tl;dr
After the vote in the Internal Market Committee, which approved FoP and UGC exceptions, as well as a public domain protection, industry pressure is increasing on all other committees. The most important vote will be on 10 October in the Legal Affairs Committee.
This and past reports: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
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Copyright reform
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The Internal Market Committee (IMCO) voted on its position on the EU Copyright reform. As it is one of the two lead committees, its opinion is especially important. It approved full Freedom of Panorama and a much needed public domain safeguard, but failed to fix the text and data mining exception and to delete the press publishers right. It somewhat surprisingly approved a user-generated content exception. [1][2][3]
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The Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), which is has the lead on copyright, has postponed its vote to 10 October. This comes as the rapporteur Therese Comodini (EPP MT) left the European Parliament for the one in Valletta and the rapporteurship was taken over by Axel Voss. [4]
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Is it really this bad?:Yes, Ms. Comodini had a very scientific approach to copyright reform and was trying to balance user rights and economic necessities. While Mr. Voss talks a good game [5], he has in past failed to deliver, instead following the party line without much discussions with other groups.
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The EPP gameplan: One thing the EPP will be working on aggressively is pushing through the press publishers’ right (thanks to its German delegation). For this they will need the ALDE votes, and ALDE in the Legal Affairs committee is staunchly against a full Freedom of Panorama. A murky deal is not a far fetched scenario.
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Our gameplan: We must get as many members of the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) to support FoP, even against the party line if necessary. The main goals should be the S&Ds (especially Luxembourg, Germany and Italy) and the Central and Eastern European EPPs (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria). [6]
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Our gameplan 2: Many individual Wikimedians are already trying to get in touch with their respective MEPs from JURI. Another goal is to mobilise organisations to support us. I am working with the European Games Developers Federation and Yelp! on the Brussels level, while Wikimedia Italia, for instance, is working on getting support back home. [7] Ideally these organisations would write to the MEPs and publish a statement on the topic.
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Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE): This committee will focus solely on the “upload filtering” provision where a compromise will be adopted that has already been taken over by the Internal Market Committee and that protects Wikipedia and similar projects. The vote will take place on 11 July.
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Culture Committee (CULT): The rapporteur in CULT, French EPP member Marc Joulaud originally proposed a full user-generated content exception and an acceptable (for a French conservative) Freedom of Panorama compromise. Not even a week after the IMCO vote so much pressure was exerted on him by the EPP and the French copying/culture/creative industries that he withdrew both. Now the committee vote, scheduled for 11 July, isn’t likely to have progressive elements. Important for us is the amendment on the unwaiveable performers’ right, to which we managed to include an exception for non-exclusive public licenses (i.e.performers can waive it in the case of free licenses).
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Audo-Visual Media Services Directive: The EU is trying to consider which rules that apply to TV and cable transmission should apply to video on demand and video sharing platforms. The issue for us: If Wikimedia Commons falls under the definition of the latter, which is still unclear, we might have to deal with a lot of extra rules. In a very controversial vote, the Culture Committee has decided to negotiate with the Council before the European Parliament adopts its final position. [8] This means the so-called trialogue [9]will be based on non-final texts, which has the effect that following the progress and the wordings of the definition close to impossible.
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Don’t forget the Database Directive Consultation! [10] The European Commission will decide in the following months which way to go. The two opposing visions are a new exclusive economic right for data owners or scrapping the sui generis database right. While it probably makes little sense to have several Wikimedia organisations answer in parallel, contributions from users and other civil society groups are more than welcome!
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[1]https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-June/001643.html
[2]http://copybuzz.com/copyright/imco-vote-copyright-dsm-crying/
[4]http://www.eppgroup.eu/news/Axel-Voss-appointed-new-Rapporteur-for-Copyright-Directive
[5]https://twitter.com/AxelVossMdEP/status/875290309269258240
[6]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/juri/members.html#
[7]http://www.wikimedia.it/associazione-italiana-biblioteche-wikimedia-italia-insieme-pubblico-dominio/
[8]https://edri.org/avmsd-the-legislation-without-friends-directive/
[9]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trialogue
[10]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Database_Directive_Consultation