[Publicpolicy] EU Policy Monitoring Report - September 2017

tl;dr The crucial committee vote on copyright has been postponed giving us several extra months to prepare. The Member States are discussing a common position in the Council and some of them are worrying about fundamental rights. This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor === EU Copyright Reform --- New timeline: The lead Legal Affairs committee (JURI) will not be able to keep its original timeline on copyright reform. The crucial vote on copyright is now most likely to happen end of November or even December. Also, the last opinion giving committee, Civil Liberties (LIBE), is not likely to be ready to vote its copyright report this week in Strasbourg. [1] --- Our negative agenda: We are looking at a dynamic that makes it seem less likely that we will see a full-blown ancillary copyright approved in the Parliament. Still, this so-called press publishers right has been coming back from the death so many times that I wouldn’t write it off completely. On the other hand, we still have an Article 13 that will be part of the final text for sure. Our efforts on this must concentrate around the top goal of not to letting upload filtering for UGC sites become an obligation. We are also trying to keep the liability protections laid out by the E-Commerce Directive intact, although a majority seems set on cutting them down. --- Our positive agenda: We are trying to give Freedom of Panorama a new spin by bringing in the Augmented Reality industry on board. [2] Th next big step would be to convince a car maker that already invests in AR technology to make a few phone calls. The education exception is still to be discussed and we are hoping to broaden its scope. There has been some considerable support piling up in favour of a broad text and data mining exception, including academia and start-ups. [3][4] The preservation & public domain article is so far flying under the radar and still needs to be discussed by the rapporteur and shadows. --- The Council: The discussions between the Member States have been very much centred around ancillary copyright (Article 11) and upload filtering/intermediary liability (Article 13). As of today, we can confirm that 16 Member States voiced opposition to a new press publishers right, preferring some sort of legal “presumption for publishers” (Option B on Article 11 in Estonian Presidency compromises [5]). The more worrying news is that many countries seem to be giving up support on Article 11 in order to get what they want out of Article 13. Hence, the discussion on Article 13 seems much more tedious. Both options presented by the Estonian Presidency are shrinking the E-Commerce Directive’s liability protections. It is furthermore completely unclear how user-generated platforms are to keep any infringing content from appearing on their sites without general monitoring. Such general monitoring obligations, however, have been declared illegal by the Court of Justice of the EU. [6] This has lead six Member States (Belgium, Czechia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands) to ask the legal services of the Council whether the Article is compatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. [7] Later it also became clear that Germany has asked its own questions [8] and that Poland has voiced criticism along the same lines. === AVMSD: Long form: Audiovisual Media Services Directive. The European Union has decided that it wants at least some of the rules that apply to traditional broadcasters (advertising, cultural quotas, age classifications) to also apply to online video platforms like YouTube, iTunes and Netflix. There is currently a big discussion on whether video-sharing platforms should be included. The issue for us is that Commons could very well fall under this definition. We are now in a very intransparent phase of the process called a trialogue. This is when Commission, Parliament and Council meet to hammer out wordings and compromises in all-night sessions that are not open to the public. Our best chance of getting something moving in our direction is the Council, where “blocking minority” could carve out some limitations. Further reading: [9] === Digital Contracts: We are currently discussing some rules regarding “digital contracts” in the EU. [10] The EU legislator declared itself worried about the so-called “click-through" agreements that we all click through online. These are supposed to become safer and more understandable for citizens by means of a Directive. We are now in the stage where the compromises are being discussed in the European Parliament committees. What would be a win for us is if a safeguard that makes sure exceptions and limitations cannot be overridden by licensing agreements is included. === Data Driven Economy: We have been participating in a number of consultations regarding the “data driven economy” recently. Our goal is to push the Commission away from its idea of establishing a new “data producers right” and towards the idea of scrapping the sui generis database right. A synopsis of the responses to the first consultation came out. [11] The good news is that “most respondents do not support regulatory intervention, be it by creating ownership-type rights or by licensing obligations. 68% of 284 respondents to the question clearly support the increased use of APIs, and around a half state that, in some cases, providing non-binding guidance and sharing best practices could help.” === PSI Directive: As a last and final (tbc) consultation before the “data economy” package is propose, the Commission is asking us for our opinion on the Public Sector Information Directive. [12] We, among other organisations, have already given the Commission our thoughts on this a few years back, which were mostly welcomed and included in non-binding implementation guidelines. [13] We will now basically take the position that we want these guidelines to become mandatory. === [1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2016/… [2]https://twitter.com/SCSsoftware/status/912974257415770112 [3]http://sparceurope.org/copyrightreform/ [4]https://twitter.com/Ansip_EU/status/788436558651219968 [5] http://www.statewatch.org/news/2017/aug/eu-council-copyright-directive-esto… [6] http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php/internet-trials/720-sabam-v-scarlet-cour… [7]http://statewatch.org/news/2017/sep/eu-copyright-ms-questions.htm [8] http://statewatch.org/news/2017/sep/eu-council-copyright-directive-german-q… [9]https://edri.org/avmsd-reform-document-pool/ [10] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2015/… [11] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/synopsis-report-public-c… [12] https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/public-consultation-review-directiv… [13] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2014.240.0…