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On April 1, 2022, Romania adopted changes to its law on copyright and related rights, fully transposing the provisions of the DSM directive.
Procedure:
In the beginning, the implementation procedure seemed promising, with the Copyright Office promoting very specific consultations among all interested stakeholders. Then it went into an all silent mode for 1 year until the end of 2020, when a seemingly different process led by the Ministry of Culture was started. An unknown number of working groups was ambiguously formed, without civil society representatives. In May 2021 the Ministry presented the first draft and organised an online public event, giving each stakeholder 3 minutes to intervene, and further allowing them to send written comments. The national implementation law was approved by the Parliament, through an ordinary legislative procedure.
Article 17:
The Romanian implementation of Article 17 simply 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. In deviation from the text of the Directive, the national lawmaker opted to extend the scope of protection granted by Article 17 to press publishers.
Other:
The Romanian 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 possibly restricts the scope of the existing exception, unnecessarily, is not subject to remuneration nor to license availability, and it covers all categories of protected materials (although there is an obligation not to replace or affect the purchase of materials intended for the educational market). Article 14 was implemented by means of exclusion from the scope of protection of copyright. When implementing the new press publishers right, the national lawmaker adopted a strict definition of what constitutes “very short extracts”, excluding from the scope of protection of the new right a maximum of 120 characters from a press publication.
Bonus:
Nothing to be seen here
Romania fully transposed the provisions of the DSM directive on April 1, 2022. Romania had a hectic implementation process (probably due to the 3 different governments that succeeded each other) and civil society organizations were only able to take part at an earlier stage of the procedures.
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. In deviation from the text of the Directive, the national lawmaker opted to extend the scope of protection granted by Article 17 to press publishers. The existing caricature and parody exception was amended to also include the act of pastiche, and applies to uses beyond uses on Online Content Sharing Service Providers.
Romania 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 of visual arts are excluded from the scope of protection of copyright.
The implementation of the new press publishers right is rather expensive, as it excludes from the scope of protection of the new right only “very short extracts” that have a maximum of 120 characters.
Local partners: Our local partner has been ApTI
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Romania.
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