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The act amending the Copyright Act to include the provisions of the DSM Directive was adopted in Parliament (Riigikogu) on the 8th of December 2021 and signed into law on the 20th of December 2021.
Procedure:
The act amending the Copyright Act was adopted by Parliament on the 8th of December after discussion in the Committee on Culture. The text was introduced into Parliament after an extensive consultation process that involved a public consultation of stakeholders ahead of the initial draft and the ability to provide comments on the first draft.
Article 17:
The Estonian implementation of Article 17 largely restates the text of the Directive. As such it does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules and does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users rights. In a deviation from the text of the Directive it requires platforms to take measures to enable users to lawfully make available to the public protected materials under copyright exceptions. The law authorizes the Consumer Protection and Technical Surveillance Authority to take actions against platforms that fail to comply with their obligations to protect substantive and procedural user rights.
Other:
The Estonian lawmaker maintained its existing non-remunerated education exception, which covers all uses of protected materials done by any users for education purposes, as permitted by Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive, while implementing a new education exception covering uses of digital works, as foreseen in Article 5 of the DSM Directive. While the new exception restricts the scope of the existing exception, unnecessarily, it is not subject to remuneration nor to license availability and covers all categories of works or other subject matter to the extent necessary for the purpose. Article 14 is transposed by adding reproductions of public domain works of fine art to the list of “Results of intellectual activities to which this Act does not apply.” The scope of the press publisher right includes some, but not all, of the limits of the Directive: scientific and academic publications are excluded from the definition of press publications; the right does not apply to the use of individual words and very short extracts, to private or non-commercial uses by individual users, nor to acts of hyperlinking; and the right is subject to the exceptions and limitations to neighboring rights laid out in the national law. However, the national law does not clarify that the right cannot be invoked against uses authorized by a non-exclusive license nor against the use of public domain works.
Bonus:
The Estonian implementation of the provisions for Out of Commerce Works (OCCW) contains a number of cut-off-dates that clarify that certain types of works should be considered to be out of commerce after a certain number of years have passed since publication (depending on the type of work between 5 and 50 years) “unless there are obvious circumstances to the contrary”. It also establishes that in order to be able to issue extended collective licenses for the use of OOCWs collective management organisation must represent "the vast majority" of rightholder in Estonia. This provides additional clarity for determining when OOCWs can be used under the exception.
On the 8th of december 2021 the Parliament (Riigikogu) adopted the act amending the Copyright Act to include the provisions of the DSM directive after discussion in the Committee on Culture. The text was introduced into Parliament in May 2021 after an extensive consultation process that provided stakeholders with meaningful opportunities to contribute to the implementation process. The government organized a public consultation and various meetings with stakeholders to discuss the Directive, before starting the drafting process. After releasing the draft, the government sent it to the stakeholders for comments and also met online with them to discuss the draft.
The implementation of Article 17 largely restates the text of the Directive. As such it does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules and does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users rights. However the law authorizes the Consumer Protection and Technical Surveillance Authority to take actions against platforms that fail to comply with their obligations to protect substantive and procedural user rights providing an additional layer of ex-post remedies against overblocking.
The Estonian lawmaker maintains its existing non-remunerated exception for education and scientific research purposes, while implementing the education and text and data mining exceptions foreseen in the DSM Directive. The new education exception for uses of digital works is not subject to remuneration nor to license availability and covers all categories of protected materials to the extent justified by the purpose. Reproductions of public domain works are excluded from the scope of application of the Copyright Act. Article 12 of the Directive is implemented, allowing domestic extended collective licensing schemes.
Local partners: Our local partner has been Wikimedia Eesti
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Estonia.
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