[Advocacy Advisors] A first glance at "A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe"

Fri May 1 17:50:47 UTC 2015

Two documents from the EU Commission that were leaked by Politico have 
already been mentioned on this list:

- Single Market: The Evidence *1
- A Digital Single Market for Europe *2

I have looked closer at the these working papers, which give us a 
preliminary idea about what the Commission wants with its initiative for 
a Digital Single Market(DSM).  There are plenty of bright spots, and 
also a few reasons to be wary.

The final, official version of the strategy will be presented in not too 
long, so I'll keep this preview brief.

As the Commission has already indicated on several occasions, they are 
primarily looking to DSM reform as a way of boosting the struggling 
European economies. Therefore, reforms with an excepted economic impact 
will be on top of their list. We expect them to talk mostly about ending 
geoblocking and cutting prices for cross-border deliveries of physical 
goods. However, also a few changes that benefit free knowledge are 
realistic to expect.

Copyright

We will likely see copyright reform that clarifies the legal environment 
for data mining, whether commercial or non-commercial.

Most importantly, the Commission states that they view the national 
differences in copyright exceptions as a problem, and may propose that 
some of the exceptions are harmonized. This is a more cautious approach 
than the one that Julia Reda has proposed in the European Parliament 
about harmonizing all copyright exceptions, but nevertheless a step in 
the same direction.

The Commission wants to focus on harmonizing exceptions where problems 
as a result of fragmentation have been identified. This reinforces the 
importance of reminding them of the very real problems that different 
European Freedom-of-Panorama regulations are causing.

Intermediary liability

The Commission wants to balance measures that the content industries 
will dislike (such as banning geoblocking) with measures that strengthen 
copyright enforcement. While they seem reluctant to revisit the 
notice-and-action principle in the e-Commerce Directive (which says that 
an intermediary is not responsible for users' copyright infringements as 
long as they remove unauthorized material when given a notice), they 
suggest harmonized procedures for swift removal.

There are also formulations about limiting which services should be 
subject to the exception from liability.

Standardization and Interoperability

The ironing out of European ICT standards will continue and increase in 
pace. The advisory group "European Multi Stakeholder Platform on ICT 
Standardisation" will play a key role. Perhaps it could make sense to 
look into how the Wikimedia movement can be more involved in this 
process to ensure the use of truly open standards?

*1 
http://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Digital-Single-Market-Evidence.pdf
*2 
http://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Digital-Single-Market-Strategy.pdf

-- 
Karl Sigfrid
+32 487 94 76 30
karl at wikimedia.be

Rue du Trone 51
1000 Brussels