Hi everyone,
The European Commission's consultation on the enforcement of intellectual property rights is due on 15 April. [1] The main goal for us here will be to avoid increasing a platform’s responsibility to monitor and remove UCG.
We are currently starting to work on our responses [2], which will be in line with the answers submitted to the related "Platforms Consultation".
One question is, however, which category Wikimedia fits in. The Commission wants everyone to chose one of the following roles applying to them: “citizens, consumers and civil society”, "rightsholder", "member of judiciary or lawyer", “intermediary” or "public authority". Depending on the hat you pick you get a slightly different set of questions. It seems apparent that we could fit into at least two or even three of the these.
We had a similar puzzle last time and solved it by having the FKAGEU submitting [3] as civil society and the WMF sending in a registered letter emphasising the importance of intermediary protection. Such an approach is also possible this time around, but I wanted to check back with the group on what your thoughts are. Having several movement entities playing different roles might actually be an advantage here.