Salut la liste !
This month we wanted to bring you closer to the actual legislative procedures of the DMA and DSA. Plus, a little update on artificial intelligence (still nothing palpable).
This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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Digital Services Act
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Commission: Strictly procedurally speaking the European Commission is supposed to wait and see what the co-legislators are doing after it has made its proposal. This was never going to happen. They are asking for public, on-the-record feedback regarding the DSA [1] until 31 March and staying very much involved. Wikimedia met (virtually) with the responsible unit and presented our main points a couple of weeks ago. [2] There seems to be some understanding that simply receiving a notice should not automatically lead to actual knowledge of something infringing or illegal. It seems like there could be an opening to re-word this bit. But for this we need to convince a few Member States.
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Council: The Council is going through the motion of unpacking the proposal, which means that the European Commission is presenting its suggestions while Member States are slowly positioning themselves. The responsible working party is "Competitiveness and Growth (Internal Market)". [3] The next meeting is on 5 March. [4] Now is the ideal moment to flag our main points (“actual knowledge upon notice” & “enforcement of terms of services by WMF Legal vs. community”). We made the rounds with the Permanent Representations last week (again virtual). If you want to help, please get in touch. Basically any outreach attempt a national government is welcome. We got the pitch.
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European Parliament: The EP’s negotiating team is ready. Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) will be rapporteur, shadows include Arba Kokalari (EPP SE), Dita Charanzova (RE CZ), Alexandra Geese (G/EFA DE), Alessandra Basso (ID IT), Adam Bielan (ECR PL) and Martin Schridewan (GUE DE). [5] Again, this is a great moment to flag our main points. If you want to help in the outreach, get in touch! :)
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2030 Digital Targets
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The European Commission published a roadmap for its 2030 Digital Targets. [6] If this sounds a bit like strategy planning to you, it is! The idea is to define targets in areas such as “education and skills”, “infrastructure and capacity” as well as "government". These will then, possibly, be made a priority in EU policy making and financing. We have until 9 March to give feedback. If you have an idea what should be included, please reply on or off-list.
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Digital Markets Act
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The European Commission dropped another chapter of the platform regulation saga: the Digital Markets Act. The proposal consumes the two topics that used to be treated separately: ex-ante rules for platforms and potential new competition tools. [7]
Changes in competition laws are kind of a big deal, as they can be compared to modifying road traffic rules: it takes a lot of effort to change existing practices and adjust operations and companies into compliance. Maybe that is the reason why the proposal does not include any major shift of status quo - it's aim being rather to sanction the existing ecosystem. There seems to be no major effort to bring more variety for users and more equity for other business models.
Looking at the bright side, the main idea is to create additional rules for “gatekeeper platforms'', because of their size and concentrated power on the market. Things like building and self-preferencing are to be limited or prohibited. Wikimedia projects are not included in the scope, because of our small financial turnover.
Interoperability is the one thing we believe would really help open up ecosystems and thus we would like to see it included. The proposal falls short. We plan on supporting relevant amendments. [8]
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Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
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It looks like both Brussels and Washington are looking for ways to work together on Artificial Intelligence. [9][10] In parallel many, many, many countries, alliances, associations are publishing positions in this field.
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Most ideas are still vague, centering around common principles, such as protecting human rights and democracy, boosting start-ups and government, ensuring financing for research and opting for a risk-based approach to regulating applications.
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Our partners at European Digital Rights are running a campaign - “Reclaim your Face” [11] - to limit or ban facial recognition in public spaces, something that uses AI/ML technology at its core. Others are working on a label for “trustworthy” AI. [12] We are watching this space.
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Data Governance Act
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The European Parliament shadows are meeting already and we are also making the rounds. A draft committee report along with amendment proposals are expected by mid April, committee vote (Industry, Trade and Research) is planned for 1 July, plenary vote for mid September. [13]
The Portuguese Presidency has meanwhile presented a first draft to Council. [14] Nothing of relevance to us in these changes. To refresh your memory: We want to make very sure that platforms like ours and Europeana are considered “general interest” and thus don’t fall under a (strict) registration regime.
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END
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[4]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVII/EU/05/17/EU_51711/imfname_11046479.pdf
[5]https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2020/0361(COD)&l=en
[7]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020PC0842
[8]https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2020/0374(COD)&l=en
[9]https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/NSCAI-Draft-Final-Report-1.19.21.pdf
[11]https://reclaimyourface.eu/
[13]https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2020/0340(COD)&l=en
[14]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tar9VlNrc6hUZzvQQK7H2MYRPSKcB47i/view?usp=sharing