Urges the Commission and the Member States to safeguard fundamental workers’ rights and the social protection of employees and to combat precarious working conditions; urges the Commission to propose, and the Member States to further develop, new protection mechanisms adapted to the working and career patterns shaped by digitalisation, paying particular attention to the situation of women; highlights the importance of collective bargaining at all levels, especially in areas which are strongly affected by digitalisation, in order to ensure the principle of equal pay for equal work and to safeguard working space quality and working space ...[+++] security in times of digitalisation; points out that necessary general framework conditions must be found in order to safeguard the protection of employees’ personal data.

As a Canadian, I am both worried and disappointed to see the extent to which my rights are easily violated by means of the universal and absolute protection of digital locks envisaged by the legislation.

Going back to my example of education, the bill makes it easier for educators to use materials in their classrooms, but then it negates that advantage by bringing in these digital locks which, under certain circumstances, would make it illegal for the professor to produce the clip or other material which he or she wished to use in class.

A long list of leading academics, educators, librarians, archivists, documentary filmmakers and citizens have expressed legitimate concern that digital lock provisions will undermine the balance that copyright law is intended to strike between creators and users, completely undermining a user's ability to use copyrighted works that they have purchased.

That is why we in the Liberal Party are extremely concerned about this issue of digital locks.

(9) There is a need to address the problem of social exclusion resulting from the inability of some individuals to take full advantage of the benefits offered by information and communication technologies (ICT) and the Internet in the knowledge society, the so-called "digital divide", which often affects young people, the disabled and elderly, and social categories who are already victims of other forms of exclusion.