Hello everyone,
For your reading pleasure, here is our fourth issue of our newsletter. Here is what has happened in public policy in February and early March 2017:
Policy Issue Highlights
Supporting collaboration across borders
On March 14, along with 50 other organizations, we signed an amicus brief in State of Hawaii v. Trump before the United States District Court of Hawaii to support the issuance of a temporary restraining order against a new executive order that imposes restrictions on travel and immigration based on national origin. Judge Derrick K. Watson granted the temporary restraining order after the first hearing, and we are happy with this outcome. We believe that international collaboration for free knowledge benefits from people’s ability to travel without undue restrictions. We will share more as the case proceeds.
See the amicus brief:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Tech_Amici_Curiae_Brief,_Hawaii_v._Trump,_3.14.17.pdf
Read our blogpost for more context:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/03/15/amicus-brief-us-travel-restrictions/
See also our blogpost about the amicus brief we joined against a similar executive order in early February:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/06/amicus-brief-immigration-travel-restrictions/
Transparency Report
In February, we released the transparency report for the second half of 2016. The report sheds light on the requests we receive to alter or remove content from the Wikimedia projects, or provide nonpublic information about users. Between July and December 2016, we received 13 requests for user data, including six from government entities. We produced data in only one of those cases. In the same time period, we received 187 alteration or take-down requests, including two from government entities. And we are proud to say that we granted none of them.
We believe in protecting the privacy of Wikimedians and in the importance of freedom of expression on the internet. They are critical values for the Wikimedia movement, and through the transparency report, we document the kinds of threats they face and the work we do to defend them.
Read the whole transparency report:
https://transparency.wikimedia.org/
Read the blogpost about the transparency report:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/13/sixth-transparency-report/
EU Copyright Reform
In September 2016, the European Commission presented its Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Now, the Committees of the European Parliament have published their draft opinions. We are closely following the debate and observing at least two positive trends: the proposal to require internet platforms to implement automatic content detection systems (Art. 13) is getting some serious pushback in both the draft opinion of the Internal Market Committee and Rapporteur Comodini’s draft report. In addition, the Culture and Education Committee’s draft opinion proposes Freedom of Panorama, albeit only for non-commercial use.
MEP Julia Reda has commissioned a study about the compatibility of Art. 13 with the current legal framework of the EU. The study finds that the proposed norm is in conflict with EU copyright law, the e-commerce directive, and three fundamental rights protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The author of the study, Dr. Christina Angelopoulos of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at Cambridge, suggests deleting the norm altogether.
We are in close contact with Dimi, who does amazing work on the ground in Brussels and also regularly sends updates about his work to this list, and optimistic about positive changes to European copyright law.
Follow the legislative procedure here:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2016/0280(COD)&l=en
Read the study on Art. 13:
https://juliareda.eu/2017/03/study-article13-upload-surveillance/
See also EFF’s blogpost on the draft report of the Legal Affairs Committee:
Comments to the U.S. Copyright Office about Sec. 512 (second round)
In addition to our support of free knowledge in the EU copyright reform, we are also engaging in a consultation by the U.S. Copyright Office about the rules for intermediary liability in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In February, we submitted our comments on improvements to the safe harbor of Sec. 512 and addressed questions about diversity of platforms, public interest, measures for the effectiveness of the current rules, tackling abuse of the system, and the need for additional educational resources for users. Broadly speaking, we believe that any changes to the current system need to take into account the diversity both among service providers and creators. In our comments, we point out how Sec. 512 has promoted the growth of the internet and diversity among service providers and voice our concerns over a “notice-and-staydown” system that would require automatic content detection.
We look forward to seeing more empirical research around Sec. 512 and hope that the Copyright Office will base its recommendations for changes to the law on this evidence.
Read our submission for this second round of comments to the U.S. Copyright Office:
https://policy.wikimedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/wikimedia-foundation-e28093-section-512-additional-comments.pdf
See also our blogposts from 2016 about the first round of comments:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/04/06/save-safe-harbors-open-web/
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/06/16/copyright-law/
Further reading:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/eff-copyright-office-safe-harbors-work
Update on IMDb.com, Inc. v. Harris
In our previous newsletter, we told you about the amicus brief that we joined in support the right to publish truthful information, in IMDB.com’s case against a new law in California, AB 1687, that would require websites like IMDB that offer employment services to remove information about an actor's age or birthday upon request. Recently, a United States District Court Judge issued a preliminary injunction to temporarily suspend the law while the lawsuit is pending. Opponents of the law have voiced concerns over its restrictions on freedom of expression. And indeed, Judge Chhabria found that “it’s difficult to imagine how AB 1687 could not violate the First Amendment.” While this is a positive sign and the law remains on hold, there will still be further hearings before the case is resolved.
Read the amicus brief:
Further reading:
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=39fa9cb4-6d09-4cfd-ba2b-3d3277aa8ba3
Met releases 375,000 images under CC Zero license
Early last month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (“The Met”) released 375,000 images under a Creative Commons Zero dedication. The release is part of the world-renown museum’s open access policy, “which makes images of artworks [the Met] believes to be in the public domain widely and freely available for unrestricted use, and at no cost [...]”. The WikiProject Metropolitan Museum of Art will add these images to Wikimedia Commons and document the artworks with metadata on Wikidata.
We are very happy to see this initiative coming from such a high-profile museum and hope that others will follow the Met’s example. Promoting the use and enjoyment of works in the public domain -- rather than locking them up -- is good for creators and everybody’s participation in our cultural heritage.
Read the blogpost:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/07/the-met-public-art-creative-commons/
The Met’s announcement:
http://metmuseum.org/press/news/2017/open-access
The Met’s open access policy and images:
http://metmuseum.org/about-the-met/policies-and-documents/image-resources
WikiProject Metropolitan Museum of Art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art
Misc.
Tackling harassment to increase access to knowledge
We work to support a welcoming environment on the Wikimedia projects and the larger web to promote diversity and inclusivity. Reducing harassment increases the number of people who can actively and safely participate in free knowledge. In its project Detox, the Wikimedia Foundation’s research team has used machine learning models to develop tools that can detect toxic comments in discussions on talk pages and measure their prevalence. Jigsaw, the Google-owned company who was part of that research project, recently launched the Perspective API, which allows websites to give users real-time feedback on the comments they are writing.
We support new ways of improving community health that are mindful of freedom of expression and access to knowledge. Tools like Detox or Perspective can help to make discussions and conversations productive and fruitful and ensure that everybody is able to contribute to free knowledge.
Read more about Detox:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Detox
Find more information about Perspective:
https://www.perspectiveapi.com/
Your Input
We would love to hear from you! If you have any feedback or would like us to include things that you see happening in your country or elsewhere, please fill out this form or follow up with me by email at <jgerlach@wikimedia.org>.
All the best,