Columba – cearta.ie

Columba’s 1,500th birthday is a good day to note that Ireland has implemented the DSM Directive, (almost) the whole DSM Directive, and nothing but the DSM Directive

8 December, 20216 February, 2024

| COIPLPA, Columba, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Digital deposit, Fair use

Happy birthday, St Columba
Today is the birthday, 1,500 years ago, in 521, of a celtic saint variously called Columba or Colmcille (pictured left). He founded many monasteries, including those in Kells, Ireland, and Iona, Scotland, where the Book of Kells was written. A tale about him forms an important part of Irish copyright lore. It is, therefore, an auspicious day on which to note that there has recently been an important development in Irish copyright law: the EU’s DSM Directive has recently been implemented into Irish law (see the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market) Regulations 2021 (SI No 567 of 2021) (also here) (SI 567) implementing Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (Text with EEA relevance) (OJ L 130, 17.5.2019, p. 92–125) (DSM)).

In the foreword to her magisterial Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Article-by-Article Commentary to the Provisions of Directive 2019/790 (OUP, 2021) Eleonora Rosati points out that this year is the 30th anniversary of the first harmonizing Directive in the broad copyright field and (Software Directive) and the 20th anniversary of the most significant Directive in that field (InfoSoc Directive).…

The non-implementation of the DSM Directive, and the Cathach of St Columba – updated!

9 June, 202111 June, 2021

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| Columba, Copyright

The EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (the DSM Directive) was due to be transposed into national law by the EU’s Member States this week. Article 29(1) of the DSM Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC) provides:

Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 7 June 2021. …

That was last Monday. Had it been Tuesday, it would have been an appropriate date for a copyright Directive to be brought into force in Ireland, as that was the anniversary of the death of St Columba (also known as St Colmcille) in 597 (I have marked this anniversary on a previous occasion on this blog). As Charleton J commented in EMI Records v Eircom Ltd [2010] 4 IR 349, [2010] IEHC 108 (16 April 2010) [28]:

There is fundamental right to copyright in Irish Law. This has existed as part of Irish legal tradition since the time of Saint Colmcille. He is often quoted in connection with the aphorism: le gach bó a buinín agus le gach leabhar a chóip (to each cow its calf and to every book its copy).

…

On World Intellectual Property Day, the modern Irish constitutional relevance of an Irish angle on Donaldson v Beckett (1774)

26 April, 202015 February, 2022

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| Columba, Copyright

Today is World Intellectual Property Day. In 2000, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) designated 26 April – the day on which the WIPO Convention came into force in 1970 – as World IP Day to increase general understanding of IP and to celebrate “the role that intellectual property (IP) rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity”. I’ve marked it in the past (here and here) on this blog. To join in this year’s celebrations, Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary in yesterday’s Irish Times considered “Ireland’s chequered history of copyright law“. It is illustrated with a picture of a young reader in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library (sadly, the young reader does not appear in the cropped version of the photograph in the print edition); and the column ends with an account of the dispute over St Columba’s copying of St Finian’s copy of the Vulgate of St Jerome (though not mentioned in the column, these elements of the story are connected, since a highlight of the Old Library is the Book of Kells, written in the scriptoria of Columba’s monasteries in Kells and Iona).

Apart from these obvious tropes, the centrepiece of McNally’s Diary is a genuinely interesting story about Roscommon-born, but London-based, writer and lawyer Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) (pictured above left).…

Felonius Monk and the Right to Copy

8 June, 20139 June, 2021

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| Columba, Copyright, Libraries

Today is the feast day of St Columba (in Irish, variously: Colamcille, Columcille, Colm Cille etc).

To mark the occasion, I present a(n in)famous episode (pdfs here and here; image here, purchase here) in his life, retold – under the above title – by my Trinity colleague Dr Eoin O’Neill, who says that his tale below is most effectively delivered in the accents of Chicago of the 1930s, as interpreted by Hollywood:

The Monks had a corner on the market

In the early days of the monastic age in Ireland, (it only lasted for ~1,000 years),
the faithful were attracted to regional monasteries by various marketing techniques such as the sight of rare and sacred objects eg finely worked gold vessels and rare books.

Rivalry between monasteries was rife, and when the renowned monk Colamcille (a scion of the house of Uí Néill, the ruling dynasty) went to visit the abbot Finian at his monastery (possibly Moville or Clonard), he noted that Finian had a fine book in the scriptorium, (a copy of the Psalms: the recording media used normally was the skin of a calf). Finian had diligently procured this copy abroad through his network, no small feat in the early part of the sixth century, given the firewalls that were then in vogue.…

Copyright and Innovation – The CRC Consultation Paper

29 February, 20129 June, 2021

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| Columba, Copyright, CRC12 / CRC13, Fair use

As regular readers of this blog will know, last Summer, to maximise the potential of digital industry in Ireland, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, set up the Copyright Review Committee to identify any areas of Irish copyright legislation that might create barriers to innovation and to make recommendations to resolve any problems identified. Our Consultation Paper has just been published on the the Department’s website (and it’s also available for download here (pdf)). Welcoming the Paper, the Minister of State with responsibility for Research and Innovation at the Department of Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, Seán Sherlock TD, said

I am committed to reviewing and updating the Copyright legislation currently in place in order to strike the correct balance between encouraging innovation and protecting creativity. This paper has been prepared by the Copyright Review Committee in response to submissions received and public engagement. I urge all interested parties, including information providers and ISPs, innovators, rights holders, consumers and end-users, to study it carefully and engage in a constructive debate on all the issues.

As to what is in the Paper, the wordle above gives a good sense of the frequency with which various words are used in it.…

The IPKat: Past historic 3: Copyright infringement and the tale of St Columba

15 November, 20119 June, 2021

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| Columba, Copyright

By Jeremy Phillips, on IPKat, a scholarly source for the hoariest oldest chestnut of Irish copyright law:

Past historic 3: Copyright infringement and the tale of St Columba

The subject of this essay is the story of Columba — saint, scholar and alleged copyright infringer — and the ruling against him: “To every cow its calf and to every book its copy”. Readers of this weblog will recall that its author had cause to return to the story in the course of some Irish copyright blogging towards the end of last year: you can access the follow-up by clicking “Wednesday Whimsies, or a Tale of Three Lams …” here and scrolling down till you find “More on St Columba Again”

via ipkitten.blogspot.com…