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Cyprus has fully implemented the provisions of the DSM Directive into national law. The changes to the Copyright and Related Rights Act took effect on the 7th of October 2022.
Procedure:
Cyprus organized a public consultation on the national implementation of the Directive before starting to draft the implementation law. The government did not organize any public events, but was available to take part in events organised by the civil society and discuss the implementation at such events. Cyprus did not submit the draft implementation law to public consultation, but was available to meet with civil society organizations to discuss the draft. The national implementation law was approved by the Parliament, through an ordinary legislative procedure.
Article 17:
The Cypriot implementation of Article 17 restates the text of the Directive. As such it contains only a general requirement not to limit legitimate uses, but does not establish any specific ex-ante safeguards. It does not contain any additional transparency provisions and it does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules.
Other:
Cyprus implemented Article 5 of the DSM Directive by introducing a new restrictive education exception and, simultaneously, turning its broad and flexible education and research exception into a equally highly limited provision. The preexisting exception was based on the InfoSoc Directive and permitted any uses by any users, for purposes of illustration for teaching and research, without being subject to compensation. Both the preexisting exception and the new exception only allow the use of 5% of a protected material (poems are excluded from this quantity limitation), are subject to compensation and do not apply if suitable licenses are easily available in the market.
Article 14 has been implemented literally.
The implementation of Article 15 includes most of the limits foreseen in the DSM Directive: scientific and academic publications are excluded from the definition of press publications; the right is subject to the exceptions and limitations to copyright laid out in the national law; the right does not apply to private or non-commercial uses by individual users, to the use of individual words and very short extracts, nor to acts of hyperlinking; and the right cannot be invoked against uses permitted by non-exclusive licenses. The national lawmaker has, however, misinterpreted the last sentence of Article 15(2) and therefore does not adequately protect the use of public domain works. In addition, the national lawmaker decided to introduce its own (narrow) definition of what constitutes an hyperlink to a press publication, covering links that can be activated to take the user to a press publication or part thereof on the press publisher's website and excluding other forms of links such as links that use framing technology.
Bonus:
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Cyprus has fully implemented the provisions of the DSM Directive into national law on the 7th of October 2022. The implementation law was adopted following an ordinary legislative process including a public consultation before the release of the government proposal.
The implementation of the DSM Directive in Cyprus led the national lawmaker to review several of its existing copyright exceptions, drastically narrowing down the scope of users rights. Article 5 of the DSM Directive was implemented by replacing a broad and non-remunerated education and research exception with a highly limited provision, which only allows use of 5% of a work and that is subject to compensation and to license availability. Other existing exceptions that were based on the flexible prototypes provided by the InfoSoc Directive, such as the quotation exception, are now much more limited.
The transposition of Article 17 does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users' rights. The national lawmaker introduced a full exception for caricature, parody and pastiche, which applies to uses beyond uses on Online Content Sharing Service Providers.
The press publishers right includes most of the limits foreseen in the DSM Directive, but the national lawmaker has not implemented Article 15(2) correctly and decided to offer its own (narrow) definition of what constitutes an hyperlink to a press publication.
Local partners: Our local partner has been the UNESCO Chair on Digital Heritage.
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Cyprus.
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