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
======
======
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]
======
======
NEW DOSSIERS: The European Commission services have proposed policy priorities to the Commissioners to-be. [2] Here’s a rough breakdown.
---
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).
---
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.
---
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
---
“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.
======
======
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! :)
---
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.
======
======
E-Privacy
---
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]
======
======
[1]https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2018/0331(COD)&l=en
[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-disinformation
[4]https://dbei.gov.ie/en/Consultations/Public-consultation-transposition-of-Directive-EU-2019-790.html
[5]https://www.privacylaws.com/news/eu-presidency-issues-amended-proposal-on-eu-e-privacy-regulation/