NEWS

FutureTDM held a workshop in Brussels on 27^th of September with the European Parliament Digital Agenda Intergroup sponsorship which ensured that our message reached the EU policy audience and received as being objective. MEPs from the intergroup chaired workshop panels and gave the closing summary keynote. FutureTDM invited the Brussels policy community, the TDM stakeholder community and the FutureTDM board of advisors to this event. There has been a strong network of influence ensuring a high number of registration for the event (surpassing our room capacity of 80). A total amount of 61 attendees, including EU policy shapers, advocacy organisations and representatives from the Parliament Commission and Council, alongside the broader TDM community that we have been engaging with for the past year.

FutureTDM on the Press!

The FutureTDM recently received a lot of coverage from different stakeholders mainly related to the FutureTDM workshop. Some can be found below:

• Science | Business: New EU text and data mining proposal would not benefit everyone.
• Marietje Schaake: Future of Text and Data Mining.
• Catherine Stihler: Press release: FutureTDM Event at Scotland House
• Copyright4creativity published a post on their website about the workshop focusing mostly on the legal aspects we discussed and included our video in their post.
• Chris Kluiters published a post on his LinkedIn page giving a more general account of the workshop.

FutureTDM Website Poll Introduced

One of the ways in which we engaged the community was by a poll on what the community considered to be the biggest barrier. FutureTDM Platform visitors were asked to participate in the poll where we ask “What represents the biggest barrier to TDM uptake in the EU?” the website poll showed people thought the legal factors provided the main barrier. We asked the same question during the Knowledge cafe and interestingly the outcome is different where the participants of the Knowledge cafe said that education and skill was the biggest barrier.

Important Updates: TDM Exceptions

In September, the Commission published a draft of the Commission’s impact assessment “on the modernisation of EU copyright rules” and a draft for a new directive “on copyright in the Digital Single Market” were leaked. Later at 14 Sep, the Commission launched the long-awaited proposal for this directive, which includes an exception for reproductions made by research organisations to carry out text and data mining (TDM) for scientific research purposes. One of the crucial aspects for the scope of this exception, and the main question that FutureTDM was interested is: who is going to benefit from this exception?

Another exception is introduced as of October 7, 2016, the law on a Digital Republic (“République Numérique”) introduced an exception for text and data mining (TDM) in the French Intellectual Property Code, which provides some safeguards and opportunities with regard to conservation and communication of any reproductions made in the TDM process after the TDM activities are carried out.

Dissemination activities

FutureTDM has extended its library of awareness sheets. In total, nine awareness sheets have been created and in print form or online disseminated and it received good feedbacks from wide audience. Many interviews have been recorded and published online on FutureTDM’s video channel.