EU

Open access should be the norm for EU by 2020, say research ministers 

EU research ministers have published a commitment to make “open access to scientific publications as the option by default by 2020.” The decision was taken during a meeting of the Competitiveness Council, which is made up of ministers from the EU’s member states. In addition, ministers agreed “to the best possible reuse of research data as a way to accelerate the transition towards an open science system.”

The formal “conclusions” of the meeting define open access to publications as “free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.”

Source: Open access should be the norm for EU by 2020, say research ministers | Ars Technica

Europe’s Geoblocking Decision: What You Need to Know 

It was previously believed the EU regulator wanted to “unblock the geo-blocks,” which would in theory have prevented companies from blocking access to their services if a user was accessing them from outside an “approved” area. The BBC’s state-funded iPlayer, officially unusable outside of the U.K., could have been affected by such a proposal, but this is not something the watchdog is addressing as part of its announcements today.

“The proposed ‘anti-geo-blocking’ regulation doesn’t do what it says on the tin,” said Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament’s Green group. “When most Europeans hear the term ‘geo-blocking,’ they think of the all-too-common error message that ‘this video is not available in your country’ — and yet the measures presented today will not do anything to address this. An anti-geo-blocking regulation that does not cover online video content misses the point.”

Source: Europe’s Geoblocking Decision: What You Need to Know – Bloomberg

Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play

Designed to enable faster, more cost efficient and simplified rights negotiations for digital music services operating in Europe, the licensing and royalty processing service collectively represents over 250,000 songwriters.

The organization bills itself as the world’s first integrated licensing and processing hub and claims to have the most comprehensive copyright database in Europe. It says it will process online music usage through a single matching engine that will eliminate “unnecessary processing” and significantly reduce disputed claims.

Source: Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play | Billboard

Report: New Euro law could put film, TV audiences at risk of substantial loss of content 

The report calculates that changes to copyright and other initiatives at the EU level could result in substantially lower levels of investment in TV and film content, with consumer welfare losses worth up to €9.3 billion. This, it said, would be a direct result of those consumers losing access to content they currently enjoy, being charged more, or being priced out completely. It further asserts that up to 48% less local TV content in certain genres and 37% less local film production would be produced, with the most marginal/risky content at particular risk of being dropped.

The report was launched with the support of a broad group of sponsors, including film and audiovisual producers, distributors, broadcasters, platforms and film agencies throughout Europe and across the world. The group urges the European Commission to re-think its proposals to erode the territorial exploitation of film and TV content and avoid any proposals or other initiatives that would undermine film and television licensing and financing, including the decision to license on an exclusive territorial basis.

Source: New Euro law claimed to be putting film, TV audiences at risk of substantial loss of content | Media Analysis | Business

Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead 

Under its digital single market plans, the European Commission has so far proposed a crowd-pleasing new law to allow people to use digital content subscriptions like Netflix when they travel to other EU countries. The executive also came out with proposals to reform online contracts and open the 700 MHz spectrum band for mobile internet and outlined non-legislative measures to make industrial manufacturing more digital.

Paul Meller, spokesman for tech industry association DigitalEurope, said the digital single market plans are “far more ambitious than any previous Commission efforts in this area”.

But there could be dramatic twists ahead: the executive’s announcements, still planned for later this year, are some of the most controversial ones in the strategy.

Source: Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead – EurActiv.com

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