CESAER Statement on Copyright and Open Access

The Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research, CESAER for short, considers the proposed EU directive on copyright to be too restrictive.

In September 2016, the European Union has passed a draft of a European Parliament directive for the harmonization of copyright regulations in the EU. It is part of a strategy to create a digital single market, seeking to reduce the differences between the national copyright legislations. The overall objective is to enable comprehensive access to protected works, in particular in the service of research and education.

CESAER has released a statement on this proposed directive, arguing that the proposals on Text and Data Mining and the use of protected works in teaching and learning might be to be too restrictive and limiting. CESAER advocates a stronger reduction of existing barriers in the interest of an European Open Science Cloud and to facilitate forward-looking forms of teaching across campuses and borders.