Salut la liste!
tl;dr
Your monthly Brussels beat comes with a new Commission finally in office, a terrorist content regulation inching its way along the legislative path and an Article 17 Stakeholder Dialogue that doesn’t discuss Article 17.
This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
======
NEW COMMISSION
Ursula von der Leyen and her fellow members of the Commission finally (and literally [1]) moved into the Berlaymont.
---
The new college got 461 votes which bests the 2014 Juncker Commission vote. It is also better than von der Leyen’s own confirmation result back in July. [2]
---
More importantly, the three largest groups - EPP, S&D and Renew Europe (ex-liberals) squarely supported the new Commission. The Greens, originally well placed to exert influence seem to have successfully maneuvered themselves to the sidelines at this stage. [3] Still, European Parliament majorities are floating and voting discipline among groups is regularly nominal, so we expect ECR (right-wing conservatives) and Greens to play kingmakers every now and then.
---
NB: True to Brussels tradition the new Commission’s first very visible action was to put up a new banner [4]. Doesn’t hurt but… well… not exactly plus ambitieux either.
======
SECOND TERRORIST CONTENT TRILOGUE: MEPs, the EU Council and the Commission met to talk about the controversial terrorist content proposal. No one was ready to budge.
---
The European Commission maintains that the definitions of what terrorist content is are clear and that this acts as a safeguard against overblocking other speech. The European Parliament maintains that referrals and proactive measures are a no-go. One technical meeting is planned on 9 December and two trilogues will take place on 5 and 15 December, respectively. Busy times ahead for anyone following this.
=====
ART. 17 STAKEHOLDER DIALOGUE
The third meeting on the implementation of the Copyright Directive’s Article 17 took place last Monday. In case your memory is rusty, the Commission is mandated by law to come up with guidelines for Member States on how to ensure that mass filtering of user content online doesn’t lead to mass filtering of user content online [5]. Squaring that circle has always been a headache. Now it became apparent that even state of the art technology can’t offer a way out.
---
Three content identification technology providers presented (pitched) their solutions (products) - YouTube’s infamous ContentID, Videntifier and PEX [6].
---
Main takeaway: None of the presented technologies do more than simply matching content. None of them can analyse the use of copyrighted work within specific contexts. Which means that they cannot detect if a specific use is covered by an exception. This, in turn, means that the current technology on offer does not meet the requirements for filtering as established by the directive itself.
======
OUR VERY OWN IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
While the Commission is straddling, we are is thrilled to release our “Guidelines for the Implementation of the DSM Directive”:
https://www.notion.so/DSM-implementation-portal-97518afab71247cfa27f0ddeee770673
---
Wikimedia, Communia, Creative Commons and Centrum Cyfrowe partnered with LIBER (European Research Libraries, Articles 3 and 4), IFLA (International Library Association, Article 6) and Europeana (Articles 8 to 11) to create these guidelines. The goal is to make sure that local communities in as many Member States as possible participate in their national legislative processes.
======
WHAT ELSE MATTERS
---
ePrivacy: The Finnish Presidency did not manage to secure a so-called “general approach” for the regulation in Council. [7] With trilogues hopelessly deadlocked the new Commission will have to chose on whether to keep pushing and plowing. It could also drop the legislation or go back to square one with a new and completely revised proposal.
---
Artificial Intelligence: The European Union wants to become the first world region to pass laws for artificial intelligence. President von der Leyen self-imposed 100-days clock to achieve this started ticking today. Expectedly consumer groups are ramping up pressure for hard rules. [8] On the other side, some officials are playing down expectations, still divided over whether the rules should be actual law or light-touch guidelines
---
French Hate Speech Law: The European Commission slammed France’s project for a hate speech law (“Loi Avia”). Brussels criticised Paris on the fact that the draft legislation is not fully compliant with the 2000 E-Commerce Directive, which gives platforms liability protections now to be taken away. The French law asks platforms to self-police their content and remove hate speech within 24 hours. [10] Brussels is currently preparing a major overhaul of the EU’s intermediary protection rules.
---
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources was adopted by its 195 member states. Concretely, the UNESCO OER Recommendation has five objectives: (i) Building capacity of stakeholders to create access, use, adapt and redistribute OER; (ii) Developing supportive policy; (iii) Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; (iv) Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; and (v) Facilitating international cooperation. [11][12]
======
[1]https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1201090376221769729
[4]https://twitter.com/KarolineBeisel/status/1201136364605063177?s=20
[7]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVII/EU/00/46/EU_04609/imfname_10943381.pdf
[8]https://www.beuc.eu/publications/beuc-x-2019-076_telecoms_council_meeting_on_ai_and_automation.pdf
[9]https://www.nextinpact.com/news/108442-loi-avia-contre-cyberhaine-critiques-commissio
[10]https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer