Plenary Kick-off Meeting and Working Group Sessions

Structured stakeholder dialogue "Licences for Europe"

4 February 2013, Brussels, Belgium

The "Licence for Europe" plenary kick-off meeting took place on 4 Febuary 2013 in Brussels (Belgium) and was introduced by Commissioners Michel Barnier (Internal Market and Services), Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda) [click to read her speech] and Androulla Vassiliou (Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth). Working group sessions covering the 4 specific areas of the "Licences for Europe" were organized on the same day.

Khalid Choukri, Secretary general of ELRA, has been invited to participate in the Working group session "Text and data mining for scientific research purposes". Inline with the Commission’s objective to promote the use of text and data mining (TDM) for scientific research purposes and to explore licensing solutions, Khalid Choukri expressed the research community concerns regarding the heavy load when it comes to licensing data from multiple sources (often from different countries and legal systems). He added that since many researchers are using data crawled from internet (visible/open data) without asking permissions , there is a need to work out exceptions for Research purposes and align the EU with practices of the USA, Japan and the coming UK regulations of fair use.

Reconcile the development of Internet with copyright is the reason for the launch of the "Licences for Europe" initiative jointly led by Commissioners Michel Barnier (Internal Market and Services), Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda) and Androulla Vassiliou (Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth). The topic is of importance, Internet being a vector for growth, and the European Commission should come up with the specific and tangible licensing solutions that both European citizens and businesses expect.

"Text and data mining for scientific research purposes" is one of the 4 specific areas the "Licences for Europe" will deal with, along with "Cross-border access and the portability of services", "User-generated content and licensing for small-scale users of protected material" and "Audiovisual sector and cultural heritage institutions".