Hello, everybody!
This month there has been some gossip about legislative or non-legislative Copyright reform which might be proposed either before or after the elections and might include an opt-in provision or not... Well, at least there’s talk about it.
Dimi
Past editions on Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor/MR
tl;dr
Open Access is to be compulsory in the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding programme. The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that an Estonian website is liable for third-party comments on their website. The European Parliament LIBE committee has passed its version of the Data Protection Regulation, making the "right to be forgotten" into the "right to be erased".
ToC
1. European Court of Justice Backs Freedom of Information
2. European Court Rules Website Liable for Third-Party Comments
3. Studies on Intellectual Property Released & IP Infringements Observatory Meeting
4. Open Access in EU’s Horizon 2020 Funding Programme
5. Data Protection Regulation - Committee Vote
6. Commission Requesting Citizens’ Feedback on Internet Policies
7. Creative Commons Takes Global Position on Copyright Reform
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#ECJ #FoI
1. European Court of Justice Backs Freedom of Information
Why is this relevant?
Freedom of Information is our community’s top ranked topic in our Policy Issues Survey. [14] Apart from being a cornerstone of transparency, the access to more government documents would provide reliable sources for Wikipedia articles, thereby improving the overall quality.
What happened?
Documents requested from the European Council under Freedom of Information law were released only after masking member states’ positions (i.e. which countries were in favour or against certain points). The Spanish based NGO promoting free access to information - Access Info Europe - appealed to the European Court of Justice against this practice. In the court case the European Parliament, the United Kingdom and Greece sided with Access Info Europe, while France, Spain and the Czech Republic supported the Council.
The ECJ ruled that the effectiveness of the decision making process does not trump the need for transparency, thereby prohibiting the erasure of Member States’ positions from released documents on a general basis. [15]
What comes next?
The European Council will have to release documents informing the public which countries were for or against a certain text. Further attempts by civil society organisations to “open up” the Council are expected, as it is still considered the least transparent of the EU’s institutions.
In the future, public institutions will need to conclusively prove stated reasons when refusing access to information.
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#ECHR
2. European Court Rules Website Liable for Third-Party Comments
Why is this relevant?
A landmark decision that makes internet platform operators liable for user generated content on their websites. This decision is not only about the specific case, but has to be regarded against the backdrop of freedom of speech online.
What happened?
The European Court of Human Rights (Council of Europe, Strasbourg) has upheld an Estonian court’s decision making a news portal operated by Delfi AS liable for clearly illegal (defamatory) comments, even though website moderators had deleted them after being informed. [7]
What comes next?
Civil society organisations have claimed that this decision will lead to even more legal uncertainty and preventive, privately-enforced censorship. An appeal to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR is to be expected. [8]
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#IPstudy #LSE #OHIM
3. Studies on Intellectual Property Released & IP Infringements Observatory Meeting
Why is this relevant?
Albeit to different extents, such studies occupy public and political debates and help shape the narratives of the debates. With copyright being seeded as one of the first major reform initiatives of the next Commission in 2014, the current back and forth will set the starting points of the expected consultation and stakeholder dialogue.
What happened?
The European Commission has founded an European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights to “understand the challenges” and “enhance cooperation” in the field of counterfeiting and piracy. [1] As part of the initiative it has commissioned a study on the Contribution of Intellectual Property to the Economy, that it plans to update every two years. This study claims that 50% of the EU economy is “IPR intensive”. [2] In a strange coincidence, the same week this study was released, the London School of Economics released their own research, stating that there is no proof online file-sharing is hurting the industry. [3]
What comes next?
As the Commission has been criticised for having only industry associations in the IPR Infringements Observatory they took the step to invite several civil society organisations to their yearly plenary in Alicante - namely European Digital Rights (EDRi), the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and us. At the two-day meeting me and Nikolas Becker (WMDE board member) requested that a complementary study on the contribution of open licensing and the public domain to the European economy be commissioned and that the observatory needs to start taking into account infringements on free licenses and the copyfraud cases. EDRi stated that it isn’t enough to just produce studies on how many people are downloading illegal content, but that future studies will need to explain what the motivation behind such actions is.
Commission representatives (esp. DG MARKT and the Observatory staff) demonstrated openness to said proposals and committed to organise a further meeting with civil society in Brussels where they will try to include these points into the 2014 work programme.
On a general note, Jean Bergevin form DG MARKT mentioned that the Commission is working on a legislative or non-legislative copyright reform proposal, which at least in part will be announced by the end of the year. Beginning of next year a decision will be made whether to proceed with the dossier or wait for the next Commission to be appointed.
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#OA #Horizon2020
4. Open Access in EU’s Horizon 2020 Funding Programme
Why is this relevant?
Horizon 2020 will be the EU’s framework programme for funding research and innovation for the period 2014-2020. Currently the last details of the funding criteria are being ironed out. [4] Things like compulsory Open Access licensing for works produced with money from this budget were on stake.
What happened?
A meeting at the European Parliament aptly titled “Open Science Works” was organised to discuss the situation regarding Horizon 2020. [5] Among others Alma Swan (SPARC Europe) and Gwen Franck from Creative Commons participated in the event. Good news is that the Commission has agreed to make open access a mandatory condition for funding research. The issues now are that there is no enforcement possibility (i.e. there is no way make scientists publish their works under OA if they don’t do it voluntarily) and that the Commission refuses to specify the type of license required.
What comes next?
The Commission representative (Celina Ramjoué, DG CONNECT) admitted that they were afraid of including an OA enforcement procedure and specifying the type of licensing, as they were afraid of “strong backlash if they they pushed too far”.
At productive and friendly talks after the session I managed to talk to both, Alma Swan and Celina Ramjoué about the importance of licensing and the definition of Free Cultural Works. [6] While the former agreed that SPARC Europe would support such licensing, the latter was weary of making promising statements and instead emphasised that the only way to make the Commission start talking about such things internally is to have it requested from several organisations. Together with SPARC Europe and Creative Commons we agreed to keep each other informed posted and to try and harmonise civil society actions in the future.
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#EUdataP
5. EU General Data Protection Regulation - Committee Vote
Why is this relevant?
This concerns the general ecosystem of the internet, an environment we and our projects are born into and dependant upon. Furthermore, the Wikimedia Foundation is currently reviewing its privacy policy [9] and it would be productive to also take non-US legislations as well as different cultural debates and sensitivities into account.
What happened?
The LIBE Committee of the European Parliament has voted on its version of the General Data Protection Regulation proposal. [10][11] One of the changes is that the “right to be forgotten” was replaced by the “right of erasure”, which means that a freedom of speech element was included (e.g. A blogger will remain free to comment on a photo was subsequently taken down).
The Parliament also supported the Commission proposal on strict rules on how data is transferred to non-EU countries, meaning that an additional EU authority might have to be asked for permission. At the same time the updated version widened the circumstances in which a company can process user data without prior consent.
At the same time this new version was criticised by civil rights groups for meaning well, but tearing huge loopholes into the system. [12]
What comes next?
The LIBE Committee has given Rapporteur Jan-Philipp Albrecht (Greens/EFA) a mandate to negotiate a final text with the Council. It is the Council where adoption continues to stall with Member States finding it hard to agree on several parts, one of them being how national data protection authorities should cooperate with each other. This is also a crucial point which will determine how and where citizens will be able to file complaints.
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#DigitalAgenda
6. Commission Requesting Citizens’ Feedback on Internet Governance
Why is this relevant?
Internet policies are important to our ecosystem and it should be welcomed that the Commission is trying to open up the debate to new players and make access easier, cheaper and less time consuming.
What happened?
As part of its initiative to include more citizens in the legislative process and its efforts to promote its so-called Digital Agenda, the European Commission is asking for opinions on internet policy issues, currently focused on the future of Internet Governance. The request for comments is open until the 8. November. [13]
What comes next?
To be blunt, I don’t think anybody really knows. The comments could be used to start an actual stakeholder dialogue on Internet Governance or remain unheard. This, to a large extent, depends on how many answers the Commission will receive.
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#cc #copyright #fixcopyright
7. Creative Commons Takes Global Position on Copyright Reform
Why is this relevant?
The vast majority of our content is licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons is not only a global partner of Wikimedia, but also a like-minded organisation with considerable community overlaps.
What happened?
In an initiative undertaken by their chapters, Creative Commons has released a policy position stating that CC licenses are “not a fix for the problems of the copyright system” and that a meaningful reform is still needed. [16]
The corresponding blog post explains that CCHQ, affiliates and community have worked together to produce the policy statement. The process was also used to clarify the extent to which both CCHQ and the CC chapters are allowed to engage in advocacy. [17]
What comes next?
A discussion on whether Wikimedia should undertake a similar step was sparked off on the advocacy advisors mailing list [18]. As a result, a talk page has been created on meta-wiki and everybody is more than welcome to comment on the proposal.[19]
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[1]http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/iprenforcement/observatory/#maincontentSec5
[2]http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/OBS/IPContributionReport.en.do
[3]http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2013/09/CreativeIndustries.aspx
[4]http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020-timeline
[5]http://openaccess.be/2013/10/15/open-science-works/
[6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Cultural_Works
[7]http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/webservices/content/pdf/003-4529626-5466299
[9]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy
[10]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-923_en.htm
[12]http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number11.20/data-protection-vote-meps
[14]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Policy_Issues_Survey_2013_-_final.pdf
[16]http://creativecommons.org/about/reform
[17]https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/39639
[18]http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2013-October/000239.html
[19]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Advocacy