Open source en open standaarden

Join us on Tuesday the 31st of May at 1700h at Townhall Europe in Brussels for the launch of the new COMMUNIA policy recommendations followed by a networking reception. We will present the 20 policy recommendations which we have developed with input from leading academics and access to knowledge advocates over the past months and which will guide our work on a more open and just copyright framework for the decade to come.

Our new policy recommendations address key policy opportunities for EU lawmakers to expand the Public Domain, increase access to and re-use of culture and knowledge and leverage the power of the digital transformation for society.

The policy recommendations will supersede the 14 existing policy recommendations that have guided our work in the past decade and have made a real contribution to the evolution of the EU copyright framework. On the 31st we will discuss the new policy recommendations with lawmakers, activists and academics. For this, we will be joined by MEP Tiemo Wölken and Professor Severine Dusollier (SciencePo).

After the launch of the recommendations (and of our new website), there will be a networking reception with the ability to exchange views with the COMMUNIA core team.

The event is open to everyone subject to registration here. We kindly ask you to confirm your attendance by Friday, May 27th. In case the max. number of registrations is reached, participants will be confirmed on a first-registered, first-served basis.

We are looking forward to toasting to the next decade with you!

The post Join us for the launch of our new policy recommendations on 31st May in Brussels appeared first on International Communia Association.

Join us on Tuesday the 31st of May at 1700h at Townhall Europe in Brussels for the launch of the new COMMUNIA policy recommendations followed by a networking reception. We will present the 20 policy recommendations which we have developed with input from leading academics and access to knowledge advocates over the past months and which will guide our work on a more open and just copyright framework for the decade to come. 

Our new policy recommendations address key policy opportunities for EU lawmakers to expand the Public Domain, increase access to and re-use of culture and knowledge and leverage the power of the digital transformation for society.  

The policy recommendations will supersede the 14 existing policy recommendations that have guided our work in the past decade and have made a real contribution to the evolution of the EU copyright framework. On the 31st we will discuss the new policy recommendations with lawmakers, activists and academics. For this, we will be joined by MEP Tiemo Wölken and Professor Severine Dusolllier (SciencePo). 

After the launch of the recommendations (and of our new website), there will be a networking reception with the ability to exchange views with the COMMUNIA core team. 

The event is open to everyone subject to registration here. We kindly ask you to confirm your attendance by Friday, May 27th. In case the max. number of registrations is reached, participants will be confirmed on a first-registered, first-served basis.

We are looking forward to toasting to the next decade with you!

Alweer ministerieel bezoek! Na vorige maand met Franc Weerwind, de minister van Rechtsbescherming, te hebben gesproken over de noodzaak van transparante rechtspraak en betere informatie-uitwisseling, was vandaag de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, Hanke Bruins Slot, op werkbezoek bij Open State Foundation. Wij vertelden over de missie en het werk van Open State – met een presentatie die telkens overging in dialoog. De minister deelde onze zorgen op het gebied van openheid, stelde veel vragen en maakte fanatiek aantekeningen.

We spraken met haar over het democratisch belang van open verkiezingen, deelden onze zorgen rondom de Wet openbaarheid van bestuur (Wob) en de nieuwe Wet open overheid (Woo), en legden uit waarom we ons hard maken voor transparante lobby. Op deze terreinen hadden we – zoals je van ons mag verwachten – een aantal adviezen voor de minister.

1. Blijf de samenwerking tussen BZK en Open State voor WaarIsMijnStemlokaal.nl voortzetten en verder vormgeven.

Dit vond minister Bruins Slot belangrijk: haar eigen stemlokaal had ze ook via onze site gevonden, en volgens haar is het van grote toegevoegde waarde dat het platform ook informatie over toegankelijkheid van stembureaus omvat, waarop gefilterd kan worden.

2. Zorg ervoor dat de kieswet uitgebreid wordt met de verplichte publicatie van de gegevens van stembureaus, kandidaten en uitslagen als open data. Dat wil zeggen: verplicht centrale, tijdige en herbruikbare publicatie.

Wettelijke verankering is inderdaad een effectief middel, stelt de minister. Maar het is minstens net zo belangrijk om overheden te overtuigen en ondersteunen. Er is namelijk geen enkele gemeente of overheidsmedewerker die toegankelijke, goed georganiseerde en transparante verkiezingen niet belangrijk vindt.

1. Kies voor een radicale aanpak met: een mentaliteit van ‘open, tenzij’, openheid als politieke prioriteit, meer politieke moed, een ‘binnen = buiten’ informatiehuishouding en een effectief Woo-adviescollege.

De minister was heel geïnteresseerd in onze kijk op de Wob-problematiek; waarom duurt beantwoording van een verzoek gemiddeld 161 dagen (terwijl 28 dagen de wettelijke termijn is)? We bespraken zowel de heersende cultuur, als de gebrekkige informatiehuishouding die hieraan bijdragen.

2. Ontwikkel een Wob-dashboard voor de Kamer – met ons!

Waarom niet geautomatiseerd bijhouden hoe lang overheidsorganisaties doen over het afhandelen van Wob-verzoeken? Niet alleen voor de burger en de journalist, maar ook zodat overheden zelf zicht hebben op hun voortgang naar de wettelijke termijn van 28 dagen. We hopen dat minister Bruins Slot dit dashboard in overweging neemt.

1. Creëer meer aandacht voor het bijhouden van agenda’s van bewindspersonen.

Toen ze onze OpenLobby-tool uitprobeerde en erachter kwam dat er in de maand mei slechts één van haar afspraken was geregistreerd werd door de minister direct een notitie gemaakt voor de volgende meeting met de communicatieafdeling. Bruins Slot zorgt er in ieder geval voor dat ook de onderwerpen van haar afspraken vermeld worden, en hoewel er volgens haar wel meer aandacht voor is binnen de overheid, erkent ze dat nog steeds maar klein deel van de (lobby-)afspraken openbaar is.

2. Maak werk van de aanscherping van het ‘Integriteitsbeleid gewezen bewindspersonen’ – wij denken natuurlijk graag mee.

Dit is een prioriteit van de minister, maar ze gaf tegelijkertijd in alle openheid aan dat dit niet binnen een half jaar is geregeld. Wij maakten de afspraak dat wij een ander woord gaan bedenken voor (Open) Draaideur en dat zij de GRECO-aanbevelingen in regelgeving gaat omzetten – waarbij ze ook aandacht heeft voor de rol van de Kamer zelf.

Co-creatie Open Overheid

Een ander onderwerp van gesprek was de samenwerking tussen overheid en maatschappelijke organisaties. Open State werkt samen met het ministerie van BZK om de commitments van het Actieplan Open Overheid vorm te geven en uit te voeren. Die vormgeving gaat volgens het Open Government Partnership-model van co-creatie. Maar vanuit het Open Government Partnership klinkt ook de oproep de NGO’s financieel te ondersteunen bij die taak. Het ondersteunen van gefundeerd kritisch meekijken vanuit de maatschappij kwam eerder naar voren bij de afgelopen begrotingsbehandeling BZK. De minister zegde nu toe hier goed naar te willen kijken.

Witboek Open Overheid

Aan het begin van het bezoek overhandigden wij aan minister Bruins Slot het eerste exemplaar van ons Witboek Open Overheid, dat we het afgelopen halfjaar geschreven en samengesteld hebben. Het Witboek staat vol met verhalen, interviews, cijfers, visualisaties en voorbeelden waarmee we laten zien wat er zo mooi is aan open data – en wat daar allemaal mee kan.

Zo hebben we datajournalisten geïnterviewd, maar ook de digitale minister van Taiwan over haar radicale openheidsbeleid en wethouder Meliani van de gemeente Amsterdam over hun algoritmeregister.

Sommige verhalen gaan over Nederlandse data. Van stikstofdata tot verkiezingsuitslagen tot de data achter het succes van Buienradar. Maar we kijken in het Witboek ook naar het buitenland. Bijvoorbeeld naar Noorwegen waar alle informatieverzoeken binnen drie dagen beantwoord worden – op straffe van een klacht bij de koning. Of naar de manieren waarop wereldwijd data ingezet wordt om natuurrampen, pandemieën en andere crises aan te pakken.

We hopen dat we met dit Witboek en met het werkbezoek minister Bruins Slot hebben kunnen inspireren!

We are attending the 42nd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) in Geneva. Today, the Committee is discussing the issue of limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 8) and the following statement was delivered on behalf of COMMUNIA:

Dear Delegates,

It will not be easy to convince your families, friends, neighbours that policymakers from across the world should spend time discussing how to improve copyright exceptions.

There is absolutely no doubt that the restrictions copyright laws pose on access to knowledge and information condition the right to education and the right to research, and that educational and research exceptions would benefit society as a whole. That is what will determine whether teachers can show a short news report during live-streamed online classes, whether researchers can conduct medical research or track desinformation online.

Yet, the fact that copyright laws are hard to understand will be an obstacle to reforming copyright laws at national level. Therefore, when Global North delegations claim that each one of you can go back to your countries and introduce exceptions that work for education and research in the 21st Century, we say: that is easier said than done.

Indeed, if you look at the national exceptions for education and research in the European Union, before the recent EU-wide copyright reform, you will see that not even the EU Member States were investing time in solving these issues if they had not been forced to do so through a binding regional instrument.

It should also be said that the fact that copyright exceptions are now outdated only in the Global South does not make this issue less problematic for the Global North. Institutions in Europe and North America engage in cross-border education and research activities outside of their regions on a regular basis. Think about EU distance education programmes attended by students located in Latin America or international research programmes involving North American and Asian researchers. It is clear that the lack of the same minimum set of rights across the world prevents these cross-border activities from taking place, affecting both the North and the South.

We understand that this Committee is not ready to make a decision on how to positively affect copyright frameworks to actually protect the right to education and research. At the same time, this Committee has been discussing this agenda item for nearly 15 years.

We believe that it is fair to say that the work undertaken by the Committee so far has not had much impact on the copyright provisions that frame how educators and researchers can have access to knowledge and information. The African Group proposal could change the course of action to make the work of the Committee more useful. We, thus, urge this Committee to use its best efforts to reach an agreement on how to move forward towards more positive and impactful outcomes.

Thank you.

The post SCCR/42: COMMUNIA statement on limitations and exceptions for education and research appeared first on International Communia Association.

We are attending the 42nd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) in Geneva. Today, the Committee is discussing the issue of limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 8) and the following statement was delivered on behalf of COMMUNIA:

Dear Delegates,

It will not be easy to convince your families, friends, neighbours that policymakers from across the world should spend time discussing how to improve copyright exceptions.

There is absolutely no doubt that the restrictions copyright laws pose on access to knowledge and information condition the right to education and the right to research, and that educational and research exceptions would benefit society as a whole. That is what will determine whether teachers can show a short news report during live-streamed online classes, whether researchers can conduct medical research or track desinformation online.

Yet, the fact that copyright laws are hard to understand will be an obstacle to reforming copyright laws at national level. Therefore, when Global North delegations claim that each one of you can go back to your countries and introduce exceptions that work for education and research in the 21st Century, we say: that is easier said than done.

Indeed, if you look at the national exceptions for education and research in the European Union, before the recent EU-wide copyright reform, you will see that not even the EU Member States were investing time in solving these issues if they had not been forced to do so through a binding regional instrument.

It should also be said that the fact that copyright exceptions are now outdated only in the Global South does not make this issue less problematic for the Global North. Institutions in Europe and North America engage in cross-border education and research activities outside of their regions on a regular basis. Think about EU distance education programmes attended by students located in Latin America or international research programmes involving North American and Asian researchers. It is clear that the lack of the same minimum set of rights across the world prevents these cross-border activities from taking place, affecting both the North and the South.

We understand that this Committee is not ready to make a decision on how to positively affect copyright frameworks to actually protect the right to education and research. At the same time, this Committee has been discussing this agenda item for nearly 15 years.

We believe that it is fair to say that the work undertaken by the Committee so far has not had much impact on the copyright provisions that frame how educators and researchers can have access to knowledge and information. The African Group proposal could change the course of action to make the work of the Committee more useful. We, thus, urge this Committee to use its best efforts to reach an agreement on how to move forward towards more positive and impactful outcomes.

Thank you.

In our capacity as permanent observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 42nd sessionof the Committee, which is taking place in a hybrid format of in-person and online participation from 9 to 13 May 2022, in Geneva.

Today, the Committee is discussing the protection of broadcasting organizations and the following statement was delivered on behalf of COMMUNIA on this agenda item (Agenda Item 6):

Much of the content that broadcasters transmit plays an essential informational, cultural and educational role in our society. Radio and television programs and archives are fundamental to have access to knowledge and information. They are sources of scientific research and are also used as educational materials. We recall that radio and TV-based remote learning have re-emerged in the past years, in response to the pandemic.

Therefore it is essential that educators and researchers have broad and immediate access to broadcast content.

Although the scope of the draft treaty has been reduced, the need for robust limitations and exceptions remains, when legal protection of broadcasters is shaped in the form of exclusive rights.

The problem is that the draft text only says that countries “may” extend the same exceptions that exist for copyright, but, obviously, countries can choose not to do this.

This is more restrictive than the Berne Convention, which has mandatory exceptions for news of the day and quotations, and permissive exceptions for educational and other uses. This may lead to the surprising result that broadcasts are subjected to fewer exceptions than the underlying copyrighted works.

A treaty that creates an additional layer of rights needs to also mandate the corresponding exceptions. Otherwise it ignores the societal and cultural needs related with access and reuse of broadcasts, failing the society as a whole.

The post SCCR/42: COMMUNIA statement on the protection of broadcasting organizations appeared first on International Communia Association.

Yesterday, China blocked the ad-hoc accreditation of Wikimedia chapters of France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, and Switzerland as official observers to the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Previously, China had rejected the Wikimedia’s Foundation application to observer status to this UN agency.

WIPO SCCR discussions where norm setting in copyright is concerned are of utmost importance to access to knowledge organizations, and observer status is a necessary condition for the six Wikimedia chapters to participate in such discussions. Not admitting the chapters as observers is unacceptable and runs counter to established practice and criteria for admission of observers at WIPO.

China opposed the applications, suggesting that they are subsidiaries of Wikimedia Foundation, whose projects violate the ‘One China’ Policy. China’s position was implicitly supported by Bolivia, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Venezuela, which stressed the need for consensus to approve the chapters’ applications.

Group B, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States urged the Committee to abide by the principles of transparency and inclusiveness and grant observer status to the chapters, as they fulfilled all the relevant criteria. They further stressed that these civil society organisations would enrich the debate at the Committee, as they have done on national legislative procedures.

The six Wikimedia chapters are legitimate civil society stakeholders in the area of access to knowledge and COMMUNIA strongly condemns the decision to not admit their applications to the status of observer of a Committee that shapes the legal framework for access to knowledge and information.

The post COMMUNIA condemns rejection of Wikimedia chapters as observers at WIPO SCCR appeared first on International Communia Association.

In our capacity as permanent observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 42nd session of the Committee, which is taking place in a hybrid format of in-person and online participation from 9 to 13 May 2022, in Geneva. 

Today, the Committee is discussing the protection of broadcasting organizations and the following statement was delivered on behalf of COMMUNIA on this agenda item (Agenda Item 6):

Much of the content that broadcasters transmit plays an essential informational, cultural and educational role in our society. Radio and television programs and archives are fundamental to have access to knowledge and information. They are sources of scientific research and are also used as educational materials. We recall that radio and TV-based remote learning have re-emerged in the past years, in response to the pandemic.

Therefore it is essential that educators and researchers have broad and immediate access to broadcast content.

Although the scope of the draft treaty has been reduced, the need for robust limitations and exceptions remains, when legal protection of broadcasters is shaped in the form of exclusive rights.

The problem is that the draft text only says that countries “may” extend the same exceptions that exist for copyright, but, obviously, countries can choose not to do this.

This is more restrictive than the Berne Convention, which has mandatory exceptions for news of the day and quotations, and permissive exceptions for educational and other uses. This may lead to the surprising result that broadcasts are subjected to fewer exceptions than the underlying copyrighted works.

A treaty that creates an additional layer of rights needs to also mandate the corresponding exceptions. Otherwise it ignores the societal and cultural needs related with access and reuse of broadcasts, failing the society as whole.

Yesterday, China blocked the ad-hoc accreditation of Wikimedia chapters of France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, and Switzerland as official observers to the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Previously, China had rejected the Wikimedia’s Foundation application to observer status to this UN agency.

WIPO SCCR discussions where norm setting in copyright is concerned are of utmost importance to access to knowledge organizations, and observer status is a necessary condition for the six Wikimedia chapters to participate in such discussions. Not admitting the chapters as observers is unacceptable and runs counter to established practice and criteria for admission of observers at WIPO.

China opposed the applications, suggesting that they are subsidiaries of Wikimedia Foundation, whose projects violate the ‘One China’ Policy. China’s position was implicitly supported by Bolivia, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Venezuela, which stressed the need for consensus to approve the chapters’ applications.

Group B, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States urged the Committee to abide by the principles of transparency and inclusiveness and grant observer status to the chapters, as they fulfilled all the relevant criteria. They further stressed that these civil society organisations would enrich the debate at the Committee, as they have done on national legislative procedures. 

The six Wikimedia chapters are legitimate civil society stakeholders in the area of access to knowledge and COMMUNIA strongly condemns the decision to not admit their applications to the status of observer of a Committee that shapes the legal framework for access to knowledge and information.

We are pleased to announce that we will launch the new COMMUNIA policy recommendations on Tuesday, May 31st, at 1700 CET, at Townhall Europe in Brussels.

Less than a year ago, we celebrated COMMUNIA’s 10th anniversary, assessing how its foundational 14 policy recommendations contributed to the expansion of the public domain during the 2011-2021 decade. At that time, we also announced that we would update our policy recommendations for the decade to come.

We have consulted with many copyright experts and key stakeholders over the past months to identify new priorities for the decade to come. That process has now come to an end and we are looking forward to presenting the results publicly, in an in-person event that will bring together EU policymakers and academics. The discussion will be followed by an apéro reception at the venue.

The event is open to everyone subject to registration here. We kindly ask you to confirm your attendance by Friday, May 27th. In case the max. number of registrations is reached, participants will be confirmed on a first-registered, first-served basis.

We are looking forward to toasting to the next decade with you!

COMMUNIA

The post Save the date: COMMUNIA’s new policy recommendations to be launched on May 31st appeared first on International Communia Association.

We are pleased to announce that we will launch the new COMMUNIA policy recommendations on Tuesday, May 31st, at 16h30 CET, at Townhall Europe in Brussels.

Less than a year ago, we celebrated COMMUNIA’s 10th anniversary, assessing how its foundational 14 policy recommendations contributed to the expansion of the public domain during the 2011-2021 decade. At that time, we also announced that we would update our policy recommendations for the decade to come.

We have consulted with many copyright experts and key stakeholders over the past months to identify new priorities for the decade to come. That process has now come to an end and we are looking forward to presenting the results publicly, in an in-person event that will bring together EU policymakers and academics. The discussion will be followed by an apéro reception at the venue.

The event is open to everyone subject to registration here. We kindly ask you to confirm your attendance by Friday, May 27th. In case the max. number of registrations is reached, participants will be confirmed on a first-registered, first-served basis.

We are looking forward to toasting to the next decade with you!

COMMUNIA

On the 28th of April, we hosted the second COMMUNIA Salon of 2022 to discuss the implications of the CJEU judgment in Case C-401/19, which rejected the request of the Polish government to annul Article 17 and confirmed that this provision can be reconciled with the right to freedom of expression provided that certain users rights safeguards are in place.

The Salon started with João Pedro Quintais (Assistant Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam), who presented an overview of the case and the three main takeaways of the judgment, according to his preliminary reading of the judgment. First, the Court clarified that Article 17 follows a normative hierarchy, where the obligation of result to protect user rights or freedoms takes precedence over the obligations of best efforts that exist for preventive measures. Secondly, the ruling makes it clear that ex-post procedural safeguards are insufficient to take care of overblocking; ex-ante safeguards are also required to protect user rights or freedoms. Finally, with regards to filtering measures, it appears that it will be difficult to argue that the judgment leads to a conclusion that is different from the AG Opinion, according to which only manifestly infringing content can be blocked at upload.

Next, Marco Giorello (Head of the European Commission’s Copyright Unit at DG CONNECT) shared his first insights on the judgment. Giorello started by saying that the Commission was satisfied that the Court had not only confirmed the validity of Article 17 but it had also largely confirmed the interpretation of the provision brought forward by the Commission. He highlighted that, since the judgment did not define how exactly the national legislator has to implement Article 17, the Commission’s guidelines for the implementation of Article 17 (which Giorello could not yet confirm if the Commission would revise in light of the judgment) could help legislators, courts and market players to get a sense of what could be a practical way of implementing the general principles drawn by the CJEU. Finally, he added that, while it is not possible to draw firm conclusions on what the judgment means for the Member States’ implementation (namely if they could make literal implementations of Article 17), it is very clear that ex-post redress mechanisms are not enough and there needs to be an ex-ante consideration for users rights leading to the distinction between lawful/unlawful content at upload.

The third speaker, Felix Reda (former MEP and Control © project lead at the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte), started by highlighting that, given that the CJEU had already confirmed that under very certain circumstances automated content recognition technologies can or should be used, he was quite happy with the outcome of the judgment, since the Court now sets specific requirements for upload filters, namely that they cannot be used unless they can ensure that lawful content does not get blocked, which is a very high bar to meet. Reda then focused his intervention on the discussion of who has to define the ex-ante safeguards against overblocking. In his view, the platforms cannot be the ones defining the technical parameters of the upload filters. According to Reda’s reading of the judgment, this follows logically from the conclusion that the platforms cannot be required to employ upload filters that do not adequately distinguish between legal and illegal content, together with the conclusion that they cannot be required to make an independent assessment of the lawfulness of the content at upload. As a consequence, the verbatim implementations of Article 17 appear to not be enough. Member States need to define ex-ante safeguards in the law (or, possibly, in secondary legislation).

Finally, Eliška Pírková (Global Freedom of Expression Lead at Access Now) presented the civil society and fundamental rights perspective and connected the discussion with the recently finalized Digital Services Act. Pírková started by recalling that the civil society has for many years challenged the deployment of upload filters because they impose ex-ante restrictions on legal forms of expression. Still, since upload filters are a reality, she welcomed the fact that online platforms do not have to turn into judges of the legality of uploaded content; that filtering system must be able to recognize, and not automatically block, lawful content; and the ex-ante safeguards of fundamental rights of users. She then turned on to discuss the relationship between the horizontal umbrella framework provided by the DSA and the sectoral legislation that precedes such regulation, such as Article 17 of the DSM directive. 

The panel was followed by a Q&A session with the participants.

On the 28th of April, we hosted the second COMMUNIA Salon of 2022 to discuss the implications of the CJEU judgment in Case C-401/19, which rejected the request of the Polish government to annul Article 17 and confirmed that this provision can be reconciled with the right to freedom of expression provided that certain users rights safeguards are in place.

The Salon started with João Pedro Quintais (Assistant Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam), who presented an overview of the case and the three main takeaways of the judgment, according to his preliminary reading of the judgment. First, the Court clarified that Article 17 follows a normative hierarchy, where the obligation of result to protect user rights or freedoms takes precedence over the obligations of best efforts that exist for preventive measures. Secondly, the ruling makes it clear that ex-post procedural safeguards are insufficient to take care of overblocking; ex-ante safeguards are also required to protect user rights or freedoms. Finally, with regards to filtering measures, it appears that it will be difficult to argue that the judgment leads to a conclusion that is different from the AG Opinion, according to which only manifestly infringing content can be blocked at upload.

Next, Marco Giorello (Head of the European Commission’s Copyright Unit at DG CONNECT) shared his first insights on the judgment. Giorello started by saying that the Commission was satisfied that the Court had not only confirmed the validity of Article 17 but it had also largely confirmed the interpretation of the provision brought forward by the Commission. He highlighted that, since the judgment did not define how exactly the national legislator has to implement Article 17, the Commission’s guidelines for the implementation of Article 17 (which Giorello could not yet confirm if the Commission would revise in light of the judgment) could help legislators, courts and market players to get a sense of what could be a practical way of implementing the general principles drawn by the CJEU. Finally, he added that, while it is not possible to draw firm conclusions on what the judgment means for the Member States’ implementation (namely if they could make literal implementations of Article 17), it is very clear that ex-post redress mechanisms are not enough and there needs to be an ex-ante consideration for users rights leading to the distinction between lawful/unlawful content at upload.

The third speaker, Felix Reda (former MEP and Control © project lead at the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte), started by highlighting that, given that the CJEU had already confirmed that under very certain circumstances automated content recognition technologies can or should be used, he was quite happy with the outcome of the judgment, since the Court now sets specific requirements for upload filters, namely that they cannot be used unless they can ensure that lawful content does not get blocked, which is a very high bar to meet. Reda then focused his intervention on the discussion of who has to define the ex-ante safeguards against overblocking. In his view, the platforms cannot be the ones defining the technical parameters of the upload filters. According to Reda’s reading of the judgment, this follows logically from the conclusion that the platforms cannot be required to employ upload filters that do not adequately distinguish between legal and illegal content, together with the conclusion that they cannot be required to make an independent assessment of the lawfulness of the content at upload. As a consequence, the verbatim implementations of Article 17 appear to not be enough. Member States need to define ex-ante safeguards in the law (or, possibly, in secondary legislation).

Finally, Eliška Pírková (Global Freedom of Expression Lead at Access Now) presented the civil society and fundamental rights perspective and connected the discussion with the recently finalized Digital Services Act. Pírková started by recalling that the civil society has for many years challenged the deployment of upload filters because they impose ex-ante restrictions on legal forms of expression. Still, since upload filters are a reality, she welcomed the fact that online platforms do not have to turn into judges of the legality of uploaded content; that filtering system must be able to recognize, and not automatically block, lawful content; and the ex-ante safeguards of fundamental rights of users. She then turned on to discuss the relationship between the horizontal umbrella framework provided by the DSA and the sectoral legislation that precedes such regulation, such as Article 17 of the DSM directive.

The panel was followed by a Q&A session with the participants.

The post Video recording of the COMMUNIA Salon on the CJEU decision on Article 17 appeared first on International Communia Association.

De Europese Unie heeft Nederland en een aantal andere landen op de vingers getikt omdat de Open Data Richtlijn (nog) niet geïmplementeerd is. Deze richtlijn is de opvolger van de Wet hergebruik overheidsinformatie (Who) en bepaalt welke informatie hergebruikt kan en mag worden en hoe overheden deze gegevens moeten publiceren.

De implementatie deadline was 17 juli 2021, bijna een jaar geleden. Begin dit jaar vond de publieke consultatie voor deze richtlijn pas plaats waarin wij onze zorgen hebben geuit over onder andere de beperkte ambitie en omvang van deze vernieuwde wet, de tarifering en de ruimte die het biedt om een databankenrecht toe te passen op publieke gegevens, zoals de KvK nu doet bij het Handelsregister. Het kabinet stelt dat de vertraging te wijten is aan de “prioritering van COVID-19-wetgeving en gebrek aan capaciteit”.

In het verlengde hiervan zijn wij, samen met 127 Europese organisaties, kritisch op de Europese Commissie betreft de vertraging van de Uitvoeringshandeling binnen de Open Data Richtlijn. Deze bepaalt welke ‘High Value Datasets’ per definitie over heel Europa openbaar gemaakt moeten worden.

Publieke inkoop moet en kan transparanter! Daarom organiseren het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, de Open State Foundation en het Open Contracting Partnership op 30 en 31 mei het evenement “Open Procurement with Impact: How?” in Amsterdam. Met workshops en een panelgesprekken gaan we tijdens deze twee dagen hiermee aan de slag.

Hoe kan publieke inkoop verbeterd worden met behulp van open data, technologie en de betrokkenheid van belanghebbenden? Hoe kan open aanbesteden en contracteren helpen om betere resultaten te bereiken, waaronder meer concurrentie, inclusie en duurzaamheid? Hoe kunnen we bestaande uitdagingen en barrières bij het publiceren van gegevens over overheidsopdrachten overwinnen, hoe kunnen we omgaan met uitdagingen zoals commerciële gevoeligheid? Wat zijn effectieve mechanismen voor betrokkenheid en monitoring? Deze vragen staan centraal tijdens dit evenement.

Samen met open inkoop experts uit verschillende EU-landen, paneldiscussies en workshops leren we van elkaar, en verkennen we verdere samenwerkingen op weg naar open inkoop! Meedoen? Dan kan! Schrijf je hier in om het evenement fysiek of online bij te wonen.

Vanaf nu plaatsen we sommige nieuwe datasets op onze eigen versie van dataplatform Aleph! Deze tool is ontwikkeld door Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) en is vooral geschikt voor het doorzoeken en onderzoeken van grote hoeveelheden tekstdocumenten.

Wij ontsluiten hier de tot nu toe gepubliceerde Covid19 Wob documenten van de Rijksoverheid. Dit doen we omdat het helaas nodig is. De huidige wijze van publiceren door de Rijksoverheid voldoet niet aan Open Data standaarden waardoor de data slecht toegankelijk en doorzoekbaar is. De documenten worden door de overheid als erg grote PDF-bestanden gepubliceerd van soms meer dan duizend pagina’s en meer dan 1 GB. Ook zijn er beperkte mogelijkheden rondom zoeken en filteren.

Wij downloaden al deze Wob-documenten, splitsen de documenten op in PDF-bestanden van één pagina en zetten deze in een folder die de naam heeft van het originele grote PDF-bestand. Zo zijn de bestanden beter behapbaar en sneller te laden.

Om toegang te krijgen tot alle mogelijkheden heb je een account nodig. Op Jodal.nl kunt u die account aanmaken. Hiermee kunt u ook inloggen op Aleph.OpenState.eu. JODAL is de tool waar je op een eenvoudige en snelle manier door open data van lokale overheden kunt zoeken. Voor de complexe en hele grote datasets bieden we nu dus Aleph aan.

Heb je vragen dan kun je contact opnemen met de projectleider Tim Vos-Goedhart via Jodal@OpenState.eu.

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its long awaited judgement on the compliance of the new liability regime established by Article 17 of the DSM Directive with fundamental rights. Rejecting the request of the Polish government to annul Article 17(4)(b) and the last half sentence of subparagraph (c), the Court confirmed that Article 17 can be reconciled with the right to freedom of expression because the article also provides ex-ante and ex-post safeguards to users rights that limit its impact on the right to freedom of expression and information.

According to the CJEU, the preventive measures to monitor and block users’ uploads envisioned by Article 17(4) constitute a limitation on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information of the users of online sharing services, but such a limitation is compatible with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, since all the conditions laid down in Article 52(1) of the Charter are satisfied.

The Court held that the risks that the use of upload filters entails for the right to freedom of expression and information of users of sharing platforms have been sufficiently addressed by the EU legislator, which laid down sufficient safeguards in Article 17(7), (8) and (9) to protect those rights:

• online sharing providers have an obligation of result to not preventively block lawful content (Article 17(7));
• those providers are only obliged to detect and block content in on the basis of  relevant and necessary information provided by rightholders and cannot be required to block content which, in order to be found unlawful, would require an independent assessment of the content by them (Article 17(8));
• additionally, and as final safeguard for situations where, despite the obligation in Article 17(7), those providers nevertheless block such legitimate content, users have at their disposal a complaint and redress mechanism as well as out-of-court mechanisms (Article 17(9)).

While Article 17(4) does not define the specific measures that online sharing platforms should adopt to monitor and block users’ uploads, the Court considered that the EU legislator has laid down a clear and precise limit in Article 17(7) and (9): measures which filter and block lawful content at upload are off limits.

In the Court’s view, the measures adopted by sharing services to comply with their obligations under Article 17(4) must “be strictly targeted in order to enable effective protection of copyright but without thereby affecting users who are lawfully using those providers’ services”. The Court says that this obligation imposed on sharing services to not affect the essence of the fundamental rights of users who share lawful content on their platforms clearly follows from Articles 17(7) and (9).

This implies that, if the online sharing platform adopts a filtering system, such a system must be able to recognize, and not automatically block, lawful content. The Court is adamant:

“(A) filtering system which might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications, would be incompatible with the right to freedom of expression and information, guaranteed in Article 11 of the Charter, and would not respect the fair balance between that right and the right to intellectual property.”

Unlike the Advocate General in his Opinion, the Court does not formulate any criteria to help determine cases where the content concerned must be presumed to be lawful and the upload must be permitted. The Court only clarifies that this should not require an independent assessment by the platforms of the information provided by the rightholders and of any copyright exceptions. In other words fully automated filters should be only allowed to block (manifestly) infringing uploads. In all other cases matches must be flagged and reviewed by rightholders who can request the removal. According to the Court, such removal requests must be “duly substantiated”.

With this ruling, the CJEU decided one of the most controversial questions in the debate surrounding the implementation of user rights safeguards: whether those rights need to be protected ex-ante, or if it is enough to consider them after the upload has been blocked.

Rejecting the interpretation put forward by the French and Spanish governments, according to which content could be systematically blocked ex-ante, provided that users could obtain its reinstatement ex-post, the Court ruled that:

“(T)he first and second subparagraphs of Article 17(9) of Directive 2019/790 introduce several procedural safeguards, which are additional to those provided for in Article 17(7) and (8) of that directive, and which protect the right to freedom of expression and information of users of online content-sharing services in cases where, notwithstanding the safeguards laid down in those latter provisions, the providers of those services nonetheless erroneously or unjustifiably block lawful content.” (emphasis added)

According to the Court, the complaint and redress mechanisms and out-of-court mechanisms are merely an additional safeguard for situations where service providers mistakenly or unjustifiably block legitimate content. Separately, and cumulatively, Article 17(7) requires service providers to not preventively and systematically block legitimate content. In other words, the obligation to protect users rights after their uploads have been blocked (as mandated by Article 17(9)) does not replace the obligation to protect users when they are uploading lawful content (as mandated by Article 17(7)).

Today’s judgement brings a preliminary end to nearly three years of heated discussions on how to implement Article 17 — the most controversial element of the 2019 Copyright Directive, which sparked massive protests from internet users both online and offline — into national law. It confirms the position developed by COMMUNIA and other civil society organisations, as well as by a large group of academics, that Article 17 requires strong user rights safeguards that prevent upload filters from blocking uploads unless they are infringing. This reading of Article 17 has since been endorsed by the European Commission — both in its 2021 implementation guidance for Article 17 and in its intervention during the hearing of the CJEU case — and in the national implementations adopted by Austria and Germany.

The ruling will force Member States that have implemented Article 17 in a manner that does not prevent legal uploads from being blocked to reverse course. Spain and Italy — both of which have included provisions in their implementations that require that disputed content remains unavailable until the resolution of a complaint — will need to bring their implementation laws into compliance with the standards set by the CJEU.  Member States such as France and the Netherlands, who have merely restated the provisions of the directive in their national laws and that have not included ex-ante measures to prevent lawful uploads from being blocked, will likely need to include additional safeguards (alternatively these implementations will have to be interpreted in line with the standards set by the CJEU). Those Member States who have — wisely — waited for today’s judgement to provide them with guidance, should follow the example set by the German implementations which is the only existing implementation that seems to meet all the standards established by the CJEU in today’s judgement.

The post Case C-401/19: CJEU limits the use of automated filters and protects user rights at upload appeared first on International Communia Association.

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its long awaited judgement on the compliance of the new liability regime established by Article 17 of the DSM Directive with fundamental rights. Rejecting the request of the Polish government to annul Article 17(4)(b) and the last half sentence of subparagraph (c), the Court confirmed that Article 17 can be reconciled with the right to freedom of expression because the article also provides ex-ante and ex-post safeguards to users rights that limit its impact on the right to freedom of expression and information.

According to the CJEU, the preventive measures to monitor and block users’ uploads envisioned by Article 17(4) constitute a limitation on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information of the users of online sharing services, but such a limitation is compatible with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, since all the conditions laid down in Article 52(1) of the Charter are satisfied. 

The Court held that the risks that the use of upload filters entails for the right to freedom of expression and information of users of sharing platforms have been sufficiently addressed by the EU legislator, which laid down sufficient safeguards in Article 17(7), (8) and (9) to protect those rights: 

• online sharing providers have an obligation of result to not preventively block lawful content (Article 17(7));
• those providers are only obliged to detect and block content in on the basis of  relevant and necessary information provided by rightholders and cannot be required to block content which, in order to be found unlawful, would require an independent assessment of the content by them (Article 17(8));
• additionally, and as final safeguard for situations where, despite the obligation in Article 17(7), those providers nevertheless block such legitimate content, users have at their disposal a complaint and redress mechanism as well as out-of-court mechanisms (Article 17(9)).

While Article 17(4) does not define the specific measures that online sharing platforms should adopt to monitor and block users’ uploads, the Court considered that the EU legislator has laid down a clear and precise limit in Article 17(7) and (9): measures which filter and block lawful content at upload are off limits.

In the Court’s view, the measures adopted by sharing services to comply with their obligations under Article 17(4) must “be strictly targeted in order to enable effective protection of copyright but without thereby affecting users who are lawfully using those providers’ services”. The Court says that this obligation imposed on sharing services to not affect the essence of the fundamental rights of users who share lawful content on their platforms clearly follows from Articles 17(7) and (9).

This implies that, if the online sharing platform adopts a filtering system, such a system must be able to recognize, and not automatically block, lawful content. The Court is adamant:

“(A) filtering system which might not distinguish adequately between unlawful content and lawful content, with the result that its introduction could lead to the blocking of lawful communications, would be incompatible with the right to freedom of expression and information, guaranteed in Article 11 of the Charter, and would not respect the fair balance between that right and the right to intellectual property.”

Unlike the Advocate General in his Opinion, the Court does not formulate any criteria to help determine cases where the content concerned must be presumed to be lawful and the upload must be permitted. The Court only clarifies that this should not require an independent assessment by the platforms of the information provided by the rightholders and of any copyright exceptions. In other words fully automated filters should be only allowed to block (manifestly) infringing uploads. In all other cases matches must be flagged and reviewed by rightholders who can request the removal. According to the Court, such removal requests must be “duly substantiated”.  

With this ruling, the CJEU decided one of the most controversial questions in the debate surrounding the implementation of user rights safeguards: whether those rights need to be protected ex-ante, or if it is enough to consider them after the upload has been blocked. 

Rejecting the interpretation put forward by the French and Spanish governments, according to which content could be systematically blocked ex-ante, provided that users could obtain its reinstatement ex-post, the Court ruled that:

“(T)he first and second subparagraphs of Article 17(9) of Directive 2019/790 introduce several procedural safeguards, which are additional to those provided for in Article 17(7) and (8) of that directive, and which protect the right to freedom of expression and information of users of online content-sharing services in cases where, notwithstanding the safeguards laid down in those latter provisions, the providers of those services nonetheless erroneously or unjustifiably block lawful content.” (emphasis added)

According to the Court, the complaint and redress mechanisms and out-of-court mechanisms are merely an additional safeguard for situations where service providers mistakenly or unjustifiably block legitimate content. Separately, and cumulatively, Article 17(7) requires service providers to not preventively and systematically block legitimate content. In other words, the obligation to protect users rights after their uploads have been blocked (as mandated by Article 17(9)) does not replace the obligation to protect users when they are uploading lawful content (as mandated by Article 17(7)).   

Today’s judgement brings a preliminary end to nearly three years of heated discussions on how to implement Article 17 — the most controversial element of the 2019 Copyright Directive, which sparked massive protests from internet users both online and offline — into national law. It confirms the position developed by COMMUNIA and other civil society organisations, as well as by a large group of academics, that Article 17 requires strong user rights safeguards that prevent upload filters from blocking uploads unless they are infringing. This reading of Article 17 has since been endorsed by the European Commission — both in its 2021 implementation guidance for Article 17 and in its intervention during the hearing of the CJEU case — and in the national implementations adopted by Austria and Germany.

The ruling will force Member States that have implemented Article 17 in a manner that does not prevent legal uploads from being blocked to reverse course. Spain and Italy — both of which have included provisions in their implementations that require that disputed content remains unavailable until the resolution of a complaint — will need to bring their implementation laws into compliance with the standards set by the CJEU.  Member States such as France and the Netherlands, who have merely restated the provisions of the directive in their national laws and that have not included ex-ante measures to prevent lawful uploads from being blocked, will likely need to include additional safeguards (alternatively these implementations will have to be interpreted in line with the standards set by the CJEU). Those Member States who have — wisely — waited for today’s judgement to provide them with guidance, should follow the example set by the German implementations which is the only existing implementation that seems to meet all the standards established by the CJEU in today’s judgement

On the 26th of April, the European Court of Justice will hand down its judgement in Case C-401/19 — the Polish challenge of the fundamental rights compliance of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, which was adopted nearly 3 years ago in April 2019.

On the 28th of April, from 1500h to 1630 CET, we are hosting a virtual COMMUNIA salon to discuss the implications of this highly anticipated judgement and what it means for the national implementations of Article 17. 

The Court’s judgement in case C-401/19 will mark an important moment in the discussions about Article 17. Not only will the Court have to decide if (elements of) Article 17 violate fundamental rights, it will also have the opportunity to issue guidance on the different approaches to implementing the provisions of Article 17, which have been taken by those member states that have implemented the article so far (and more clarity for those that have not implemented yet). Finally, the decision should also provide more clarity on the European Commission’s implementation guidance that was issued in June of last year, following an extensive stakeholder dialogue. 

A recap of the arguments brought forward by the parties to the case can be found in our report from the hearing, which took place in November 2020. And our summary of the most important aspects of the AG Opinion from last July can be found here.

For this Salon we will be joined by Marco Giorello — Head of the European Commission’s Copyright Unit at DG CONNECT, João Pedro Quintais — Assistant Professor at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam, Eliška Pírková — Global Freedom of Expression Lead at Access Now — and Felix Reda — former MEP and project lead Control © at the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte. The Salon will be moderated by Paul Keller and there will be lots of room for audience participation.

The Salon will be hosted in Zoom and it is open for everyone to attend. To join us, please register here and we will send you login details on the morning of the event.

Op 11 april bracht minister Franc Weerwind van Rechtsbescherming een werkbezoek aan de Digitale Vier bij De Waag in Amsterdam. De Digitale Vier is het samenwerkingsverband van vier organisaties die zich inzetten voor digitale burgerrechten. En die vier organisaties hadden een lange wensenlijst. Minister Weerwind absorbeerde alle punten en gaf aan de discussie belangrijk te vinden en te willen voortzetten.

De ‘Digitale Vier’ bestaat naast Open State Foundation uit Waag, Amnesty International en Bits of Freedom. Vertegenwoordigers van deze organisaties hadden minister Weerwind uitgenodigd voor een kennismaking en dialoog, directeur van Open State Foundation Serv Wiemers en senior projectleider Jesse Renema waren hierbij aanwezig. Franc Weerwind is als minister voor Rechtsbescherming onder meer verantwoordelijk voor de democratische rechtstaat, rechtspraak, bestuursrecht en bescherming persoonsgegevens (AP). Maar hij benadrukte namens het Kabinet te komen, en “niet in silo’s te willen denken”.

Centraal thema van het gesprek was de informatie- en dus de machts-asymmetrie tussen overheid en burger. De overheid digitaliseert en gebruikt in toenemende mate data en algoritmische besluitvorming. Dat leidt tot meer afstand, en uitwassen zoals bijvoorbeeld de toeslagenaffaire. Transparantie, openheid, het inbouwen van rechtstatelijke waarborgen en ‘de burger centraal’ moeten dat voorkomen, aldus de Digitale Vier.

Open State Foundation vroeg daarbij extra aandacht voor de Staatscommissie rechtsstaat en een meer transparante rechtspraak. De pas ingestelde Staatscommissie rechtsstaat heeft de taak te kijken naar de versterking van de positie van burgers ten opzichte van de staatsmacht en een betere informatie-uitwisseling. Open State Foundation directeur Serv Wiemers riep minister Weerwind op NGO’s te betrekken bij de Staatscommissie en werk te maken van een nieuwe bestuurscultuur van openheid en transparantie. Een fundamentele verandering van de omgang met Wob (Woo)-verzoeken moet daar onderdeel van zijn.

Wat betreft de rechtspraak verbaasde Serv Wiemers de minister met cijfers over hoe “belabberd” het is gesteld van de openheid:  Nederland bekleedt de 17e plek in de EU als het gaat om online toegang tot uitspraken, terwijl het gebruik van digitale technologie in ons rechtssysteem (rechtbanken en OM) nog minder is; daar bekleedt Nederland de 24e plek in de EU. Bovendien wordt van de rechtbankuitspraken een zeer klein deel gepubliceerd; 5% volgens de rechtbanken zelf en 0,5% volgens eigen onderzoek. Een radicale aanpak van transparantie bij de rechterlijke macht, bestaande uit cultuurverandering en goede toepassing van digitalisering is noodzakelijk, zo hield Wiemers de minister voor.

Minister Franc Weerwind was heel positief over het gesprek en beloofde open te staan voor input vanuit de Digitale Vier en follow-up. Die bestaat in ieder geval uit een vervolggesprek in deze setting over een jaar om te kijken of er voortgang is geboekt.