tl;dr
The crucial copyright vote in the European Parliament has been postponed until at least the end of January. The Council negotiations have been fed a new round of compromises drafted by Estonia.
This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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European Parliament on Copyright Reform
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The lead committee (Legal Affairs, JURI) has expectedly rescheduled its vote on the copyright reform to its 24/25 January session. [1] We are still waiting for the new rapporteur Axel Voss (EPP, DE) to propose his first compromise amendments. Now is the time to give him and the shadows of this file wordings they can actually work with. Ancillary copyright and upload filtering seem to be the most debated items, which less time being spent on discussing exceptions.
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The last remaining opinion giving committee (Civil Liberties, LIBE) has also postponed its vote to 6 November. [1] LIBE is working exclusively on the upload filtering for UGC sites article. [2] In the last shadow meeting (where MEPs working on the dossier meet) every political group, except the EPP, agreed to support the compromise that was also passed in the Internal Market committee (IMCO). [3] This would be good news for us, as this version protects the intermediary protections we currently enjoy and doesn’t mention “content recognition technologies”. If two powerful committees (IMCO, LIBE) support this compromise it will be the basis for the work in the lead committee (JURI).
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New Estonian Compromises on Copyright
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Meanwhile the Estonian Presidency has drafted new compromise proposal which it will hope a majority of the Member States can agree on. They were originally partially leaked over Politico, but it was the Austrian Parliament that made them fully available. [4] Kudos!
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On the upload filtering article we cannot like or support the proposed compromise, as it goes on to redefine the concept of “communication to the public” in a way that hurts intermediary protections we rely on. Furthermore, while the term “content recognition technology” has been dropped from the actual article (good!), it now simply appears in the recitals (not good!).
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The proposed text and data mining exception is not really good enough. It allows cultural and research organisations to create copies for the purpose of using technical analysis in the context of research, but asks them to retain the copies no longer than strictly needed for conducting the research. The main reason for having such an exception in the first place is that scientific results must be reproducible and thus the data should be included in the documentation. Theoretically all other mining uses that only require temporary technical copies are already covered by an exception and legal. This however is only mentioned in a recital, which is a bit weak.
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The Estonian Presidency makes some efforts to widen the proposed education exception by expanding the number of places illustrations for teaching will be possible. Originally only the premises of education establishments were included, now also “other venues” are included, as long as the school or university is responsible for the event.
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E-Privacy Regulation
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The Civil Liberties committee has voted to pass all compromise amendments on the E-Privacy Regulation and to start trialogues (negotiations on the final text with the Council and the Commission). The committee position was later also confirmed in a plenary vote. [5] The final Parliament position [6] is a strong text that pushes the “privacy by default” principle and that will nonetheless get rid of the “cookie banners”, which you might have seen when opening sites from the EU.
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PSI Directive
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As part of its “data economy” legislative package [7], which is expected 1H 2018, the European Commission will also attempt to reform the Public Sector Information Directive. [8] This piece of EU legislation tries to push public bodies across the EU to open up as much content and data as possible. It currently mostly recommends the use of free licensing, which has not been as effective in switching public bodies to an open model of publishing. A few years ago the Commission therefore released a “best practice guide” on how to implement it. [9] We will recommend for these best practices to become binding. If you want to work on our answers with us, please do so through the dedicated Meta-Wiki page. [10]
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Belgium: More panoramic drama
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Since about a year there is a Freedom of Panorama exception in Belgium. It is not limited to non-commercial uses but, as a compromise, includes that the uses should “not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work”. This is not an issue for buildings, whose normal exploitation is being rented/inhabited. However it could be tricky for landmarks. How far this restriction really goes will now be tested. The Atomium (the non-for-profit that inherited the rights from the architect after his death) will sue French DJ Hamida, because the latter filmed his latest music video in front of Brussels landmark without asking for permission. [11]
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[1]https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/
[2]https://www.communia-association.org/tag/article-13/
[4]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXV/EU/16/00/EU_160054/imfname_10757971.pdf
[6]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A8-2017-0324&language=EN
[7]https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/building-european-data-economy
[9]http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=6421
[10]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/PSI_Directive_Consultation