EU about to break the internet – Copyright

The EU Court of Justice declared that proactive filtering by internet access providers and internet hosting providers is illegal. 1 Yet, the EU copyright proposal includes such upload filtering.

Over 80 organisations warn:

“The signatories warn the Member states that the discussion around the Copyright Directive are on the verge of causing irreparable damage to our fundamental rights and freedoms, our economy and competitiveness, our education and research, our innovation and competition, our creativity and our culture.”

To show the substance behind that sentence, the letter refers in an annex to 29 letters and analyses sent previously by various European stakeholders and experts for more details.

A call to action

The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee will vote on the proposal on 25 January. Unfortunately, in this lead committee a significant majority is in favor of upload filters. 2

You may like to to contact legal affairs committee members before 15 December and ask to oppose the upload filters and other detrimental articles. The sooner you do this, the better, before compromise amendments are agreed. Phone Tool, Procedure page, EDRi document pool.

Also, contact your government, as the situation in the co-legislator, the Council (of member states), is bad as well. Parliament and Council may go into secret negotiations, the so-called trilogues.

Footnotes:

1

Scarlet/Sabam C-70/10 and Netlog/Sabam C-360-10

2

The Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted against upload filters. However, the legal affairs committee is the lead committee, making the report for the plenary vote.