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Develop an education and research-compatible copyright law
The seven major science and research organisations associated within the Alliance call for a copyright law that is compatible with the needs and interests of education and research. This development builds on the current debate regarding the copyright act amendment proposed by the federal government in which the concerns that have been repeatedly voiced by education and research hardly seem to have been considered at all. It is to be feared that cooperation between academics, scientists and researchers across information networks will be made much more difficult, that the scientific study of audiovisual documents, in particular, will be massively impeded, and that the costs charged for the provision and use of digital information material for education and research that have already seen drastic increases in recent times will continue to rise substantially.Access to worldwide information will only become possible for education, science and research within a limited scope and at unacceptable costs. This will have an extremely negative impact on study conditions at German universities. It will no longer be possible to use library resources to the extent that they have been in the past, a development that will very substantially complicate the need to network schools, universities, research facilities, and industry more closely, a process that must begin now. The science and research organisations refer in this respect to the Coalition for Action "Copyright for Education and Research", which, in a recent open letter to the federal chancellor, emphatically drew attention to the consequences which the amendment will have.
Germany's upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has issued an extensive statement on the amendment in which it already takes up the demands made by the Alliance and voices its support for core points of the criticism made by education and research. In the meantime, federal government largely rejected the Bundesrat statement in a counter-statement and regrettably decided to adhere essentially to its draft bill.
The science and research organisations expressly welcome the federal government's goal to give the promotion of education, science and research the highest priority. However, this commitment should then be taken to serve as a benchmark for assessing any draft bills that have a direct impact on science, education or research. Consequently, the Alliance of Science and Research Organisations emphatically calls upon the federal government to take up and implement the demands unanimously voiced by science, research and education and subsequently put forward by the Bundesrat.
The Alliance members are:
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / German Research Foundation, Bonn
Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren / Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Berlin
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft / Fraunhofer Society, Munich
Hochschulrektorenkonferenz / German Rectors' Conference, Bonn
Leibniz-Gemeinschaft / Leibniz Association, Bonn
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft / Max Planck Society, Munich
Wissenschaftsrat / German Science Council, Cologne
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