Hi all,
I have a precise job to be done and decided to check this list for
potential volunteers.
As you may have read, the European Union is the world's first jurisdiction
to propose legislation on artificial intelligence. [1]
Long story short: We want to pitch the idea of mandatory open source for AI
systems used by the government. The current proposal contains lots of
fluffy language on transparency and on how citizens should always know
what's happening. We feel that an actual open source requirement would fit
in here. But we need to have concrete amendment suggestions at hand in
order to seriously pitch it. So I decided to trawl this list for brainpower
:)
Thanks and cheers,
Dimi
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52021PC0206
Everything is slowing down in Europe. The Council and the European
Parliament are on summer break. And we got thousands of amendments to the
Digital Services Act to plough through. Also, Malta introduced a public
domain safeguard in their national copyright law (yey!).
Anna & Dimi
This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
======
Digital Services Act
---
Amendments, amendments, amendments: Not even accounting for the seven other
committees providing input to the Digital Services Act, the lead Internal
Market and Consumer Protection committee (IMCO) has seen a stunning, even
compared to copyright reforms, 1313 pages of amendments filed. This will
take the translation services a while, so we are working with original
languages versions (mostly English, but also some French, Dutch and
Italian). [1]
---
On whose rules: We have been talking to policy makers about the distinction
between rules set up by the service provider (e.g. the Wikimedia
Foundation) and rules created and applied by the community (e.g. criteria
for notability, the style guide). The DSA creates an obligation on service
providers to enforce their terms of use in a coherent (exact wording still
debated) manner. But we wouldn’t really want the legal team to be forced to
interfere in a discussion on Albanian Wikipedia about the encyclopaedic
style of an article. Amendment 731 (on page 445 if you are reading the
document) by several Renew Europe heavyweights tries to solve exactly this
by specifying “by the service provider” in the article. We will work with
that.
---
On “actual knowledge” of illegal content: Under the current regime service
operators such as the Wikimedia Foundation enjoy some protection of
liability for their users edits and uploads, but only if they act
expeditiously when receiving “actual knowledge” of illegal content. Of
course what “actual knowledge” means is a hot and heavy debate. Article
14.3 of the proposed regulation tried to solve it, but it made it sound
like any notice we get gives rise to actual knowledge of illegal content.
Which is not true, as most notices received are either imprecise or about
legal content. The Greens/EFA group, the ID group (far right) and MEPs from
the radical left propose to delete this paragraph (see AMs 1053-1055).
Renew Europe MEPs make sure that “actual knowledge” is stricken off but
introduce an “obligation to investigate” each notice in a timely manner (AM
1057). The EPP representatives leave the “actual knowledge” term unchanged,
but specify that the notice must be written in a way that “diligent
provider of hosting services is able to assess the illegality of the
content in question” (AM 1060). The EPP and RE amendments do seem to take a
step in the right direction, but fall short of the clarity we would need.
We will work on the exact wording during the compromise seeking phase
starting in September.
---
Interesting carve-out ideas: Both the Greens/EFA and the Renew Europe
groups have interesting ideas to exclude certain platforms from Chapter III
(which is where notices, actual knowledge and obligation to enforce terms
of service are. In amendment 894 Renew Europe suggests that
not-for-profits, as well as micro, small and medium enterprises may apply
to the European Commission for a waiver. The Greens/EFA propose to exclude
micro enterprises and not-for-profit services with fewer than 100.000
monthly active users (AM 895). These are interesting suggestions that might
remedy some worries but would also add to the complexity of an already very
complex file. We will engage with both groups and are definitely interested
to see if this can get traction in the committee compromises.
---
Still, there are plenty of dangerous suggestions: Don’t be fooled by us
writing mainly about proposals that make steps in the right direction.
There are many, many terrible ideas in the batch. One such anti-highlight
is AM 1058 by Italian EPP MEPs that suggest that practically any notice
received “shall create an obligation on behalf of the notified provider
of hosting services to remove or disable access to the notified
information expeditiously.” Brrrr!
======
Copyright Transposition
---
We can’t believe the Commission did this: After waiting for the very, very
last moment to issue its “transposition guidelines” on Article 17 and
signalling at the beginning of the pandemic that it intends to be flexible
as to deadline, the Commission has actually opened infringement procedures
against all but four Member States (Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary and
Malta) for not transposing the directive on time. The deadline was 7 June
2021. [2]
---
AG Opinion on Article 17: Another good reason for Member States to wait a
little longer is that the Court of Justice of the EU is to issue a verdict
on the legality of Article 17. The Advocate-General’s opinion on the case
indicated that the court might add some additional user safeguard
requirements for countries to implement. [3]
---
Malta done: Malta has become the fourth country to fully transpose the
copyright reform. On a positive note the country has fully taken over the
“public domain safeguard” we are pushing and has enshrined the right to
“caricature, parody and pastiche” for online users on platforms. Thus both
digital copies of public domain works and memes are safe to use online. [4]
======
wikimedia.brussels
---
In July we looked further into the dossiers that we work on and that had
new developments before the summer recess:
-
DMA: IMCO targets GAFAM, forgets interoperability
<https://wikimedia.brussels/dma-imco-targets-gafam-and-forgets-interoperabil…>
- Anna looks into the IMCO Rapporteur Andreas Schwab vision for the Digital
Markets Act
-
Data Governance Act: Good Intentions, Bad Definitions
<https://wikimedia.brussels/data-governance-act-good-intentions-bad-definiti…>
- Dimi examines how DGA offers some good thinking while missing the mark on
defining the elements of data ecosystem
-
An Introduction to WIPO, Part II: The fight for Users’ Rights in Geneva
<https://wikimedia.brussels/an-introduction-to-wipo-part-ii-the-fight-for-us…>
- in his ongoing series on the debates within World Intellectual Property
Organisation, Justus explains how legacy creative industry interest clash
with rights of users and their importance across the globe
-
Digital Principles by European Commission: too little, too late?
<https://wikimedia.brussels/digital-principles-by-european-commission-too-li…>
- Anna read the eerie digital principles that the European Commissions
imagined after it had released all the relevant proposals of legal acts,
so that you don’t have to read them
======
END
======
[1]
https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/DSA-IMCO-amendments_08.07.21.pdf
[2]
https://www.eureporter.co/business/copyright-legislation/2021/07/27/commiss…
[3]
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-07/cp210138en…
[4]
https://www.notion.so/communia/Malta-84eefd61cb9843c3adc0c16176a53797#3a426…
Hi all,
We – Wikimedia Sverige – put together a brief translation on Diff
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/19/statistics-sweden-adopts-cc0-license-…>,[1]
of an article where we help Statistics Sweden
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_Sweden>, the Swedish government
agency responsible for national statistics, announce that they have marked
all their open data with CC0.
This means of course that their open data can be imported to Wikidata. They
are responsible for data on, among other things, population, demographics,
economics, politics, education, geography, etc. We have just started
looking together with them on what to prioritize for Wikidata. One area
where we are looking into possibilities for collaboration is around data on
the global goals, as Statistics Sweden is responsible for most of this
data. It will be interesting to explore how to, where possible, model such
data on Wikidata.
We will also use this piece of news to urge more government agencies in
Sweden to adopt CC0. Perhaps this can also encourage conversations with
statistical agencies in other countries?
Best,
*Eric Luth*
Projektledare engagemang och påverkan | Project Manager, Involvement and
Advocacy
Wikimedia Sverige
eric.luth(a)wikimedia.se
+46 (0) 765 55 50 95
Stöd fri kunskap, bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige.
Läs mer på blimedlem.wikimedia.se
[1]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/19/statistics-sweden-adopts-cc0-license-…
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/19/statistics-sweden-adopts-cc0-license-…>
Dear all,
Hope this email finds you well.
On June 6, the Wikimedia Foundation sent a letter to the USTR thanking Ambassador Katherine Tai for her support for a TRIPS waiver, which if agreed to at the WTO would allow the necessary intellectual property protections to prevent and treat COVID-19. We also urge the U.S. government to take an active role in the WTO negotiations.
You can find our statement and the thank you letter sent here <https://wikimediapolicy.medium.com/restoring-global-public-health-our-thank…>.
Best,
Amalia
--
Amalia Toledo (she/her)
Tech, Law and Policy Fellow
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
as mentioned during the Lean BXL Meeting, WMDE just started an event series
discussing questions around the distribution of knowledge and thus power in
the tradition of the Wikimedia Salon
<https://www.wikimedia.de/projects/das-abc-des-freien-wissens/> and in
cooperation with with Deutschlandfunk Kultur
<https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/> (Radio station focusing on cultural
topics, reaching 4.41 million listeners daily).
[image: humroig.png]
Our guests at the first edition on July 1:
Dr. Emilia Zenzile Roig <https://www.emiliaroig.com/>, Founder and
Executive Director Center for Intersectional Justice
<https://www.intersectionaljustice.org/>, political scientist and book
author "Why we matter. The End of Oppression."
Dr. Christian Humborg
<https://blog.wikimedia.de/2021/05/10/christian-humborg-wird-neuer-geschaeft…>,
Executive Director Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Moderated by Christine Watty, editor at DLF Kultur.
The conversation (in german) was broadcast on the radio and it is available
as a podcast
<https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/wissen-macht-gerechtigkeit-wie-fair-is…>
including an article at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. The video of the
conversation is available on our Youtube channel
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6AEoaxs6L0>. If you like it, share it
with your networks! Emilia Roig was already featured with an interview in
the publication "The ABC of Free Knowledge"
<https://www.wikimedia.de/abcdesfreienwissens/wissensgerechtigkeit/#emilia-r…>
.
The idea is to stimulate a broader public debate on issues related with
knowledge equity as a fundamental strategic goal of the Wikimedia Strategy
2030
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/de>.
A website is being created with more background info. We plan on having
discussions for example on the role of Wikidata in the knowledge society of
the future and much more. Feedback is very welcome!
Greetings
Lilli
--
Lilli Iliev
Projektmanagerin Politik
project manager public policy
@lilliliev <https://mobile.twitter.com/lilliiliev>
-----------------------------
Bleiben Sie auf dem neuesten Stand! Aktuelle Nachrichten und spannende
Geschichten rund um Wikimedia, Wikipedia und Freies Wissen im Newsletter: Zur
Anmeldung <https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>.
------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
http://wikimedia.de Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an
der Menge allen Wissens frei teilhaben kann.
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 27/029/42207.
Dear Friends,
we are super excited to see you tomorrow for
Small Lean BXL Meeting: “Brave New EU”
Thursday, July 1st, 17:00-20:00 CET
in this BigBlueButton
<https://app.bbbserver.de/de/join/df51a54b-f188-418c-a54d-02462c568e48>
We are grateful to the following people:
- Allison Davenport will pick our brains on a very important issue: how to
best get feedback on and consult policy positions in our community?
- Justus G. de Bruijn will present WMNL's experience with force field
analysis: how to cherish your friends and keep an eye on adversaries?
- Liam Wyatt alias Wittylama will discuss the Enterprise project: what are
its potential implications for public policy work?
- Lilli Iliev will engage us around knowledge equity: this issue is one of
the fundamentals of the 2030 Strategy, how do we incorporate it in things
we do?
The general idea for any contribution is that there is 5-7 minutes to
present - then we decide if:
- this is something to discuss in more depth in the meeting (beyond
questions of clarification that are always welcome and possible, that is) -
then we just dive right in
- this is something to discuss right away between a few interested
participants - then we create a breakout room for that purpose
- this is something to discuss at a later date - the person presenting will
collect interest and get back to those interested separately
Along with these updates Dimi and I will bring you up to speed on the most
important developments in the Brussels Bubble across our work plan.
Also, since we last saw each other we have gained new colleagues taking on
public policy and advocacy roles in chapters - welcome, and we hope that
you will make yourselves known!
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Hope to see you tomorrow in big numbers!
Anna & Dimi
--
Anna Mazgal
Senior EU Policy Advisor
Wikimedia
anna(a)wikimedia.be
@a2na
mobile: +32 487 222 945
12 Rue Belliard
BE-1040 Brussels
--
Wikimedia Belgium vzw
BE 0563.775.480
- RPR Brussel
Antwerpselaan 40
Boulevard d’Anvers 1000 Brussel/Bruxelles
www.wikimedia.be
<https://www.wikimedia.be/>
info(a)wikimedia.be <mailto:info@wikimedia.be>