Ministers offered compromise on text and data mining

EU member states should have control over non-scientific use of copyrighted materials for text and data mining, the Estonian presidency of the Council of Ministers has proposed.

In a compromise proposal for the copyright directive, published on 28 November, the Estonian presidency of the Council said that member states should be given individual powers to decide whether private and public organisations should have the right to carry out text and data mining on copyrighted materials to which they have lawful access.

The proposal seeks to give more legal certainty to the non-scientific use of computer programmes to legally analyse large files.