The European Commission’s flagship digital regulation, the DSA on content
moderation, is starting with a brawl over European Parliament committee
competencies and being torpedoed by Member States’ quickly setting national
rules. For more on the French government’s moves in this direction we have
invited Wikimédia France’s new public policy person, Naphsica, to share
some insight. Please welcome her to the group!
This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
======
*Digital Services Act*
---
*Member States in a frenzy*
As stakeholders and MEPs are unpacking the European Commission’s new
proposed rules on online content moderation, Member States are speeding to
create precedens in national law, presumably to help them push certain
aspects through in Brussels. France is discussing a new amendment to the
law on “Republican Values” that would see a “duty of care” for platforms
(see more below from Naphsica). Austria has not given up on it’s “online
hate speech law” that is mandating platforms to delete “obviously illegal”
content within 24 hours. [2] Of course, this is largely copied from
Gemany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG). Meanwhile Poland wants to slap
humongous fines on platforms that delete content that is not illegal under
Polish law [3] and Romania trying to criminalise the creation of fake
accounts on social media. In short, it is a mess and Brussels is trying to
use that by telling tech giants to support EU-level rules if they want to
avoid a fragmented national landscape. [4]
---
*What about Wikimedia?*
The Regulation tries to cover everything from liability exceptions for
hosting providers over “notice & action” rules to content blocking
disputes. And while we welcome the attempt to set a general frame for
content moderation practices across platforms, we are of course worried to
not impede functioning, self-orgnised community moderation practices. As
thew WMF legal team has sharply described earlier [5]
The first important point we will address with the European
legislators is *Article
12*, which basically says that platforms must disclose their terms of
service and enforce them“in a diligent, objective, and proportionate
manner.” Particularly the objectivity seems to be a tricky legal concept
here. We basically worry that editors and readers unhappy with community
decisions will try to go over the WMF to contest it. This scenario should
remain an exception.
The second key point we want to raise is within the “notice & action”
system. *Article 14* says that an online provider will be presumed to know
about illegal content — and thus be liable for it — once it gets a notice
from anyone claiming that content is illegal. This clause is risky, as the
platform’s only certain way to avoid liability is to delete it. We we will
be making the argument that it needs to be explicitly that such a notice is
only a claim and the platform cannot be presumed to know about illegal
content at this point.
---
*Who do we talk to?*
We talked about Member States jockeying into position, but what about the
other co-legislator, the European Parliament? Well, Brussels wouldn’t be
half as much fun if there wasn't a brawl among committees who gets a hot
file. Long story short, the Internal Markets and Consumer Affairs committee
(IMCO) is expected to get it. But this will only be official after a
plenary vote in February and is expected to then be officially contested by
other committees. Still, in IMCO we know that the rapporteur will be
Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) and the shadow rapporteur carrying the most
votes will be Arba Kokalari (EPP SE). [6] If you happen to know them, ping
us ;) Actual legislative committee action is probably going to start in
March.
======
*French Law on “Republican Values”*
A government amendment to the “Republican Values” law has been passed in
committee at the National Assembly in Paris following Donald Trump's
censorship by Twitter. The Secretary of State for Digital, Cedric O,
decided to transpose DSA provisions in advance into this French law.
-----
*The government amendment* was taken over by MP Laetitia Avia and
introduces stricter “duty of care” obligations for "large and very large
online services", while also devolving new powers to the Superior Council
of Audio-visual. [7] Wikimedia projects are within its scope.
-----
*Wikimédia France* had a meeting with a MP, Paula Forteza, to discuss
issues regarding the text. She will table an amendment to protect community
and commons based projects like Wikipedia. It should be discussed at the
public session that begins 2 February. ======
*Data Governance Act *
Back in Brussels, we provided feedback [8] to the European Commission on
its Data Governance Act proposal. [9] Our main points are that projects of
collaborative knowledge like Europeana and ours should not fall under the
new notification regime for “data sharing services” and we thus need to
clarifly language on both the provided exception and the definition of
“data altruism”. We also emphasise that it is crucial to not undermine the
GDPR by creating a parallel regime for certain types of data and that we
really support the Commission trying to limit the scope of the sui generis
database right.
-----
See past report for more details on the actual proposal: [11]
-----
We have prepared a couple of amendments. The first one clarifies that
projects of “collaborative knowledge” are “general interest”, which is a
lot of terminology, but is fundamental to the scope of several provisions
with this Regulation. The second one basically tries to… well… kill the
sui generis database rights. Take a look at the key MEPs and in case you
know someone, you know where to find us ;) [12]
======
*TERREG*
To recap: The European Union is trying to pass rules on how to combat
terrorist propaganda online since its last legislative period. [13] Most
prominent is perhaps the proposal of a one-hour rule: a legally binding
one-hour deadline for content to be removed following a removal order from
national competent authorities.
---
We came closer to the end of this unfortunate legislative saga when the
file was rushed through the trilogue process under the German Presidency
that managed to reconcile all the controversial points just before the
holiday break in December. In January the Civil Liberties Committee adopted
the trilogue result by an overwhelming majority, while the Greens/EFA Group
voted against it. Civil society organisations like EDRi and ourselves are
unhappy with the outcome, as despite some additional safeguards to free
expression, user protections remain inadequate. [14] The final plenary vote
has been scheduled for April. In the meantime, we will try to better
analyse and explain what this legislation means for free knowledge. Stay
tuned!
======
END
======
[1]
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-…
[2]
https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-protection/news/austrias-law-against-…
[3]
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/poland-readies-law-blocking-…
[4]https://www.ft.com/content/2bd619a2-dee0-492a-b397-73a0ba00e369
[5]
https://wikimediapolicy.medium.com/how-europes-proposed-digital-services-ac…
[6]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?refere…
[7]
https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/amendements/3649/CSPRINCREP/1770
[8]
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1…
[9]
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/docs_autres_institutions/commission_…
[10]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2020-December/002041.html
[11]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=e…
[12]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=e…
[13]
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-civil-liberties-just…
[14]https://wikimediapolicy.medium.com/terrorist-clicks-ca373e84796f
Hello everyone,
Applications for the WikiLearn: Online learning pilot
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Best,
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Cassie Casares
Project Coordinator
Community Development
Wikimedia Foundation
ccasares(a)wikimedia.org