Today more than ever, digital technologies are revolutionising our everyday life, the ways in which we express our creativity, access culture, information, and knowledge. Digital technologies carry the potential to enable unprecedented democratisation of our cultural practices related to both the production and consumption of music, literature, news, movies and so many other intellectual and artistic works.

Copyright law plays a fundamental role in turning this potential into reality. The discipline boasts an enduring European history, having traditionally interacted with the offline world for over three centuries. The entry into the scene of digital technologies represents a disruption that cannot be ignored. On the contrary, it needs to be taken seriously, as it represents a unique opportunity to modernize the European copyright legal framework.

We at ReCreating Europe are working in this direction. By bringing researchers, institutions, copyright experts, policymakers, and other stakeholders together, we investigate what is needed to support the emergence of a new effective system of sustainable norms for digital copyright.

It is in this spirit that today, which is the World IP Day 2021, our project joins the IP community worldwide to celebrate the importance of copyright for fostering creativity, innovation, and growth, and for promoting a culturally diverse production and inclusive access to cultural goods in Europe.

For us, IP does not just stand for intellectual property, but also for Inclusiveness Project. Modern intellectual property was born to include, not just to exclude. With our research and activities, we want to help legislators and the market to make sure that digital copyright law remains inclusive for all the stakeholders involved. This means for:

• All end-users, also the most vulnerable ones, to ensure access and accessibility. We study the interplay between technology, digitalization, and regulation taking into account that end-users are not an anonymous and homogeneous bulk of consumers, but they are individuals with different preferences, characteristics, and backgrounds;
• Individual authors and performers, no matter where they live and what they create, to ensure adequate remuneration and access to the market. We are specifically looking at the impact of new digital technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, on creators and creative processes;
• Creative industries, from the smallest and most isolated creative community to the big company, treasuring all forms of cultural and creative contributions. We are working with lawyers, geographers, and sociologists to investigate, among others, the effects of the territorial nature of copyright law in the EU Digital Single Market, new emerging business models in creative sectors that do not necessarily rely on intellectual property incentives, and best practices in reusing audiovisual materials in documentary filmmaking and other sectors.
• Cultural heritage institutions, to empower their role of hubs of cultural democracy. We work closely with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums to understand their position and collect their feedback, conducting quantitative and qualitative empirical research to determine the impact that copyright law and open policies have on the digitization of Europe’s cultural heritage;
• Intermediaries, to make them lawful catalysts of information and creative expressions, and not dark censors. Our research focuses on copyright content moderation in online platforms and its impact on access to culture in the Digital Single Market. We look into how the law and the privacy practices, mechanisms and structures of different sized platforms interact and shape the ways in which users disseminate and access content cultural and creative expression through online platforms.

Listen to what our research team leaders have to say about their work towards ‘ReCreating’ European digital copyright:

If you want to know more and keep posted about ReCreating Europe’s research and activities, subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

A culturally diverse, accessible, and creative Europe is possible. Happy World IP Day to everyone!

[Photo by Everyday basics on Unsplash]