tl;dr
The European Parliament approved a copyright mandate that is detrimental to user rights and introduces new exclusive rights. Meanwhile, the recast of the Public Sector Information Directive is picking up pace.
This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
===
European Parliament on Copyright Reform
---
There is no way to sugar-coat it: The European Parliament adopted a copyright mandate that is detrimental to free knowledge sharing. [1] It establishes a new exclusive right for press publishers aimed at giving them control over how press publications are shared online (Article 11). It gives rightholders more control over how content is shared on platforms and the demand stay-downs (Article 13). It gives rightholders the possibility to demand additional licenses from anyone but researchers to mine legally accessible text and data (Article 3). It extends copyright to sports events and would allow the organisers to control images and recordings thereof even more tightly (Article 12a). It would require any search engine to obtain licenses for even thumbnail previews of images displayed in search results (Article 13b).
---
Few rays of hope: On the other hand all of the tabled amendments that didn’t come from the rapporteur Mr. Voss were rejected, including the user-generated content and Freedom of Panorama exception proposals. The only positive changes that survived were the ones that made it into the committee compromises earlier this year: A public domain safeguard (Article 5.1a), an option for Member States to allow unrestricted text and data mining (Article 3a), a realistic way for cultural heritage institutions to sue of out-of-commerce works (Article 7). Also a slightly better version of education exception made it through (Article 4).
---
What about the filters?: The rapporteur’s newly proposed Article 13 compromise was in the end adopted. It doesn’t speak of filtering per se, but commands large for-profit platforms that host user-generated content to “ensure that unauthorised protected works or other subject matter are not available” while saying that this “shall not lead to preventing the availability of non-infringing works”. Non-profit platforms remain excluded from the new liability rules. Newly excluded are now start-ups (Article 2.1.4b)
---
Copyright Reform Trilogues: The Parliament will now enter into trilogue negotiations with this mandate. These are meetings between the rapporteur and his shadow rapporteurs with representatives of the European Commission and the Council. There is a so-called four-column document with the versions proposed by all three institutions and the fourth, blank column, where possible compromises will be filled out.[2] We expect tomorrow to be mostly about an exchange of positions and a formal agreement on the meeting schedule.
---
===
Public Sector Information Directive recast
---
The recast of this piece of legislation that is supposed to make public bodies and publicly financed services open up their documents and data is picking up pace. The rapporteur in the lead Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), Mr. Neoklis Sylikiotis (GUE, CY) has tabled his amendment proposals. [3] He will now be meeting with the shadow rapporteurs from the other political groups to try to find common positions on most issues. [4] Our priorities here are to make sure that the “open definitions” are compatible with these of our projects and that, of course, as much public information as possible is opened up for re-use.
===
ePrivacy Regulation
---
The European Union is working on upgrading its ePrivacy Directive (the one responsible for the cookie notices) to a Regulation. The main goal is to extend privacy rules that apply to SMS to also cover over-the-top services such as messaging apps and better define the rules for cookies (getting rid of the ridiculous notices) . The European Parliament’s mandate added a ban on “tracking walls” to the original proposal. [5] After many months of stalemate in the Council, the Austrian Presidency now proposed a new draft Council position that would go in the opposite direction. A full depth analysis thereof can be read here: [6] Once Member States agree on a position the trilogue phase would start.
===
Preventing the Dissemination of Illegal Content
---
Just as if content filtering for copyright’s sake wasn’t enough, the European Commission gets into the offensive to stretch the requirement for the platforms to filter out content that is identified as terrorist[7]. Platforms will have an hour to take down messaging that praises terrorism, encourages undertaking of such actions or donating to terrorist organisations, on the 24/7 basis. Moreover, all platforms hosting user-generated content would be obliged to carry out ‘proactive measures’ and make them even stronger at the authorities’ request. As much as combating terrorism is important, among others, the future of efforts to document war crimes and other atrocities is at stake. As the file has just been assigned to Civil Liberties Committee Rapporteur Helga Stevens (ECR/NL)[8], we will be following the works closely. Because yes, Wikimedia projects fall under the scope of this proposed Regulation.
===
[1]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337
[2]https://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/EU/XXVI/EU/03/62/EU_36241/imfname_10841779.pdf
[4]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2018/0111(COD)&l=fr
[6]https://edri.org/five-reasons-to-be-concerned-about-the-council-eprivacy-draft/
[7]https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2018/EN/COM-2018-640-F1-EN-MAIN-PART-1.PDF
[8]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/125105/HELGA_STEVENS_home.html