tl;drFull throttle in Brussels this month - copyright decisions on
education, the public domain and upload filtering seem possible in the
European Parliament, while filters are still pending in the Council. The
PSI Directive and the Database Directive reforms are being drafted.
This and past reports:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor===Copyright Reform -
The (potentially) good
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Education:As far as the education exception compromise goes (Article 4),
the battle in the Parliament is between “kind of good” and “bad”. JURI
Shadows managed to convince the Rapporteur to not exempt textbook
publishers from the scope of the exception - let’s see if that stands.
It seems that they also managed to kick out the temporary limitation
(proposed para 1c) when the exception could be applied only for the
duration of illustration of teaching (whatever that means in practice).
Here’s hoping article 4 is not the hill Rapporteur Voss would like to
proverbially die on[1], and both changes will be sustained.
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Public Domain:Our bid to include a public domain safeguard in the EU
copyright reform is slowly weaving its way through the inner workings
European Parliament. A compromise text was hammered out during the
technical meeting (meeting of experts & advisors) and is being discussed
by the MEPs. The main open questions are whether it should be limited to
“preservation purposes” only (not clear how) and whether it should be
part of the “Preservation of cultural heritage” article or get its own
article. While the latter question is more an issue of practicality and
political tactics, on the former we are experiencing significant
pushback from the ALDE and ECR groups, that want to limit the safeguard.
===Copyright Reform - The bad & ugly Article 13
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Article 13 should have landed in the garbage of legislative history long
time ago, but both JURI and Bulgarian Presidency[2] are tirelessly
trying to make it even worse. The parallel proposals become more and
more similar, which may have to do with the fact that, as it turns out,
at least some of MEP Voss’s compromise versions were in fact drafted by
the European Commission officials[3]. In a surprising twist of events,
however, in both JURI and BG drafts we can find a carve-out for online
encyclopaedia, which would not fall under the scope of the article.
While the Bulgarian version would exclude Wikimedia Commons resources
that are also used at Wikipedia, it seems that the Parliamentary take
would keep our projects intact by Article 13. Still, we believe that a
long list of carve-outs will not fix what will get broken by content
filtering and excessive intermediary liability.
===
Public Sector Information Directive Review
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A review study on the Public Sector Information Directive [4] was
presented in Brussels this month. This is expected to be the last public
step before the commission proposes a reform of this legal act before
summer. The analysis and discussion revolved around para-public bodies
(i.e. energy and transport companies), the use of APIs and reduction of
exclusive agreements for data. The general assessment was that the
Directive is “having positive impact, but there is pressure to open up
more data”. The seemingly currently favourite policy option is to extend
the scope of the Directive to cover research and para-public bodies. A
provision to make sure “free of charge re-use” for all documents is on
the table, but is not included in the “preferred way forward” in the
analysis.
===
Tackling Illegal Content Online
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The European Commission wants platforms to remove all sorts of illegal
information faster and more efficiently - from counterfeit product
offers, through hate speech, to terrorist content. The Inception Impact
Assessment mentions 3 possible interventions - from soft measures,
through targeted legal intervention to horizontal legislation including
automated content detection. In the feedback we pointed out that more
evidence is needed, also on how social media business models contribute
to the dissemination of controversial (also potentially harmful)
content. We also noted that any automated content detection requires a
thorough human oversight and decision-making to avoid overpolicing of
users’ activity online. Our full response will be available on a
dedicated meta page[5] at the end of business today.
===
French Constitutional Court answers to WMFR
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In November 2017 Wikimédia France and La Quadrature du Net asked the
French Constitutional Court whether the Loi Création, a law that
establishes a new image right allowing administrators of public estates
to control the commercial use of their images is constitutional. [6] The
argument was, that this law realistically limits the public domain. An
decision was issued and it was, unfortunately, in the affirmative. An
interesting commentary on the decision can be read on the court’s site: [7]
===
[
1]https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/978987997130469377
[2]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVI/EU/01/60/EU_16061/imfname_10796990.pdf?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=0fac1d8a06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_03_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-0fac1d8a06-188979681
[
3]https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/973953977862774784
[
4]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0QRHCpjYWN2aERxdFhLM2ZtanVJdVRqTFZvc21F…
[
5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Illegal_Content_Feedback_2018
[
6]https://www.laquadrature.net/en/Wikimedia-La-Quadrature-defend-public-dom…
[7]http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/root/bank/download/2017687QPC2017687qpc_ccc.pdf
--
Anna Mazgal
EU Policy Advisor
Wikimedia
anna(a)wikimedia.be
@a2na
mobile: +32 487 222 945
51 Rue du Trône
BE-1050 Brussels