It is what we have decided to call “DSA month” here in Brussels and your
monitoring report will do a deep dive of it. A total of 8 (in words: eight)
committees are working on it and there are literally thousands of
amendments to plow through. On the Council side the Portuguese Presidency
tried to solve one issue of ours before it hands it over to Slovenia. Enjoy
the read!
Anna & Dimi
This and previous reports on Meta-Wiki:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor
======
Digital Services Act
---
Council: As the Portuguese Presidency steps down and Slovenia takes over
[1], there is still no “general approach”, meaning Member States still
haven’t agreed on a common negotiating position vis-à-vis the European
Parliament. France is pushing for stricter liability (see French Republican
Values Bill below) and would love to see hard deadlines for platforms’
reactions to notices. In the other corner Sweden, Ireland and Finland have
released a joint paper [2] calling for a higher threshold for content
removal. They argue that takedown rules should apply only to “clearly
illegal” content as opposed to “apparently illegal” content and make a
freedom of expression argument.
---
Council Compromises: One thing the Portuguese Presidency did rather well
was to propose new wording of the “actual knowledge” in Article 14.3.
Online platforms are obligated to act upon obtaining “actual knowledge” of
illegal content. However, the Commission proposal could have meant that
almost any notice we receive is considered to be “actual knowledge”. Most
notices we receive are not about illegal content. The proposed compromise
adds that it applies only if “services can identify the illegality of the
content in question”, [3] which is much better.
---
Parliament - IMCO: In the lead Internal Market and Consumer Affairs
committee (IMCO) the rapporteur Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) presented her
draft report. [4] While she focuses mainly on consumer protection and
physical goods and services, she presented a few worrying ideas. Ms.
Schaldemose proposes that accounts of politicians should be harder to
block. She also proposes a 24 hour deadline for platforms to remove illegal
content that “can seriously harm public policy (?!?), public security or
public health” and a seven days deadline for all other cases. Other MEPs
have until the end of today to submit their amendments. We are working with
several groups on amendments to clearly distinguish between service
provider rules and rules created up and enforced by editing communities. We
are also raising attention to the “actual knowledge” issue, as we did with
Council.
---
Parliament - other committees: A total of seven other committees are
working on issuing opinions on the DSA, some of which the lead committee
will have to take into account. There is a flurry of literally thousands of
amendments in all directions. Across the board French lawmakers are pushing
for stricter liability and hard content removal deadlines, in sync with
their national government. Perhaps one interesting suggestion was made in
the Industry, Trade and Research committee (ITRE). A group of EPP lawmakers
there tabled amendment 225 [5], which would exclude not-for-profit
providers of scientific and educational repositories from the act. This
would probably be the safest way to keep Wikipedia and Commons as they are.
We are going to do a deeper, legal analysis of what it means, but we
welcome the thoughtful proposal by these MEPs.
======
French Republican Values Bill
---
France, in an attempt to create facts and push its views onto the DSA is
debating a “Republican Values” Bill, which is incorrectly summarized as a
"social networks" law, as it has a much larger scope of application and
Wikipedia is targeted. It basically creates obligations to quickly delete
content that is considered illegal (But by whom?!?).
---
WMFR: Needless to say that Wikimédia France is not amused and tabled some
amendments in the Assemblée nationale as it seems inappropriate to regulate
social networks and not-for-profit educational sites in the same way. They
also published a somewhat angry blog post. [6]
---
European Commission: Another party that is not amused is the European
Commission itself. They just love it when Member States start creating
national laws while they are trying to establish EU-wide rules to avoid
fragmentation. Member States have the obligation to notify the Commission
when they are working on national implementation of EU law, something
France did for a second time last week. [7] Stakeholders have the
opportunity to submit comments on these notifications to the European
Commission. Something that Wikimédia France did for a second time this
week. [8]
======
Digital Markets Act
---
The DSA’s weird sibling, DMA, has been taken on at the IMCO Committee.
Rapporteur MEP Andreas Schwab (EPP, DE) proposes that the special rules for
gatekeepers are limited to really wealthy and popular platforms, targeting
them effectively at GAFAM. The leak surfacing a few days before the
report’s publication showed a bold attempt to create a procedure for
tailor-made remedies in case gatekeepers don’t behave well that included
measures ranging from mandating interoperability with other services to
breaking up culprit services. Disappointingly, the Rapporteur got shy and
the idea bordering on introducing a new competition tool, was removed from
the official version of the report. We shared our feedback with the MEPs
sitting at IMCO as the deadline for tabling amendments passes on July 1st.
======
Data Act
---
Before you ask: No this is not the Data Governance Act, neither the AI
Regulation. Those are still going on and we will get back to them next
month. The European Commission is toying with the idea of proposing yet
another law to force companies share more sectoral data among each other.
The details are murky, as we are in the very beginning of the process.
There’s a roadmap which is currently open for feedback. [10] Companies like
Microsoft, IBM and associations like the CCIA say they hate the idea. As
this procedure officially also covers the potential review of the Database
Directive, we wrote that we would like the sui generis database right to go
away, as there is not proof that it has lead to more investment in
databases in the EU, while there is evidence that the EU is lagging behind
other regions in data sharing (something the sui generis right doesn’t make
easier).
======
wikimedia.brussels
---
In June we blogged about:
-
Takedown Notices and Community Content Moderation
<https://wikimedia.brussels/takedown-notices-and-community-content-moderation-wikimedias-latest-transparency-report/>:
Wikimedia’s Latest Transparency Report - Dimi takes us through our content
moderation practices and results presented in the report
-
COMMUNIA, the voice for public domain, celebrates 10. anniversary
<https://wikimedia.brussels/communia-the-voice-for-public-domain-celebrates-10-anniversary/>
- Anna explains the role COMMUNIA Association has played in protecting
users’ rights in access to knowledge - and in keeping us all positive and
hopeful amongst the legislative turmoil
-
Wikimedia France: new anti-terrorist bill exposes users to mass
surveillance
<https://wikimedia.brussels/wikimedia-france-new-anti-terrorist-bill-exposes-users-to-mass-surveillance/>
- Naphsica provides insight into the new law proposal that would raise red
flags in the EU if it were proposed anywhere else but France
======
END
======
[1]https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/presidency-council-eu/
[2]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a-zdxR9mWfUgkG-u9hkMYuY-xxAXrD8W/view?usp=…
[3]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HG8U6hHjNAmHY50iwWFMc70j4EUfobgZ/view?usp=…
[4]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/IMCO-PR-693594_EN.html
[5]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/ITRE-AM-693906_EN.pdf
[6]
https://www.wikimedia.fr/loi-separatisme-que-vient-faire-wikipedia-dans-cet…
[7]
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/tris/en/search/?trisaction=sear…
[8]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z88gqC7Mu7FBWq0mr2_pZEX5Sewqys9D/view?usp=…
[9]https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/IMCO-PR-692792_EN.pdf
[10]
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/1…