Hello everyone,

We want to start this second issue of our public policy newsletter by wishing you a great start into the new year! The past 12 months have been quite eventful for everyone and many of you may have been looking forward to 2016 coming to an end. Taking stock, we can state that a lot of exciting things have happened for public policy at Wikimedia and we look forward to working with you to continue to promote and protect free knowledge in 2017. But first, please let us briefly summarize what has happened recently:

Public Policy Highlights

NSA hearing

Earlier last month, a hearing in Wikimedia Foundation v. National Security Agency took place before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The case, in which we challenge the Government’s “Upstream” surveillance program, had previously been dismissed on procedural grounds. However, we appealed because we believe in the importance of protecting our users’ privacy and freedom of expression. In this latest hearing, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, we argued that the lower court had misunderstood several important technical aspects of the surveillance program and the scope and scale of the United States government’s searches of private internet communications. The Government argued that the plaintiffs do not have standing because the details of the “Upstream” program remain classified. During the hearing, the court seemed skeptical of the Government’s arguments at times. We expect a ruling from the panel of the appeals court in a few months and will keep you updated.

Our own post about the hearing is on the Wikimedia Blog here:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/09/wikimedia-v-nsa-hearing-fourth-circuit/

Further reading:

https://policy.wikimedia.org/stopsurveillance/

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/

Participation in the Internet Governance Forum 2016

In early December, we attended the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Guadalajara, Mexico. IGF is the UN platform that facilitates a multi-stakeholder debate about governance issues related to the Internet. Besides an increasing concern over content removals and their threat to freedom of expression, one large topic that people were addressing throughout the conference was the significance of human rights online in countries with authoritarian regimes or weak systems of checks and balances, for instance in Venezuela. There was a concern that policies in the US and Europe, including those affecting freedom of expression, may be copied by other countries without including proper human rights protections.

During IGF, we were given the chance to voice some of Wikimedia's concerns in a meeting with a delegation from the European Parliament, during which we explained that Wikimedians are a global movement with large communities in Europe who contribute to the digital preservation of European culture. We used the opportunity to talk about threats to the public domain in Europe and about proposed new rights for traditional rightsholders in the proposed Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Finally, we pointed out that the current proposal to force platforms to implement automated content detection will interfere with our communities' ability to self govern and create an infrastructure that can be abused to chill free speech.

Further information:

http://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/

Read the transcripts and watch recordings of the public sessions at IGF here:

http://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2016-transcripts-and-videos

See our first assessment of the proposal for a new EU Copyright Directive:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/09/13/european-commission-copyright-leaks/

Further Reading:

http://www.internetjurisdiction.net/event/2016-global-internet-and-jurisdiction-conference

http://www.internetjurisdiction.net/news/videos-from-the-2016-global-internet-and-jurisdiction-conference

Katherine Maher’s op-ed about global removals of search results

The Globe and Mail, a major Canadian newspaper, published an op-ed by Executive Director Katherine Maher addressing the problems around forcing search engines to remove search results globally. In Google v Equustek, the Canadian Supreme Court has to decide whether Google can be ordered to remove search results with worldwide effect. Since such forced removals would set a bad precedent and have negative implications on people’s ability to find and access information as well as on their freedom of expression, we have intervened in the case.

Read the op-ed here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/when-search-engines-omit-results-our-rights-are-jeopardized/article33240768/

See also our blogpost about our own intervention in the case:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/10/14/intervention-google-v-equustek/

WMF and WMFR partner on opinion piece discussing the Right to be Forgotten

On November 25, a joint op-ed signed by Jimmy Wales and Emeric Vallespi, Chairman of Wikimedia France, was published in Le Monde. The op-ed outlines our concerns regarding the implementation of the Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) in France, as ordered by the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the French data protection authority. The op-ed encourages lawmakers to consider the importance of public access to knowledge in administering the RTBF, and asks for government or court oversight of the search engine companies evaluating the requests. The Legal team would like to thank Wikimedia France, as well as the Wikimedia Communications team, for their hard work on the piece.

Read the op-ed in Le Monde here (in French):

http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/25/le-droit-a-l-oubli-ne-doit-pas-tourner-a-la-censure_5037658_3232.html