INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
European Union lawmakers are facing a major vote on digital copyright reform proposals on Wednesday — a process that has set the Internet
hair fully on fire.
Here a run down of the issues and what at stake…
Article 13
The most controversial component of the proposals concerns
user-generated content platforms such as YouTube, and the idea they should be made liable for copyright infringements committed by their
users — instead of the current regime of takedowns after the fact (which locks rights holders into having to constantly monitor and report
violations — y&know, at the same time as Alphabet ad business continues to roll around in dollars and eyeballs).
Critics of the
proposal argue that shifting the burden of rights liability onto platforms will flip them from champions to chillers of free speech, making
them reconfigure their systems toaccommodate the new level of business risk.
More specifically they suggest it will encourage platforms into
algorithmically pre-filtering all user uploads — aka #censorshipmachines — and then blinkered AIs will end up blocking fair use content,
cool satire, funny memes etc etc, and the free Internet as we know it will cease to exist.
Backers of the proposal see it differently, of
These people tend to be creatives whose professional existence depends upon being paid for the sharable content they create, such as
musicians, authors, filmmakers and so on.
Their counter argument is that, as it stands, their hard work is being ripped off because they are
not being fairly recompensed for it.
Consumers may be the ones technically freeloading by uploading and consuming others& works without
paying to do so but creative industries point out it the tech giants that are gaining the most money from this exploitation of the current
rights rules — because they&re the only ones making really fat profits off of other people acts of expression
(Alphabet, Google ad giant parent, made $31.16BN in revenue in Q1 this year alone, for example.)
YouTube has been a prime target for
musicians& ire — who contend that the royalties the company pays them for streaming their content are simply not fair recompense.
Article
11
The second controversy attached to the copyright reform concerns the use of snippets of news content.
European lawmakers want to extend
digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because,
again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others& professional work without paying them to do so
And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content.
The reforms would seek to
compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being
by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet aggregators).
Critics don''t see it that way of course
They see it as an imposition on digital sharing — branding the proposal a &link tax& andarguing it will have a wider chilling effect of
interfering with the sharing of hyperlinks.
They argue that because links can also contain words of the content being linked to
And much debate has raged over on how the law would (or could) define what is and isn''t a protected text snippet.
They also claim the
auxiliary copyright idea hasn''t worked where it already been tried (in Germany and Spain)
Google just closed its News aggregator in the latter market, for example
Though at the pan-EU level it would have to at least pause before taking a unilateral decision to shutter an entire product.
Germany
influential media industry is a major force behind Article 11
But in Germany a local version of a snippet law that was passed in 2013ended up being watered down — so news aggregators were not forced
to pay for using snippets, as had originally been floated.
Without mandatory payment (as is the case in Spain) the law has essentially
pitted publishers against each other
This is because Google said it would not pay and also changed how it indexes content for Google News in Germany to make it opt-in only.
That
means any local publishers that don''t agree to zero-license their snippets to Google risk losing visibility to rivals that do
So major German publishers have continued to hand their snippets over to Google.
But they appear to believe a pan-EU law might manage to tip
Hence Article 11.
Awful amounts of screaming
For critics of the reforms,who often sit on the nerdier side of the spectrum, their reaction
can be summed up by a screamed refrain that IT&S THE END OF THE FREE WEB AS WE KNOW IT.
WikiMedia has warned that the reform threatens the
&vibrant free web&.
A coalition of original Internet architects, computer scientists, academics and others — including the likes of world
wide web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, security veteran Bruce Schneier, Google chief evangelist Vint Cerf, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and
entrepreneur Mitch Kapor — also penned anopen letterto the European Parliament president to oppose Article 13.
In it they wrote that while
&well-intended& the push towards automatic pre-filtering of users uploads ''takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the
Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users&.
There is
more than a little irony there, though, given that (for example) Google ad business conducts automated surveillance of the users of its
various platforms for ad targeting purposes — and through that process it hoping to control the buying behavior of the individuals it
tracks.
At the same time as so much sound and fury has been directed at attacking the copyright reform plans, another very irate, very
motivated group of people have been lustily bellowing that content creators need paying for all the free lunches that tech giants (and
others) have been helping themselves to.
But the death of memes! The end of fair digital use! The demise of online satire! The smothering of
Internet expression! Hideously crushed and disfigured under the jackboot of the EU evil Filternet!
And so on and on it has gone.
(For just
one e.g., see the below video — which was actually made by an Australian satirical film and media company that usually spends its time
spoofing its own government initiatives but evidently saw richly viral pickings here… )
For a counter example, to set against the less
than nuanced yet highly sharable satire-as-hyperbole on show in that video, is the Society of Authors— which has written a 12-point
breakdown defending the actual substance of the reform (at least as it sees it).
A topline point to make right off the bat is it hardly a
fair fight to set words against a virally sharable satirical video fronted by a young lady sporting very pink lipstick
But, nonetheless, debunk the denouncers these authors valiantly attempt to.
To wit: They reject claims the reforms will kill hyperlinking or
knife sharing in the back; or do for online encyclopedias like Wikimedia; or make snuff out of memes; or strangle free expression —
pointing out that explicit exceptions that have been written in to qualify what it would (and would not) target and how it intended to
operate in practice.
Wikipedia, for example, has been explicitly stated as being excluded from the proposals.
But they are still pushing
water uphill — against the tsunami of DEATH OF THE MEMES memes pouring the other way.
Russian state propaganda mouthpiece RT has even
joined in the fun, because of course Putin is no fan of EU…
Death of memes EU advances copyright controls https://t.co/PEEbGDjBiQ
pic.twitter.com/xtVAeZQtkX
mdash; RT (@RT_com) June 21, 2018
Terrible amounts of lobbying
The Society of Authors makes the very pertinent
point that tech giants have spent millions lobbying against the reforms
They also argue this campaign has been characterised by &a loop of misinformation and scaremongering&.
So, basically, Google et al stand
accused of spreading (even more) fake news with a self-interested flavor
Who&d have thunk it!
Dollar bills standing on a table in Berlin, Germany
(Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
The EU (voluntary)Transparency Registerrecords Google directly spending between $6M
and $6.4M on regional lobbying activities in 2016 alone
(Although that covers not just copyright related lobbying but a full laundry list of &fields of interest& its team of 14 smooth-talking
staffers apply their Little Fingers to.)
But the company also seeks to exert influence on EU political opinion via membership of additional
lobbying organizations.
And the register lists a full TWENTY-FOUR organizations that Google is therefore also speaking through(by contrast,
Facebook is merely a member of eleven bodies) — from the American chamber of Commerce to the EU to dry-sounding thinktanks, such as the
Center for European Policy Studies and theEuropean Policy Center
It is also embedded in startup associations, like Allied for Startups
And various startup angles have been argued by critics of the copyright reforms — claiming Europe is going to saddle local entrepreneurs
with extra bureaucracy.
Google dense web of presence across tech policy influencers and associations amplifies the company regional lobbying
spend to as much as $36M, music industry bosses contend.
Though again that dollar value would be spread across multiple GOOG interests —
so it hard to sum the specific copyright lobbying bill
(We asked Google — it didn''t answer)
Multiple millions looks undeniable though.
Of course the music industry and publishers have been lobbying too.
But probably not at such a
Though Europe creative industries have the local contacts and cultural connections to bend EU politicians& ears
(As, well, they probably should.)
Seasoned European commissioners have professed themselves astonished at the level of lobbying — and that
really is saying something.
Yes there are actually two sides to consider…
Returning to the Society of Authors,here the bottom third of
their points — which focus on countering the copyright reform critics& counterarguments:
The proposals aren''tcensorship: that the very
opposite of what most journalists,authors, photographers, film-makers and many other creators devote their lives to.
Not allowing creators
to make a living from their work is the real threat tofreedom ofexpression.
Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the
real threat to thefreeflow of information online.
Not allowing creators to make a living from their work is the real threat
toeveryone&sdigital creativity.
Stopping the directive would be avictory for multinational internet giantsat theexpense of all those who
make, enjoy and enjoy using creative works.
Certainly some food for thought there.
But as entrenched, opposing positions go, it hard to find
two more perfect examples.
And with such violently opposed and motivated interest groups attached to the copyright reform issue there
hasn''t really been much in the way of considered debate or nuanced consideration on show publicly.
But being exposed to endless DEATH OF
THE INTERNET memes does tend to have that effect.
What that about Article 3 and AI
There is also debate about Article 3 of the copyright
reform plan — which concerns text and data-mining
(Or TDM as the Commission sexily conflates it.)
The original TDM proposal, which was rejected by MEPs, would have limited data mining
toresearch organisations for the purposes of scientific research (though Member States would have been able to choose to allow other groups
if they wished).
This portion of the reforms has attracted less attention (butm again, it difficult to be heard above screams about dead
Though there have been concerns raised from certain quarters that it could impact startup innovation— by throwing up barriers to training
and developing AIs by putting rights blocks around (otherwise public) data-sets that could (otherwise) be ingested and used to foster
algorithms.
Or that &without an effective data mining policy, startups and innovators in Europe will run dry&, as a recent piece of
sponsored content inserted into Politico put it.
That paid for content was written by — you guessed it! — Allied for Startups.
Aka the
organization that counts Google as a member…
The most fervent critics of the copyright reform proposals — i.e
those who would prefer to see a pro-Internet-freedoms overhaul of digital copyright rules — support a ‘right to read is the right to
mine& style approach on this front.
So basically a free for all — to turn almost any data into algorithmic insights
(Presumably these folks would agree with this kind of thing.)
Middle ground positions which are among the potential amendments now being
considered by MEPs would support some free text and data mining — but, where legal restrictions exist, then there would be licenses
allowing for extractions and reproductions.
And now the amendments, all 252 of them…
The whole charged copyright saga has delivered one
bit of political drama already — when the European Parliament voted in July to block proposals agreed only by the legal affairs
committee, thereby reopening the text for amendments and fresh votes.
So MEPs now have the chance to refine the parliament position via
supporting select amendments — with that vote taking place next week.
And boy have the amendments flooded in.
There are 252 in all! Which
just goes to show how gloriously messy the democratic process is.
It also suggests the copyright reform could get entirely stuck — if
parliamentarians can''t agree on a compromise position which can then be put to the European Council and go on to secure final pan-EU
agreement.
MEP Julia Reda, a member of The Greens&European Free Alliance, who as (also) a Pirate Party member is very firmly opposed to the
copyright reform text as was voted in July (she wants a pro-web-freedoms overhauling of digital copyright rules), has created this breakdown
of alternative optionstabled by MEPs — seen through her lens of promoting Internet freedoms over rights extensions.
So, for example, she
argues that amendments to add limited exceptions for platform liability would still constitute &upload filters& (and therefore &censorship
machines&).
Her preference would be deleting the article entirely and making no change to the current law
(Albeit that not likely to be a majority position, given how many MEPs backed the original Juri text of the copyright reform proposals 278
voted in favor, losing out to 318 against.)
But she concedes that limiting the scope of liability to only music and video hosting platforms
would be &a step in the right direction, saving a lot of other platforms (forums, public chats, source code repositories, etc.) from
negative consequences&.
She also flags an interesting suggestion — via another tabled amendment — of&outsourcing& the inspection of
published content to rightholders via an API&.
With a fair process in place [it] is an interesting idea, and certainly much better than
However, it would still bechallenging for startups to implement,& she adds.
Reda has also tabled a series of additional amendments to try to
roll back what she characterizes as &some bad decisions narrowly made by the Legal Affairs Committee& — including adding a copyright
exception for user generated content (which would essentially get platforms off the hook insofar as rights infringements by web users are
concerned); adding an exception for freedom of panorama (aka the taking and sharing of photos in public places, which is currently not
allowed in all EU Member States); and another removing a proposed extra copyright added by the Juri committee to cover sports events —
which she contends would &filter fan culture away&.
So is the free Internet about to end
MEP Catherine Stihler, a member of the Progressive
Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, who also voted in July to reopen debate over the reforms reckons nearly every parliamentary group is
split — ergo the vote is hard to call.
It is going to be an interesting vote,& she tells TechCrunch
&We will see if any possible compromise at the last minute can be reached but in the end parliament will decide which direction the future
of not just copyright but how EU citizens will use the internet and their rights on-line.
Make no mistake, this vote affects each one of us
I do hope that balance will be struck and EU citizens fundamental rights protected.
So that sort of sounds like a ‘maybe the Internet as
you know it will change& then.
Other views are available, though, depending on the MEP you ask.
We reached out to Axel Voss, who led the
copyright reform process for the Juri committee, and is a big proponent of Article 13, Article 11 (and the rest), to ask if he sees value in
the debate having been reopened rather than fast-tracked into EU law — to have a chance for parliamentarians to achieve a more balanced
At the time of writing Voss hadn''t responded.
Voting to reopen the debate in July, Stihler argued there are &real concerns& about the
impact of Article 13 on freedom of expression, as well as flagging the degree of consumer concern parliamentarians had been seeing over the
issue (doubtless helped by all those memes + petitions), adding: &We owe it to the experts, stakeholders and citizens to give this directive
the full debate necessary to achieve broad support.
MEP Marietje Schaake, a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, was
willing to hazard a politician prediction that the proposals will be improvedvia the democratic process — albeit, what would constitute an
improvement here of course depends on which side of the argument you stand.
But she routing for exceptions for user generated content and
additional refinements to the three debated articles to narrow their scope.
Her spokesman told us: &I think we&ll end up with new exceptions
on user generated content and freedom of panorama, as well as better wording for article 3 on text and data mining
We&ll end up probably with better versions of articles 11 and 13, the extent of the improvement will depend on the final vote.
The vote will
be held during an afternoon plenary session onSeptember 12.
So yes there still time to call your MEP.
