[Publicpolicy] EU Policy Monitoring Report: June 2022

The French government has vowed to invest money in the commons. Rub your eyes, read it again and then continue reading below. ==================== DIGITAL COMMONS ==================== It still surprises us to be able to put “French government” and “investment in the digital commons” together, but here we go: The French Presidency of the Council of the EU came up with a plan how the old continent can compete with dominant US tech companies. The plan is to have more “digital commons”, which can be anything open source, including software, code libraries, tools, repositories. The basic thinking is that if fundamental tools and libraries are accessible to all players, this will level the playing field. [1] — 19 EU Member Countries and the Commission presented the idea of digital commons at the Digital Assembly in Toulouse. They acknowledge that there are many instances of working digital commons, but also point out that oftentimes projects lack long-term, structural support. The plan envisages financial help and a “one-stop-shop” to find government support. [2] — Funds in the ballpark of tens of millions of euros are already pledged, but the concrete details are still in the making. Thanks to the leadership of Wikimédia France, our movement and a group of partners (Europeana, Communia, OpenStreetMap) are part of this conversation from the start. We especially want to show that governments can often help by removing legal and administrative obstacles, not just by peddling money. [3] ====== CSAM ====== We wrote about the proposal of the Commission to regulate the online moderation of “Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)” in last month’s report [4]. While it is a very important issue to tackle, we do have great concerns with parts of the text, especially provisions that would allow scanning all online chats on a given platform. We are still analysing how exactly, if at all, this would impact Wikimedia projects. In the meantime, we can offer a short briefing. [5] — On the legislative side, the start feels very bumpy: The European Parliament probably won’t refer the file to a committee until September or October, while ample criticism is pouring in, including from the German government. [6] ========= Net Neutrality ========= The European Commission plans to push out a new legislative proposal after the summer that is expected to include provisions forcing some service providers to pay for data traffic (think Facebook and Netflix paying Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica). While this is a classic example of a lobbying battle between very large telecommunications companies and very large tech companies, it also would violate some basic principles of net neutrality. A group of civil society organisations, led by EDRi, sent a letter to the relevant Commissioners outlining the main issues. [7] — On the bright side, BEREC, the EU’s body of telecoms regulators, has updated its net neutrality guidelines to close some loopholes and effectively ban zero rating of data for some applications. [8] ============= Disinformation ============= The European Commission has presented an updated Code of Practice on Disinformation. [9] Wikimedia had not signed up the original Code, because we deemed it was mainly focused on “follow the money”, hence where disinformation is spread through advertising and paid reach. The version will allow researchers more access to data of large platforms and again focus on advertising. — The Code of Practice is a voluntary initiative for online platforms, but taking part in it essentially removes some obligations under the newly created Digital Services Act. ============= Italian Dramas ============= The Italian government published new draft guidelines about public data (open government) and opened a consultation. [10] They basically state that open government and open data provisions don’t apply to institutions related to culture, which is a very Italian thing. We wonder if this is in line with the Public Sector Information Directive and will investigate with Wikimedia Italia, which are also participating in the consultation. — The Italian government has been on a roll. It also published the draft national digitisation plan. It would establish an administrative fee for the commercial use of all public domain digitisations of cultural institutions. It essentially outlaws CC0 as a relevant license for most GLAMs in the country and circumvents the public domain safeguard enshrined in the latest copyright directive. There was a public consultation until 15 June which Wikimedia Italy and partners participated in. Expect blog posts on Diff and on wikimedia.brussels soon. ============= Polish & Czech Copyright Reforms ============= The Czech copyright reform is in parliament. We have a Czech language copy. [11] The Polish government published its proposal, which will go to parliament very soon. We have a rough English translation. [12] If you consider yourself a copyright geek, enjoy reading them. If you want to help our national partners advocating on this, get in touch! :) ==== END ==== [1]https://twitter.com/AmbNum/status/1540657835427741699 [2] https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/politique-etrangere-de-la-france/diplomat… [3] https://www.wikimedia.fr/pour-un-developpement-des-communs-numeriques-a-lec… [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.or… [5] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dD5AF8-uk2LFG7mu62AK7S80H4CrF1ftV7lheE6… [6] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/27/germany-says-hell-no-to-eu-proposal-to-… [7] https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Q4d13xqr5UsPkoSMw7d_3YL-hZnq4cL/view?usp=… [8]https://fossbytes.com/europe-bans-zero-rating-internet-offers/ [9]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3664 [10] https://www.agid.gov.it/it/agenzia/stampa-e-comunicazione/notizie/2022/06/1… . [11] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J7dvl4yEk6ScWIIypdI6Uq_7273T7G5i/edit?u… [12] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0ArQkgpZkQQcdpsidS_Yc-bS5liQsl5/view?usp=… -- 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>