Re: [Publicpolicy] EU Policy Monitoring Report - May

tl;dr We have an updated work programme by the Commission: Digital Services Act will be proposed by the end of the year, but the Artificial Intelligence dossier is being pushed back and is now expected first half of 2021. Meanwhile the European Parliament is gathering input from MEPs on both these topics in an array of non-binding reports. This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor ====== Digital Services Act (DSA) --- Back on track: Contrary to what your Wikimedia Brussels team was sure and certain of, the Digital Serves Act timeline won’t be postponed, according to the adjusted Commission Work Programme presented this week. [1] Despite the fact that we are still waiting for the consultation to be published, which was originally supposed to happen early May and is expected next week now, Commissioner Breton and associates still want to have a legislative proposal out in time by the end of this year. --- Meanwhile in the Parliament: The last of a number of own initiative draft reports on the DSA was published by Kris Peeters (EPP BE) in the Civil Liberties committee (LIBE). [2] Petters supports “limited liability for content and the country of origin principle”, key components of the current regime under the e-Commerce Directive. However he suggests that harmful content, as opposed to only illegal content, should be addressed. --- Meanwhile in Parliament II: Last month’s Monitoring Report already talked about the other two parliamentary draft reports, by Alex Saliba (S&D MT) in the Internal Market committee (IMCO) and by Tiemo Wölken (S&D DE) in the Legal Affairs committee (JURI). [3] The MEPs and their staff are now parsing through hundreds of amendments on these (non-binding) reports. [4][5] Votes are expected in September. Some key questions include: *Should harmful content be included in the scope? *Should there be extra rules for some, more dominant platforms? *Should these extra rules be for platforms that are “dominant”, “systemic”, “which significant network effects”, “holding a significant gatekeeper role”. [6] *Should platforms that moderate content enjoy liability protections? (They now risk losing it.) On the other hand, it seems that almost everyone sees the need for some sort of notice and action procedures for content removal to be enshrined. ====== Artificial Intelligence: The consultation on Artificial Intelligence is due in a couple of weeks. Several of you already contributed (mille grazie!). [7] We are having a call Monday, 1 June, at 15:00 CEST to polish our answers to the Commission survey. Ping me if you like to join! ====== Data Strategy: The Commission is asking about things like “data altruism”, “data for the public good” and data “donations”. All these terms are crucial to the interpretation of the questions and their answers and, of course, there are no where defined. We called the Commission out on this, submitted a position on “quality requirements for High-Value Datasets” (which was asked about as such sets should become open as per Open Data Directive). We also gave examples of data being already gathered and used for the public good and a few ideas what potential “data trustees” could look like. We, of course, didn’t forget to repeat our “Carthago delenda est” a.k.a. “No new IP rights!” Our final submissions are now linked on the Meta-Wiki page of the consultation. [8] ====== Competition Consultation: [9][10] One of the European Commission’s main objectives for the current legislative is regulating platforms. The Digital Services Act is an important but not the only one part of this endeavor, as the EC’s Vice-President Margrethe Vestager seems to be set to solving some of the problems through competition mechanisms. It is in fact good news, as pushing everything that relates to dominant platforms into a Digital Single Market regulation may be limiting to solve issues that have little to do with the common market area and a lot to do with how powerful some actors have become. The EC plans to evaluate a 1997 Notice on market definition[9], a set of binding guidelines used to define what's the "market" a business operates in. This is a crucial step in determining things such as whether a business has a large or small market share, whether a business is dominant, or whether a merger would reduce competition and cause harm. The process has started with gathering of feedback on the scope and rationale of the evaluation. Both the Wikimedia Foundation and Free Knowledge Advocacy Group submitted responses underlining the need to evaluate the notice as to its adequacy for the digital sphere and markets. The analysis of a relevant market should be centered around user behaviour and how the results of examining that behaviour can be integrated in the market definition. You can check both responses on a dedicated meta page[10] or on the EC’s website[11][12]. We will be following this process as the next step is consultation on the Notice planned to start in the second quarter of 2020[13]. If you would like to be involved in drafting the consultation response, let us know! ====== [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/cwp-2020-adjusted-annexes_en.pdf [2]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/LIBE-PR-650509_EN.pdf [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2020-April/002002.html [4] https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=&… [5] https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=&… [6]https://twitter.com/Kirst3nF/status/1265985306144256000 [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Consultation_on_the_White_Paper_o… [8] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Consultation_on_a_European_Strate… [9] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1586343289199&uri=C… [10] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/consultations/Feedback_Notice_on_… [11] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1… [12] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1… [13] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1… ====== END ====== _______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy