pts.
points
Slovakia has fully implemented the provisions of the DSM Directive into national law on 16th of February 2022. The law entered into force on 25th of March 2022.
Procedure:
The Slovakian government organized a public pre-draft consultation on the implementation, providing stakeholders with the opportunity to present their own proposals. Furthermore, the Copyright Working Group, formed by approximately 40 members representing different types of stakeholders, met regularly since 2019, giving stakeholders equal opportunities to discuss the implementation. The Ministry of Culture has continually circulated preliminary versions of the draft law among the members of the working group. The national implementation law was approved by the Parliament, through an ordinary legislative procedure.
Article 17:
The Slovakian implementation of Article 17 contains only a general requirement not to limit legitimate uses, without establishing any specific ex-ante safeguards for users. On the positive side, the national lawmaker expanded the exemplificative list of uses that must remain unaffected by the cooperation of platforms with rightholders: in addition to uses covered by copyright exceptions, platforms shall not restrict fundamental rights and freedoms nor the use of subject matter excluded from copyright protection.
The national law does not contain any additional transparency provisions and it does not narrow down the definition of platforms affected by these rules.
Other:
The Slovakian lawmaker maintained its existing non-remunerated education and research exception, which covers reproductions, public performances and public communications of protected materials done by any users for education or research purposes, as permitted by Article 5(3)(a) of the InfoSoc Directive, while implementing a new education exception covering uses of digital reproductions, public performances and public communications during teaching at school, under the responsibility of the school or via the school's secure electronic network. While the new exception, based on Article 5 of the DSM Directive, 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.
Slovakia has not explicitly implemented Article 14 into national law. The national law does not offer protection to non-original photographs or other reproductions, and there’s a provision that states that once the copyright protection has expired the work can be freely used.
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 the title, individual words and very short excerpts of 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 the exceptions and limitations to copyright laid out in the national law.
Bonus:
Nothing to be seen here.
Slovakia has fully implemented the provisions of the DSM Directive into national law on the 16th of February 2022. The implementation law was adopted following an ordinary legislative process, including an exemplary public consultation process pre-draft and post-draft.
Slovakia maintains its existing non-remunerated exception for education and research purposes, while implementing the education exception foreseen in the DSM Directive. This new exception is not subject to remuneration nor to license availability and covers all categories of protected materials without pre-defined quantity limitations.
The transposition of Article 17 does not contain any specific ex-ante safeguards for users, but the national law goes beyond the text of the Directive, when it comes to define legitimate uses, by protecting not only uses covered by copyright exceptions, but also fundamental rights and freedoms and the use of subject matter excluded from copyright protection.
The press publisher's right is subject to all of the limits foreseen in the DSM Directive.
Local partners: Our local partner has been Creative Commons Slovakia.
For more information please see our implementation tracking page for Slovakia.
License information
This site is hosted by Communia, the International Association On the Digital Public Domain. We release all our documents, reports, infographics and researches under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0). Unless otherwise stated, images are released under CC0 as well. Please feel free to download and reuse.
Credits
The font used in this project is under the SIL Open Font License, and it's provided by Creative Sauce Design. The photos used in this website to better illustrate each EU Member State were downloaded form Flickr and therein stored under CC-BY or CC-BY-NC licenses.