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

Give Europe what it wants.

[Zorro]

Cut Europe off from the Internet.

THIS is what they really want.
$15 a Minute phone calls to Italy and only Government approved newspapers.
Galileo for navigation and no GPS.

Re:Give Europe what it wants.

[bobstreo]

Cut Europe off from the Internet.

THIS is what they really want.
$15 a Minute phone calls to Italy and only Government approved newspapers.
Galileo for navigation and no GPS.

Upload filters will never work. Make the countries interested in filtering responsible for filtering, not non-eu websites.

It's best to not cut them off, but to remove any .eu sites from web search results, then see what happens.

The Internet generally knows how to route around problems.

Not just control of IP; control of INFORMATION

[Rick Schumann]

You know.. it just dawned on me when I read the name 'Wikipedia' in this headline: All this 'copyright' business isn't just about 'protecting IP' and monetizing everything in sight, it's mainly about controlling access to information, putting it behind access barriers that require money to bypass. This is essentially no different than what the Catholic Church would do in pre-renaissance times: if you were rich, you could learn to read, therefore you had access to education and information, and as we all well know, 'knowledge is power'. Now in the 21st century, which has the Internet, and where most everyone is literate, there is unprecedented access to information and self-education -- and knowledge is still power. While The Rich, Dominionists, and other so-called 'special interest groups' work in the non-digital world to limit access to higher education, all this 'copyright' action going on works to limit access to information and self-education in the digital/Internet world. Nicely played, Rich People, nicely played. That's the real reason why this needs to be fought against.