With the emergence of the digital environment, the issue of “transformative uses” in copyright law has gained renewed interest in legal literature. While many authors emphasized the challenge that these transformative practices constituted for copyright law, there has been a clear lack of comprehensive study of the extent of copyright law's (in)hospitality to such practices. In addition, too little attention has been paid to possible solutions to resolve this conflict inside the copyright regime. This paper aims to contribute to fill these two gaps. In this first paper, we will provide a comprehensive assessment of the status transformative uses in EU, Belgian and French law, informed by a vast body of case law. In a second paper, we will discuss potential solutions drawing inspiration from Canadian copyright law, which has recently experienced both the introduction of a legal exception for user generated content, and a court-led shift from a traditional closed-list fair dealing system to a broader, semi-open system of exceptions and limitations..
Cabay, J., & Lambrecht, M. (2015). Remix prohibited: how rigid EU copyright laws inhibit creativity. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 10(5), 359-377. https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpv015 (Original work published 2015)