Julia Reda’s proposed changes to Europe’s copyright legislation will be voted on by the entire European Parliament in July 2015.
Julia Reda is the European Parliament’s sole Pirate Party representative. Her report has already been adopted by the European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee which spent hours voting on 550 proposed amendments. Reda and others have argued that ordinary people face legal uncertainty every day as they interact with copyright material.
To coincide with the vote, the UK’s Publishers Association (PA) has released a document which hopes to set the records straight on copyright in the digital single market.
'Copyright and the Digital Single Market: Busting the Myths' outlines ten 'copyright myths' which it sets out to debunk.
The myths include:
Libraries cannot lend e-books without there being a change in copyright law
As we know, a variety of e-lending agreements between authors, publishers and libraries are already in place across the EU.
Copyright stops consumers buying ebooks on any device, and from reading ebooks abroad
The PA emphasises that it is not copyright legislation that sets up these restrictions but rather retailer policy and the limitations of technology.
University students can’t access online resources across borders
Academic publishers work closely with universities to provide their content in the most appropriate format to meet the needs of students and the licences used do allow students to access material from across the EU – and often beyond.
Education is a social good. Schools should not have to pay for textbooks
There are costs incurred when it comes to creating high quality teaching resources - writers of textbooks should not be treated differently from other forms of suppliers.
The link to the download is available here.
For more detailed information on the state of copyright within the EU, the European Parliamentary Research Service has published a briefing which can be found here.