Our response to European Commission’s review of the CDSM Directive
We welcomed the European Commission’s call for evidence regarding the implementation and impact of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) – see the feedback we submitted.
As an organisation dedicated to fostering an open, equitable, and digital-ready knowledge and cultural ecosystem, our evaluation focuses on how the CDSM framework affects researchers, cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), and the emerging landscape of public-interest, open-source AI development and European innovation.
We align our position with the submission by the COMMUNIA Association and Knowledge Rights 21, of which Centrum Cyfrowe is a member (COMMUNIA) and National Coordinator for Poland (KR21).
While the CDSM Directive introduced mandatory exceptions—particularly for text and data mining (TDM) and the preservation of cultural heritage—empirical evidence gathered across our recent initiatives demonstrates that European copyright remains overly fragmented, complex, and risk-inducing. To truly achieve a competitive and inclusive Digital Single Market, Europe must move beyond the current patchworks and work toward comprehensive harmonisation, institutional “safe harbors,” and robust protections for open science and public-interest technology.
The CDSM Directive, while a step forward in 2019, is insufficient for the digital realities of 2026. The current ecosystem leaves researchers constrained, museums immobilised by legal risk, and open-source AI developers facing regulatory gridlock. We call on the European Commission to look toward a comprehensive regulation that permanently harmonises users’ rights, establishes institutional safe harbors, and ensures that the public domain and open science are treated as vital European common goods – supporting development of sovereign technologies as well as broad access to knowledge and culture crucial for a more resilient society.
Full text of our response is available on the European Commission’s platform.