Thanks for the update, John (and Dimi).
By now, it has become apparent that this is not just an intellectual property issue. I was thinking that maybe a statement by David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, would be helpful. He is increasingly looking at the role of the private sector in promoting freedom of expression online and presented his report on ISPs https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38786/en/un-expert-calls-on-internet-access-providers-to-respect-free-expression today. Thus, laws that would mandate filtering systems are certainly of interest to him/his office. I am not sure about the protocol for the Special Rapporteur to comment on proposed legislation, though.
Has anyone seen him talk about the proposed copyright directive, especially Art. 13? In a quick skim of his Twitter stream I only saw that he retweeted Daphne Keller's piece in the New York Times https://twitter.com/davidakaye/status/874323409844436994.
Best, Jan
On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 5:34 AM John Hendrik Weitzmann < john.weitzmann@wikimedia.de> wrote:
re yesterday's GRUR meeting:
There was, according to Dimi, close to now relevant attendance by MEPs and Commission.
At the same time, to have/keep Art. 13 in some form seems to be a sort of (almost scary) general view amongst the legal experts group.
Question thus is, how do we counter that? There must be a separate group of legal experts, beyond the bubble of IP lawyers, that understand the implications of Art. 13's framework at its potential to be abused. Maybe constitutional judges? Human rights lawyers?
Greetz John
2017-06-02 8:54 GMT+02:00 Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov < dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com>:
Dear Henning,
Thank you for reminding me! I am, in fact, registered to the GRUR meeting and re-confirmed my presence last week.
I agree that people (including MEPs from the EPP in most committees) are quite willing to exclude Wikipedia and the like from Art. 13. At the same time it seems like there is a majority to not delete Art. 13 completely. The question now is where to draw the line and how to best phrase it.
Thanks and cheers,
Dimi
2017-06-01 16:58 GMT+02:00 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
Hi Dimi,
I'd like to repeat my note regarding the GRUR meeting on the single market directive on June 12 in Brussels and my suggestion to attend if possible at all.
There you might be able to reach the people who can make it possible to exclude wikipedia from the upload filter requirements.
This would not be the big win liability exemption for all user generated content but at least non-profit platforms could and must be exempt.
In my talks every single person assured me that they do not intend to cover wikipedia with the regulation. So it should be possible to exclude non-profits.
Rgds
Henning
-------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht -------- Von: Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com Datum: 01.06.17 11:38 (GMT+01:00) An: Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: [Publicpolicy] EU Policy Monitoring Report - May
tl;dr
An all important Internal Market Committee (IMCO) vote on copyright is next week. As IMCO has joint responsibility on this file, their final wording on the “upload filtering” article is crucial. {{ACTION REQUIRED}}
This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
===
Copyright reform - Internal Market Committee Vote
All important vote: With exactly one week to go until the vote in the Internal Market Committee (8 June), the largest political group, the EPP, has entrenched itself and is trying get a majority for something that can only be defined as extremist. [1][2][3] While rapporteur Catherine Stihler (S&D UK) has been working for months to find a compromise that assures liability exceptions and freedom of speech provisions for open platforms like Wikipedia remain in place and content recognition systems don’t become compulsory, [4] the EPP has last week left the negotiating table. Instead, their shadow rapporteur Pascal Arimont (EPP BE) has circulated “Alternative Compromise Amendments” on the publishers right and the upload filtering provision. [5][6]
Is it really this bad?: Yes! The proposal on a a press publishers ancillary copyright that lasts for 50 years (instead of 20 in the Commission proposal), applies to academic publications (which weren't included) and to offline uses (also not included in the original text). As to upload filtering: Any platform that allows user uploads and does anything more than simply displaying such content will be stripped of the liability exemption provided for in Article 14 of E-Commerce Directive. This means that all open platforms, from Wikipedia to GitHub, will be liable for any infringements by their users.
The EPP game plan: They have been getting the shorter end of the stick in many committees on upload filtering and the press publishers right. By taking an extreme position, they either want to force the other groups to give in during compromises or poison the well and sabotage the reform as a whole. Either way, in the coming seven days they will be trying to split as many voting members of the Socialists and Liberals group as possible to get a committee majority. They have managed to do this in the past.
Our game plan: Don’t panic, but get we need to hold onto a majority! This is the first crucial vote and it is a black-and-white one. We either manage to keep a majority behind the very sensible compromises by Ms. Stihler (that, btw, include Freedom of Panorama and Safeguard the Public Domain) or the EPP gets its way and we will end up having to defend the current status quo rather than working on positive change. The best thing we can do is contact the voting MEPs in this committee. In order not to waste time on the hardliners, here’s a list of people we believe are swing votes:
*Nicola Danti (S&D IT): Coordinator of the Socialists group [7]
*Olga Senhalova (S&D CZ) [8]
*Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) [9]
*Sergio Prieto (S&D ES) [10]
*Anna Hedh (S&D SE) [11]
*Biljana Borzan (S&D HR) [12]
*Jiri Pospisil (EPP CZ) [13]
*Roza Grafin von Thum und Hohenstein (EPP PL) [14]
*Ilidko Gall-Pelcz (EPP HU) [15]
I will be reaching out to some of you, but if you want to join, please do so! I am happy to get in touch to give you help and pointers.
===
Copyright reform - Other Committees
Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE): The deadline for amendments in the Civil Liberties committee is next week. It looks like the rapporteur from the EPP (Michal Boni, PL) and the shadow second largest group, the Socialists (Koster, DE) have agreed to focus only on the upload filtering article in order to give their opinion more weight. The EPP wants to significantly weaken the Commission proposal and enshrine liability protections, while the Socialists want to completely delete the entire article.
Culture Committee (CULT): There have been some polemics about a new, unwaivable, performers’ right, which the EFF claims to have leaked. [16] The issue here is that unwaivable rights are not compatible with free licenses. We have had a meeting with the said performers’ collecting societies on this. They really do not want to hurt us or free licenses. We agreed to compromise on adding a carve-out for this case. This compromise has been brought into the Culture Committee as a compromise amendment. It will also be proposed in the lead committee - Legal Affairs.
===
Database Directive Consultation: After the disastrously biased “Data Driven Economy” consultation [17], the European Commission is now asking specifically for organisations’ and citizens’ opinion of the Database Directive. [18] This is a priority to us, as the “sui generis” right on database that it establishes hinders projects such a Wikidata. We will be coordinating our answers on Meta-Wiki. Deadline is 30 August. [19]
===
[1] http://www.communia-association.org/2017/05/31/worst-version-eu-copyright-re...
[2]http://copybuzz.com/copyright/imco-committee-derailing/
[3]https://juliareda.eu/2017/05/alternative-compromise/
[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxcZ9aZ_U4YuZ2l3NElVdTZrTTQ/view?usp=sharin...
[5] https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/arimont-alternative-compromi...
[6] https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/arimont-alternative-compromi...
[7]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/124821/NICOLA_DANTI_home.html
[8]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/96718/OLGA_SEHNALOVA_home.html
[9] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/37312/CHRISTEL_SCHALDEMOSE_home.html
[10] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/103488/SERGIO_GUTIERREZ+PRIETO_home.ht...
[11]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/28131/ANNA_HEDH_home.html
[12] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/112748/BILJANA_BORZAN_home.html
[13]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/125706/JIRI_POSPISIL_home.html
[14] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/96776/ROZA%20GRAFIN%20VON_THUN%20UND%2...
[15] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/102886/ILDIKO_GALL-PELCZ_home.html
[16] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/secret-new-european-copyright-proposal...
[17] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_Data_Economy_Consultation_-...
[18] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/commission-launches-publi...
[19] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Database_Directive_Consultation
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
-- Referent für Politik und Recht Legal and Policy Advisor
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin Tel. +49 (0)30 219 158 26-0 http://wikimedia.de
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch an der Menge allen Wissens frei teilhaben kann. Helfen Sie uns dabei! http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. _______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy