Curious if we are watching that in connection with other Disinfo/Content
moderation laws.
Cheers,
Alex
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 12:16 PM Dimi Dimitrov <dimi(a)wikimedia.be>
wrote:
The French government has vowed to invest money
in the commons. Rub
your eyes, read it again and then continue reading below.
====================
DIGITAL COMMONS
====================
It still surprises us to be able to put “French government” and
“investment in the digital commons” together, but here we go: The French
Presidency of the Council of the EU came up with a plan how the old
continent can compete with dominant US tech companies. The plan is to have
more “digital commons”, which can be anything open source, including
software, code libraries, tools, repositories. The basic thinking is that
if fundamental tools and libraries are accessible to all players, this will
level the playing field. [1]
—
19 EU Member Countries and the Commission presented the idea of digital
commons at the Digital Assembly in Toulouse. They acknowledge that there
are many instances of working digital commons, but also point out that
oftentimes projects lack long-term, structural support. The plan envisages
financial help and a “one-stop-shop” to find government support. [2]
—
Funds in the ballpark of tens of millions of euros are already pledged,
but the concrete details are still in the making. Thanks to the leadership
of Wikimédia France, our movement and a group of partners (Europeana,
Communia, OpenStreetMap) are part of this conversation from the start. We
especially want to show that governments can often help by removing legal
and administrative obstacles, not just by peddling money. [3]
======
CSAM
======
We wrote about the proposal of the Commission to regulate the online
moderation of “Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)” in last month’s report
[4]. While it is a very important issue to tackle, we do have great
concerns with parts of the text, especially provisions that would allow
scanning all online chats on a given platform. We are still analysing how
exactly, if at all, this would impact Wikimedia projects. In the meantime,
we can offer a short briefing. [5]
—
On the legislative side, the start feels very bumpy: The European
Parliament probably won’t refer the file to a committee until September or
October, while ample criticism is pouring in, including from the German
government. [6]
=========
Net Neutrality
=========
The European Commission plans to push out a new legislative proposal
after the summer that is expected to include provisions forcing some
service providers to pay for data traffic (think Facebook and Netflix
paying Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica). While this is a classic example of
a lobbying battle between very large telecommunications companies and very
large tech companies, it also would violate some basic principles of net
neutrality. A group of civil society organisations, led by EDRi, sent a
letter to the relevant Commissioners outlining the main issues. [7]
—
On the bright side, BEREC, the EU’s body of telecoms regulators, has
updated its net neutrality guidelines to close some loopholes and
effectively ban zero rating of data for some applications. [8]
=============
Disinformation
=============
The European Commission has presented an updated Code of Practice on
Disinformation. [9] Wikimedia had not signed up the original Code, because
we deemed it was mainly focused on “follow the money”, hence where
disinformation is spread through advertising and paid reach. The version
will allow researchers more access to data of large platforms and again
focus on advertising.
—
The Code of Practice is a voluntary initiative for online platforms,
but taking part in it essentially removes some obligations under the newly
created Digital Services Act.
=============
Italian Dramas
=============
The Italian government published new draft guidelines about public data
(open government) and opened a consultation. [10] They basically state that
open government and open data provisions don’t apply to institutions
related to culture, which is a very Italian thing. We wonder if this is in
line with the Public Sector Information Directive and will investigate with
Wikimedia Italia, which are also participating in the consultation.
—
The Italian government has been on a roll. It also published the draft
national digitisation plan. It would establish an administrative fee for
the commercial use of all public domain digitisations of cultural
institutions. It essentially outlaws CC0 as a relevant license for most
GLAMs in the country and circumvents the public domain safeguard enshrined
in the latest copyright directive. There was a public consultation until 15
June which Wikimedia Italy and partners participated in. Expect blog posts
on Diff and on wikimedia.brussels soon.
=============
Polish & Czech Copyright Reforms
=============
The Czech copyright reform is in parliament. We have a Czech language
copy. [11] The Polish government published its proposal, which will go to
parliament very soon. We have a rough English translation. [12] If you
consider yourself a copyright geek, enjoy reading them. If you want to help
our national partners advocating on this, get in touch! :)
====
END
====
[
1]https://twitter.com/AmbNum/status/1540657835427741699
[2]
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/politique-etrangere-de-la-france/diplomat…
[3]
https://www.wikimedia.fr/pour-un-developpement-des-communs-numeriques-a-lec…
[4]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.or…
[5]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dD5AF8-uk2LFG7mu62AK7S80H4CrF1ftV7lheE6…
[6]
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/27/germany-says-hell-no-to-eu-proposal-to-…
[7]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Q4d13xqr5UsPkoSMw7d_3YL-hZnq4cL/view?usp=…
[
8]https://fossbytes.com/europe-bans-zero-rating-internet-offers/
[9]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3664
[10]
https://www.agid.gov.it/it/agenzia/stampa-e-comunicazione/notizie/2022/06/1…
.
[11]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J7dvl4yEk6ScWIIypdI6Uq_7273T7G5i/edit?u…
[12]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0ArQkgpZkQQcdpsidS_Yc-bS5liQsl5/view?usp=…
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