Dear Public Policy wikifolk,
As some of you may be aware, I've been working with Jessica Coates (cc'd) -
of the Australian Digital Alliance(ADA) - formerly from Creative Commons
international - on a Wikimedia advocacy campaign in Australia with regards
to the possibility that Fair Use legislation could be introduced into the
Australian Copyright Act. This has been recommended many times before by
various government enquiries, and the Library and Education sectors of
Australia have long hoped for its introduction. Our current system - known
as Fair Dealing - is extremely limiting and prescriptive, which is why it
was illegal, for example, to use a personal VCR recorder in Australia until
2006, just to take one example...
Having sought and received confirmation from WMF-Legal that the proposal is
technically and legally allowable, and also received confirmation from the
ADA that their staff/communications/documentation resources would be
available to do the 'heavy lifting' in terms of public communications, I
have been running this straw poll/consultation with the Australian,
english-Wikipedia community:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians%27_notice_bo…
You can see there the details of the proposed advocacy campaign on-wiki,
and also the background details of why this legal issue is relevant right
now in the Australian political landscape.
In short - I'm proposing to run banners on en.wp to logged out users in the
Australian-IP range who are viewing WP articles which include a Fair Use
image (e.g. corporate logo, album cover, film title card...), which will
point them to a landing page [probably on meta] explaining what Fair Use in
Australia would mean in practice, and why it's not nearly as scary as the
Copyright Lobby would have them believe. It can then point people to
further resources on the ADA website, ask them to contact their local
politician on the matter etc. [I do NOT intend for wikimedians to be
collecting a petition]. In this regard it is rather similar to the FoP
advocacy campaign run in Europe.
here's some local political context:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/productivity-commission-to-say-fair-use-could…
and here's a video that ADA produced a couple of years ago for their
previous lobbying campaign in this topic (which was pitched to an audience
of online-creative industry in general)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ACreationistas_-_Aust…
And here's the actual government enquiry report which is currently sitting
in front of the politicans waiting for a formal reply:
http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/intellectual-property/report
As you can see at the Straw Poll/Consultation page the comments so far are
heavily (though not unanimously) in favour of running this advocacy
campaign on-wiki. It has been advertised through watchlist notifications in
the Australian IP range, emails to the Australian-chapter mailing list, as
well as talkpage notices to the 1700 people in the category:Australian
Wikipedians.
So, as people involved in wikimedia/open-access advocacy in general, you're
welcome to comment on that page yourselves (though - do please indicate if
you're actually going to be affected by this proposal, since it's only
going to be visible in Australia). Equally - I'd love your feedback and
help in designing the banner and landing page (on meta?) IF the
consultation is eventually closed as demonstrating confirmed
relevant-community consensus to support. Obviously there's a Communications
side of this as well.
Sincerely,
Liam / Wittylama
wittylama.com
Peace, love & metadata
Hello everybody
Some of you may know SXSW ("South-By-Southwest"), an annual tech/music/film
festival in Austin, TX. For next year's event, held in March 2018, we have
submitted a proposal for a panel that will discuss a worrying trend:
countries increasingly enforce their national laws globally to take down
content from the internet.
We believe that this trend causes harm to the internet and access to
knowledge. (See our blog posts about this problem in the context of a case
in Canada <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/07/20/google-v-equustek/>
and another
one in France
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/07/31/global-search-engine-delistings-petit…>.)
The panel will address how countries that enforce their national laws
globally online threaten to break the internet into pieces and hurt
fundamental rights. We're very happy to have secured the participation of
three fantastic speakers:
- Nani Jansen Reventlow (a Dutch freedom of expression litigator)
- Malavika Jayaram (a privacy researcher and the Executive Director of
the Digital Asia Hub)
- Carlos Affonso Souza (Director of the Institute for Technology and
Society, Rio)
Now, before the proposal is considered for the official program, it has to
go through a voting process. Everybody can vote (after creating an account
on the SXSW website):
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/70062
We need your help to get as many votes as possible. Please vote for our
panel, help spread the word,
<https://twitter.com/Wikimedia/status/897847012082806788> share with your
friends and networks.
THANK YOU!
Best,
Jan
==
Jan Gerlach
Public Policy Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
jgerlach(a)wikimedia.org
Hi all,
As every month, I am looking for local or regional news you would like to
share share as part of the European Policy Monitoring Report.
Cheers,
Dimi
Dear all
It was great to meet so many of you at Wikimania in Montreal!
I'm writing today to let you know that negotiations have started for a new
NAFTA treaty between Mexico, the US, and Canada. The negotiations will also
include copyright provisions, which we will keep an eye on. You can read
more about what is to be expected in the negotiations in a blog post by the
EFF
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/with-release-nafta-negotiating-object…>
.
Best,
Jan
==
Jan Gerlach
Public Policy Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
jgerlach(a)wikimedia.org
Dear all
At this year’s Wikimania conference
<https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania> next month in
Montréal, we’re again hosting a public policy meetup for folks interested
in advocacy for laws that promote free knowledge and the Wikimedia
projects. The gathering will take place on Saturday, August 12, from 12.30
to 2.00pm in a room on the 7th floor of the event hotel. We will announce
the room number once it is available.
We’d like to invite you to join us for a conversation and exchange about
ongoing and upcoming policy challenges and campaigns. The goal for this
meetup is to learn about regulatory trends and developments directly from
other Wikimedians from different countries. We’re also inviting people from
other organizations who are participating in Wikimania and would love to
use the meetup to connect them with you.
Some topics that we can discuss include:
-
Copyright reform in the EU, South Africa, and Australia;
-
Access to knowledge and enforcement of national laws across borders;
-
Public domain status for publicly funded works.
The meetup will take place over lunch, so feel free to grab food and bring
it with you to the room.
If you’re interested in participating, please send us an email off-list. We
look forward to seeing you!
Best,
Dimi (Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU)
Jan (Wikimedia Foundation)
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…
.