BRUSSELS — February 14, 2019 — BSA | The Software Alliance welcomes the agreement reached today by the EU Institutions, after more than two years of negotiations, to enact a mandatory exception for Text and Data Mining (TDM) for commercial purposes in Art. 3(a) of the Copyright Directive.

TDM is a form of software-enabled analytics that enables users to unlock correlations and identify useful knowledge from information that rests undiscovered in data sets in ways that humans can process and harness for a myriad valuable purposes. TDM is one of the revolutionary tools used by Artificial Intelligence (AI), a fundamental process in machine-learning and data analytics.

As a global organisation, BSA has advocated for broad TDM exceptions (only in cases where the party doing so already has lawful access to the underlying work) with all global leaders in AI. Countries such as Japan, Singapore, and the United States provide broad exceptions while Canada and Australia are considering updates to their copyright legislation, including an exception for TDM for commercial uses.

“By agreeing to include a mandatory exception for TDM, the EU has made the decision to take a leading role in AI. TDM is central to the development of AI and to the future of Europe’s digital economy,” said Thomas Boué, BSA Director General, Policy – EMEA. “As global leaders move towards balanced legislation in this field, this decision gives the EU the opportunity to claim a leading role in the global development of AI through future-proof rules that protect rights holders while supporting cutting-edge technologies and research.”