Alternative Licenses and the Dutch Copyright Act

Thomas Dysart, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, is publishing Author-Protective Rules and Alternative Licences: A Review of the Dutch Copyright Contract Act in volume 2015 of the European Intellectual Property Review. Here is the abstract.

On the 12th of February 2015, the Dutch House of Representatives adopted the Copyright Contract Act (‘CCA’). The proposed legislation introduces a number of author-protective rules on copyright contracts into the Dutch Copyright Act (‘DCA’). According to observers, the new statutory provisions will have “profound consequences” for contractual practices in Dutch copyright-based industries. This article gives a brief overview of the potential effects that the CCA may have on Free and Open Source Software (‘FOSS’) and Creative Commons (‘CC’) licensing models as alternative models of copyright exploitation. Given that FOSS and CC licensing models flourish as the result of the parties’ freedom to contract, the extent to which these models may be adversely affected through the imposition of mandatory provisions as found in the CCA is an important question to consider and one which is all too easily overshadowed by the assumption that author-protective rules, by their very nature, are universally beneficial for all authors.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.