tl;dr

The European Commission presented its 3rd Digital Single Market Package. They don’t intend to change the intermediary liability regime (good) and also won’t really tear down geoblocking (bad). Meanwhile FoP is making its way through the Belgian federal law-making machinery.

This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor

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Third Digital Single Market Package: Last week the European Commission presented what it calls its 3rd Digital Single Market Package. The legislative and non-legislative proposals are intended to tackle geoblocking, parcel deliveries, consumer rights online, quotas for European content and advertising rules. [1] Of course the packaging looks fluffier than its actual content.

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Geoblocking: The proposal to “end geoblocking” will remedy many of the situations where cross-border access to goods and services is causing problems. One thing it won’t remedy is online access to audiovisual content. [2][3] Instead, the Commission will make sure parcels are delivered everywhere in the EU and credit cards are always accepted by online shops, regardless of the country they were issued in. Good overview here: http://wmde.org/1XLsnA6

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Liablitiy: On the plus side we’re happy to read that “the Commission will maintain the existing intermediary liabability regime”. [4] Yes, they want to analyse something they call the “value gap”, encourage systems protecting minors on video-sharing sites and come up with notice-and-action procedures, but as long as the E-Commerce Directive remains closed, things can’t go too bad. Of course keeping IPRED would also be crucial. We have a very clear idea of how notice and action procedures should look like, so we’re not scared to work with the units on this.

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European content: The Audio-Visual Media Services Directive (AVMS) [5] contains provisions requiring TV broadcasters and cinemas in Europe to carry a certain percentage of European content. The same does not apply to online video services. Something that traditional boroadcasters and cinemas claim is unfair competition (and in all fairness, they are right). In order to level this, the European Commission is proposing to impose a 20 percent European content quota on online services like Netflix, iTunes Video and CanalPlay. [6] The Commission has confirmed to me that their intention is for this to only apply to on-demand video streaming services and not to video sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion.

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A wink to the 4th: While getting a lot of justified ridicule for a anti-geoblocking proposal that talks about credit card use but not video services, the Commission has pointed out that there will be a Fourth Digital Single Market Package sometime in September or October this year. This should include revisions of the Satellite & Cable and Information Society Directives, i.e. copyright and cross-border access to audiovisual content.

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Open Access: The Council of the European Union has called for all publicly funded research to be OA by default. [7] This is useful, because such proposals usually get weakened in the Council, so we now have a very clear declaration we can use for future political pressure. Even better is that they acknowledged that OA should be defined as it is in the Budapest OA Initiative [8a], meaning that everything would be compatible with our projects. “Non-commercial” or “non-derivative” restrictions are explicitly excluded. We should bring up these points at the mid-term evaluation of the Horizon 2020 programme. [8b]

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Privacy Shield: After the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the EU-US Safe Harbour deal invalid, [9] Commission officials and company lobbyists have been scratching their heads how to patch the ensuing legal gap. Safe Harbour allowed US companies to practically self-certify that they follow European data protection rules after which they were granted access to the European market. The system worked about as well as a self-certification system can be expected to work. Since its end, the new marketing name of such a deal that officials came up with is Privacy Shield. It is meant to be pretty much the same thing as Safe Harbour. However the cool-sounding initiative had to be postponed again, because neither the European Parliament, nor the Ombudsman, nor a majority of National Data Protection Agencies believe it would conform with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. [10] The idea that the courts will accept an identical deal with a fresh name is also a… ludacris one.

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Freedom of Panorama in Belgium: After last year’s #saveFoP campaign [11], some Belgian government parties (Mouvement réformateur and OpenVLD, liberal party family) have picked up on the shameful fact that there is no Freedom of Panorama in Belgium. So they proposed changing it. [12][13]. Towards the end of last year a proposal for a FoP bill was introduced. It was supported by the Flemish nationalist-conservative N-VA and the Flemish christian-democrat CD&V, [14] giving us a majority.

In committee, the socialist PS proposed an amendment to limit this exception to “non-commercial” uses only, which was supported by the francophone christian-democrat cdH. It didn’t pass by a vote of 10-5, whit the green Ecolo-Groen also choosing to go with the initial proposal in the end. [15] The committee has informed us today, that the text has passed the second committee reading a few hours ago and is now awaiting its plenary vote.

Knowing that collecting societies have been lobbying the MPs, Wikimedia Belgium has sent personalised letters, including FAQ sheets and “Why NC won't serve your need” brochures to each voting committee member. We also used our individual contacts to reach out to the parties involved. [16]

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Don't forget! EU Freedom of Panorama Consultation: There are currently two things we can do to make a EU-wide Freedom of Panorama much more likely - get full exceptions in Member States and get many people and organisations to submit answers to the EC consultation. [17] We have about two weeks to go, so please talk to individuals and organisations (ideally photographers’ clubs & friendly architects). Of course you are encouraged to use the straightforward answering guide. [18]

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[1]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-1895_en.htm

[2]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016-320-EN-F1-1.PDF

[3]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016-285-EN-F1-1.PDF

[4]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016-288-EN-F1-1.PDF

[5]http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32010L0013

[6]http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=15948

[7]https://blog.creativecommons.org/2016/05/27/council-european-union-calls-full-open-access-scientific-research-2020/

[8a]http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read

[8b]http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regulation/roadmaps/docs/2015_rtd_005_evaluation_ie_horizon_2020_en.pdf

[9]http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-10/cp150117en.pdf

[10]http://www.politico.eu/article/privacy-shield-dead-on-arrival/