Dear all,
Many of you have helped translating and sending out our position paper on the EU copyright reform addressed to the Council (i.e. the national governments). [1] Thank you so, so much for that! We have gotten in touch with 16 Member States' governments in their national language and are expecting at least three more countries to be covered before this month ends. This an excellent geographic spread. We are getting close to the number of language versions and national campaigns organisations like the WWF, Amnesty International and Greenpeace achieve. In order to make sure our voice doesn't get lost in the national capitals, we will have to follow up in each of these countries by requesting a (in some cases second) meeting with the copyright authorities and localising our asks. This will be the main focus of the upcoming Big Fat Brussels Meeting. [2]
In the meanwhile, the European Parliament has also started working on the reform. The rapporteurs in the four responsible committees (Legal Affairs, Internal Market, Industry & Research, Culture) have published their draft reports (i.e. the changes they are proposing). I have re-mixed and slightly updated the position paper, so it makes sense if given to MEPs in the coming months. [3] The most meaningful change is that we can now realistically support a user-generated content exception. This was an absolute non-starter a few months ago, but is suddenly being seriously considered in at least two committees. I would be grateful for your comments and edits to the new text this week.