tl;dr
The most important European Parliament vote for the copyright reform will
take place in the Legal Affairs committee on 10 October. So far, we have
had one rather forward-looking opinion from the Internal Market committee
and two backwards oriented opinions from the Culture and Industry
committees.
This and past reports:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
===
Copyright reform
---
The Legal Affairs committee (JURI) is the lead committee on this dossier
and is scheduled to vote on 10 October. We are expecting to see the
rapporteur, Mr. Axel Voss (DE EPP), propose compromise amendments to the
shadow rapporteurs in September. The issues for which no compromise is
reached, will be voted on by the MEPs by going through all tabled
amendments. We are primarily focusing on preventing compulsory upload
filtering for user-generated projects (Art. 13), on safeguarding the public
domain and on freedom of panorama. Efforts on German, Czech, Hungarian,
Polish and Bulgarian MEPs are a priority right now. The only way to get a
majority is to have the Socialists&Democrats group cast a united vote with
the smaller groups on a number of issues. Anyone who wants to join the
frontline action is welcome! [1]
---
The opinion giving committees have produced very contradictory proposals.
The Internal Market committee (IMCO) largely solved the main issues
surrounding the “upload filtering” provision in an all-group compromise,
while also endorsing “safeguard the public domain”, a user-generated
content exception and Freedom of Panorama. [2] The Culture (CULT) and
Industry (ITRE) committees failed to do any of this and even worsened the
Commission proposal form our perspective. The CULT committee compromise on
Freedom of Panorama was withdrawn by the rapporteur Marc Joulaud (FR EPP)
after the EVA (European Visual Artists) and the French collecting society
ADAGP staunchly attacked him personally over this in several meetings
following the IMCO vote. The text & data mining exception and ancillary
copyright are also going in worrisome direction in the CULT and ITRE
opinions. If their wordings make it through, the new law might threaten
open access and open data. [3][4]
---
One small silver lining from the CULT opinion is that our worries about a
proposed unwaivable right for music performers [5][6] have been heard and a
so-called “linux clause” [7] was included. This means that the new rights
would be unwaivable, except in the case of free licenses.
---
In parallel to the European Parliament, the Council is also looking to find
a common position of all its members (i.e. the Member States). The Maltese
Presidency made some timid compromise proposals which don’t depart much
from the Commission text. These are to be discussed by the Member States
after the summer break. The Austrian Ministry of Justice has invited
Wikimedia Austria to submit a written statement and to participate in a
stakeholder meeting on 13 September. We have drafted a letter to that
effect [8]. A draft of this letter is also available in English [9] and
presents a great opportunity for other chapters and user-groups to get in
touch with their Ministries once again.
===
We have drafted our responses to the Database Directive Consultation. [10]
Feel free to read through and edit. As the Database Directive is a top
priority of ours (next to copyright), we are trying to generate additional
input in the process. Our draft answers are coordinated with he draft
answers of EDRi and Copyright4Creativity. We have drafted an answering
guide that is supposed to help organisations and individuals participate in
the consultation. [11]
Furthermore, we have had yet another meeting with the responsible unit at
DG Connect in Brussels during which we presented Wikidata (together with
Jens Ohlig from WMDE). We were asked by the Commission to provide examples
where data donations have been impeded by the sui generis database right.
We are preparing such a letter, but if you happen to have additional
examples, please share!
===
Latvia: Our Latvian user-group reports, that there are now some additional
restrictions when photographing "critical infrastructure". [12] This is a
bit confusing, as high voltage electricity lines also fall under the
definition of "critical infrastructure". These seemingly unreasonable
restrictions were intorduced because of fears of foreign intelligence
services operating on Latvian territory. An employee of the national
railway company was arrested for spying. [13]
===
Public Policy at Wikimania: If you are attending Wikimedia, we would love
to meet & work with you! No matter if you can spare some time to draft a
letter or you just want to catch the latest gossip, here are some dates you
should note:
->Thursday (10 August), 13:00–14:30: “Next Steps in EU Advocacy”, workshop
[14]
->Friday (11 August), 14:30-15:30: “New Wikimedian Order - How to represent
Wikimedia's values in international organisations?”, roundtable discussion
[15]
->Saturday (12 August), 12.30-14: “Public Policy Lunch”, global meet-up
over lunch [16]
->Sunday (13 August), 11:30-12: “It's alive! The EU copyright reform is
coming and will affect Wikipedia.”, talk [17]
===
[1]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dutuqAeZUTtSTrW-O-fzYqWD2ptwLhG-8bC…
[2]
http://www.communia-association.org/2017/06/09/internal-market-committee-to…
[3]
http://www.communia-association.org/2017/07/19/cult-committee-wants-educato…
[4]
http://www.communia-association.org/2017/07/18/eu-research-committee-wants-…
[5]
https://creativecommons.org/2017/07/19/copyright-law-deny-creators-right-sh…
[6]
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/another-fine-mess-ustr-has-gotten-us-…
[
7]http://ifosslawbook.org/germany/ (search for “Linux Clause”)
[8]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jm5YgRhTjC7-TIh6A5zEed3OH0YpRFq8aeM6aoy…
[9]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_zPX0taE3Og2JJl3FxnBCFfzIpRtHxoMDKXGTAj…
[10]
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/fe0f0469-e8fa-42f1-b1dd-ed487ee6d585?d…
[11]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14GXlIAo6mSUzf4kpSMIo4ckxLIj1AIx6XdCse0m…
[12]
http://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/crime/cabinet-moves-to-outlaw-filming-of-…
[13]
http://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/minister-confirms-spying-suspect-…
[
14]https://wikimania2017.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMCON_Follow-Up_Day#
[15]
https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/New_Wikimedian_Order_-…
[
16]https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-July/001671.html
[17]
https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/It%27s_alive!_The_EU_c…
.