Salut la liste!

We’re back in full swing and reporting live from Brussels. In this episode the Commission has finally published its proposal for a net neutrality regulation. Simultaneously the data protection discussion has successfully melted into the surveillance debate, which in its turn has produced more hashtags than one can possibly follow.

Dimi

Past editions on Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor/MR

tl;dr

Tere is a chance that the General Data Protection Directive will be negotiated behind closed doors. The Commission has tabled its proposal for a network neutrality regulation, including a “specialised services” permission. We at the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group are writing up a mission statement.

ToC

1. Surveillance and Data Protection

2. Net Neutrality

3. Revision of the PSI Directive

4. TTIP

5. EU Launches OER Initiative

6. Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU - Drafting the Mission Statement

7. Open Policy Network by Creative Commons

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#EUdataP #EPinquiry #SMART #Tempora #Prism #SWIFT #GCHQ #NSA

1.Surveillance and Data Protection

Why is this relevant?

Well, its not a core issue of ours. Still, privacy is fundamental to intellectual knowledge and parts of our community have formulated worries that our servers and software might be susceptible to mass surveillance. At the same time both the Wikimedia Foundation [1] and Wikimedia Deutschland [2] have had official reactions on these issues. It is part of the future of the internet.

What happened?

While the Data Protection Regulation debate was slowly dying out, the PRISM affair knocked it right out of its sleep. [3] The Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament is holding series of inquiry meetings on electronic mass surveillance [4][5] and published a report by Caspar Bowden on the effects of NSA surveillance on EU citizens’ rights [6a][6b], while at the same time Edward Snowden was officially nominated and later shortlisted for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought [7a][7b] given each year by the EP.

Meanwhile a number of prominent civil society organisation signed a resolution against massive eavesdropping in Europe [8a] and both, the Safe Harbour (personal data exchange between EU-US) [9] and the SWIFT (exchange of banking data) [8b] agreements were put into question by the EP and EC officials.

While all of this has been going on, the only actual work done on the General Data Protection Regulation is probably the Wikipedia article, which now looks presentable. [10] One notable exception is Article 42, which was reinserted after news broke out. This amendment prohibits access to personal data in the EU where required by a non-EU court without the prior authorisation of the EU Data Protection Authority. [27]

What comes next?

The mass electronic surveillance frenzy has not yet resulted in major content changes when it comes to data protection, yet. Given the appeal and loose connectedness between the two topics it is however to be expected that at least some of the stakeholders will push this argument.

It is likely that the Committee will have a vote on the Parliament version in October.[11] Until then there will be debate over whether the trilogue - a discussion meeting between the Parliament, Council and Commission - should be informal. An informal trilogue would mean that the three parties would try to negotiate a compromise behind closed doors ahead of the first reading. [12] The earliest possible plenary vote seems to be in March 2014.

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#netneutrality

2. Net Neutrality

Why is this relevant?

It is a fundamental internet issue. The new draft regulation by the European Commission proposes to explicitly allow “specialised services”, without defining them too narrowly. This would allow content providers to pay telecoms for zero-charge or faster delivery of their services to the end user. If the Parliament and Council agree to knock these passages out, all preferential content delivery might be disallowed. So far this is more likely to happen in the Parliament. Specialised services would have implication on the relative place of our projects on the internet.

What happened?

Commissioner Kroes presented the new draft regulation [13] which came under immediate fire from her fellow Commissioner Reding (Justice). [14] The latter sees the provision allowing “specialised services” as a threat to freedom of speech, as the resulting traffic management would become “discriminatory”. While the brouhaha is settling and the Commission received questions and critique from across the board (e.g. [15]), some MEPs already took the lead and invited to round-table talks. [16] It is to be expected that the European Parliament, that has long been calling for a net neutrality regulation, will decisively change the tabled text, especially articles 2., 19. and 23..

Another source for chitter-chatter is the decision of Commissioner Kroes to pack network neutrality into the much wider telecoms package, which also regulates roaming charges. It seem like the no-roaming-fees pre-election publicity is being traded off against actual net neutrality.

What comes next?

It is most likely that this Dossier will be taken over by the next Parliament after the elections in 2014. The next steps would be to assign parliamentary committees and rapporteurs. [17]

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#PSI

3. Revision of PSI Directive

Why is this relevant?

In very rough terms, the PSI directive is meant to encourage, authorise and enable the reuse of such information by anyone for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. It does not contain a clause to force releasing of content for such purpose without financial compensation, it rather gives a set of rules how an institution from the public sector can calculate costs that can be burdened on the re-user.

What happened?

Directive 2013/37/EU (a.k.a. Directive on the Re-use of Public Sector Information) [18] revises the 10 year old directive on public sector information. This rather broad term relates to basically all information created, maintained or stored by public administration and many public (even cultural) institutions. EU member states are given until July 2015 to revise the adoptions into national law.

What comes next?

The next two years will be crucial in implementing the revised PSI-directive. This implementation could result in standard licenses and overall avoidance on paywalls or in a highly fragmented manner with multiple, complex and contradicting licenses and barriers to obtaining data.

The European Commission is hosting a hearing on this implementation in November following the consultation. [19] Both, WMDE and the Wikimedian in Brussels are going to participate.

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#TTIP

4. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement

Why is this relevant?

Frankly, we aren’t sure yet. Still, there is still a very real chance the final agreement will contain a chapter on intellectual property.

What happened?

A first Civil Society Dialogue organised by the European Commission took place back in July. [20] The information round, intended to ensure more transparency, didn’t provide any specific information about the discussed content. Here are a few statements by the EC that give us a hint about what lies ahead of us:

-With TTIP, EU & US are aiming to *set new global standards*

-Not just a run-off-the-mill trade agreement

-Negotiations will not be used to *lower* regulation

What comes next?

As with previous international negotiations, transparency won’t be a priority for the EU or US, but managing to receive early information about the intended, legally binding texts will be crucial.

Current timeline expectations:

-According to EU officials, the Commission will probably publish a call for tender on TTIP sustainability assessment

-Text will be published "as soon as it is agreed - or perhaps once it is sufficiently stabilised, but not in the coming months" (statement by Levie, Deputy Chief Negotiator for EU)

-A public stakeholder briefing on second round TTIP negotiations will take place in October

Further links:

EU Portal on TTIP [21]

Agenda according to MEP Marietje Schaake (ALDE, NL) [22]

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#OER

5. EU Launches OER Initiative

Why is this relevant?

Wikipedia and Wikisource have active OER communities [23] [24] that have been following and actively participating in the development in such initiatives and policy change relating to Open Educational Resources.

What happened?

The European Commission has launched [25] a new educational portal [26] allowing schools and universities to find and share Open Educational Resources. The standard licensing is CC-by, making it compatible with our projects, although other licenses are accepted as well.

What comes next?

Once the database is sufficiently populated, it could become a valuable resource (both citations and source documents) for our projects. Future cooperations are not unthinkable.

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#wikimedia

6. Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU - Drafting our Mission Statement

In order to better define our three main policy goals and to be able to refer people to a “founding document” when they ask what we’re doing, we’re in the process of drafting something like a policy mission statement for our group. It has not been adopted by anyone yet and is really just an open document trying to define and refine ideas. Please don’t hesitate to comment or edit, as we’re grateful for any piece of advice.

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/MissionStatementFKAGEU

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#CreativeCommons

7. Open Policy Network

Our friends at Creative Commons have constituted an Open Policy Network which wants to work on adopting and implementing open policies around the world. If that’s your cup of tea, I was assured Wikimedians are more than welcome.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Open_Policy_Network

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Refernces

[1]https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/weneedtoknow-transparency-letter.pdf

[2]http://www.stopsurveillance.org/

[3]http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number11.16/data-privacy-prism

[4]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201309/20130904ATT70774/20130904ATT70774EN.pdf

[5]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201309/20130925ATT71905/20130925ATT71905EN.pdf

[6a]https://info.publicintelligence.net/EU-NSA-Surveillance.pdf

[6b]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/dv/briefingnote_/briefingnote_en.pdf

[7a] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/17/us-eu-snowden-idUSBRE98G0FY20130917

[7b]http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/09/30/uk-eu-snowden-prize-idUKBRE98T0ZF20130930