Dear free knowledge supporters,
We have exciting news. Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, in partnership with Wikimedia UK, issued an open letter calling on the UK Government to exempt Wikipedia and other public interest projects from the Online Safety Bill (UK OSB).
We would be grateful if you could help us spread the word with your channels by using these resources:
* Open letter [1]
* Social media toolkit [2]
* Blog post to learn more [3]
More about the UK Online Safety Bill:
The UK Online Safety Bill, as it’s currently drafted, would require significant changes to how Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects operate. Last month, we shared details of the threats in this blog post [4] and have written in the past about our broader UK OSB concerns [5].
In December 2022, Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation began outreach to British regulators to educate them on how our projects work and how the Online Safety Bill would threaten them. Over the last several months, we ramped up our advocacy efforts as the bill was debated in the House of Lords. We successfully convinced key Lords and Baronesses to support our proposed amendments and built public and media attention, but the UK Government has resisted making the necessary changes.
Our best chance of protecting Wikipedia is to persuade the UK Government to exempt public interest projects from the OSB, so we’ve written this open letter and formed a coalition of signatories. The list is a testament to the network of allies that WMUK has established over years of promoting free knowledge in the UK. If the government fails to act, our last chance to push this exemption to protect Wikipedia is with Parliament during the Bill’s “Report Stage” voting, starting on 6 July.
Please consider using the social media toolkit to spread the word with your channels about our open letter.
If you have questions or thoughts, respond to this email!
@Lucy, please hop in if there's something I've missed or something you would like to share from WMUK's perspective.
In solidarity,
Ziski
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[1] https://wikimedia.org.uk/2023/06/online-safety-bill-open-letter/
[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kTQSQU8VPhq-_AHg95ZYcL19Vdqrqf1m2U5X7Q0…
[3] https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/protect-the-futu…
[4] https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/05/11/good-intentions-bad-effects-wikimedia…
[5] https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/deep-dive-the-united-kingdoms-online-sa…
Hi everyone!
Europe is hurtling towards a mass annual summer break in August, but before
that everyone seems to be in a frenzy to get some progress done on their
files. The European Commission is consulting on -a public “content
moderation database”, France being France is trying to over-implement the
DSA and pre-implement other digital files, while Germany is asking itself
what to do with e-lending. Oh, yes, the Media Freedom Act is also moving
forward. Can’t wait for the Sommerpause!
Dimi & Michele
=== DSA: Content Moderation Database ===
The DSA obliges online platforms to submit to the European Commission
decisions to remove or disable access to information and decisions to
suspend or terminate recipient’s accounts. These shall be submitted, with
an explanation, to a publicly accessible and machine-readable database.
This obligation was inspired by the Lumen Database that aggregates such
information on a voluntary basis.
—
The Commission has published the code and documentation (on GitHub) of its
planned “DSA Transparency Database” and has opened a public consultation
until 17 July to gather feedback. [1] The consultation poses questions on
methods of submission and the precise information to be collected.
—
Wikimedia Foundation is worried about how to submit the decisions it takes
to this public database without sharing any personal data. Additionally,
protecting users is a major priority and in some sensitive cases this could
best be done by being nonspecific about the reasons for the decision. We
will provide feedback.
=== Data Act ===
It’s a wrap! Well, a deal. As you might already know if you read this list
regularly, the Data Act will give users the power to request and re-use
data generated by products or services they use. In order to achieve this,
the legislation limits the scope of the sui generis database right (SGDR)
in Article 35, so it cannot be an obstacle to such re-use. This is a win,
although we would like to see the entire SGDR reviewed and then reformed or
removed. [2]
=== EMFA ===
The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) aims at improving the functioning of
the internal market for media services. [3] It specifically introduces
safeguards for journalists and media providers, provisions for increasing
regulatory cooperation and convergence in the media market (e.g. New Board
for Media Services, former ERGA) as well as ensuring transparency in the
allocation of economic resources (e.g. state advertising). The rationale is
that by protecting the internal market for media services the EU
fundamental values of media freedom and pluralism can thrive.
—
The focus of our attention has been Article 17 of the proposal. Indeed, it
contains a “media exemption”, introducing new obligations for providers of
very large online platforms offering “online intermediation services”: more
specifically, they will have the power to accept or refuse
self-declarations of media providers as well as to decide whether an
account or item can be restricted or deleted. Considering that the
Wikimedia Foundation does not offer “online intermediation services” as
defined in the P2B regulation (Regulation (EU) 2019/1150), such provision
will not affect Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia.
—
More recently, we co-signed an open letter 4[] addressed to the Council
asking for a stronger protection of journalists and their sources against
the deployment of spywares. Indeed, it is extremely important to support
the call for a strong protection of freedom of expression given that it is
the basis of Wikipedia.
—
Currently, Council adopted (21st June 2023) its general approach and
Parliament (CULT, IMCO & LIBE committees) is working on its position, which
should be adopted after the summer (concerning the media exemption,
Parliament looks more keen to introduce a stronger version of it).
Trilogues are supposed to normally start at the end of the year, e.g. November
2023, under the Spanish Presidency. The goal is to have this new
legislation in place before the 2024 elections, which will be held in June
(therefore the Belgian Presidency will probably wrap the dossier up).
=== Political Advertising Regulation ===
The main goal of the Regulation on transparency and targeting of political
advertising, which was put forward in November 2021 [5], is to ensure the
proper functioning of the internal market for political advertising. The
proposal was a political priority of the EU Commission and was inspired by
the scandal of Cambridge Analytica. The proposal introduces, on the one
hand, a set of obligations ensuring a higher level of transparency of
advertising and related services and, on the other hand, specific rules on
the possibility of using special categories of personal data when targeting
and amplification techniques are used when offering this kind of services.
—
Wikimedia is not directly affected by the new rules given that it does not
offer political advertising services. Furthermore, its services are
advertising free. Nevertheless, the definition of what constitutes a
political advertising service is very broad, especially with regard to the
“issue based advertising”. In light of that, we asked to introduce a
carveout for “unremunerated services acting in a non-commercial purpose
capacity”. In addition, we have signed an open letter [6] asking for the
restriction of the scope of the definition of political advertising as well
as the ban of the possible use of sensitive personal data with regard to
targeting techniques.
—
Currently, trilogue negotiations have been suspended sine die: Parliament
and Council could not find an agreement on the use of sensitive personal
data concerning targeting and ad delivery techniques. This is a very
sensitive aspect since it calls into question the interplay with the DSA
horizontal rules (especially Article 26) and positions fundamentally
diverge (Council is more prone to allow the use of sensitive data in
targeting techniques).
The Spanish Presidency should resume negotiations and seems more open to
accept Parliament’s position. In any case, it seems very difficult that the
regulation will be in force for the 2024 elections.
=== France’s Tech Bill Regulating The Online Environment ===
France is working on a tech bill to regulate the entire online environment.
More precisely the de loi n° 593 visant à sécuriser et réguler l’espace
numérique (SREN). [7] In theory this is a transposition of some of the DSA
provisions, but France being France it is much more and way more French.
—
In particular, the bill introduces new criminal sanctions. In practice,
this will result in: 1) allowing courts to to impose up to six-month-long
social media bans for users convicted of harassment, cyberbullying, apology
of terrorism. This will oblige online projects to monitor the registrations
of new accounts and block people who were previously banned from
re-registering.
2) Introduction of a criminal sanction (1 year jail and a fine up to 4% of
turnover) for online platforms that do not respect the order of the online
regulatory authority (ARCOM) to remove pedopornographic content within 24
hours.
On the other hand, it confers to ARCOM additional powers to issue orders
for content removal when a sanction is taken according to Article 215 TFEU,
a provision introduced following the difficulties faced in blocking all RT
and Sputnik links as well as mirrors.
—
Wikimedia projects would be fully in scope, which is problematic with at
least a few of the proposed obligations. Wikimédia France has commissioned
a legal analysis and the Wikimedia Foundation has also checked the text. A
position is being written and the rapporteur in the French National
Assembly will be approached.
=== Germany’s E-Lending Consultation ===
Four German organisations, GFF, Wikimedia Deutschland, OKF Deutschland and
AlgorithmWatch contributed to the German government consultation on
e-lending. [8] They are criticising that e-lending in Germany is much
harder than the lending of physical books and that libraries regularly are
blocked from doing it, because publishers refuse to licence this activity.
=== Switzerland’s Press Publisher Right Proposal ===
The Swiss government is mulling over a press publisher's right and has
shared a draft. [9]
One interesting thing about the Swiss approach is that they want to
establish a universal right for everyone to share snippets of press
articles. In a second step, they want to oblige only commercial online
platforms that are used by more than 10% percent of the Swiss population to
enter agreements with the press publishers’ collecting societies and pay
licence fees.
===
[1]
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/bd32f3a5-2d69-95dc-41b2-7066e31ca8e1#p…
[2]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3491
[3]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022PC0457
[4]
https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Open-Letter-Council-Protection-…
[5]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A52021PC0731
[6]
https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Joint-Civil-Society-Letter-on-d…
[7]https://www.senat.fr/dossier-legislatif/pjl22-593.html
[8]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wyKttShxuqTh4TboFCCD7Kjr1VGaw0Du/view?usp=…
[9]
https://www.admin.ch/gov/fr/accueil/documentation/communiques.msg-id-95351.…
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Wikimedia Europe ivzw
Dear friends,
The WMF Global Advocacy team has released our "Don't Blink" monthly retrospective for May.
Every month we share developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to
participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked this month, here are the
most important public policy advocacy topics that kept the Wikimedia Foundation busy in
May:
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/06/27/dont-blink-public-policy-snapshot-for…>
Highlights include:
* European Commission designated Wikipedia as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) under the new Digital Services Act (DSA)
* Potential Effects of UK Online Safety Bill (OSB) on Wikimedia Projects
* Implications for the Wikimedia Model from US Supreme Court Rulings
If you want more information about any of these initiatives, or wish to share something of your own, get in touch.
We hope you enjoy the read!
Ziski & The Global Advocacy Team
Dear public policy friends and fans,
The WMF Global Advocacy team has released our "Don't Blink" monthly retrospective for April.
Every month we share developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked this month, here are the most important public policy advocacy topics that kept the Wikimedia Foundation busy in April:
<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/06/01/dont-blink-public-policy-snapshot-for…>
Highlights include:
* WMF's submission to the Global Digital Compact
* Wikimedians presenting at digital rights conferences such as RightsCon & the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum
* Rebecca MacKinnon's talk at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project (ISP)
If you want more information about any of these initiatives, or wish to share something of your own, get in touch.
We hope you enjoy the read!
Ziski & The Global Advocacy Team
Salut la liste !
This month we were active on addressing age-verification requirements for
online platforms and talking about liability for free software. We also got
some good news on open access.
=== Age-Verification ===
France: The French legislature is discussing a law [1] that would require
online platforms, defined as “social networks”, to check their users’ age
before allowing them to access the service. The proposed definitions would
cover Wikipedia and its sister projects. For Wikimedia projects it would be
more than just a nuisance to age-gate content. Most of the proposed systems
would require gathering user data or working with third parties who do so.
It would also decrease the availability and accessibility of our projects.
—
Wikimédia France reached out to Senators, who last week debated and voted
on the proposal. An amendment was tabled that excludes “not for profit
online encyclopaedias and not for profit educational and scientific
repositories”. [2] It was supported by the rapporteur, the French
government (the Minister of Digital Transition and Telecommunications was
present) and Senators from the the left, right and centrist groups. It was
adopted by a solid majority. We have a video of the short exchange. [3]
—
UK: France is not the only country where mandatory age-gating provisions
for online platforms are currently being considered. The UK’s Online Safety
Bill would introduce such requirements. Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia
Foundation are working intensively on advocating for various amendments to
the law. [4]
—
Brussels: The topic is also being considered at the EU level. The Digital
Services Act has a provision that requires very large online services to
protect minors, but leaves it (for now) largely up to the platforms how
they want to achieve this.
—
Another process that is expected to start in Brussels is a “special group
on the EU Code of conduct on age-appropriate design” [5], which Wikimedia
Europe has applied to be a member of. The group is supposed to come up with
best practice solutions on several issues, including age-verification. The
chosen participants are expected to be announced “any day now”.
=== CSAM ===
The proposal to tackle child sexual abuse material online (CSAM) [6]
foresees the possibility of "detection orders" that can be issued by courts
or relevant authorities against providers of "interpersonal communication
services" - for example, messaging apps. This is the most contentious
provision in the draft legislation, as such orders would effectively
eliminate end-to-end encrypted communications.
—
Last month, an opinion by the Council Legal Services [7] was leaked that
argues that the proposal would allow generalised access to the content of
interpersonal communications and thus fail to meet the proportionality
requirement inherent to fundamental rights. Meanwhile the European
Commission continues to argue (see a note circulated in the Council on 16
May [8]) that the proposed system of detection orders is proportionate,
because providers would be able to choose between “(i) abandoning effective
end-to-end encryption or (ii) introducing some form of 'back-door' to
access encrypted content or (iii) accessing the content on the device of
the user before it is encrypted (so-called 'client-side scanning')."
—
The Wikimedia Foundation has positioned itself on the proposal. [9]
Wikimedia already takes measures with regards to such content on its
projects and cooperates with law enforcement wherever appropriate. While
Wikimedia doesn’t operate interpersonal communication services, we worry
about putting an end to secure and private communications that can’t be
read by governments. We also worry that some anti-grooming provisions might
end up hurting already marginalised groups.
=== Liability on Free Software ===
The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) sets out cybersecurity requirements for a
range of software products placed on the EU market. The instrument of
choice is to impose liability on developers and deployers of software. Our
main worry is how the new obligations would hinder developers, especially
volunteers, of free software. We are coordinating our position [10] and
actions with the FSFE and EDRi.
—
The Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee in the European
Parliament has the lead and MEPs have tabled their amendments, which will
now be discussed in the coming weeks (see Documentation Gateway in [11]).
The good news is that most political groups are thinking about the specific
needs of free software. The challenge is that the lawmakers, including the
ones in Council, seem to be lacking a coherent vision of what a liability
system should look like. We appear to be stuck considering patches and
carve-outs. We are now going through an initial assessment of amendments
[12] and will coordinate with our allies before contacting lawmakers.
=== Open Access ===
Good news on Open Access! Under the Swedish Presidency, the
Competitiveness Council adopted conclusions on the ‘high quality,
transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing’, calling
for immediate and unrestricted open access to be the norm in publishing
research involving public funds. [13] The Council calls on the European
Commission and Member States to support policies towards a scholarly
publishing model that is not-for-profit, open access and multi-format, with
no costs for authors or readers. (H/T to C4C)
===
[1]https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/textes/l16b0739_proposition-loi
[2]https://www.senat.fr/amendements/2022-2023/588/Amdt_16.html
[3]https://twitter.com/juliettedlrx/status/1661280743362789379
[4]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/05/11/good-intentions-bad-effects-wikimedia…
[5]
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/apply-become-member-commissio…
[6]
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2022%3A209%3AFIN
[7]
https://www.statewatch.org/media/3901/eu-council-cls-opinion-csam-proposal-…
[8]
https://www.statewatch.org/media/3900/eu-com-csam-regulation-proportionalit…
[9]
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1…
[10]https://wikimedia.brussels/who-should-be-liable-for-free-software/
[11]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?refere…
[12]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-9G5h-PYFgtzriuPtqgnRboe_IrDuH16kvq…
[13]https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8827-2023-INIT/en/pdf
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Wikimedia Europe ivzw