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Greece adopted changes to its Copyright Act, transposing all the provisions of the DSM directive on 22 November 2022. The law came into effect on 24 November 2022.
Procedure:
A law-making committee was formed by the government in 2019 to work on the implementation of the DSM Directive. The committee included members from the academia, but no civil society representatives, and there are no details on the frequency of the meetings, nor on the participation balance among stakeholders. In the meantime, the Hellenic Copyright Organization organized a public consultation on the matter, and met with representatives of civil society organizations. All requests by civil society organizations to meet with the Ministry of Culture and Sports were ignored or rejected. After the first committee failed to meet the deadline for the delivery of a draft law to the Ministry of Culture and Sports, a second committee was appointed in 2021. The latter prepared a draft law and submitted it to the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports within the set deadline.The Ministry of Culture and Sports published the draft law for public consultation for a period of 15 days. A few weeks later, the national implementation law was approved by the Parliament, through an ordinary legislative procedure.
Article 17:
The Greek implementation of Article 17 contains only a general requirement not to limit legitimate uses, without any specific ex-ante measures to protect users rights. The law does not contain any additional transparency provisions and it does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules.
Other:
Greece has implemented Article 5 of the DSM Directive through a new education exception that allows only the use of 5% of the protected material, unless the material is a newspaper or periodical article, a poem, or a work of visual arts, in which case the material can be used in its entirety. The new exception does not apply if suitable licenses are easily available in the market and it is subject to compensation. When implementing this new provision, the lawmaker also decided to reduce the scope of the pre-existing reproduction exception. The exception, which previously protected both digital and printed copies and covered all users without requiring any payment, now only applies to printed copies.
Article 14 has been implemented literally.
The implementation of Article 15 includes all the limits foreseen in the DSM Directive: scientific and academic publications are excluded from the definition of press publications; the right does not apply to private or non-commercial uses by individual users, to acts of hyperlinking nor to the use of individual words and very short extracts from press publications; the right cannot be invoked against uses authorized by a non-exclusive license nor against the use of public domain works; and the right is subject to all the exceptions and limitations to copyright laid out in the national law. However, the Greek lawmaker decided to introduce its own qualitative definition of “very short extracts”, covering only those extracts “the use of which does not affect the effectiveness of the rights of publishers”. This is deemed to happen “in particular, when the use of the extracts replaces the publication itself or prevents the interested party from reading it”.
Bonus:
Nothing to see here
Greece has fully implemented the provisions of the DSM Directive into national law on 24 November 2022.
The Greek government embarked on the implementation process in a relatively intransparent manner. The government formed a first law-making committee in 2019 without involving civil society organizations, nor disclosing the details of the discussions. A second committee (which was nominated in 2021, after the first failed to deliver a draft on time) proceeded differently and the leading organization not only prepared a public consultation, but was also available to meet with civil society organizations. The government has rejected or ignored all meeting requests by civil society organizations, but after releasing the draft law organized a public consultation. The national implementation law was approved by the Parliament, following an ordinary legislative procedure.
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, does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users rights or additional transparency provisions.
The new education exception is subject to quality limitations and to license availability. In addition, it is subject to remuneration, breaking with the Greek tradition of not requiring payment for uses permitted under copyright exceptions.
The press publisher's right is subject to all of the limits foreseen in the DSM Directive, and the national law contains its own definition of “very short extracts”, covering only those extracts “the use of which does not affect the effectiveness of the rights of publishers”.
Our local partner has been Homo Digitalis
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Greece.
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