10 November 2017 – OpenMedia

Last week we said we only had a few days left to call MEPs responsible for civil liberties before they voted on whether or not to approve content censorship rules, in the name of copyright.^[1]

Hundreds of you made calls to ask them to stand up for fundamental rights. It’s been an amazing effort from our Internet rights community.

Then we found out, with only a few hours notice, that the vote has been postponed to November 20th.

Why did they postpone the vote so abruptly? It could be that they wanted to come up with a better compromise to stand up for user rights – OR, they could be trying to deflect from public attention, and bury these decisions. We need to keep our eyes on these kind of movements.

At the same time, the copyright law is also facing some dangerous sabotage from the European Council^[2] – a secretive body which is also able to propose its own changes to the law.

France, Spain, and Portugal are pushing for amendments that not only embrace mass content filtering with bots judging what should be posted – from tumblr to github – but take it several steps further to make it even worse.

They want to legally redefine websites so that they have liability for what we post – encouraging overzealous take down of legal content, and an Internet that only publishes content from major media players.^[3]

The European Council is currently working on this extreme amendment, despite the fact that several other nations have been dubious about whether or not it could even comply with human rights laws.^[4]

It’s important that we don’t let them ruin our hard work by using delay tactics to get away with mass-censorship policies.

That’s why we’re working with other groups across Europe to expose France, Spain, and Portugal’s persistent attacks on the open web. And we will continue to keep you updated on our activities, and how you can maximize your voices to protect the open Internet.

Thank you for your continued support,
Ruth

P.S.

Big media lobbyists often use delaying tactics because they know they have more time and money than civil society. They want to wait us out and apply extreme pressure at the last minute. Help ensure we can keep on fighting by donating to the campaign.

Footnotes

[1] Say no to copyright censorship. Source: OpenMedia
[2] Leaked: These 3 EU governments want to give record labels control over what we can and can’t post online. Source. Julia Reda
[3] France, Spain and Portugal: We must adapt the internet to the reality of copyright (not the other way around). Source: Communia
[4] New Estonian Presidency “compromise” creates copyright chaos. Source: EDRi