Hi everyone,
I've been invited to represent Wikimedia at a round-table of interested parties with the UK Government on Wednesday, to offer thoughts on the current EU consultations on Freedom of Panorama, and on a proposed new EU "neighbouring right" for publishers (similar to the EU broadcasters' right).
Dimi has already put up some good thoughts on the FoP consultation questions, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/FoP_Consultation
but it would be useful to pull together talking points on the proposed Publishers' Right.
As Dimi flagged up in his report recently, the publishers' pitch for this can be found at http://www.publishersright.eu/
while the questions in the EU consultation can be found at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Copyright?surveylanguage=E... & click on the button "The role of publishers in the copyright value chain"
There is a clear attempted grab buried in the consultation, under question 4: proposing that publishers should have the ability "to receive compensation for uses made under an exception"
which can be contrasted with the exceptions under 5(3) of the InfoSoc directive which do *not* require compensation.
But apart from this, it would be useful to discuss WM's take on the issues that the Publishers' Right is being canvassed for to supposedly address, from the standpoint of WMF as a publisher, that reserves its recourse to copyright to defend the terms on which our material is made available.
Questions:
* Is this something (going after some entity for copyright infringement) that we have in fact ever done ?
(Either for text or images)
* Would WMF have standing to initiate such a suit, or (if WMF only has a nonexclusive license to the material on WP pages) would such a suit have to be initiated by the content creator ?
* When eg the GPL has been defended in Europe, is that typically only possible because there has been a copyright transfer agreement required to the project from contributors ?
* Is there therefore at least some case for what the publishers are asking for ?
Counter-issues:
* Do such neighbouring rights threaten to upset copyleft ecosystems, by locking up PD content and/or copyleft content as part of a publication protected as a whole ?
* What sort of damages would publishers be able to seek? What 'value' would these be computed on, outwith the value of the copyrights?
* Implications for text & data mining, summarisation, etc. "Right to read is the right to mine".
More thoughts ?
-- James.
Hi James:
I haven't given too much about the potential negative impact of ancillary copyright specifically in relation to Wikimedia projects, but there are major negative consequences for users, and businesses too.
Spain and Germany experimented with ancillary copyrights for press publishers, and both seem to have failed miserably [1]. The Spanish law ended in Google News shuttering its operation there because it would have been too costly to have to pay license fees to news publishers for snippets/links provided through their aggregation service. And surely this harmed users, who would then have a harder time finding the news and information they were looking for. Simultaneously, the publishers were shooting themselves in the foot because they eventually realized that Google News (and possibly other aggregators) was sending a huge amount of traffic their way (duh). But without it, traffic to the publishers' content went down. The same thing happened in Germany, except the German publishers saw what had happened in Spain and literally gave Google a free license to their content [2].
And it's not just the big news aggregators that are affected. Check out this story about a small business that curated links and news about alzheimer's disease that had to remodel their entire business because of the ancillary copyright law [3].
Even if the ancillary copyright for press publishers gets adopted, the benefits to authors are not at all clear. On the topic of remuneration: there's no evidence showing any connection between ancillary copyright for press publishers and increased income for authors, i.e. publishers have no incentive to redistribute any potential revenue back to authors. This is probably not shocking. And under this scheme, everyday users and consumers of news and articles would potentially face more constraints in quoting, linking to, aggregating, or otherwise using works protected by a new ancillary right for press publishers.
I hope this helps a bit! timothy
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study-spains-google-t...
[2] http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google...
[3] http://newsletterbreeze.com/european-copyright-reform-legislation
Other relevant links: http://ancillarycopyright.eu/ http://www.communia-association.org/
On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:31 PM, James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk wrote:
Hi everyone,
I've been invited to represent Wikimedia at a round-table of interested parties with the UK Government on Wednesday, to offer thoughts on the current EU consultations on Freedom of Panorama, and on a proposed new EU "neighbouring right" for publishers (similar to the EU broadcasters' right).
Dimi has already put up some good thoughts on the FoP consultation questions, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/FoP_Consultation
but it would be useful to pull together talking points on the proposed Publishers' Right.
As Dimi flagged up in his report recently, the publishers' pitch for this can be found at http://www.publishersright.eu/
while the questions in the EU consultation can be found at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Copyright?surveylanguage=E... & click on the button "The role of publishers in the copyright value chain"
There is a clear attempted grab buried in the consultation, under question 4: proposing that publishers should have the ability "to receive compensation for uses made under an exception"
which can be contrasted with the exceptions under 5(3) of the InfoSoc directive which do *not* require compensation.
But apart from this, it would be useful to discuss WM's take on the issues that the Publishers' Right is being canvassed for to supposedly address, from the standpoint of WMF as a publisher, that reserves its recourse to copyright to defend the terms on which our material is made available.
Questions:
- Is this something (going after some entity for copyright infringement)
that we have in fact ever done ?
(Either for text or images)
- Would WMF have standing to initiate such a suit, or (if WMF only has a
nonexclusive license to the material on WP pages) would such a suit have to be initiated by the content creator ?
- When eg the GPL has been defended in Europe, is that typically only
possible because there has been a copyright transfer agreement required to the project from contributors ?
- Is there therefore at least some case for what the publishers are asking
for ?
Counter-issues:
- Do such neighbouring rights threaten to upset copyleft ecosystems, by
locking up PD content and/or copyleft content as part of a publication protected as a whole ?
- What sort of damages would publishers be able to seek? What 'value'
would these be computed on, outwith the value of the copyrights?
- Implications for text & data mining, summarisation, etc. "Right to read
is the right to mine".
More thoughts ?
-- James.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Hi James,
A few answers to the questions.
1. As far as I'm aware, WMF has not gone after anyone for copyright infringement. I can't 100% rule out that it might have happened many years ago, but I don't think we ever have.
2. The content creator or creators have the best standing for a lawsuit because they're the copyright owners. As far as standing for WMF goes, it's a pretty complex question. I think there could be some theories of standing that might allow WMF to sue on behalf of one or more users to enforce a copyright, but I can't say for sure if any of them would hold up in court.
3. Not sure what circumstances have led to GPL or similar licenses coming up for litigation. It's equally possible that an individual content creator chose to sue or was sued in the context of the GPL, it just depends on the resources involved.
4. I don't see the connection between organizational standing and the value of a publisher's right. If there were some hypothetical really egregious case of Wikimedia project licenses being infringed and WMF wanted to sue, there's a possibility of funding a suit by a group of users even if we couldn't get associational standing. A separate publisher's right seems to me to potentially pit authors and publishers against each other and allow publishers to demand money even when the author is okay with dedicating their work or a use of it to the public.
Counter issues
1. Licensed content is unlikely to be affected since it is published with the license, it would seem to me that the same license would apply to the published copy. Though it's possible if the law were poorly worded, it could create a right outside of the existing regime and that wouldn't be covered by existing CC licenses and would require an update as a result.
I am much more worried about PD content, which could potentially become mired in confusion if specific publications of it were separately copyrighted even though the underlying content is free for the public.
2. My best guess at damages would be some calculation of lost profits. That is, the publisher would say "if i had the exclusive right to sell this, I would have made X dollars, but that didn't happen because the person I'm suing made all these copies without permission, so they should pay me X."
3. Text and data mining probably wouldn't be affected, or at least would be no more affected than they are under the existing copyright regime.
On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:31 PM, James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk wrote:
Hi everyone,
I've been invited to represent Wikimedia at a round-table of interested parties with the UK Government on Wednesday, to offer thoughts on the current EU consultations on Freedom of Panorama, and on a proposed new EU "neighbouring right" for publishers (similar to the EU broadcasters' right).
Dimi has already put up some good thoughts on the FoP consultation questions, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/FoP_Consultation
but it would be useful to pull together talking points on the proposed Publishers' Right.
As Dimi flagged up in his report recently, the publishers' pitch for this can be found at http://www.publishersright.eu/
while the questions in the EU consultation can be found at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Copyright?surveylanguage=E... & click on the button "The role of publishers in the copyright value chain"
There is a clear attempted grab buried in the consultation, under question 4: proposing that publishers should have the ability "to receive compensation for uses made under an exception"
which can be contrasted with the exceptions under 5(3) of the InfoSoc directive which do *not* require compensation.
But apart from this, it would be useful to discuss WM's take on the issues that the Publishers' Right is being canvassed for to supposedly address, from the standpoint of WMF as a publisher, that reserves its recourse to copyright to defend the terms on which our material is made available.
Questions:
- Is this something (going after some entity for copyright infringement)
that we have in fact ever done ?
(Either for text or images)
- Would WMF have standing to initiate such a suit, or (if WMF only has a
nonexclusive license to the material on WP pages) would such a suit have to be initiated by the content creator ?
- When eg the GPL has been defended in Europe, is that typically only
possible because there has been a copyright transfer agreement required to the project from contributors ?
- Is there therefore at least some case for what the publishers are asking
for ?
Counter-issues:
- Do such neighbouring rights threaten to upset copyleft ecosystems, by
locking up PD content and/or copyleft content as part of a publication protected as a whole ?
- What sort of damages would publishers be able to seek? What 'value'
would these be computed on, outwith the value of the copyrights?
- Implications for text & data mining, summarisation, etc. "Right to read
is the right to mine".
More thoughts ?
-- James.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Hi list,
Another worry surrounding ancillary copyright issue has been voiced by Wikimedia Deutschland a few years ago [1] before Germany introduced the law. The focus was that Wikipedia articles regularly include links and parts of newspaper articles or press releases. It seems to be quite unclear to what extent they fall under the citation exception and where the new ancillary copyright takes over.
Dimi
[1]https://wikimedia.de/wiki/Pressemitteilungen/PM_6_12_LSR
2016-04-20 3:00 GMT+02:00 Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org:
Hi James,
A few answers to the questions.
- As far as I'm aware, WMF has not gone after anyone for copyright
infringement. I can't 100% rule out that it might have happened many years ago, but I don't think we ever have.
- The content creator or creators have the best standing for a lawsuit
because they're the copyright owners. As far as standing for WMF goes, it's a pretty complex question. I think there could be some theories of standing that might allow WMF to sue on behalf of one or more users to enforce a copyright, but I can't say for sure if any of them would hold up in court.
- Not sure what circumstances have led to GPL or similar licenses coming
up for litigation. It's equally possible that an individual content creator chose to sue or was sued in the context of the GPL, it just depends on the resources involved.
- I don't see the connection between organizational standing and the
value of a publisher's right. If there were some hypothetical really egregious case of Wikimedia project licenses being infringed and WMF wanted to sue, there's a possibility of funding a suit by a group of users even if we couldn't get associational standing. A separate publisher's right seems to me to potentially pit authors and publishers against each other and allow publishers to demand money even when the author is okay with dedicating their work or a use of it to the public.
Counter issues
- Licensed content is unlikely to be affected since it is published with
the license, it would seem to me that the same license would apply to the published copy. Though it's possible if the law were poorly worded, it could create a right outside of the existing regime and that wouldn't be covered by existing CC licenses and would require an update as a result.
I am much more worried about PD content, which could potentially become mired in confusion if specific publications of it were separately copyrighted even though the underlying content is free for the public.
- My best guess at damages would be some calculation of lost profits.
That is, the publisher would say "if i had the exclusive right to sell this, I would have made X dollars, but that didn't happen because the person I'm suing made all these copies without permission, so they should pay me X."
- Text and data mining probably wouldn't be affected, or at least would
be no more affected than they are under the existing copyright regime.
On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:31 PM, James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk wrote:
Hi everyone,
I've been invited to represent Wikimedia at a round-table of interested parties with the UK Government on Wednesday, to offer thoughts on the current EU consultations on Freedom of Panorama, and on a proposed new EU "neighbouring right" for publishers (similar to the EU broadcasters' right).
Dimi has already put up some good thoughts on the FoP consultation questions, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/FoP_Consultation
but it would be useful to pull together talking points on the proposed Publishers' Right.
As Dimi flagged up in his report recently, the publishers' pitch for this can be found at http://www.publishersright.eu/
while the questions in the EU consultation can be found at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Copyright?surveylanguage=E... & click on the button "The role of publishers in the copyright value chain"
There is a clear attempted grab buried in the consultation, under question 4: proposing that publishers should have the ability "to receive compensation for uses made under an exception"
which can be contrasted with the exceptions under 5(3) of the InfoSoc directive which do *not* require compensation.
But apart from this, it would be useful to discuss WM's take on the issues that the Publishers' Right is being canvassed for to supposedly address, from the standpoint of WMF as a publisher, that reserves its recourse to copyright to defend the terms on which our material is made available.
Questions:
- Is this something (going after some entity for copyright infringement)
that we have in fact ever done ?
(Either for text or images)
- Would WMF have standing to initiate such a suit, or (if WMF only has a
nonexclusive license to the material on WP pages) would such a suit have to be initiated by the content creator ?
- When eg the GPL has been defended in Europe, is that typically only
possible because there has been a copyright transfer agreement required to the project from contributors ?
- Is there therefore at least some case for what the publishers are
asking for ?
Counter-issues:
- Do such neighbouring rights threaten to upset copyleft ecosystems, by
locking up PD content and/or copyleft content as part of a publication protected as a whole ?
- What sort of damages would publishers be able to seek? What 'value'
would these be computed on, outwith the value of the copyrights?
- Implications for text & data mining, summarisation, etc. "Right to
read is the right to mine".
More thoughts ?
-- James.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
hi all,
re the old WMDE press release:
a lot depends on how such a law is drafted. In Germany, the press publishers right is clearly aiming at search engines, or rather, at one particular search engine with a capital G. Everybody not providing snippets in the course of general web search or similar services is - in theory - not affected at all. However, in the parliamentary process the wording was made even more twisted and unclear, so that it is basically "FUD by law".
I don't know enough about WM's systems to assess whether it's possible that snippets from press publications could end up in any wiki search results.
Best John
2016-04-21 15:25 GMT+02:00 Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov < dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov@gmail.com>:
Hi list,
Another worry surrounding ancillary copyright issue has been voiced by Wikimedia Deutschland a few years ago [1] before Germany introduced the law. The focus was that Wikipedia articles regularly include links and parts of newspaper articles or press releases. It seems to be quite unclear to what extent they fall under the citation exception and where the new ancillary copyright takes over.
Dimi
[1]https://wikimedia.de/wiki/Pressemitteilungen/PM_6_12_LSR
2016-04-20 3:00 GMT+02:00 Jacob Rogers jrogers@wikimedia.org:
Hi James,
A few answers to the questions.
- As far as I'm aware, WMF has not gone after anyone for copyright
infringement. I can't 100% rule out that it might have happened many years ago, but I don't think we ever have.
- The content creator or creators have the best standing for a lawsuit
because they're the copyright owners. As far as standing for WMF goes, it's a pretty complex question. I think there could be some theories of standing that might allow WMF to sue on behalf of one or more users to enforce a copyright, but I can't say for sure if any of them would hold up in court.
- Not sure what circumstances have led to GPL or similar licenses coming
up for litigation. It's equally possible that an individual content creator chose to sue or was sued in the context of the GPL, it just depends on the resources involved.
- I don't see the connection between organizational standing and the
value of a publisher's right. If there were some hypothetical really egregious case of Wikimedia project licenses being infringed and WMF wanted to sue, there's a possibility of funding a suit by a group of users even if we couldn't get associational standing. A separate publisher's right seems to me to potentially pit authors and publishers against each other and allow publishers to demand money even when the author is okay with dedicating their work or a use of it to the public.
Counter issues
- Licensed content is unlikely to be affected since it is published with
the license, it would seem to me that the same license would apply to the published copy. Though it's possible if the law were poorly worded, it could create a right outside of the existing regime and that wouldn't be covered by existing CC licenses and would require an update as a result.
I am much more worried about PD content, which could potentially become mired in confusion if specific publications of it were separately copyrighted even though the underlying content is free for the public.
- My best guess at damages would be some calculation of lost profits.
That is, the publisher would say "if i had the exclusive right to sell this, I would have made X dollars, but that didn't happen because the person I'm suing made all these copies without permission, so they should pay me X."
- Text and data mining probably wouldn't be affected, or at least would
be no more affected than they are under the existing copyright regime.
On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 4:31 PM, James Heald j.heald@ucl.ac.uk wrote:
Hi everyone,
I've been invited to represent Wikimedia at a round-table of interested parties with the UK Government on Wednesday, to offer thoughts on the current EU consultations on Freedom of Panorama, and on a proposed new EU "neighbouring right" for publishers (similar to the EU broadcasters' right).
Dimi has already put up some good thoughts on the FoP consultation questions, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/FoP_Consultation
but it would be useful to pull together talking points on the proposed Publishers' Right.
As Dimi flagged up in his report recently, the publishers' pitch for this can be found at http://www.publishersright.eu/
while the questions in the EU consultation can be found at:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Consultation_Copyright?surveylanguage=E... & click on the button "The role of publishers in the copyright value chain"
There is a clear attempted grab buried in the consultation, under question 4: proposing that publishers should have the ability "to receive compensation for uses made under an exception"
which can be contrasted with the exceptions under 5(3) of the InfoSoc directive which do *not* require compensation.
But apart from this, it would be useful to discuss WM's take on the issues that the Publishers' Right is being canvassed for to supposedly address, from the standpoint of WMF as a publisher, that reserves its recourse to copyright to defend the terms on which our material is made available.
Questions:
- Is this something (going after some entity for copyright infringement)
that we have in fact ever done ?
(Either for text or images)
- Would WMF have standing to initiate such a suit, or (if WMF only has a
nonexclusive license to the material on WP pages) would such a suit have to be initiated by the content creator ?
- When eg the GPL has been defended in Europe, is that typically only
possible because there has been a copyright transfer agreement required to the project from contributors ?
- Is there therefore at least some case for what the publishers are
asking for ?
Counter-issues:
- Do such neighbouring rights threaten to upset copyleft ecosystems, by
locking up PD content and/or copyleft content as part of a publication protected as a whole ?
- What sort of damages would publishers be able to seek? What 'value'
would these be computed on, outwith the value of the copyrights?
- Implications for text & data mining, summarisation, etc. "Right to
read is the right to mine".
More thoughts ?
-- James.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
--
Jacob Rogers Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation
NOTICE: This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org