Coalition for Creativity
C4C
Created in 2010, C4C is a broad-based coalition that seeks an informed debate on how copyright can more effectively promote innovation, access, and creativity.
ID: 342464912839-08
Lobbying Activity
Response to Digital Fairness Act
23 Oct 2025
The Coalition for Creativity (C4C), representing libraries, archives, memory institutions, and digital rights organisations across Europe, welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the European Commissions Fitness Check on Digital Fairness. Our submission highlights how the current digital market for knowledge resources has become systemically unfair, undermining the ability of public-interest institutions to fulfil their missions and threatening fundamental rights to education, research, and cultural participation. 1. The Erosion of Fairness in the Digital Environment The digital shift has disrupted the historic balance between creators rights and public access. Dominant market players have replaced ownership with restrictive licensing, using contractual and technological barriers to curtail lending, preservation, and access to lawfully acquired works. Libraries, archives, and other public-interest institutions now operate in an anti-ownership ecosystem designed to maximise publisher control at the expense of the public good. 2. Concrete Problems in Practice *Unfair and Abusive Contracts: Libraries are routinely required to accept terms that override EU law, including bans on text and data mining permitted under EU copyright exceptions, unilateral withdrawal of paid content, disproportionate liability for user actions, and jurisdiction clauses outside the EU. Confidentiality (gag) clauses further prevent transparency and collective negotiation. *Predatory Commercial Models: Big Deal bundles force institutions to purchase large, costly collections, eliminating choice and diverting public funds from diverse resources. Public institutions effectively pay twice for the same research through salaries and subscription fees. *Discriminatory Pricing and Precarious Access: Libraries face a public interest penalty, paying several times the consumer price for e-books with weaker rights, often limited to temporary or metered access. Some publishers refuse to license popular or essential works altogether, creating serious gaps in public access and threatening long-term cultural preservation. 3. The Structural Problem: Market Failure These issues are symptoms of a concentrated market in which a handful of oligopolistic actors exercise disproportionate power. Through vertical integration and licensing-only business models, they have deliberately eliminated ownership and created an environment where libraries lack meaningful negotiating leverage. The DFA must recognise libraries and similar institutions as a distinct class of users that, like consumers, require protection from systemic abuse. 4. C4Cs Proposed Solutions for the Digital Fairness Act To restore fairness, the DFA should include the following structural measures: *Legally Recognise Digital Ownership: Codify a digital first sale principle ensuring that once a library lawfully purchases a digital work, it owns that copy and may lend, preserve, and transfer it. *Blacklist Unfair Contractual Clauses: Establish a non-exhaustive list of automatically unfair terms in B2B agreements with public-interest institutionsprohibiting unilateral withdrawal, restrictions on copyright exceptions, non-EU jurisdiction clauses, excessive liability, and confidentiality clauses that hinder transparency. *Mandate Fair Licensing and a Right to Preserve: Require publishers to license works to publicly funded institutions on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms, guaranteeing perpetual access and the right to preserve and, where necessary, circumvent DRM for lawful purposes. *Protect Lawful Digital Lending Models: Recognise Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) as a legitimate and lawful practice mirroring physical lending, ensuring that libraries can continue to serve the public where the market fails to provide fair access. See the attached full submission for more details.
Read full responseResponse to Review of the Digital Markets Act
22 Sept 2025
The Commission should use this review to assess whether dominant academic and scientific publisher platforms should be designated as gatekeepers. Major publishers such as RELX/Elsevier and Springer Nature have evolved far beyond their traditional roles. They now control vertically integrated digital ecosystems that are indispensable for researchers, academic institutions, and the public. This creates a severe dependency and warrants scrutiny under the DMA's qualitative criteria. These platforms exhibit core gatekeeper characteristics. They have an entrenched and durable position, leveraging the prestige of their journals to lock in both researchers, depending on them for career progression, and institutions, which are bound by expensive and opaque "read and publish" package deals. These companies also control the entire research workflow. Through strategic acquisitions, a single publisher like Elsevier owns platforms for search (Scopus), reference management (Mendeley), research analytics (SciVal), and institutional repositories (Pure). This creates a closed ecosystem where a publisher can "control every part of the process and register every action you take".¹ This deep integration creates significant barriers to entry for alternative, more innovative services. This gatekeeper position is particularly detrimental to Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs). Unfair and restrictive licensing agreements prevent GLAMs from fulfilling their public interest mission. Instead of owning digital works, libraries are forced into rental agreements that undermine their ability to build and preserve collections for future generations. These contracts strip away fundamental rights to lend, preserve, and provide access to our shared digital culture, effectively preventing libraries from functioning as custodians of knowledge and memory.² ³ This also enables unfair practices that harm European research and innovation: 1) Exploitative Business Models: These platforms extract huge profits from publicly funded research. RELXs STM arm reports operating profit margins as high as 37%, while Springer Nature reports 26%, margins comparable to the world's largest tech companies. This model drains public funds away from new research and into shareholder returns and multi-million euro CEO salaries, directly stifling innovation. 2) Unfair Data Exploitation: Publishers' new business model is data itself. They collect vast quantities of granular user data, including search queries, downloaded articles, IP addresses, and peer review activity. This surveillance infrastructure, built on the back of publicly funded research, poses a significant threat to academic freedom and creates an insurmountable competitive advantage. This data is then repurposed and sold for entirely unrelated commercial purposes, such as to banks, insurance companies, and the US Immigration Service.¹ The conduct of these dominant publisher platforms results in less choice, higher prices, and reduced innovation, directly contradicting the goals of the DMA. In the context of a new approach to competition, C4C therefore calls on the Commission to extend its definition of gatekeepers to actors which may not fulfil the financial requirements necessary under the Regulation but fulfil the other criteria. Doing so would ensure the research ecosystem remains fair, competitive, and open, thereby fostering creativity and the wide dissemination of knowledge for the public good. [1] https://ukrant.nl/magazine/elseviers-stranglehold-on-academia-how-publishers-get-rich-from-our-data/ [2] www.ourfuturememory.org [3] https://informationlabs.org/protectourfuturememory-why-libraries-need-fair-contracts/ [4] https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-world-2025-8-increased-submissions-drive-springer-nature-profit-higher/ [5] https://stukroodvlees.nl/woekerwinsten-voor-ceos-wetenschappelijke-uitgevers/
Read full responseResponse to European Research Area (ERA) Act
8 Sept 2025
Barriers to Open Science and access to knowledge Researchers across Europe face systemic obstacles preventing the full realisation of Open Science principles and limiting access to knowledge. Key obstacles are: Researchers feeling compelled to publish in paywalled journals, faced with uncertainty about their rights to make their work available in open access repositories; and, Restricted access to new research, hampering scientific progress and (cross-border) collaboration. Need for EU-level Secondary Publication Rights National Secondary Publication Rights policies suffer from a lack of ambition due to the absence of EU-level harmonisation. This is evident from the limited number of countries guaranteeing zero-embargo periods for immediate knowledge dissemination. Solutions: Establish a harmonised EU-level Secondary Publishing Right with a zero-embargo period; and, Ensure legislation does not limit or restrict rights retention initiatives, acknowledging that authors rights retention efforts complement Secondary Publishing Rights. Constraints on research activities Research activities are hindered by: Unclear boundaries of existing exceptions for research; Absence of a broader, more flexible mandatory research exception; Exclusion of collaborative research efforts, including through current artificial limitations to non-commercial research; and, Lacking cross-border harmonisation. Solution: Implement a mandatory flexible EU-level research exception facilitating all research activities, including collaborative initiatives, cross-border projects, and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Obstacles for research institutions Research institutions are burdened by: Publishers contractual terms and practices underming research exceptions and imposing unreasonable restrictions on institutions; Technological protection measures (TPMs) blocking legitimate uses; and, Liability fears creating chilling effect on research activities. Solutions: Extend contractual override provisions protecting research exceptions; Establish workable solutions for removing or circumventing technological protection measures for legitimate research purposes; Extend unfair contractual practices rules currently protecting consumers to education and research institutions with workable remedies; and, Create liability limitations for educational and research institutions safeguarded from contract override. Conclusion The European Research Area Act presents a unique opportunity to create legislation designed for research needs. Addressing fundamental legal barriers realises the 5th Freedom by enabling researchers in the EU to share knowledge freely and collaborate effectively. This will accelerate scientific progress across Europe, enhancing knowledge valorisation and EU competitiveness. The proposed solutions would: Remove legal barriers to Open Science; Provide legal certainty for researchers and institutions; Harmonise research conditions across Europe; and, Strengthen Europe's competitive position.
Read full responseResponse to Digital Networks Act
25 Jun 2025
This submission from the Coalition for Creativity (C4C) addresses two proposals under the "Level Playing Field" heading of the Digital Networks Act (DNA) Call for Evidence, namely the proposals to empower regulators to "facilitate cooperation" and to "clarify" Open Internet rules. Our core concern is that these proposals risk introducing mandatory network usage fees and eroding net neutrality through the back door. Such outcomes would severely harm Europes creative industries, stifle innovation, and ultimately hurt consumers. Please find our detailed response attached.
Read full responseResponse to How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?
20 Jun 2024
The Coalition for Creativity (C4C) appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the European Commissions White Paper on How to master Europe's digital infrastructure needs?, published on 21 February 2024. The White Paper outlines various possible scenarios for public policy actions aiming to incentivise building the digital networks of the future in the Union, including by undertaking regulatory action via a possible Digital Networks Act. On the latter, we note that the Commission appears to leave open, at this stage, the potential scope of and concrete measures pursued under said legislative initiative in order to meet the objectives outlined in the White Paper. Our comments will focus on Scenario 4, which implements the objectives of the White Papers Pilar II (Completing the Digital Single Market) and some of the misconceptions it is based on, and more specifically section 2.3.4. (Convergence and level playing field), section 3.2.2 (Scope of application), and section 3.2.8. (Universal service and affordability of digital infrastructure). We notably believe the following elements need to be rectified in any action or vision coming out of the White Paper: * Coexistence should not be interpreted as convergence. * A level playing field requires defining the field, which can not be based on wishful thinking. * No one is benefitting from a free pass from regulation in the Internet stack. * Replacing network fees with an indirect contribution through a Universal Service obligation does not make these covert telco subsidies acceptable. * Dispute resolution mechanisms are not needed when you find no evidence of systemic disputes. Please see the attached response for more details on our position.
Read full responseResponse to European Media Freedom Act
14 Dec 2022
In this submission, the Coalition for Creativity (C4C) outlines the need to delete Articles 17 and 18 from the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). We justify this position as follows: 1. The DSA and the P2B Regulation suffice and there is no need for a specific media content moderation privilege: the DSA ink is barely dry, yet another unnecessary layer of complexity could get added with Article 17 of the EMFA and creating a narrower right applicable to less platforms than the P2B Regulation makes no sense. 2. Articles 17 and 18 of the EMFA raise multiple questions to solve a non-existent problem. There should be no privilege: (1) for certain actors, as making some actors more important means the speech of others is automatically of less value; (2) for media, as this creates an easily exploitable loophole in the fight against disinformation; (3) for media on VLOPs as this creates a provision resting on the wrong scope at both ends; and (4) as such a privilege is extremely difficult to combine with the multiple other obligations platforms have. 3. The introduction of these articles in the EMFA brings us back on the slippery slope from media privilege to media exemption/must-carry, a path that has already been clearly condemned by EU legislators. We refer you for more details to the attached submission.
Read full responseMeeting with Kevin O'Connell (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)
11 May 2015 · Digital Single Market Strategy and review of the EU’s copyright framework
Meeting with Kevin O'Connell (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)
6 May 2015 · Upcoming copyright review
Meeting with Stig Joergen Gren (Cabinet of Vice-President Andrus Ansip)
21 Jan 2015 · Copyright