Despite the European Union undergoing its own review of the copyright acquis, the Irish Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation has drafted a new bill. They claim that the bill is intended to help rightsholders enforce their IP rights in the courts but also ‘addresses a host of other important societal needs including:
- expanding the education exception to allow the use of digital works in the classroom or through access to secure school networks, such as students using school iPad at home to access material held in school databases or for watching lectures over the internet;
- expanding the research exception and making provision for data analytics through a new exception for text and data mining;
- facilitating persons with a disability getting access to works by expanding the disability exception to use new technologies to adapt works to the needs of persons with a disability, allowing persons with a disability or authorised entities to make necessary adaptations to books, audio-visual works or other copyright work themselves using modern technologies.
The proposal is available here and the official press release announcing the bill here.
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has also published draft texts which reportedly also include an exception for text and data mining.
IPA will monitor these pieces of legislation as they progress and keep members informed.