Hi,
I am forwarding an article I wrote at
http://searchengineland.com/german-leistungsschutzrecht-146826 about
an expert hearing in the German parliament yesterday on a proposed
change of copyright:
Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee of the German Bundestag — Germany’s
national parliament — held an expert hearing on a proposed
“Leistungsschutzrecht” law for news publishers. The law, known as
“ancillary copyright” in English, would require search engines and
others — perhaps even Facebook, Twitter and individual bloggers — to
pay news publishers if they link to or even briefly summarize news
content.
The hearing didn’t result in a vote. It was the next step in a process
that may lead to Leistungsschutzrecht becoming law or not. Below, some
background on what happened at the hearing, along with some analysis
from my perspective about the law.
Before I go further, an important note. I am not a lawyer. English is
not my native tongue, and I am not a trained journalist. Please do not
expect legal expertise, journalistic style or proper English. I do not
speak on behalf of anyone else. This is my personal opinion. But I
have I’ve been tracking “Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger”
since 2009, as part of my work for Wikimedia Deutschland, as we’ve
tried to figure what impact it might have on us or others.
Background About Leistungsschutzrecht
Under the current copyright law in Germany, it is perfectly legal to
operate a for-profit search engine that contains search results from
German news publishers. It is legal to allow users to enter search
terms and to display search results that contain a link to pages
matching the search terms. It is also legal to add a snippet to this
link and present a small piece of information that might help the user
understand if this is a meaningful search result you might want to
click on.
The draft Leistungsschutzrecht bill (known as “LSR”) was formally
proposed by the German government coalition in August of 2012 and
passed to the German parliament for action. That action will involve
several readings and committee reviews, of which yesterday’s hearing
was only one.
If this bill is enacted as-is, search engines would no longer be
allowed to display snippets unless they had received permission first.
This is very crucial aspect of this Leistungsschutzrecht. It is not
meant as an opt-out tool that allows you to operate a search engine
unless the publisher objects and has his web sites removed. Quite the
opposite, it is up to the search engine operator to ask for permission
first.
LSR would grant news publishers an exclusive right to “make public”
news content for one year, though what exactly “news content” would be
is unclear. Part of the proposed law defines this as essentially doing
what the press “usually does,” explicitly mentioning informing,
offering opinions and entertaining.
After the year exclusivity period had passed, the right would be
transferrable. There are provisions to ensure authors or other right
holders are not disadvantaged. Other provisions would extend rules
specifically aimed at requiring search engines and ”commercial
providers of services who process content respectively” to seek
permission for use.
The bill does not have requirements on payments. It is quite possible
that in an LSR world, a news publisher grants permission to a search
engine for free use. It is also possible that the press publisher pays
the search engine in order to get included into a web site. In any
case, the default switch is set to, and I am going to use a German
term here you might remember from the TV show Hogan’s Heroes:
VERBOTEN.
How Would It Work? Unclear
There are many unanswered questions and uncertainties about how LSR
would work. For example, how does a search engine how whether a
something is a news story? The answer is simple: it doesn’t.
A news story published by a journalist on his personal web site and
meant as an example of his skills will not be covered by the LSR,
whereas the same exact text on the web site of a publishing house will
be covered by the LSR.
It is a matter of open debate whether blogs will qualify as press
products. A safe approach for a search engine operator will be to
assume that all content is press content until evidence to the
contrary surfaces.
Next question: Why don’t publishers simply use robots.txt to exclude
google from listing them? The answer is, again, simply: A large share
of revenue comes from showing ads to visitors who come in via Google
and Google News. There is no economic point in shutting down one of
your largest sources of income. Publishers want to have Google
continue sending them customers and at the same time get paid for it.
Who doesn’t want to have the cake and eat it, too? Some publishers
have tried to present robots.txt as a binary measure that is incapable
of preventing the indexing of only parts of a web site or the
selective exclusion of services like Google News or the ability to
disable snippets. Their objections have been disproven by (LSR
opponent and journalist) Stefan Niggemeier.
Yesterday’s Expert Hearing
Yesterday’s hearing was, as best we know, the only expert hearing that
will be held as the proposed law is considered. It lasted for three
hours. It allowed members of the Bundestag to ask questions to nine
experts who were picked by the five parties in parliament (larger
parties got to allocate more expert slots). These experts were allowed
to submit written statements before the hearing (you can find them in
German here).
Parts of the hearing were easily predictable. Members of the political
opposition (which is against the proposed law) had picked scholars to
speak against it. The governing parties had picked experts supporting
the law. Questions from one party to their own experts were meant to
create the opportunity for these experts to elaborate on their
arguments in favor or against the Leistungsschutzrecht.
While it was an expert hearing, it wasn’t focused on technological
expertise. Instead, it was more a scholarly or philosophical
examination, of how such a law might fit into the current framework of
constitutional law, European Union law the current dogmatic style of
copyright.
Whenever a technical question was raised, the answers were vague,
evading or simply hilarious.
A representative from the publishers’ associations in favor of the law
kept on repeating a demand for technical language with a much more
complex vocabulary to express conditions such as temporal, topical or
size restrictions, payment requirements and other conditions.
So far, he has been unable to present a viable way how this could be
implemented and he has failed to explain the obvious: the language he
proposed would only constitute an invitation to negotiate on the
terms. It would not substitute the negotiations itself, bringing us to
the argument of a huge and crippling bureaucratic nightmare or
opt-in-rights negotiations.
All experts in this hearing agreed that this law will create an era of
legal uncertainty, and it will require a series of lawsuits to create
enough case law to see who will actually be within the sights of the
LSR. The time span mentioned was five years or more. Until then, any
professional legal advisor would be required to warn his clients
against innovating or investing in search engine projects in Germany
because of such uncertainty.
Till Kreutzer, a legal expert and vocal LSR opponent who was among the
nine invited experts was correct to point that out. He’s been working
on this topic since it first emerged as a proposal by the publishers’
association in 2009. He and several other experts agreed during the
hearing that the current LSR design will most definitely favor large
corporations over smaller startups and smaller publishing houses and
that the economic effects of this law will strengthen the position of
both Google and companies like the Axel Springer publishing house.
Beyond Google: Twitter & Facebook?
At one point, parliament member Burkhard Lischka, of the opposition
Social Democrats party, asked expert Christoph Keese of the Axel
Springer publishing house if the proposed law would apply to news
content that is shared on Twitter and Facebook.
Keese ducked the question. That’s probably because he, like most,
doesn’t know. No one will for certain until a court case happens.
The Law Has No Clothes?
A key point during the hearing, to me, was when the parliament member
and committee chair Siegfried Kauder, of the Christian Democrats party
that’s part of the ruling government coalition, stated that after
hearing from the experts, it seemed that the law was unlikely to
actually produce new income for news publishers. Given this, he asked,
why did it make sense to still pursue it?
Despite Kauder’s party being in favor of the law, he’s opposed to it
but unable to actually stop it. His statement resulted in some
laughter, perhaps because it was an “emperor has no clothes on”
moment. So many seem to understand the absurdities in the proposed law
that it’s almost humorous.
Next Steps
What happens next? There might be political pressure to have another
expert hearing, this time with experts from the technical and
commercial world. However, the chances are quite limited, and the
governing coalition has shown little interest in dropping this
endeavor.
In particular, there’s a general election of the Bundestag in
September. If this law is going to have a good chance to pass, it has
to reach the President’s desk well ahead of that date. The coalition
government might try to speed up getting recommendations in favor of
introducing such a Leistungsschutzrecht in order to have the second
and final required readings by February. The very last possible date
for a second and final reading is the last week of June.
In the meantime, all it took was a skilled programmer to come up with
a tiny Chrome extension that will detect URIs in plain text and create
snippets on the fly, thereby completely circumventing the LSR. You can
test the proof of concept here have a look at thescreenshot that
compares a demo page without the plugin or with the plugin enabled.
It is almost certain that if this LSR becomes law, a huge amount of
legal expertise and programming skills will be wasted to present
workarounds to the LSR to restore what had been possible until then or
come up with technical or legal countermeasures to stop these
workarounds. One might think that there are enough actual things to
do.
--
Mathias Schindler
Projektmanager
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
web: http://www.wikimedia.de
mail: mathias.schindler(a)wikimedia.de
jabber: mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu
der Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
2013/1/30 ENWP Pine <deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com>:
> I believe I heard of a case in Germany where someone sold a bunch
> of CC photos from Wikimedia Commons with the claim that the photos were a
> "private collection", although I can't seem to find a news link for that so
> I could be mistaken.
This was mentioned by the head of the Bundesarchiv image department
who saw printouts of cc licensed Bundesarchiv images on ebay - without
attribution. I have no information about the current state of
enforcement.
Unrelated to that, my wife successfully enforced the CC license terms
three times (out of three). A French TV station settled out of court,
a far right wing party and an islamist group had to be sued, one case
is mentioned at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Gerlach_vs._DVU /
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/28644
Mathias
--
Mathias Schindler
Projektmanager
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
web: http://www.wikimedia.de
mail: mathias.schindler(a)wikimedia.de
jabber: mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu
der Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
cross-forwarding
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Itzik Edri <itzik(a)infra.co.il>
Date: 2013/1/30
Subject: [PRESS] Wikimedia Israel spokesperson against the Likud
To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi,
Not direct related to Wikipedia, but as my role, the press mention my
connection to Wikipedia (and also my second role, as adviser to the leader
of another political party), I asked the two reporters for some changes so
their report will not show any connection of the chapters or Wikipedia to
the issue, beside the fact that the pictures was uploaded to Wikipedia.
Yesterday I sued the Likud party (the prime minister party) for using my
pictures without credit. I tried to find a compromise with them, without
success, so I deiced to sue them and asking for 25,000.NIS The money was
less relevant, I did that more in the matter of showing that also when
someone publishing photos under CC, he still have rights - and the basic
it's his own credit (their lawyer said me "But you put them on the internet
for free uses, so we forgot the credit, so what?").
It been reported on Walla (http://tech.walla.co.il/?w=/4002/2611704) and
Haaretz (http://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/net/1.1917526).
Here is the article from Walla:
של מי התמונה של סילבן שלום? תביעה נגד הליכוד
מאת: עידו קינן, מערכת וואלה!
יום שלישי, 29 בינואר 2013, 14:55
דובר עמותת ויקימדיה ישראל תובע את הליכוד על כך שהשתמשה בתמונה שצילם של
סילבן שלום, מבלי לקיים את תנאי השימוש
תגיות: הליכוד,סילבן שלום,איציק אדרי,ויקימדיה
"התמונה הוצגה באתר בלי קרדיט ובלי אזכור הרשיון" (צילום מסך)
כשתנועת הליכוד ביקשה להציג את תמונת השר סילבן שלום באתר הרשמי שלה ושל
הרשימה המאוחדת הליכוד ביתנו, היא עשתה מה שרבים עושים: לקחה תמונה
מוויקיפדיה. אלא שהיא לא עמדה בתנאי השימוש של התמונה, שפורסמה ברשיון שימוש
חופשי. כעת תובע הצלם, איציק אדרי, 25 אלף שקל מהמפלגה על הפרת זכויות היוצרים
שלו.
בכתב התביעה, שהוגש אתמול לבית המשפט לתביעות קטנות בתל אביב, סיפר אדרי כי
צילם את השר שלום בינואר 2011 בכנס שנערך בכנסת, ושיתף את התצלום באתר
וויקיפדיה תחת רשיון Creative Commons מסוג Attribution Share Alike.
קריאייטיב קומונז (CC בקיצור) היא מערכת זכויות יוצרים חלופית שנומרה לפני
יותר מעשור במטרה לאפשר לבעלי זכויות להתיר שימוש חופשי ביצירותיהם בתנאים
ובהגבלות שונים, ולציבור להשתמש ביצירות הללו בהתאם לתנאי הרשיון בלי צורך
לבקש רשות או לחתום על חוזה עם היוצר. הרשיון הספציפי שאדרי בחר מחייב מתן
קרדיט ליוצר, אזכור סוג הרשיון ושיתוף כל יצירה נגזרת מהיצירה באותו רשיון.
הליכוד, לפי התביעה, השתמש בתמונה של אדרי תוך הפרת התנאים - היא הוצגה באתרים
בלי קרדיט לאדרי ובלי אזכור הרשיון. בתביעה נכתב כי "במיוחד במהלך קמפיין
בחירות, עומד לרשות הנתבעת תקציב גבוה לניהול קמפיין הבחירות והמפלגה, כמו
רבות מהמפלגות, מעסיקה הנתבעת אנשי מקצוע רבים, ביניהם צלמים ומבצעת רכש של
תמונות, קטעי וידיאו ומוזיקה רבים לשימוש הקמפיין. למרות זו, בחרה הנתבעת להפר
זכויות יוצרים של אדם פרטי, מאשר לרכוש תמונה לשימוש בקמפיין הבחירות כפי
שעושות כל המפלגות. [...] למרות שכל אשר נדרש מהנתבעת הוא מתן קרדיט, היא בחרה
שלא לעשות כך".
אדרי פנה לליכוד בתחילת ינואר והציע פשרה, שבה הליכוד יסיר את התמונה, יפרסם
באתרים התנצלות על השימוש בתמונה ויפצה אותו ב-25 אף שקל. מספר ימים אחר כך
הוסרה התמונה ובמקומה הופיע אייקון שגיאה, והיום יש באתר תמונה אחרת של שלום.
אדרי והליכוד ניהלו מגעים אך לא הסכימו על פשרה, ואתמול הוגשה התביעה.
"אנחנו לא מוותרים לחלוטין על הזכויות שלנו"
אתר הליכוד - תמונת ה"אחרי". איפה סילבן?
אדרי הוא דובר עמותת וויקימדיה ישראל, אשר תומכת בפעילות של וויקיפדיה העברית,
ושניהלה בשנים האחרונות מאבק לשחרור תמונות שצולמו על ידי משרדי הממשלה מכספי
ציבור לשימוש חופשי. בתחילת דצמבר החליטה הממשלה על שחרור התמונות. אדרי גם
קידם את רשיון ה-CC במסגרת תפקידו כיועץ הניו מדיה של ציפי לבני, כיו"ר קדימה
ואחר כך כמייסדת התנועה - כל התמונות שעלו לפליקר הרשמי של לבני במסגרת מסע
הבחירות שוחררו ברשיון CC. "התביעה חשובה כדי למנוע מחברות ואנשים לנצל את
הרצון הטוב של אנשים שמשחררים תוכן ברישיון חופשי (CC)", אמר אדרי לוואלה!
TECH. "כשאנחנו באים לטובת הציבור, אנחנו לא מוותרים לחלוטין על הזכויות שלנו,
וזה מה שחשוב שאנשים יבינו. העלאה של תמונות לאינטרנט ברישיון חופשי לא אומרת
שאתה יכול לעשות עם התמונה שלי מה שאתה רוצה. [...] כשזה נעשה בטעות על ידי
עסק קטן או אדם פרטי, זה עוד נסבל, כאשר זה נעשה על ידי מפלגת שלטון, שמצפצת
על חוקים, ואף לא מוכנה להודות בטעותה ומזלזלת בציבור ובזכות שלו - זה כבר לא
במקום".
עו"ד יהונתן קלינגר, שייצג את אדרי במגעים מול הליכוד, אמר: "במקרים דומים בתי
המשפט פסקו פיצויים של אלפי שקלים, והחוק אפילו מאפשר לתת פיצויים עד 100,000
ש"ח בלי כל הוכחת נזק. אני מקווה שגם במקרה הזה בית המשפט יהיה קשוב, ויזכיר
למפלגת השלטון מה החוק אומר".
דוברת הליכוד, נגה כץ, מסרה בתגובה: "כפי שהליכוד פועל תמיד, גם במהלך הקמפיין
שמרנו על זכויות הצלמים והאינטרסים שלהם, וכך נמשיך בעתיד. לפיכך גם במקרה
הפרטי הזה נלמד את פרטי התביעה שטרם הגיעה לידי הליכוד ונתייחס אליה בהתאם".
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EFF has a press release[1] regarding Associated Press v. Meltwater,
where AP asserts the newsclipping service infringes because its use
cannot be "transformative" unless it is also "expressive".
Almost all direct quotes in Wikipedia would likely fail AP's
more-restrictive test, I suspect.
Amgine
[1]
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-urges-court-protect-transformative-u…
(full amicus brief https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-14)
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Hello all,
Demand Progress has launched a campaign to reform the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act ("CFAA"). Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill titled "Aaron's Law"
that would decriminalize parts of CFAA. Below is some background
information on the issue.
* Demand Progress's letter on CFAA and Aaron's Law:
http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/aaron_justice
* Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society on CFAA and Aaron
Swartz:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swa…
* Remembering Aaron Swartz (1986-2013),
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/12/remembering-aaron-swartz-1986-2013/
--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia
Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer
for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal
capacity.*
Dear all,
I wish you a Happy New Year (though it's not so new anymore)!
This week I had the opportunity to attend an event in Brussels which gained
quite some media attention. Jan-Philipp Albrecht, a German Green MEP and
rapporteur for for the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee
(LIBE) of the European Parliament, presented his amendments to the Data
Protection Regulation Draft proposed by the European Commission:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/pr/922/9223…
This enormous text has also been stripped down to ten key points:
http://www.janalbrecht.eu/uploads/pics/data_protection_English.pdf
The Regulation shall replace the pre-Internet Data Protection Directive
(1995). With this reform the EU is trying "to establish a comprehensive
approach to data protection, to strengthen online privacy rights and to do
away with the current fragmentation of 27 different national data
protection laws which are costly and burdensome for businesses operating on
Europe's single market". For further details, see yesterday's press release
by the European Commission:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-4_en.htm?locale=en
The commission's proposal was facing the "biggest lobbying campaign in the
world ever", as Joe McNamee, CEO of European Digital Rights (EDRI) has put
it. Obviously, the strenghtening of users' rights and the far stricter
rules for data controllers run counter the interests of companies like
Facebook and Google. If personal data of individuals in the EU is handled,
the Regulation will also apply to companies which are not established in
the Union. To put it bluntly: It could even affect charities in San
Francisco.
Quite worrysome for the Wikimedia movement was the Commission's initial
proposal for a "right to be forgotten" (Art. 17), a general guarantee for
data subjects to get their personal data erased, if they didn't give their
explicit permission. Lacking a clear-cut, consensual definition of
"personal data", even the birth date of a Hollywood actress could be
handled like that.
For a volunteer project like Wikpedia based on free licenses, the
"reasonable steps" to inform even third parties about personal data which
has to be erased (foreseen in Art.17.2), didn't seem realistic at all.
Besides, the exemptions or derogations from that rule (laid out in Art. 80)
were restricted to the processing of personal data for journalistic or
artistic purposes only.
According to the rapporteur's amendments, freedom of expression must be far
better balanced against the foggy "right to be forgotten". Now, Art. 80 (in
connection with the new Art. 17.2a) postulates the accordance with the
Europan Convention of Human Rights which makes sure that the conflicting
goods (privacy vs. information) are carefully weighed.
Of course, the political gaming is just about to begin. Various Commitees
and shadow rapporteurs will have their say in order to draft a compromise.
Besides, the whole time line for the legislative process (so-called
"Trilogue" between Commission, Parliament and Council) is tough. Most of
the European parties don't have any interest in making data protection a
major topic during the next EU election campaign in 2014. Together with
lokal Wikipedians in Brussels and NGO collegues, we will keep an eye on the
further process.
Best wishes to all,
Jan
--
Jan Engelmann
Leiter Politik & Gesellschaft
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Obentrautstr. 72
10963 Berlin
Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de
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