EU public consultation on the access to Public Sector Information (PSI)

Published Monday 20 of December, 2010

The EU Commission recently launched a public consultation to gather feedbacks on the application of, and possible amendments to, Directive No. 2003/98/EC regulating access to Public Sector Information (“PSI”).
Access to, and reuse of, PSI is critical to the free circulation of culture within a democratic society. Therefore, AFACE responded to the consultation. 

You may find the whole text of AFACE’ s response to the consultation at this link. For your information, some of the views supported in AFACE’s s response are reported below:

  1. In general, laws should compel a more open access to PSI, while “soft” law (e.g. standardization of databases) should be used to encourage coordination between public administrations (“PAs”);
  2. All PAs and public enterprises (including public broadcasters) should allow access to all of the documents they own, which should all be considered PSI;
  3. All types of “documents” – including audiovisual ones and orphan works – should be considered PSI as long as created in the exercise of a public service, notwithstanding the existence of any IP rights;
  4. Access to PSI should be allowed at reasonable prices, which should only take into account the PA’ s costs for maintenance and the type of re-use made, not grant a profit to PA. Please send us your ideas and thoughts to support fair copyright and free circulation of culture in Europe. 

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