tl;dr Full throttle in Brussels this month - copyright decisions on education, the public domain and upload filtering seem possible in the European Parliament, while filters are still pending in the Council. The PSI Directive and the Database Directive reforms are being drafted.
This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor === Copyright Reform - The (potentially) good
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Education: As far as the education exception compromise goes (Article 4), the battle in the Parliament is between “kind of good” and “bad”. JURI Shadows managed to convince the Rapporteur to not exempt textbook publishers from the scope of the exception - let’s see if that stands. It seems that they also managed to kick out the temporary limitation (proposed para 1c) when the exception could be applied only for the duration of illustration of teaching (whatever that means in practice). Here’s hoping article 4 is not the hill Rapporteur Voss would like to proverbially die on[1], and both changes will be sustained.
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Public Domain: Our bid to include a public domain safeguard in the EU copyright reform is slowly weaving its way through the inner workings European Parliament. A compromise text was hammered out during the technical meeting (meeting of experts & advisors) and is being discussed by the MEPs. The main open questions are whether it should be limited to “preservation purposes” only (not clear how) and whether it should be part of the “Preservation of cultural heritage” article or get its own article. While the latter question is more an issue of practicality and political tactics, on the former we are experiencing significant pushback from the ALDE and ECR groups, that want to limit the safeguard.
=== Copyright Reform - The bad & ugly Article 13
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Article 13 should have landed in the garbage of legislative history long time ago, but both JURI and Bulgarian Presidency[2] are tirelessly trying to make it even worse. The parallel proposals become more and more similar, which may have to do with the fact that, as it turns out, at least some of MEP Voss’s compromise versions were in fact drafted by the European Commission officials[3]. In a surprising twist of events, however, in both JURI and BG drafts we can find a carve-out for online encyclopaedia, which would not fall under the scope of the article. While the Bulgarian version would exclude Wikimedia Commons resources that are also used at Wikipedia, it seems that the Parliamentary take would keep our projects intact by Article 13. Still, we believe that a long list of carve-outs will not fix what will get broken by content filtering and excessive intermediary liability.
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Public Sector Information Directive Review
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A review study on the Public Sector Information Directive [4] was presented in Brussels this month. This is expected to be the last public step before the commission proposes a reform of this legal act before summer. The analysis and discussion revolved around para-public bodies (i.e. energy and transport companies), the use of APIs and reduction of exclusive agreements for data. The general assessment was that the Directive is “having positive impact, but there is pressure to open up more data”. The seemingly currently favourite policy option is to extend the scope of the Directive to cover research and para-public bodies. A provision to make sure “free of charge re-use” for all documents is on the table, but is not included in the “preferred way forward” in the analysis.
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Tackling Illegal Content Online
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The European Commission wants platforms to remove all sorts of illegal information faster and more efficiently - from counterfeit product offers, through hate speech, to terrorist content. The Inception Impact Assessment mentions 3 possible interventions - from soft measures, through targeted legal intervention to horizontal legislation including automated content detection. In the feedback we pointed out that more evidence is needed, also on how social media business models contribute to the dissemination of controversial (also potentially harmful) content. We also noted that any automated content detection requires a thorough human oversight and decision-making to avoid overpolicing of users’ activity online. Our full response will be available on a dedicated meta page[5] at the end of business today.
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French Constitutional Court answers to WMFR
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In November 2017 Wikimédia France and La Quadrature du Net asked the French Constitutional Court whether the Loi Création, a law that establishes a new image right allowing administrators of public estates to control the commercial use of their images is constitutional. [6] The argument was, that this law realistically limits the public domain. An decision was issued and it was, unfortunately, in the affirmative. An interesting commentary on the decision can be read on the court’s site: [7]
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[1]https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/978987997130469377
[3]https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/973953977862774784
[4]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0QRHCpjYWN2aERxdFhLM2ZtanVJdVRqTFZvc21FOGtFcFNn/view?usp=sharing
[5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Illegal_Content_Feedback_2018
[6]https://www.laquadrature.net/en/Wikimedia-La-Quadrature-defend-public-domain
-- Anna Mazgal EU Policy Advisor Wikimedia anna@wikimedia.be @a2na mobile: +32 487 222 945 51 Rue du Trône BE-1050 Brussels