European UnionInformation Society Directive, Protection of Technological Measures and Rights-Management Information
Directive 2001/29/EC, Arts. 6-7
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Private right of action
- Yes
- Obligation class
- Access restriction, Prohibition
As of .
What it requires
- Do not circumvent an effective technological measure, as Article 6(3) defines the term, where you know, or have reasonable grounds to know, that circumventing it is what you are doing (Art. 6(1)).
- Do not manufacture, import, distribute, sell, rent, advertise for sale or rental, or possess for commercial purposes a device, product or component, or provide a service, that is promoted for circumvention, has only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than circumvention, or is primarily designed to enable or facilitate it (Art. 6(2)).
- Do not knowingly and without authority remove or alter electronic rights-management information, as Article 7(2) defines the term (Art. 7(1)(a)).
- Do not knowingly and without authority distribute, import for distribution, broadcast, communicate or make available to the public a work from which electronic rights-management information has been removed or altered without authority, if you know or have reasonable grounds to know that doing so induces, enables, facilitates or conceals an infringement (Art. 7(1)(b)).
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Each Member State, through the sanctions and remedies its own law provides under Article 8, including the action for damages or an injunction that rightholders must be able to bring in national courts; the Directive names no enforcement authority of its own.
What this law does
Article 6(1) requires Member States to provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
Article 6(3) defines a technological measure as any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright, any right related to copyright or the sui generis database right.
Under the second subparagraph of Article 6(3), a technological measure is deemed effective where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
Article 6(2) requires the same protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components, and against the provision of services, that are promoted for circumvention, have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than circumvention, or are primarily designed to enable or facilitate it.
Under Article 6(4), where rightholders have taken no voluntary measures, Member States must take appropriate measures to ensure that rightholders make available to the beneficiary of certain listed exceptions or limitations the means of benefiting from them, to the extent necessary and where the beneficiary has legal access to the protected work.
Article 7(2) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 applies the first, third and fifth subparagraphs of Article 6(4) of this Directive to Articles 3 to 6 of that Directive, which include its text and data mining exceptions in Articles 3 and 4.
Article 7(1) requires Member States to provide adequate legal protection against any person who knowingly and without authority removes or alters electronic rights-management information, or who distributes, imports for distribution, broadcasts, communicates or makes available to the public works from which it has been removed or altered without authority, if that person knows or has reasonable grounds to know that doing so induces, enables, facilitates or conceals an infringement.
Article 7(2) defines rights-management information as information provided by rightholders that identifies the work, the author or another rightholder, or states the terms and conditions of use of the work, together with any numbers or codes that represent that information.
Article 8(1) requires Member States to provide appropriate sanctions and remedies for infringements of the rights and obligations in the Directive, and to ensure that they are applied, and the sanctions must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.
Article 8(2) requires each Member State to ensure that rightholders whose interests are affected by an infringing activity carried out on its territory can bring an action for damages and/or apply for an injunction and, where appropriate, for the seizure of infringing material and of the devices, products or components referred to in Article 6(2).
How courts have read itPremium data
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What each ruling held, what it means for an app, and whether it still stands are premium data, in the Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans.
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