Czech Business Today
TDM exemption will ease artificial intelligence development
On the 13th of February, representatives of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Romanian presidency in the Council of the EU reached a provisional deal regarding the revision of the Copyright Directive.
The negotiations have been very heated, especially in the European Parliament which indicates the importance of the reform. The new rules based on the Directive will have a major impact on the development of the single digital market, from the implementation of Industry 4.0 and robotics to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Apart from the two infamous articles of the proposed Directive – 11 and 13, one of the key aspects of the copyright reform for the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning was article 3a which focused on text and data mining.
This mechanism has major importance for big data processing and machine learning. Therefore, Czech business associations welcome that the provisional agreement from the trilogue includes an exemption from the copyright restrictions for text and data mining, which means that researchers and scientists will be able to use automated technologies to analyse large data sets for their activities, while establishing a legal certainty that they don’t infringe the copyright rules. Text and data mining was one the hot topics during the negotiations because some parties deemed the exemption will harm copyright holders.
However, the use of the content for text and data mining will only be allowed in cases where the user will have legal access to the content and after the approval of the copyright holder, meaning that the rights of the holders won’t be infringed. Czech business organizations are convinced that the exemption will help to exploit the potential of European research and keep the EU in the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution.
