Making research works visible and stimulating a research milieu in the field of social work - The European Resource Centre for Social Work Research (CERTS)

The project to create a European Resource Centre for Social Work Research (CERTS) has been agreed in December 2001 by the General Research Board of the European Commission within the framework programme 'Accompanying Measures for the improving the Human research potential and the Socio Economic Knowledge Base'.

News of the European Resource Centre for Social Work Research Data base

The CERTS database is now online! Our efforts bear finally fruit! It is possible to visit our database on the web now in French, in English and in about ten European languages in the forthcoming months. Your turn! Connect you to the following address: www.certs-europe.com/database

Unsticking the centre-piece – the liberation of European copyright law?

Following European legislative initiatives in the field of copyright limitations and exceptions, policy flexibilities formerly available to mem- ber states has been greatly diminished. The law in this area is increasingly incapable of accommodating any expansion in the scope of freely permitted acts, even where such expansion may be an appropriate response to changes in social and technological conditions. In this article, the causes of this problem are briefly canvassed and a number of potential solutions are noted. It is suggested that one such solution – the adoption of an open, factor-based model similar to s 107 of the United States’ Copyright Act – has not received the serious attention it deserves. The fair use paradigm has generally been dismissed as excessively unpredictable, contrary to international law and/or culturally alien. Drawing on recent fair use scholarship, it is argued here that these disadvantages are over-stated and that the potential for the development of a European fair use model merits investigation.