How the EU Copyright Proposal Will Hurt the Web and Wikipedia (wikimedia.org)

Wikimedia, which operates Wikipedia, chimes in on the EU copyright debacle: Our movement is working to promote freedom online for the benefit of all. Our efforts in this public policy realm are all the more important in an era of increasing restrictions on free speech and free access to knowledge across the globe, which directly threaten the mission and vision of Wikimedia and its projects, such as Wikipedia. This is why we strongly oppose the proposed EU Copyright Directives and urge the Members of the European Parliament to reconsider proceeding with the version recently adopted by the Legal Affairs Committee. We are concerned because these flawed proposals hurt everyone's rights to freedom of expression and Europe's ability to improve the welfare of its citizens online. Next week, we expect the European Parliament to vote in plenary on whether to proceed with the version adopted by the Committee. If the Members of the European Parliament reject it, there will be another opportunity to fix much of the current proposal's broken requirements. Now may be the last opportunity to improve the directive.

The requirement for platforms to implement upload filters is a serious threat for freedom of expression and privacy. Our foundational vision depends on the free exchange of knowledge across the entirety of the web, and beyond the boundaries of the Wikimedia projects. A new exclusive right allowing press publishers to restrict the use of news snippets will make it more difficult to access and share information about current events in the world, making it harder for Wikipedia contributors to find citations for articles online. The proposal does not support user rights, is missing strong safeguards for the public domain, and does not create exceptions that would truly empower people to participate in research and culture. We believe that enactment of this copyright package will significantly decrease in the amount of content that will be freely accessible to all across the globe.

Comments

Re:Brexit, baby

[x0ra]

Probably not "communism", the "People" is of no importance *at all*. It's more like a form of textbook fascism.

Re:EU hurt free speech?

[JaredOfEuropa]

The EU does not want to implement censorship. They want to scare online platforms into doing it for them. Once upload filters are in place, their scope will be increased to include not only copyrighted material but also undesirable opinions (a.k.a. "fake news")

Six years notice that sources are needed

[raymorris]

> Wikipedia is it considers the cult games Osu! and Kid Pix as not notable and sent its deletionists

I see that there are Wikipedia articles for both. The Kid Pix article has been up for at least 13 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...!

I also see that for the past SIX YEARS it's been flagged as needing references. Each page has only a single reference, and the Osu page consists of a single sentence.

If you think these topics are important, important enough that they've been written about, spend 10 minutes on Google to find a few articles and add them as references. It's really not hard.

If you actually take the 20 minutes to READ the articles, you can then type some information from those sources into the Wikipedia article, so it'll be an article instead of a sentence.

You've had six years notice, how long do you need in order to spend a few minutes adding a couple links?

Re:Give Europe what it wants.

[El_Muerte_TDS]

If this EU law passed you think you're safe in the US? The same actors will push for similar laws in other countries and cite the EU law as basis.