EU's Kroes Says Europe's Copyright Laws Are Outdated

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Copyright laws are holding back potentially life-saving research, the European Union's top digital lawmaker said on Monday.

Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes was speaking at the 2012 Intellectual Property and Innovation Summit in Brussels. She also said that the E.U. copyright laws are out of date and have failed to keep up with the rapid pace of changing technology.

The E.U.'s Copyright Directive was adopted in 2001, but is based on recommendations dating back to to 1998 -- long before Facebook and YouTube, as the Commissioner pointed out.

Kroes said she is concerned about how copyright laws could be holding back clinical research. Researchers could be making huge breakthroughs by manipulating existing data. "Data and text-mining techniques now lie behind a huge field of research," said Kroes. But research is not explicitly exempted from current copyright rules across the E.U. and Kroes wants to see the researchers "freed them from their current legal tangle."

She also expressed concern that copyright was hampering culture, as online licensing restrictions can make it impossible to buy music legally across an E.U. border.

This view was echoed by Paul Klimpel, former managing director of Deutsche Kinemathek. "Copyright is the highest barrier to the future of our cultural heritage." He added that the term of copyright protection is often longer than economic recovery possibilities, which doesn't make sense and leads to abandoned and worthless works.

Taking up the issue of the length of copyright terms, Bernt Hugenholz, professor of intellectual property at the Institute for Information Law in the University of Amsterdam, asked the commissioner if it is time to put copyright term reduction on the agenda.

Kroes said that she was tempted, but ultimately side-stepped the question.

Source: PC World

[neufuse Veteran]

didn't read the whole thing, but if you got rid of medical patents in the USA for example a lot of pharm. companies would sadly stop trying because there was not financial benefit for being the first anymore... it's sad, but it's true

[theyarecomingforyou]

There is no doubt that copyright laws are out of date but unfortunately the EU isn't brave enough to take adopt radical reforms, especially not when the US will resist such a move. You only have to look at the Wikileaks documents to see that the US has been manipulating copyright laws in EU countries, most notably Spain.

[THolman Veteran]

I support copyright law. We need copyright law. But we also need reform, something to take it back closer to its origins. Right now its been so abused and drawn out that it's a barrier to intellectual work, rather than a stimulus. Maybe shorter periods of protection, with the option of renewal if the creator or immediate family is still alive and wants to keep control over the work.

[Growled Member]

I support copyright law. We need copyright law.

Yes, we do. But we don't need software patent laws.That's the holdup.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Yes, we do. But we don't need software patent laws.That's the holdup.

Actually, Europe has a much stricter stance on software patents than the US and the UK doesn't recognise software patents. It's primarily the US where they have been abused. International reform and standardisation is needed to ensure consistency and to protect innovation, as currently innovation is being stifled which runs counter to the purpose of copyright laws.

[zeta_immersion]

make it free open source so any idiot can take a look at it and start pointing fingers. Put your name in it and post it online.

have a central repository (easily done) and then no one can steal as it can be easily checked for date stamp and name