tl;dr

An all important Internal Market Committee (IMCO) vote on copyright is next week. As IMCO has joint responsibility on this file, their final wording on the “upload filtering” article is crucial. {{ACTION REQUIRED}}

This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor

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All important vote: With exactly one week to go until the vote in the Internal Market Committee (8 June), the largest political group, the EPP, has entrenched itself and is trying get a majority for something that can only be defined as extremist. [1][2][3] While rapporteur Catherine Stihler (S&D UK) has been working for months to find a compromise that assures liability exceptions and freedom of speech provisions for open platforms like Wikipedia remain in place and content recognition systems don’t become compulsory, [4] the EPP has last week left the negotiating table. Instead, their shadow rapporteur Pascal Arimont (EPP BE) has circulated “Alternative Compromise Amendments” on the publishers right and the upload filtering provision. [5][6]

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Is it really this bad?: Yes! The proposal on a a press publishers ancillary copyright that lasts for 50 years (instead of 20 in the Commission proposal), applies to academic publications (which weren't included) and to offline uses (also not included in the original text). As to upload filtering: Any platform that allows user uploads and does anything more than simply displaying such content will be stripped of the liability exemption provided for in Article 14 of E-Commerce Directive. This means that all open platforms, from Wikipedia to GitHub, will be liable for any infringements by their users.

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The EPP game plan: They have been getting the shorter end of the stick in many committees on upload filtering and the press publishers right. By taking an extreme position, they either want to force the other groups to give in during compromises or poison the well and sabotage the reform as a whole. Either way, in the coming seven days they will be trying to split as many voting members of the Socialists and Liberals group as possible to get a committee majority. They have managed to do this in the past.

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Our game plan: Don’t panic, but get we need to hold onto a majority! This is the first crucial vote and it is a black-and-white one. We either manage to keep a majority behind the very sensible compromises by Ms. Stihler (that, btw, include Freedom of Panorama and Safeguard the Public Domain) or the EPP gets its way and we will end up having to defend the current status quo rather than working on positive change. The best thing we can do is contact the voting MEPs in this committee. In order not to waste time on the hardliners, here’s a list of people we believe are swing votes:

*Nicola Danti (S&D IT): Coordinator of the Socialists group [7]

*Olga Senhalova (S&D CZ) [8]

*Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) [9]

*Sergio Prieto (S&D ES) [10]

*Anna Hedh (S&D SE) [11]

*Biljana Borzan (S&D HR) [12]

*Jiri Pospisil (EPP CZ) [13]

*Roza Grafin von Thum und Hohenstein (EPP PL) [14]

*Ilidko Gall-Pelcz (EPP HU) [15]

I will be reaching out to some of you, but if you want to join, please do so! I am happy to get in touch to give you help and pointers.

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Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE): The deadline for amendments in the Civil Liberties committee is next week. It looks like the rapporteur from the EPP (Michal Boni, PL) and the shadow second largest group, the Socialists (Koster, DE) have agreed to focus only on the upload filtering article in order to give their opinion more weight. The EPP wants to significantly weaken the Commission proposal and enshrine liability protections, while the Socialists want to completely delete the entire article.

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Culture Committee (CULT): There have been some polemics about a new, unwaivable, performers’ right, which the EFF claims to have leaked. [16] The issue here is that unwaivable rights are not compatible with free licenses. We have had a meeting with the said performers’ collecting societies on this. They really do not want to hurt us or free licenses. We agreed to compromise on adding a carve-out for this case. This compromise has been brought into the Culture Committee as a compromise amendment. It will also be proposed in the lead committee - Legal Affairs.

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Database Directive Consultation: After the disastrously biased “Data Driven Economy” consultation [17], the European Commission is now asking specifically for organisations’ and citizens’ opinion of the Database Directive. [18] This is a priority to us, as the “sui generis” right on database that it establishes hinders projects such a Wikidata. We will be coordinating our answers on Meta-Wiki. Deadline is 30 August. [19]

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[1]http://www.communia-association.org/2017/05/31/worst-version-eu-copyright-reform-proposal-yet-thinly-veiled-compromise/

[2]http://copybuzz.com/copyright/imco-committee-derailing/

[3]https://juliareda.eu/2017/05/alternative-compromise/

[4]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxcZ9aZ_U4YuZ2l3NElVdTZrTTQ/view?usp=sharing

[5]https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/arimont-alternative-compromise-2.pdf

[6]https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/arimont-alternative-compromise-1.pdf

[7]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/124821/NICOLA_DANTI_home.html

[8]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/96718/OLGA_SEHNALOVA_home.html

[9]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/37312/CHRISTEL_SCHALDEMOSE_home.html

[10]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/103488/SERGIO_GUTIERREZ+PRIETO_home.html

[11]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/28131/ANNA_HEDH_home.html