tl;dr
The European Parliament has appointed a new rapporteur and shadows on the
Terrorist Content Regulation. The European Commission is not only taking
shape with respect to personnel, but also legislative ideas.
This and previous reports on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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TERREG
After the European Parliament’s Committees formed, the works on terrorist
content regulation proposal started with the appointment of the new
Rapporteur Patryk Jaki (ECR, UK). MEP Jaki’s job will be to carry out the
trilogue conversations on behalf of the EP working closely with his
Shadows. Some are resuming this task (Spanish MEP Maite Pagazaurtundua of
RE and German MEP Cornelia Ernst of GUE/NGL) and some are taking over: MEP
Patrick Breyer (Greens, De, replacing Julia Reda), MEP Marina Kaljurand
(S&D, EE) and MEP Javier Zarzalejos (EPP, ES). The rumour has it the
Rapporteur Jaki is in favor of the EP report bringing more proportionality
to the ideas that the European Commission had cooked up (proactive
measures, referrals, wide definitions of terrorist content and who falls
under the scope). Another rumour is that the European Commission will be
having none of it. Let the games begin! [1]
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NEW DOSSIERS: The European Commission services have proposed policy
priorities to the Commissioners to-be. [2] Here’s a rough breakdown.
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Digital Services Act: New liability rules for all platforms across all
categories of content (hate speech, defamation, disinformation IP
infringements, terrorist content, incitement to violence, child
exploitation, harmful content, etc.). The trend seems to be going toward
platforms being asked to “do more”. There is also talk about how to ensure
judicial oversight or at least some safeguards. Still very light on the
details and unclear how this will cascade into all the other dossiers that
also create new rules for platforms (Copyright, TERREG, Disinformation).
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Disinformation: Before the European Parliament elections the Commission sat
down with representatives of the advertising industry and large platforms
to adopt a “Code of Practice on Disinformation”. [3] From the looks of it
the European Commission is unhappy with the achieved results during the
elections and they are now looking into a co-regulation framework. This
would mean that they want to keep industry self-regulation, as it is now
with the Code, but add a stick to it, e.g. fines. We would expect things
like transparency for election and political ads and demonetisation
“disinformation accounts” to be part of it. This is something the main
platforms are already doing, of course. The nitty-gritty will be in the
details.
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Geoblocking: DG Connect suggested to the future Commissioners to “include
delivery of goods across the EU; look into the limitations in the
distribution agreements; consider inclusion of new sectors such as
transport, as well as online content (in particular, non-audiovisual
copyright protected content, such as online music, e-books or games).” So
far the EU hasn’t got the greatest track record in restricting geoblocking
in the face of
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“Artificial Intelligence”: The new Commission President Ursula von der
Leyen has marked an artificial intelligence dossier as one of the first
deliverables of her Commission. “Some” (™) here in Brussels think we might
see “something” (™) within a year. What we know so far is that the idea of
“data passports” is circulated. These would essentially be sets of data and
algorithms used in the training and decision process of machine learning
systems. There might be a requirement for all or parts of these to be
public or at least shared in some way. Another thing we know is that DG
SANTE (the Directorate-General for Health & Food Safety) will be part of
the initiative, alongside DG CONNECT, which will make for a unprecedented
tandem. As the healthcare sector is expected to be one of the key areas of
deployment of AI systems, this move seems to make plenty of sense. DG JUST
(Justice and Consumers) and DG GROW (Internal Market) will complement the
leading quartet.
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CDSM Transposition: Ireland has launched a consultation on the
transposition of the copyright reform. [4] Deadline is 23 October. This
consultation specifically ask for input on Articles 13-17. Further public
consultations on the other articles will be opened in the future.
We will reach out to all our contacts (Wikimedia, CC, EDRi, libraries) in
Ireland. Still, if you know of individuals or organisations that might be
interested in this, please put us in touch! :)
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Meanwhile the Swedish government is having stakeholder dialogues (written
and face-to-face) on Article 17. They are especially keen to know of
Swedish (based) platforms that would be covered by the new rules. WMSE is
on top of this, but any additional engagement from civil society is highly
welcome (and asked for by the government). So, please raise your hand if
you know someone.
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E-Privacy
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This file has been stuck in “trilogues” for… seemingly forever now. The
European Parliament has a strong privacy-friendly position (adopted with a
rather slim majority) that pleases most civil society actors in town. The
Council is more worries about business and seems to be siding more with the
larger, for-profit platforms (the ones that they crusaded against during
the copyright reform). The Finnish Presidency is now expected to propose a
new compromise text in October to get things rolling again. A key issue is
Article 10, which covers confidentiality settings for browsers. It
basically poses the question to the EU legislator whether browsers should
come with strong privacy settings by default (i.e. users would have to
opt-out of privacy settings). It was deleted in the last compromise
proposal by the Council. The Parliament seems to still insist on it. [5]
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[1]
https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?refere…
[2]https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/clean_definite2.pdf
[3]
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/code-practice-disinforma…
[4]
https://dbei.gov.ie/en/Consultations/Public-consultation-transposition-of-D…
[5]
https://www.privacylaws.com/news/eu-presidency-issues-amended-proposal-on-e…