Author: Allison Davenport

Update (May 6, 2020): In 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation intervened in support of Google’s efforts to define the scope of the “right to be forgotten” in France. Faced with an order from the French data protection authority (“CNIL”) to delist information worldwide in response to a right to be forgotten request, Google challenged the order….

Three months ago, a German court ruled that part of a Wikipedia article—found to be defamatory in a previous court decision—had to be removed from both the article and its associated revision tracker, known as a “history” page. (History pages allow anyone to see how a Wikipedia article has developed since they were created, in….

Today, the European Parliament voted 348–274 to pass a new copyright directive that includes problematic rules that will harm free knowledge. They did so after years of discussions, revisions, and more recently street protests. We believe that this is a disappointing outcome, the impacts of which will certainly be felt for years to come. As….

After a long legislative process, the final text of the EU Copyright Directive was cemented last week as trilogue negotiations between the EU Commision, Parliament, and Council came to a close. Now that the final text has been made available, with only a yes-no vote in Parliament standing in the way of its implementation, Wikimedia….

It was almost exactly five years ago that a reform of EU copyright was included in the European Commission’s list of priorities. The setting of that priority was followed by several public consultations, countless public events, and many face-to-face meetings. In 2016, the Commission made a proposal for what this reform would look like. Since….

It’s been just over three weeks since the public domain started growing again in the United States, and works from 1923 became available for anyone to freely share, remix, and enjoy.[1] Since January, hundreds of files from 1923 have been uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons, including books, images, movies, and music. It would be impossible to showcase….

As 2018 turned to 2019, people around the world celebrated the start of a brand new year with parties, family, and friends. The transition into 2019 also marked a new era for access to knowledge and culture in the United States, as new works finally entered the public domain through copyright expiration for the first….

Two years ago, we wrote about Magyar Jeti Zrt v. Hungary, a case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which dealt with legal liability for hyperlinking—a practice on which the open internet relies and which many internet users engage in a on a daily basis. Last week, the ECHR affirmed an important principle:….

The European Parliament’s September 12 vote on the proposed Copyright Directive was a missed opportunity to improve copyright, after many years of discussion: Two years ago, the European Commission set out to modernize copyright laws across the EU with a flawed proposal with potential to improve. This proposal was referred to several committees in the….

In an attempt to harmonize copyrights for the use of sound recordings created before 1972, the U.S. Senate is currently poised to pass a bill which could endanger the preservation and sharing of historical sound recordings online. The Music Modernization Act (MMA), which was passed in the House of Representatives in April and recently received….