EIFL’s comments to the European Commission’s targeted changes to the EU’s copyright framework focused on two areas: copyright and generative AI, and copyright and research. Case studies help to illustrate the need for change.

On copyright and generative AI, EIFL called for clarification of EU copyright rules, especially on text and data mining, and the introduction of obligations on transparency, disclosure and record-keeping by AI companies. These measures would address practical and policy concerns, helping to create legal certainty for users, making it easier for researchers, as copyright owners who have retained their rights, to understand how their content is used by web crawlers and AI agents, and increasing accountability among AI providers. 

On copyright and research, EIFL called for an updated, mandatory research exception and the introduction of an EU-wide Secondary Publication Right (SPR).  An updated, harmonized, mandatory research exception would facilitate research in the digital environment, especially across borders, and it would align with the policy objectives of Horizon Europe, the EU's key funding programme for research and innovation. An EU-wide Secondary Publication Right (SPR) would give authors of publicly-funded research a legal right to share their work in open access repositories,  even in the absence of an open access publishing agreement with the publisher or a national policy on open access.