Monthly report on copyright reform in Poland-November, 2013
Below we are publishing key developments in copyright reform in Poland. November, 2013.
The project is conducted with the support of Open Society Foundations. Most of the links lead to content in Polish.
1. In mid-November the Association of Importers and Manufacturers of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (ZIPSEE) presented a draft amendment of regulations on categories and private copying levy on devices and carriers used for fixing works and objects of related rights. It is a reaction to a proposal prepared by the collecting societies in September this year, which is expected to increase both the number of devices covered by the levy and the charged amount. Instead, ZIPSEE is suggesting crossing out all archaic devices, such as VHS ,VCR or floppy disks and implementation of standarized categories, for example a single category on CDs instead of the current three. The amendment proposes an obligation of regular overview of the devices list by the Ministry of Culture.
ZIPSEE advocates also for the deletion of KOPIPOL, one of the collecting societies, from the list of authorized entities to collect money, due to not fulfilling its obligation to distribute revenues. In 2012, KOPIPOL has collected more than 9,6M PLN, but payed only 233 thousand PLN to authors, while the administrative cost of association, which employs 4 people was nearly 1,6M PLN.
2. The National Broadcasting Council (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji) and 19 public media companies have signed a letter of intent on the creation of Public Media Digital Library (Biblioteka Cyfrowa Mediów Publicznych). The idea is to gather in one place sound and audiovisual materials stored in the archives of public radio and television. The announcement of establishing of the Digital Library is a response to the European Commission’s policy on making available and sharing public media resources. A unified system for searching audio and audiovisual works form public radio and television will provide opportunity of access and reuse to public media resources, while respecting copyright of authors and producers.
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3. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has published results of a public consultation on exceptions and limitation on copyright law and public lending right, which were the subject of discussion during the third Copyright Forum. As the Ministry ensures, changes of provisions relating to exceptions and limitations on copyright law will be part of the copyright act reform associated with the implementation of the Directive on orphan works or if neccessary, after additional consultation on this topic.
4. According to the draft amendment to the Law on Higher Education till the end of the 2016 all Polish Universities will be obliged to implement anti-plagiarism systems to check whether thesis of their students are not infringing any copyrights. Currently, there is no such obligation. Currently universities need only to ensure that all thesis are verified for plagiarism, but it doesn’t have be through the computer system. In addition, the universities will be required to enter all thesis defended after 30 September 2009 into a nationwide database. This will include both public and private universities.