Just to add that obviously as the UK chapter we have also been tracking the progress of the Online Safety Bill and have responded to the various past consultations as well as liaised with the WMF and allies such as Creative Commons and Open Rights Group on key angles. Currently planning some joint advocacy (with UK partners) around the dilution of the media literacy aspects of the Bill. Happy to pick up on this again next week (it's late on Friday night here!)
Best Lucy
On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 12:35, publicpolicy-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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- Re: EU Policy Monitoring Report: June 2022 (Rita Jonusaite)
Message: 1 Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2022 13:34:34 +0200 From: Rita Jonusaite rj@disinfo.eu Subject: [Publicpolicy] Re: EU Policy Monitoring Report: June 2022 To: Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Kyle Taylor kyle@fairvote.uk, Matthew Gallagher matt@fairvote.uk Message-ID: <CA+A7O8g-gvGgt9=dLUBLSb7CJ_tCVtGi+v5YRkb4= XLk+NDVmA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000efbf3105e2bcc5e6"
Hey all,
If you have not seen re OSB in the UK, the Fair Vote UK is circulatring a Global letter to the UK Government on the loopholes in the UK's Online Safety Bill that they would like other organisations to sign. The joint letter is nearing 50 signatures already including Accountable Tech, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Global Witness and Global Project Against Hate and Extremism etc. I am sharing with you their original message below and adding Matt and Kyle who are leading the campaign in Cc if you have any questions directly.
*Deadline is COB Friday (but they can go as late as Monday to my understanding)!*
Best,
Rita *--ORIGINAL ASK--*
I'm Matt of Fair Vote UK, and I'm leading within our organisation on an international coalition campaign to voice global opposition to the loopholes currently written into the UK's Online Safety Bill.
*I'm writing to ask for your organisation's signature on a global letter < https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyCCU9ms7AlMdieIl4zEGlBHf7n8snCttyQf4pBp...
*to the UK Government,* highlighting the danger posed by this bill's exemptions, exceptions and exclusions – which fundamentally undermine its purpose of making the internet safer. The risks are international in scope as these loopholes could effectively allow for harmful content and disinformation to be "laundered" in the UK. Please sign if possible!
*Overview of the Letter: *
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, aims to make the UK “the safest place in the world to go online”. Unfortunately, it falls far short of that objective in its current form – to the extent that it could actually make adults and children *less safe * online*. *
The bill contains glaring loopholes that could allow some of the actors most responsible for harm online to avoid oversight and regulation. Media entities are exempt based on incredibly lenient criteria which would allow nefarious actors to launder harmful content. The democratic importance exemption would let politicians' online speech stay up regardless of its vast reach and potential to cause harm. Paid ads are left in scope despite their demonstrable role in spreading disinformation and hate. All of this serves to create a two-tiered system in which some of the most harmful actors are given precedence, prioritising their freedom of speech over the regular user. We’re demanding online regulation that protects all of our human rights *equally. *These loopholes have severe implications not just for the UK, but for the global community as well. If this new regime does not address them, the UK could become the world’s “disinformation laundromat”.
*We’re urging orgs and individuals from anywhere in the world concerned with democracy, children’s safety, disinformation, public health, climate change or other related causes to sign this letter to the UK Government < https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyCCU9ms7AlMdieIl4zEGlBHf7n8snCttyQf4pBp...
calling on them to close the loopholes and build a more robust human rights framework that applies equally. *In addition to this letter, we’re kicking off a public advocacy campaign on July 4th with significant digital spend behind it to further raise awareness about the OSB’s dangerous loopholes.
*You can sign on by adding your name in the format shown at the bottom of the document. *
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Many thanks,
Matt
*P.S. Please feel free to forward this on to additional orgs and individuals you think would consider signing with matt@fairvote.uk matt@fairvote.uk cc'ed. Thank you! *
On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 13:05, Eric Luth eric.luth@wikimedia.se wrote:
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the summary, Dimi. Interesting read on the Digital Commons, happy to see that the Swedish government also supported.
On Copyright reform, the Swedish government has sent its proposal on copyright reform to the council on legislation, which is the last step before it goes to parliament. We are currently analyzing the proposal,
and
working with MPs to improve the worst parts and safeguard the best.
Best *Eric Luth* Projektledare engagemang och påverkan | Project Manager, Involvement and Advocacy Wikimedia Sverige eric.luth@wikimedia.se +46 (0) 765 55 50 95
Stöd fri kunskap, bli medlem i Wikimedia Sverige. Läs mer på blimedlem.wikimedia.se
Den tors 30 juni 2022 kl 17:58 skrev Jan Gerlach <jgerlach@wikimedia.org :
Many thanks for another great update, Dimi!
Alex, the Foundation's Global Advocacy team is tracking the UK Online Safety Bill and we have published our first impressions on the text here <
https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/early-impressions-of-the-uk-online-safet...
.
We're in touch with various allies of our movement in the UK and plan to further engage on the bill when appropriate.
Thanks for your interest! Jan
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:32 AM Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Demi and list?
Is anyone following the UK law at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-bill-supporting-doc...
Curious if we are watching that in connection with other
Disinfo/Content
moderation laws.
Cheers,
Alex
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 12:16 PM Dimi Dimitrov dimi@wikimedia.be wrote:
The French government has vowed to invest money in the commons. Rub your eyes, read it again and then continue reading below.
====================
DIGITAL COMMONS
====================
It still surprises us to be able to put “French government” and “investment in the digital commons” together, but here we go: The
French
Presidency of the Council of the EU came up with a plan how the old continent can compete with dominant US tech companies. The plan is to
have
more “digital commons”, which can be anything open source, including software, code libraries, tools, repositories. The basic thinking is
that
if fundamental tools and libraries are accessible to all players,
this will
level the playing field. [1]
—
19 EU Member Countries and the Commission presented the idea of
digital
commons at the Digital Assembly in Toulouse. They acknowledge that
there
are many instances of working digital commons, but also point out that oftentimes projects lack long-term, structural support. The plan
envisages
financial help and a “one-stop-shop” to find government support. [2]
—
Funds in the ballpark of tens of millions of euros are already
pledged,
but the concrete details are still in the making. Thanks to the
leadership
of Wikimédia France, our movement and a group of partners (Europeana, Communia, OpenStreetMap) are part of this conversation from the
start. We
especially want to show that governments can often help by removing
legal
and administrative obstacles, not just by peddling money. [3]
======
CSAM
======
We wrote about the proposal of the Commission to regulate the online moderation of “Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)” in last month’s
report
[4]. While it is a very important issue to tackle, we do have great concerns with parts of the text, especially provisions that would
allow
scanning all online chats on a given platform. We are still analysing
how
exactly, if at all, this would impact Wikimedia projects. In the
meantime,
we can offer a short briefing. [5]
—
On the legislative side, the start feels very bumpy: The European Parliament probably won’t refer the file to a committee until
September or
October, while ample criticism is pouring in, including from the
German
government. [6]
=========
Net Neutrality
=========
The European Commission plans to push out a new legislative proposal after the summer that is expected to include provisions forcing some service providers to pay for data traffic (think Facebook and Netflix paying Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica). While this is a classic
example of
a lobbying battle between very large telecommunications companies and
very
large tech companies, it also would violate some basic principles of
net
neutrality. A group of civil society organisations, led by EDRi, sent
a
letter to the relevant Commissioners outlining the main issues. [7]
—
On the bright side, BEREC, the EU’s body of telecoms regulators, has updated its net neutrality guidelines to close some loopholes and effectively ban zero rating of data for some applications. [8]
=============
Disinformation
=============
The European Commission has presented an updated Code of Practice on Disinformation. [9] Wikimedia had not signed up the original Code,
because
we deemed it was mainly focused on “follow the money”, hence where disinformation is spread through advertising and paid reach. The
version
will allow researchers more access to data of large platforms and
again
focus on advertising.
—
The Code of Practice is a voluntary initiative for online platforms, but taking part in it essentially removes some obligations under the
newly
created Digital Services Act.
=============
Italian Dramas
=============
The Italian government published new draft guidelines about public
data
(open government) and opened a consultation. [10] They basically
state that
open government and open data provisions don’t apply to institutions related to culture, which is a very Italian thing. We wonder if this
is in
line with the Public Sector Information Directive and will
investigate with
Wikimedia Italia, which are also participating in the consultation.
—
The Italian government has been on a roll. It also published the draft national digitisation plan. It would establish an administrative fee
for
the commercial use of all public domain digitisations of cultural institutions. It essentially outlaws CC0 as a relevant license for
most
GLAMs in the country and circumvents the public domain safeguard
enshrined
in the latest copyright directive. There was a public consultation
until 15
June which Wikimedia Italy and partners participated in. Expect blog
posts
on Diff and on wikimedia.brussels soon.
=============
Polish & Czech Copyright Reforms
=============
The Czech copyright reform is in parliament. We have a Czech language copy. [11] The Polish government published its proposal, which will
go to
parliament very soon. We have a rough English translation. [12] If you consider yourself a copyright geek, enjoy reading them. If you want
to help
our national partners advocating on this, get in touch! :)
====
END
====
[1]https://twitter.com/AmbNum/status/1540657835427741699
[2]
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/politique-etrangere-de-la-france/diplomati...
[3]
https://www.wikimedia.fr/pour-un-developpement-des-communs-numeriques-a-lech...
[4]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org...
[5]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dD5AF8-uk2LFG7mu62AK7S80H4CrF1ftV7lheE6Z...
[6]
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/27/germany-says-hell-no-to-eu-proposal-to-o...
[7]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Q4d13xqr5UsPkoSMw7d_3YL-hZnq4cL/view?usp=s...
[8]https://fossbytes.com/europe-bans-zero-rating-internet-offers/
[9]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_3664
[10]
https://www.agid.gov.it/it/agenzia/stampa-e-comunicazione/notizie/2022/06/16...
.
[11]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J7dvl4yEk6ScWIIypdI6Uq_7273T7G5i/edit?us...
[12]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0ArQkgpZkQQcdpsidS_Yc-bS5liQsl5/view?usp=s...
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