EU Council's Position
As adopted 25th May, 2018
View Commission's Position on Recital 11b
Recital 11b
Definition of "lawful access"
Research organisations and cultural heritage institutions, including the persons attached thereto, should be covered by the text and data mining exception regarding content to which they have lawful access.
Lawful access should be understood as covering access to content based on open access policy or through contractual arrangements between rightholders and research organisations or cultural heritage institutions, such as subscriptions, or through other lawful means.
For instance, in cases of subscriptions taken by research organisations or cultural heritage institutions, the persons attached thereto covered by these subscriptions would be deemed to have lawful access. Lawful access also covers access to content that is freely available online.