In July 2008 the European Commission published a Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. According to the Commission,

The purpose of the Green Paper is to foster a debate on how knowledge for research, science and education can best be disseminated in the online environment. The Green Paper aims to set out a number of issues connected with the role of copyright in the “knowledge economy” and intends to launch a consultation on these issues.

The Green Paper consists of two parts, the first one dealing with general issues regarding to the role of exceptions and limitations to exclusive rights and the extend to which these have been harmonized across the member states of the EU. The second part deals with specific issues related to the exceptions and limitations in the fields of education, libraries and archives, access for the disabled and ‘user generated content’. Throughout the Green Paper the Commission has formulated 25 questions related to these issues and has invited stakeholders provide the commission with comments and reactions by the 30th of November 2008.

Yesterday, Knowledgeland has submitted a document with comments on the Green Paper [download the PDF here]. These comments deal with the questions relating to issues that are relevant to our own activities [primarily the projects Images for the Future and Creative Commons Nederland]. Parts of these comments have been formulated based on the - more extensive - reply by the Dutch Cultural Heritage Institutions and the comments from working group 3 of the COMMUNIA network and La Quadrature du Net.