CDT Joins Open Letter on Text and Data Mining Exception in EU Copyright Discussions

As the European Commission, Council and Parliament are preparing for a last trilogue meeting on a revised Copyright framework for Europe, We, representatives of the broader European research and innovation ecosystem, namely universities, large and small European technology companies, startups and scaleups and libraries, who stand at the forefront of developing research underpinning the next generation of data analytics and artificial intelligence innovation, wish to make a last plea to EU institutions to make Article 3a mandatory rather than optional in the ongoing reform of the Copyright Directive.

As EU institutions aim to find a political agreement on the Copyright Directive next week, we urge negotiators to seize this last opportunity to get the fundamentals of AI right: by replacing “may” by “shall” in Article 3a, Para. 1 of the proposed text, the EU would pave the way for a broad and effective TDM exception across Member States, allowing European researchers and companies to remain competitive in the global AI race.