tl;dr
This month we have a two-issues report for you: The final vote on copyright is three weeks away and the Terrorism Regulation will be voted on by two out of three responsible committees on Monday.
This and previous reports on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
Copyright
The Legal Affairs Committee passed the copyright reform text that was negotiated with the Council last Tuesday in a 16-9 vote. [1] While the majority in favour seems bone-crushing, this does not automatically translate to the plenary vote. At the very least, in this lead committee the French MEPs, who favour the text in huge numbers, are heavily overrepresented.[2] The final, plenary vote is now planned for 26 March in Strasbourg.
Wikimedia published its final voting recommendation in a blog post. [3] There we repeat that, despite certain carve-outs for our projects, a public domain safeguard and a good text and data mining exception, the two central articles of this reform aim at restricting information online. They would have consequences for the free knowledge ecosystem, which for us means that we cannot support the reform as is. Feel free to share and translate.
Katherine Maher is coming to Brussels early next week on the back of a meeting of the Transatlantic High Level Working Group on Content Moderation Online and Freedom of Expression. [4] When here, she will be meeting with a number of MEPs and hosting a dinner with journalists and rightsholder representatives.
There are a several campaigns getting traction. Most notably savetheinternet.info and pledge2019.eu. Wikimedia and its affiliates do not carry these as organisations, because we believe we can be most helpful as an additional voice in the debate. Individuals, however, may of course very well use the tools to get in touch with law makers.
Talking to many of our chapters and user-groups from across the continent (an exercise that is continuing this and next week), most seem to be focussing on participating in events organised by like-minded organisations or co-signing positions to be sent to MEPs. Almost all will contact MEPs they have already been in touch with (making sure the converted stay converted) and some are trying to get celebrities (online or not) to support our position, as this is something rightsholders have been very efficient at. If you find a moment, please share what you are doing on Meta-Wiki. [5]
TERREG
The work on the Terrorist Content Regulation proposal [6] has sped up, with the LIBE Rapporteur MEP Dalton (ECR, UK) determined to have a vote on Committee Report on 21 March followed by a plenary vote (first reading) either 25-28 March or 15-18 April. All committees have published their draft reports and opinions (Civil Liberties - report, Culture - opinion, Internal Market - opinion) and now deliberate on the amendments. On the Internal Market Committee we generally hope the draft opinion by MEP Julia Reda, who did a great job removing all the questionable provisions, will not be watered down. On the Culture Committee we are hoping the draft opinion MEP Julie Ward’s can be improved by removing referrals. Both opinion giving committees will have their votes on 4 March. The lead committee still has some time to discuss the text, which is beneficial considering that rapporteur Dalton’s text left a lot to wish for. [7] Further reading: [8]
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[1]https://twitter.com/EP_Legal/status/1100396346639609856
[2]https://twitter.com/AClorrain/status/1100434160634671104
[5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Copyright_2019#Ideas_for_Actions_by_Chapters_&_Communities
[6]https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2018/0331(COD)&l=en