Re-imagining Copyright law in the Digital Public Sphere: Fostering democratic discourse on online spaces

The objective of this research project is to re-imagine and re-interpret EU copyright law, based on the communicational theory of copyright law as advanced by scholars such as Netanel, Fisher, Elkin-Koren and Sunder. Based on this re-imaging, it establishes the promotion of democratic discourse as being the overarching purpose and function of copyright law, and advocates for legislative and policy reform that can achieve a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners, users and platforms in a manner that restores greater equilibrium to the power-relations between these actors. It seeks to formulate concrete proposals — directed at policymakers, legislators and judges —to enable the framing, interpretation and enforcement of EU copyright law in a way that facilitates these platforms to flourish as online spaces for robust democratic discourse.