Copyleft - Copyright? Challenges for Civil Societies in the New EU Member States from Eastern Europe

Péter Munkácsi
Hungarian Patent Office

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     Last modified: March 15, 2005

Abstract
An impressive legal development of the Eastern European new EU Member States can be seen in the field of copyright as in many others inside and outside a broad concept of intellectual property. The general situation at the beginning of 90s, when all these countries are in the situation characterised by the basic reform of their previous political structures and by the transformation to become free market economies is the reasons for this development. The increasing importance of the development of the protection of intellectual property in the EU is also reflected in the Europe Agreements and the Association Agreements, concluded over the past years with number of these countries.

Since more than a decade the task and the challenge for the copyright legislators in Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) can be defined with three elements, based on Dietz's modell: (i) transformation, (ii) modernisation and (iii) implementation of acquis communautaire into the national law. However, the recent legislative enactments of the new EU Member States from Eastern Europe shows an 'Janus faced' developments: the governmental experts transformed successfully their substantial copyright system into the international and regional standards but they could not find find answers to online and digital phenomena. There never was a tremendous difference between the copyright legislation and the reality, then nowadays. There is a low-level perception of copyright by the wide public, users, consumers etc.. In my opinion the cause of the difference is traceable to the missing role of the civil society in Eastern Europe, however the non-profite NGOs represent overall a progression in E-business, Cyberspace, knowledge-based society and the mass media. The main aim of this paper to examine the future possibilities of the interested groups, network communities and societies for a better and more efficient participation and online deliberation between the governments.