Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society -- better and preferably known as the InfoSoc Directive
[why can't the EU's legislators come up with cute little pet-names and acronyms for their legislation like their US cousins?] -- uses the terms "commercial" and "non-commercial" in respect of exceptions to copyright infringement. These terms are not defined in the Directive and it is unlikely that any definition would stand the test of time as the lines between formal business arrangements and individual instances of profitable activities become increasingly blurred.
This blogger has been asked if he can encourage readers to submit not definitions per se but helpful examples of activities that might be consensually regarded as definitely commercial, definitely non-commercial or possibly both commercial
and non-commercial depending on their circumstances -- particularly but not necessarily limited to the context of the provision of public access to a work.
Please feel welcome to post your suggestions and comments below this blogpost.
There are a number of sources that are useful regarding commercial v non-commercial:
ReplyDeleteThe IPO's guidance on the orphan works licensing scheme has a list of examples of what would constitute non-commercial use, and then a paragraph about what would be commercial
There is also the legal case of HMSO v Green Amps which looked at the meaning of commercial
There is the Creative Commons item "Defining noncommercial" which was done from the perspective of the CC movement, rather than specifically from a copyright law point of view.
See: http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/defining-noncommercial/Defining_Noncommercial_fullreport.pdf
ReplyDelete