ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a new way of looking at EU copyright law, shifting the analytical focus from the traditional binary of infringements and exceptions toward the regulation of digital platforms as a means of promoting education. It begins by examining the misalignments that characterise the EU’s regulation of digital copyrights, particularly as they affect the public interest in education, access to knowledge, and the safeguarding of the public domain. It then reviews the leading doctrinal proposals advanced to remedy these shortcomings, before introducing its central contribution: a lens that treats specific market actors – notably digital platforms and educational institutions – as strategic regulatory addressees, and even as ‘regulatory sandboxes’, within the EU legal framework. Drawing on the legislative experience of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, and in particular Articles 5 and 17, the author shows how the EU has assigned tailored obligations, liability schemes, and conditions to online content-sharing platforms and educational institutions. The paper argues that such interventions are not merely redistributive – shifting entitlements between rightholders and users – but jus-generative, establishing new legal relationships, balances, and practices. It concludes that recognising platforms as enablers of copyright rules on educational uses opens a more imaginative and effective avenue for calibrating EU copyright law to contemporary digital realities.
Priora, Giulia, A New Way to Look at EU Copyright Law: Regulating Digital Platforms to Promote Education (June 1, 2026). Published for Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Digi-U.
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