New subject: EU Policy Monitoring Report - May

1 Jun 2017

Hi Dimi,
I'd like to repeat my note regarding the GRUR meeting on the single market directive
on June 12 in Brussels and my suggestion to attend if possible at all.
There you might be able to reach the people who can make it possible to exclude wikipedia
from the upload filter requirements. 
This would not be the big win liability exemption for all user generated content but at
least non-profit platforms could and must be exempt.
In my talks every single person assured me that they do not intend to cover wikipedia with
the regulation. So it should be possible to exclude non-profits.
Rgds
Henning 
-------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------Von: Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov
&lt;dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov(a)gmail.com&gt; Datum: 01.06.17  11:38  (GMT+01:00) An:
Publicpolicy Group for Wikimedia &lt;publicpolicy(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Betreff:
[Publicpolicy] EU Policy Monitoring Report - May 
tl;drAn all important Internal Market Committee (IMCO) vote on copyright is next week. As
IMCO has joint responsibility on this file, their final wording on the “upload filtering”
article is crucial. {{ACTION REQUIRED}} This and past reports:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor ===Copyright reform - Internal Market
Committee Vote---All important vote: With exactly one week to go until the vote in the
Internal Market Committee (8 June), the largest political group, the EPP, has entrenched
itself and is trying get a majority for something that can only be defined as extremist.
[1][2][3] While rapporteur Catherine Stihler (S&D UK) has been working for months to
find a compromise that assures liability exceptions and freedom of speech provisions for
open platforms like Wikipedia remain in place and content recognition systems don’t become
compulsory, [4] the EPP has last week left the negotiating table. Instead, their shadow
rapporteur Pascal Arimont (EPP BE) has circulated “Alternative Compromise Amendments” on
the publishers right and the upload filtering provision. [5][6] ---Is it really this bad?:
Yes! The proposal on a a press publishers ancillary copyright that lasts for 50 years
(instead of 20 in the Commission proposal), applies to academic publications (which
weren't included) and to offline uses (also not included in the original text). As to
upload filtering: Any platform that allows user uploads and does anything more than simply
displaying such content will be stripped of the liability exemption provided for in
Article 14 of E-Commerce Directive. This means that all open platforms, from Wikipedia to
GitHub, will be liable for any infringements by their users.---The EPP game plan: They
have been getting the shorter end of the stick in many committees on upload filtering and
the press publishers right. By taking an extreme position, they either want to force the
other groups to give in during compromises or poison the well and sabotage the reform as a
whole. Either way, in the coming seven days they will be trying to split as many voting
members of the Socialists and Liberals group as possible to get a committee majority. They
have managed to do this in the past. ---Our game plan: Don’t panic, but get we need to
hold onto a majority! This is the first crucial vote and it is a black-and-white one. We
either manage to keep a majority behind the very sensible compromises by Ms. Stihler
(that, btw, include Freedom of Panorama and Safeguard the Public Domain) or the EPP gets
its way and we will end up having to defend the current status quo rather than working on
positive change. The best thing we can do is contact the voting MEPs in this committee. In
order not to waste time on the hardliners, here’s a list of people we believe are swing
votes: *Nicola Danti (S&D IT): Coordinator of the Socialists group [7]*Olga Senhalova
(S&D CZ) [8]*Christel Schaldemose (S&D DK) [9]*Sergio Prieto (S&D ES)
[10]*Anna Hedh (S&D SE) [11]*Biljana Borzan (S&D HR) [12]*Jiri Pospisil (EPP CZ)
[13]*Roza Grafin von Thum und Hohenstein (EPP PL) [14]*Ilidko Gall-Pelcz (EPP HU) [15]
I will be reaching out to some of you, but if you want to join, please do so! I am happy
to get in touch to give you help and pointers. 
===---Copyright reform - Other Committees---Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE): The deadline
for amendments in the Civil Liberties committee is next week. It looks like the rapporteur
from the EPP (Michal Boni, PL) and the shadow second largest group, the Socialists
(Koster, DE) have agreed to focus only on the upload filtering article in order to give
their opinion more weight. The EPP wants to significantly weaken the Commission proposal
and enshrine liability protections, while the Socialists want to completely delete the
entire article. ---Culture Committee (CULT): There have been some polemics about a new,
unwaivable, performers’ right, which the EFF claims to have leaked. [16] The issue here is
that unwaivable rights are not compatible with free licenses. We have had a meeting with
the said performers’ collecting societies on this. They really do not want to hurt us or
free licenses. We agreed to compromise on adding a carve-out for this case. This
compromise has been brought into the Culture Committee as a compromise amendment. It will
also be proposed in the lead committee - Legal Affairs. ===Database Directive
Consultation: After the disastrously biased “Data Driven Economy” consultation [17], the
European Commission is now asking specifically for organisations’ and citizens’ opinion of
the Database Directive. [18] This is a priority to us, as the “sui generis” right on
database that it establishes hinders projects such a Wikidata. We will be coordinating our
answers on Meta-Wiki. Deadline is 30 August.
[19]===[1]http://www.communia-association.org/2017/05/31/worst-version-eu-co…

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