tl;dr
The European Commission is running a consultation on intermediary liability, in France and Belgium FoP is becoming a national topic and this year’s Big FAT Brussels Meeting will take place on the 20-21 November.
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This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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Platforms Consultation: The European Commission has launched its “Public consultation on the regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy”. [1] We shall simply call it the “platforms consultation”. It deals with intermediary liability (copyright and use of data) as well as platforms’ market position as they potentially control the access points. The consultation will run for at least 12 weeks after it has been published in all official EU languages, which has not happened yet.
We will draft answers on Meta-Wiki. [2] Please participate!
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State of the Union (yet another): Nothing in-depth, of course, but Jean-Claude Juncker did manage to bring in the terms “copyright reform” and “Digital Single Market” in a speech otherwise dedicated to do-or-die European issues like refugees, Great Britain (not) leaving the EU and Greece (not) leaving the Eurozone. This does peg it pretty high up on the agenda. [3]
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EU-US Umbrella Agreement on Data Protection: An agreement that sets out rules for future data protection agreements has been reached. [4] This agreement isn’t legislation on its own, but its principles will be included in future laws and treaties. Once the U.S. Congress passes such a bill, it will give individual Europeans a right to sue federal agencies that misuse their data.
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GDPR: Remember the General Data Protection Regulation? A major dossier that was supposed to be passed last legislative term in order to updates Europe’s data protection rules that were conceived in the late 90s before everyone started collecting data on everything online. Terms like “right to be forgotten” and “data sovereignty” were part of the negotiations. Things are still in a state of constant limbo, but there has been a trialogue (talks between the Commission, Council and Parliament) and a political agreement seems possible by… let’s guess... January. One major issue still to solve is whether consent for data collection should explicit or unambiguous.
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FOP - Parliamentary Questions: Our #saveFoP campaign was successful, but the results for the Reda Report were anticlimactic. No Freedom of Panorama was included in the final version. [5] Good news is that the topic remained hot with a number of MEPs asking parliamentary questions (a tool they have to poke the Commission on certain topics). Even better, it wasn’t only one group or country filing them: Victor Negrescu (S&D, RO) [6], Marc Tarabella (S&D, BE) [7], Frédérique Ries (ALDE, BE) [8] and Mike Hookem (EFDD, UK) [9].
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FOP - French amendment proposal: Wikimédia France has filed a Freedom of Panorama amendment proposal to the French “digital republic” draft law. [10] Any kind of (social) media promotion is welcome, especially by people speaking French.
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FOP - Belgium on the move: The Belgian parties of the ALDE Group in the European Parliament who have supported our #saveFoP campaign have now taken it a step further. As they are both part in the current coalition government, they have proposed national Freedom of Panorama exception. [11] A Wikimedia Belgium working group will attempt to assist the process.
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EU Policy Meet-up: Yes, we will meet this year! The dates are 20 and 21 November and will will try to convert our 5 global goals into European priorities and an agenda. [12]
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Recommended reading: Stevie Benton from Wikimedia UK, an indispensable part of our #saveFoP campaign, wrote a learning pattern on campaigning on political issues. [Stevie] Highly recommended!
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[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Platforms_Consultation
[3]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm
[4]http://statewatch.org/news/2015/sep/eu-us-umbrella-agreement-full-text.pdf
[5]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P8-TA-2015-0273&language=EN
[12]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Big_Fat_Brussels_Meeting_-_Episode_3
[13]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/How_to_campaign_on_a_political_issue