Non-Commercial Quotation and Freedom of Panorama: Useful and Lawful?

Abstract

This contribution seeks to assess both the practical implications and lawfulness of national copyright exceptions that – lacking a corresponding provision in Article 5 of Directive 2001/29 (the InfoSoc Directive) – envisage that the only permitted use of a copyright work for the sake of the applicability of a certain exception is a non-commercial one. By referring to different national exceptions allowing quotation and freedom of panorama as case studies, the paper shows some of the shortcomings deriving from different approaches to the same permitted uses of copyright works across the EU, as well as the resulting (negative) impact on the very objective underlying adoption of the InfoSoc Directive: harmonization. This contribution concludes that – in general terms – diverging approaches to copyright exceptions, including limiting the availability of certain exceptions to non-commercial uses, may be both impractical and contrary to the system established by the InfoSoc Directive.