New Brussels Lobbying Group Communia Works For A Stronger Public Domain

A new association is being launched this week in Brussels with the mission to promote the digital public domain. The move comes in the face of heavy lobbying for stronger copyright protection.

The group, Communia, will focus on research and advocacy work, according to Mélanie Dulong of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), a partner of the Research Center in Administrative Science (CERSA), one of the founding members of Communia.

Lobbying from this angle is important because pressure is so strong for a more restrictive copyright system, more control and three-strikes systems, Dulong said. Three-strikes refers to a growing practice of threatening to cut off all access to the internet for a person alleged to violate copyright three times.

At their 16 June launch, Communia members will promote 14 principles to protect and promote the public domain, including a warning against ever-longer automatic copyright protection periods (up to 90 years), a call to sanction “any false or misleading attempt to misappropriate public domain material,” and to only grant full copyright protection to registered works.

It also calls for harmonisation of exceptions and limitations to copyright, a pan-European system allowing full access to orphan works (for which the copyright owner cannot be found), facilitation of access to copyrighted works for education and research purposes, and strengthening of publicly funded and cultural organisations by ensuring information is freely available for all.

The launch of Communia results from the work of an EU-funded project started in 2007 that brought together about 50 partners from research, library and advocacy institutions. The partners, many of which are also active as Creative Commons partners, decided after the end of the EU public funding that the work was indispensable.

The list of Communia members is available here.

More information on Communia is available here.