Salut!
This month in a short and sweet version: The new Commission still isn’t in
office, terrorism is on the agenda and we are pecking away at the copyright
reform transposition.
Anna & Dimi
This and previous reports on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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TERREG
For terrorist content regulation proposal, round 3 has started with the
first trilogue meeting on October 17th. The three institutions made a
presentation on their priorities and agreed on a timetable. Further work
was delegated to the technical level. It means that the institutions want
to find common ground on minor issues while they are preparing the bigger
issues for political decisions - we presume the latter to be potential
reinstitution of referrals and proactive measures into the proposal.
Good news is that the Rapporteur, ECR’s Patryk Jaki (PL), maintained the
line adopted by the European Parliament in its final voting streak of the
previous EP term. No to upload filters and referrals, exceptions for
journalistic, educational, artistic, etc. exceptions, judicial or
functionally independent competent authority and no direct cross-border
enforcement make the EP position diametrically different from that of both
the Council and the European Commission. Looks like a lot to be discussed!
Meanwhile the EC is pushing for the trilogues to be concluded a.s.a.p.,
meaning until the end of this year. It is hard to imagine since the next
trilogue meeting is scheduled for November 20th only. The recent terrorist
attacks: in the synagogue in Germany that was live streamed[1] and at a
police station in Paris[2] are, the EC argues, a proof that the EU needs
the new law now. Since the EC proposal is much broader that the manifestly
illegal streaming of violent crimes, so much for the “do something”
doctrine, we say.
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Art 17 Stakeholder Dialogue:
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The first Stakeholder Dialogue on Article 17 of the Copyright in the
Digital Single Market Directive took place on 15 October. The European
Commission is required by the Directive itself to organise such meetings
and issue “best practices for cooperation between online content-sharing
service providers and rightholders”.
Wikimedia is represented, along with the two associations we are members of
- EDRi and Communia. All in all there were 80 stakeholders ranging from
large platforms, over rightholder lobbies to collecting societies. Each EU
Member State is also represented in the room. The meeting itself was
completely off topic. Instead of discussing best practices for cooperation
most stakeholders just repeated their old talking points from years ago.
More details in the Communia blog: [3]
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Copyright Transposition
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IE: The Irish government is starting a string of consultations on the
copyright reform transposition. The first round included Articles 14, 15
and 17 and Wikimedia submitted answers. The second round includes Articles
2-7, the deadline is 14 November. [4] If you know individuals or
organisations that would like to cooperate on this, please get in touch!
---
RO: The Romanian Copyright Office (ORDA) is asking about voluntary
procedures for complaint resolution for Articles 13, 17(9) and 21. The
questions were sent out to known national stakeholders by email. They are
asking what alternative dispute resolution procedures should be applicable
at national level: mediation, arbitration or another impartial body. H/T to
EDRi member ApTI for letting us know!
---
CY: Communia and Wikimedia organised a copyright transposition workshop in
Cyprus together with the national UNESCO Commission, the University of
Technology and local law firms. It even made the evening news :D [5]
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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Halle_synagogue_shooting
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_police_headquarters_stabbing
[3]
https://www.communia-association.org/2019/10/23/article-17-stakeholder-dial…
[4]
https://dbei.gov.ie/en/Consultations/Public-consultation-transposition-of-D…
[5]https://youtu.be/B8-n6kvBmGw
Dear all,
Germany's national public television broadcaster ZDF releases video clips
and photos on climate change and global warming under CC BY 4.0 for the
first time on this website:
https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/terra-x/terra-x-creative-commons-cc-100.ht…
Though there are things to improve, like adding a CC-button with more info
on correct licensing in each video, this his can be seen as a milestone and
a role model for more content and public service broadcasters like ARD to
open up and share content especially in the fields of news and
documentation.
After all, media under public law are publicly financed and using free
licences would correspond to their mission since they'd make a significant
contribution to the reach of public content.
Feel free to share the news and make them visible on twitter and other
channels.
Tweet by WMDE (german):
https://twitter.com/WikimediaDE/status/1186304730932355072
Blogpost on netzpolitik.org (german):
https://netzpolitik.org/2019/zdf-veroeffentlicht-terra-x-clips-unter-freier…
best
Lilli
--
Lilli Iliev
Projektmanagerin Politik
project manager public policy
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0https://wikimedia.de
Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der
Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns
dabei!https://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 27/029/42207.
Hi all,
I hope you are doing well! And apologies for crossposting!
I am excited to share a new job posting for the GLAM team at the
Foundation! We are hiring a Senior Program Manager for the team:
https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1898773
We are looking for someone to strengthen our support of Global Outreach to
the GLAM sector! Please share the job description widely, and help us find
good candidates in all parts of the world: tts a remote job and we are a
remote team!
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Ben Vershbow, Sandra
Fauconnier, Satdeep Gill or myself.
Cheer,
Alex
--
Alex Stinson
Senior Program Strategist
Wikimedia Foundation
Twitter:@glamwiki/@sadads
Learn more about how the communities behind Wikipedia, Wikidata and other
Wikimedia projects partner with cultural heritage organizations:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM
tl;dr
The European Parliament has appointed a new rapporteur and shadows on the
Terrorist Content Regulation. The European Commission is not only taking
shape with respect to personnel, but also legislative ideas.
This and previous reports on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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TERREG
After the European Parliament’s Committees formed, the works on terrorist
content regulation proposal started with the appointment of the new
Rapporteur Patryk Jaki (ECR, UK). MEP Jaki’s job will be to carry out the
trilogue conversations on behalf of the EP working closely with his
Shadows. Some are resuming this task (Spanish MEP Maite Pagazaurtundua of
RE and German MEP Cornelia Ernst of GUE/NGL) and some are taking over: MEP
Patrick Breyer (Greens, De, replacing Julia Reda), MEP Marina Kaljurand
(S&D, EE) and MEP Javier Zarzalejos (EPP, ES). The rumour has it the
Rapporteur Jaki is in favor of the EP report bringing more proportionality
to the ideas that the European Commission had cooked up (proactive
measures, referrals, wide definitions of terrorist content and who falls
under the scope). Another rumour is that the European Commission will be
having none of it. Let the games begin! [1]
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NEW DOSSIERS: The European Commission services have proposed policy
priorities to the Commissioners to-be. [2] Here’s a rough breakdown.
---
Digital Services Act: New liability rules for all platforms across all
categories of content (hate speech, defamation, disinformation IP
infringements, terrorist content, incitement to violence, child
exploitation, harmful content, etc.). The trend seems to be going toward
platforms being asked to “do more”. There is also talk about how to ensure
judicial oversight or at least some safeguards. Still very light on the
details and unclear how this will cascade into all the other dossiers that
also create new rules for platforms (Copyright, TERREG, Disinformation).
---
Disinformation: Before the European Parliament elections the Commission sat
down with representatives of the advertising industry and large platforms
to adopt a “Code of Practice on Disinformation”. [3] From the looks of it
the European Commission is unhappy with the achieved results during the
elections and they are now looking into a co-regulation framework. This
would mean that they want to keep industry self-regulation, as it is now
with the Code, but add a stick to it, e.g. fines. We would expect things
like transparency for election and political ads and demonetisation
“disinformation accounts” to be part of it. This is something the main
platforms are already doing, of course. The nitty-gritty will be in the
details.
---
Geoblocking: DG Connect suggested to the future Commissioners to “include
delivery of goods across the EU; look into the limitations in the
distribution agreements; consider inclusion of new sectors such as
transport, as well as online content (in particular, non-audiovisual
copyright protected content, such as online music, e-books or games).” So
far the EU hasn’t got the greatest track record in restricting geoblocking
in the face of
---
“Artificial Intelligence”: The new Commission President Ursula von der
Leyen has marked an artificial intelligence dossier as one of the first
deliverables of her Commission. “Some” (™) here in Brussels think we might
see “something” (™) within a year. What we know so far is that the idea of
“data passports” is circulated. These would essentially be sets of data and
algorithms used in the training and decision process of machine learning
systems. There might be a requirement for all or parts of these to be
public or at least shared in some way. Another thing we know is that DG
SANTE (the Directorate-General for Health & Food Safety) will be part of
the initiative, alongside DG CONNECT, which will make for a unprecedented
tandem. As the healthcare sector is expected to be one of the key areas of
deployment of AI systems, this move seems to make plenty of sense. DG JUST
(Justice and Consumers) and DG GROW (Internal Market) will complement the
leading quartet.
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CDSM Transposition: Ireland has launched a consultation on the
transposition of the copyright reform. [4] Deadline is 23 October. This
consultation specifically ask for input on Articles 13-17. Further public
consultations on the other articles will be opened in the future.
We will reach out to all our contacts (Wikimedia, CC, EDRi, libraries) in
Ireland. Still, if you know of individuals or organisations that might be
interested in this, please put us in touch! :)
---
Meanwhile the Swedish government is having stakeholder dialogues (written
and face-to-face) on Article 17. They are especially keen to know of
Swedish (based) platforms that would be covered by the new rules. WMSE is
on top of this, but any additional engagement from civil society is highly
welcome (and asked for by the government). So, please raise your hand if
you know someone.
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E-Privacy
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This file has been stuck in “trilogues” for… seemingly forever now. The
European Parliament has a strong privacy-friendly position (adopted with a
rather slim majority) that pleases most civil society actors in town. The
Council is more worries about business and seems to be siding more with the
larger, for-profit platforms (the ones that they crusaded against during
the copyright reform). The Finnish Presidency is now expected to propose a
new compromise text in October to get things rolling again. A key issue is
Article 10, which covers confidentiality settings for browsers. It
basically poses the question to the EU legislator whether browsers should
come with strong privacy settings by default (i.e. users would have to
opt-out of privacy settings). It was deleted in the last compromise
proposal by the Council. The Parliament seems to still insist on it. [5]
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[1]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?refere…
[2]https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clean_definite2.pdf
[3]
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/code-practice-disinforma…
[4]
https://dbei.gov.ie/en/Consultations/Public-consultation-transposition-of-D…
[5]
https://www.privacylaws.com/news/eu-presidency-issues-amended-proposal-on-e…