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This paper asks the following research question: What are the policy dynamics of copyright regulation for digital audiovisual (AV) archives in Europe and what is their potential impact? The paper aims to discuss the social relevance of archives, European cultural policies targeting operationalisation of these archives and underpinnings and sought implementation of copyright policies.

Drawing upon three European cultural policy approaches, namely, democratisation of culture, cultural democracy and governmentalisation of culture, the discussion aims to situate current legislative attempts within digital content governance and examine policy as to its proclaimed aims of broadening access. The authors deployed macro-level legal analyses of key legislative acts of the European Union (EU) with direct relevance to the availability of and accessibility to digital historical content by European citizens. The authors juxtapose relevant cultural policy interventions with the corresponding legal rules and norms in copyright legislation. The authors evaluate the ways in which normative arguments are reflected in these acts and propose reflections on documented and possible impact.

The authors argue that the EU’s legal direction is characterised by uncertainty of conviction and internal tensions regarding the place of common cultural heritage in EU policy, and they present a restrictive acknowledgement of what culture and heritage policy entail and, by extension, how cultural matters should be governed. Cultural heritage AV archives are examples of digital content whose governance was almost “automatically” linked to copyright.

The paper links copyright and cultural policy and demonstrates that although the EU cultural policy is based on access, availability and usability, copyright is unnecessarily restraining them with the improper design and implementation of exceptions and limitations. This reflects EU’s focus on the single market, which, in this case, is pursued at the expense of building of a European identity with shared memories.

This paper is concerned with the place of human rights in the process of technological development but specifically as this process is situated within the corporate-technological complex of modern digital communications and their derivatives. This paper aims to argue that expecting and institutionalizing the incorporation of human rights in the process of technological innovation and production, particularly in the context of global economic actors, constitutes a necessary act if we want to navigate the immediate future of artificial intelligence and ubiquitous connectivity in ways that protect democracy and human dignity.

The discussion presents the case for defending human rights through a social control perspective, which assumes the conscious quest for impacting change and cartographing a path of actions and intentions. The authors approach the problem from James Ralph Beniger’s theory of the Control Revolution (1986) to explain the emergence of a new social order and to outline the main challenges brought particularly by media and information and communication technology (ICT) corporations as global actors of power.

Ethics initiatives, considering human rights as an ethical framework for media and ICT businesses, can be based on social control perspectives to regard the more complex variables interacting in the formation of effective policy making. It is the right to participate in the construction of knowledge in society and, informed by this knowledge, help manage or control democratic issues, including influencing on the regulation of technology and other cultural formats of control (Altheide, 1995). Knowing social control tools enable citizens to lead their destinies, plan their freedom and the change what they wish in the societies they live in.

Social control is often understood as a term taken for granted and many times faced as representing malignant and anti-democratic forms. Here, the authors try to build a theoretical ground where both sides – the benign and the malignant – can be taken in consideration to bring awareness to the need to discuss social control as a democratic endeavor, and consider human rights as part of this and not something apart and idealized. The practice of human rights is directly associated with social control forms and is from within these practices individuals must understand its role on social control and act.

Purpose – This chapter aims to show how media law strongly contributed to shape in Hungary what has been pictured as a U-turn. This illiberal trend was subsequently strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology/Approach – It considers that law also constitutes and not only orders political and social relationships. Law, including media law, has been in Hungary one of the main factors of change or rather of political-social construction. This chapter therefore moves from the study of positive law and analyzes Hungarian media laws within the theoretical framework of illiberal democracy, drawing from contributions to political science and socio-legal studies. Findings – This chapter demonstrated that media laws have outlined in Hungary a centralized regulatory system with broad powers, which lacks political independence, therefore encouraging self-censorship and limiting freedom of expression and pluralism. These laws contributed to shape the illiberal U-turn occurred in the country before the pandemic, but the coronavirus offered the occasion to reinforce government powers, giving the leeway to rule with no or minimum scrutiny for an indefinite period and further limiting dissent. The analysis enabled to argue that neither the media regulation established during the past decade nor the laws adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic are compatible with a modern democracy. Originality/Value – Based on existing literature, little research has been conducted on the appearance and endurance of non-democratic regimes, and supposedly even less within the context of the coronavirus pandemic which started only a few months ago, compared to the contributions available on democratization processes and democratic consolidation.