On Wed, 23 Mar 2016, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov wrote:
Hi everyone,
The European Commission's consultation on the enforcement of intellectual
property rights is due on 15 April. [1] The main goal for us here will be
to avoid increasing a platform’s responsibility to monitor and remove UCG.
We are currently starting to work on our responses [2], which will be in
line with the answers submitted to the related "Platforms Consultation".
One question is, however, which category Wikimedia fits in. The Commission
wants everyone to chose one of the following roles applying to them:
“citizens, consumers and civil society”, "rightsholder", "member of
judiciary or lawyer", “intermediary” or "public authority". Depending on
the hat you pick you get a slightly different set of questions. It seems
apparent that we could fit into at least two or even three of the these.
We had a similar puzzle last time and solved it by having the FKAGEU
submitting [3] as civil society and the WMF sending in a registered letter
emphasising the importance of intermediary protection. Such an approach is
also possible this time around, but I wanted to check back with the group
on what your thoughts are. Having several movement entities playing
different roles might actually be an advantage here.
One thing maybe somebody (us?) should complain, that this is a pretty
strange process. I think we should split roles - chapters can
join the consultation as well I believe. Except for "public
authority" the chapters or the editors could actually submit in all
the categories.
It would be also good to post all the questions online and compare
them - to stop this kind of "divide et impera" approach.
Marcin Cieślak
saper@plwiki