One or Several Super-Rights? The (Subtle) Impact of the Digital Single Market on a Future EU Copyright Architecture

Abstract

The 2001 Directive on Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society has often been criticized as being too rigid, and also for affording too powerful rights to exploiters, rather than emphasising the relationship between author’s rights and the public interest. Recent CJEU jurisprudence has, very arguably, introduced more flexibility and shifted the focus, perhaps in a subtle anticipation of a digital single market. This contribution explores that jurisprudence and its potential impact, with an emphasis on uses of works by institutions such libraries. More generally, the role of limitations and exceptions to copyright in the broader framework of a novel (yet of course evolving) construction of key concepts is examined—in particular the notion of a new public and the advent of a digital exhaustion doctrine.