National and EU text and data mining exceptions: room for coexistence?
If only all mining activities were these cheerful! A few days ago this blog reported that Irish Government has recently proposed the introduction into Irish law (new section 53A of the Copyright Act) of a copyright exception for text and data mining (TDM). From an EU standpoint, the most interesting aspects of the Irish proposal are probably the following: First, its timing: while it is true that a TDM exception was first proposed in the 2013 Modernising Copyright Report , an actual initiative of that Member State's Government comes at a time when discussion is well underway to introduce a mandatory TDM exception at the EU level [Article 3 of the Proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market - on the EU proposal see further here and here ] . Secondly, the different scope of the Irish exception [which would be derived from Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive ] ...