130 EU businesses sign open letter against Copyright directive (Art. 11 & 13)

Warn MEPs about massive damage Copyright directive would do to EU economy.

Stuttgart, Germany - March 19, 2019 - Nextcloud Founder and CEO Frank Karlitschek addresses an open letter urging members of the EU Parliament to vote against Articles 11 and 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive. The letter, which was signed by more than 130 companies and business alliances from 16 European countries, was sent to each member of the EU Parliament.

As founder and CEO of Nextcloud I fear that Articles 11 and 13 of this directive create a serious disadvantage for European startups. The fact that more than 100 companies from different European countries signed our text within a few days shows that I am far from being the only one. I urge every politician to protect European businesses and vote against Article 11 and Article 13.

said Karlitschek.

At the end of March, the EU parliament will have to vote on the Copyright Directive. Two articles in this directive - Articles 11 and 13 - will seriously jeopardize the success of business enterprises.

Find the open letter with its list of signatures below, as well as links to a downloadable PDF and our blog post.

About Nextcloud

Nextcloud offers the industry-leading, fully open source, self-hosted Content Collaboration Platform, combining the easy user interface of consumer-grade cloud solutions with the security and compliance measures enterprises need. Nextcloud brings together universal access to data through mobile, desktop and web interfaces with next-generation, on-premise secure communication and collaboration features like real-time document editing, chat and video calls, putting them under direct control of IT and integrated with existing infrastructure.

Nextcloud's easy and quick deployment, open, modular architecture and emphasis on security and advanced federation capabilities enable modern enterprises to leverage their existing file storage assets within and across the borders of their organization. For more information, visit nextcloud.com or follow @Nextclouders on Twitter.

Links:

Blog with open letter nextcloud.com/blog

Open letter and initial signatories (pdf download) PDF

More information about Nextcloud nextcloud.com/about

Press contact

Nextcloud GmbH

Jos Poortvliet

Hirschstrasse 26

D-70173 Stuttgart, Germany

e-mail: pr@nextcloud.com

Public letter to members of the European Parliament

Dear Members of the European Parliament,

vote against Articles 11 and 13 of the proposed copyright directive. The text of the trilogue agreement would harm the European economy and seriously undermine the ability of European businesses to compete with big Internet giants like Google. The companies signing this letter to the European Parliament are urging you toof the proposed copyright directive. The text of the trilogue agreement wouldand seriously undermine the ability of European businesses to compete with big Internet giants like Google. We support the goal of the legislation to protect the rights of creators and publishers, but the proposed measures are inadequate to reap these benefits and also fail to strike a fair balance between creators and all other parts of society. The success of our business enterprises will be seriously jeopardized by these heavy-handed EU regulations. Especially Article 13 is dangerously experimenting with the core foundation of the Internet’s ecosystem. Making companies directly liable for the content of their users forces these businesses to make billions of legal decisions about the legality of content. Most companies are neither equipped nor capable of implementing the automatic content filtering mechanisms this requires, which are expensive and prone to error. Article 11 is creating a completely new intellectual property right for press publishers. The experience with similar laws in Germany and Spain raises serious doubts about the expected benefits, while the negative impact would be very real. An additional layer of exclusive rights would make it harder to clear the necessary legal hurdles to start new projects. It will make entrepreneurs more hesitant to just launch new projects. Europe would lose any chance to play a significant role on the world stage. Startups that build services based on aggregated online information would go out of business, and every company that publishes press summaries of their appearance in the media would be in violation of this law. Although the purpose of these regulations is to limit the powers of big US Internet companies like Google or Facebook, the proposed legislation would end up having the opposite effect. Article 13 requires filtering of massive amounts of data, requiring technology only the Internet giants have the resources to build. European companies will be thus forced to hand over their data to them, jeopardizing the independence of the European tech industry as well as the privacy of our users. European companies like ours will be hindered in their ability to compete or will have to abandon certain markets completely. Given all of these issues it is noteworthy that the final trilogue agreement lacks meaningful safeguards for small and medium enterprises. The broad scope of this law would most likely lead to less new companies being founded in Europe and existing companies moving their headquarters out of Europe. For all those reasons we urge every pro-Startup politician to vote against Article 11 and Article 13. Sincerely, Frank Karlitschek, Founder & CEO, Nextcloud GmbH, Germany

Jutta Steiner, CEO & Founder, Parity, United Kingdom

Alan Duric, CTO/COO and Co-Founder, Wire, Switzerland

Jon Karlung, CEO Bahnhof AB, Sweden

Stefan Lingler, CTO, finderly Gmbh, Austria

Philippe Kalaf, CEO, Collabora Limited, United Kingdom

Till Faida, CEO, eyeo GmbH, Germany

Cătălin Frâncu, Founder, dexonline.ro, Romania

Ruth Schöllhammer, Chairwoman of the Managing Board, Deutscher Gründerverband, Germany

Sam Tuke, CEO, phpList, United Kingdom

Peter Ganten, Founder and CEO, Univention & Chairman, Open Source Business Alliance, Germany

p≡p Security SA, Luxembourg

Lenard Koschwitz, Senior Director Global Policy, Allied for Startups, EU/Global

Erik Muttersbach, CTO, FreightHub, Germany

Nitrokey UG, Germany

Dom Hallas, Executive Director, The Coalition for a Digital Economy (COADEC), United Kingdom

Tobias Gerlinger, CEO, Owncloud, Germany

Adela Zábražná, Executive Manager, SAPIE – The Slovak Alliance for Innovation Economy, Slovakia

Travis Todd, Co-founder, Silicon Allee, Germany

Harald Kapper, CEO, Kapper Network-Communications GmbH, Austria

Tim Pritlove, Owner, Metaebene Personal Media, Germany

Bernd Hilmar, CEO, VIRTEXXA Cloud Services SRL, Romania

Frank J. Dürring, Dipl.-Inf. (FH), CEO, condero Aktiengesellschaft, Germany

Markus Raunig, Managing Director, AustrianStartups, Austria

Mirko Lorenz, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Datawrapper, Germany

Brian Joseph, CEO, Kopano BV, Netherlands

Dr. Detlef Oertel and Erol Ülükmen, Managing Directors, uib gmbh, Germany

Julia Szopa, President of the Board, Startup Poland, Poland

Paolo Vecchi,CEO, Omnis Cloud, Luxembourg

Timo Hetzel, Managing Director, Undsoversum GmbH, Germany

Maddalena Falzoni, CEO, MaadiX, Spain

Ralf Becker, CEO, Birgit Becker, CEO, Egroupware GmbH, Germany

Gianmarco Carnovale, Chairman, Roma Startup, Italy

Ulrich Brandner, CEO, CIB software GmbH, Germany

Steffen Weber, CEO, ComputerBase GmbH, Germany

evenly GmbH, Germany

Pierre Beyssac, CEO & Founder, Eriomem.net, France

Stefan Scholz, CEO, Zellwerk GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Schallert.com e.U., Austria

Factory, Germany

Nicolas Chauvat, CEO, Logilab, France

Maik Aussendorf, Managing Director, Bareos GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Richard Marx, COO, Assanti Insurance Technologies, Netherlands

Philippe Hemmel, President, Arawa, France

Fabio Natali, Director, Reckon Digital, United Kingdom

Sebastian Jabbusch, Founder and CEO, Public Impact UG, Germany

Labarama, Austria

Mario Behling, CEO, OpnTec GmbH, Germany

Daniel Hansson, Founder and Owner, T&M Hansson IT AB, Sweden

Lars Fassmann, Founder and CEO, chemmedia AG, Germany

Alexander Todorov, CEO, Open Technologies Bulgaria, Ltd, Bulgaria

Dr. Detlef Hühnlein, CEO, ecsec GmbH, Germany

Tom Knienieder, CEO, peaknetworks e.U., Austria

Karsten Klein, CEO, metaeffekt GmbH, Germany

Thierry Leblond, CEO, Scille, France

Dirk Ahrnke, Managing Director, it:25, Germany

Gerhard Sternath, CEO/CFO, LINBIT HA-Solutions GmbH, Austria

Bernhard Reiter, Managing Director, Intevation GmbH, Germany

Alexey Volkov, Founder and CEO, On My Disk, Slovenia

Marcel van Duijvendijk, CEO, Wind Engineering Solutions, Netherlands

Bozena Jarosz, CEO, SecN UG, Germany

Dr.ir Rick van Rein, CTO, OpenFortress B.V., Netherlands

Dirk Kutsche, CEO, pro-ite GmbH, Germany

Anne Dillard, Pierre Fumet & Cyril Lacoux, Managing Directors, EASTER-EGGS, France

Felix Arndt, CEO, fnordserver, Germany

Oscar Ortega, CEO, BTACTIC, Spain

Clemens Toennies, CEO, Blue Systems GmbH, Germany

Ajdin Gazija, CEO and Christian Machalitzky, CTO, NOBUGS IT GmbH, Austria

Dirk Breunich, CEO, Donner & Doria Werbeagentur GmbH, Germany

Dennis Pennings, CTO, Good Cloud BV, Netherlands

Silvina Furnadzhieva, CEO, Double Click Systems Ltd., Bulgaria

Samuel John, CEO, OtoJig GmbH, Germany

Marius Quabeck, CEO, NerdZoom Media, Germany

Martin Wiederkehr, CEO & Partner, Ops One AG, Switzerland

Mario Peshev, CEO, DevriX Ltd., Bulgaria

Steffen Lindner, CEO, Portknox.net, Germany

Tada.city, Netherlands

Omnis Systems Ltd, United Kingdom

Alexander Nimmervoll, Managing Director, Generalize-IT Solutions OG, Austria

Nadine Nüsse, CCO, Innovo Cloud GmbH, Germany

Christopher Neal, Director, Twist Development Limited, United Kingdom

Werner Klinger, CEO, Neodiffusion, France

Liane Hampe, Managing Director, xmera e.K., Germany

Markus Frei, Managing Director, Linuxfabrik, Switzerland

Dr. Richard Heigl, Co-Founder and CEO, Hallo Welt! GmbH, Germany

Sander Venema, Owner, Asteroid Interactive, Netherlands

Harald Dittmar, CEO, sys-pro GmbH, Germany

Daniel Huhardeaux, CEO, TOOTAi, France

Johan Poortvliet, Owner, Adjoadvies bv, Netherlands

Philipp Süß, Managing Owner, Ingenieurbüro Süß & friends, Germany

Patricia Moncorgé, CEO, Editions D-BookeR, France

Ralf Guttmann, CEO, Hyperspace GmbH, Germany

Patrick Babonneau, CTO, Eralog, France

Thomas Michalak, Owner, Nimmerland Nextcloud Service, Germany

Huib Verweij, Owner, X-Scale, Netherlands

Nicolas Lantz, Founder and CEO, UBICORE, France

Oliver Breidenbach, Director (CEO), Boinx Software Ltd., Germany

360ict, Netherlands

Just Software AG, Germany

Frédéric Da Vitoria, Owner, FDV Informatique, France

Stefan Vartolomeev, CEO & Founder, Pisateli BG, Bulgaria

Claudia Behr, Owner, computer & communication, Austria

Johan Bernhardsson, CEO, Kafit AB, Sweden

Clara Guinea Jaime, CEO, WIKIVITAS SL, Spain

Holger Schlichting, Managing Director, PRAXISFELD GmbH, Germany

Romain Hurdequint, Founder, The Daily Board Co., France

Jörg Günther, Main shareholder, AFI Solutions GmbH, Germany

Oslandia, France

Ingo Wichmann, CEO, Linuxhotel GmbH, Germany

Inventia Plus S.L., Spain

Jérémie Lesage, Company Manager, JECI SARL, France

Philip Bräunlich, Managing Director, Gerrit van Aaken, Managing Director, whitespace GmbH, Germany

Reinhold Baudisch, CEO, Michael Doberer, CEO, durchblicker.at, Austria

Robert Gavin, Managing Partner, Sören Tschiersch, Managing Partner, Flens IT Solutions GmbH, Germany

Hal Hughes, Director, TeeBase UK Ltd., United Kingdom

Sebastian Software GmbH, Germany

Florent Manens, CEO, BeeZim, France

Linnart Unger, Founder and Managing Director, Studio GOOD digital GmbH, Germany

Ing. Mag. Dr. Vincenz Leichtfried, CEO, LV7 Media Services, Austria

Mark Heckes, Managing Director, complingua GmbH, Germany

Andrej Stojanovič, CEO, A-com spletne storitve, Slovenia

Ingomar Otter, Director Technology & Innovation, Valtech Mobility GmbH, Germany

Josef Mayerhofer, Executive Director, WVNET, Austria

Bär Tiger Wolf GmbH, Germany

Julien Fastré, Administrator, Champs Libres Cooperative SCRLFS, Belgium

fullstax GmbH & CO. KG, Germany

Bauspenglerei Sukup-Groetzer OG, Austria

Biker-Boarder, Germany

Autonom Health GesundheitsbildungsGmbH, Austria

Nerdlichter AG, Germany

Tripple Internet Content Services, Austria

Yaltik, France

Konrad Koch, CTO, pantaBio AG, Germany

Nicolas Ducoulombier, Founder and CEO, Sébastien Ducoulombier, Founder and CEO, Julien Steinhauser, CEO, Les Développements Durables, France

Ansgar H. Licher, Co-Founder & CEO, Martin Werthmöller, Co-Founder & CTO, Lwsystems GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Signatories after publication Mathias Bartholomäus, CEO and founder, studio.201 software GmbH, Germany

Tomas Vondra, Technical director, Home at Cloud, Czech Republic

Marcus Toth, CEO, Beamy Lake GmbH, Austria

Christopher Atlan, Owner, Letter Opener GmbH, Austria

Dennis Nissen, CEO, naymspace GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Max Seelemann, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Ulysses GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Torsten Markmann, Managing Director, Uplinked UG, Germany

Pavel Volk, Owner, Pavel Volk - Bischofstein, Czech Republic

Reinblau eG, Germany

Błażej Sołtowski, CEO & Co-Founder, MLabs sp. z o.o., Poland

Dennis Nissen, CEO, naymspace software GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Maik Derstappen, CEO, Derico, Germany

Peter Faxe Lachenmair, Owner, lachenmair.info - it consulting, Germany

Redon Skikuli, Business Development, Collective68, Albania

Aris Ntatsis, CEO, Onscreen Web Services, Greece

Nikos Roussos, Founder, Autoverse, Greece

Eduardo Díaz Comellas, CEO, Ultreia Comunicaciones, SL, Spain

Ricardo Cristof Remmert-Fontes, Owner, Midvinter Holzhandwerk, Germany

Youthweb e.V., Germany

Elio Quoshi, Founder, Ura Design, Albania

Jérôme Marchini, founder, paquerette.eu, France

Pedro Fernandes, Founder, TugaTech, Portugal

Fabian Spielberger, CEO, Pepper Media Holding GmbH, Germany

Jasir Baftijari, Founder, JABA e.K., Germany

Ole Emken, Co-Founder & CEO, medienweite GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Daniel Weingart, Freelancer, Medien & Design, Germany

Christian Steiauf, Sales Manager, Endpoint Protector GmbH, Germany

Pierre Chevalier, géologue et informaticien, Sémofi, France

Bastian Allgeier, CEO, Bastian Allgeier GmbH, Germany

Julian Mair, Co-Founder, Hotel Tirolerhof des Mair Manfred & Co. KG, Italy

David Lopez, SerenaMail, Spain

Speed U Up, Austria

Daniel Bönisch, Founder and CEO, UEBERBIT GmbH, Germany

Jacobo Vidal, Co-Founder & CEO, Arengu, Spain

Michael Wegge, CEO & Founder, Firesource UG, Germany

Benjamin Schröter - CEO, Founder & Wolfram Bernhardt - CEO, Founder, Rhein-Spree Software Engineering GmbH, Germany

Valentin Born, owner, born2webdesign, Germany

Arnaud Launay, CEO, Cusae, France

Dr. Ingo Keck, CTO, Moringa Science Publishing UG, Germany

Peter Faxe Lachenmair, owner, lachenmair.info - it consulting, Germany

Georg Stefanowitsch, OHNE LIMIT, Germany

Eleftherios Tzouanakis, owner, CretaDrive, Greece

Peter Gierl (CTO), markt.de GmbH & Co KG, Germany

Konrad Greilich, Thomas Möhle, Marius Hoppe (Founders), Bitkomplex UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Germany

Damien Accorsi - Dirigeant, Algoo, France

Markus Winzer, Prokurist, E. Winzer GmbH & Co KG, Austria

Founder, Saber, UK

Fernando Alava, owner, PixyBit SLU, Spain

Xavier Colombel, CEO, Le Reacteur, France

CEO & Co-founder, Tiptapp, Sweden

Jerome Leclanche, Director, Goveni Limited, Ireland

Florian Traverse, CTO and founder, RockSolead, France

Christian Maas, Founder, myNFP, Germany

Tillmann Carlos Bielefeld, CEO, Maerketing Europe OÜ, Estonia

Evan Murs, owner, Opentruss - Ethicity, Ireland

Kenny Levinsen, Founder and CEO, Levinsen Software IVS, Denmark

Martijn Vos, founder, Vosdev, Netherlands

Thomas Schweizer-Bolzonello, CEO, Intelliance, Estonia

Founder, Screenaware UG, Germany

Florian Wesch, CEO, inlua GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

David Sinclair (CEO), Codebreeze, Sweden

Loris Cuoghi, Founder & CTO, AArtificiale, France

Vinay Sajip, Red Dove Consultants Limited, UK

Andrea Borghi, CEO, W Key s.r.l., Italy

Damjan Maticic, CEO, Koofr, Slovenia

Dmitriy Akulov, CEO, PerfOps, Poland

George Kastelakis, CEO, Ignimedia EE, Greece

Rasmus Porsager, Founder, Porsager IVS, Denmark

Sylvain Kerkour, CEO, Phaser Security France

Stefan Keller, CEO, Keller & Neudecker GdbR, Germany

Robin Jakobsson, Wavy AB, Sweden

Bert Defoor founder, Gardica, Belgium

Hakon Eide, CEO, Personal Software Ltd, UK

CTO, DreamApply.com, Estonia

Jan Rychter, Founder, PartsBox.io, Poland

Bart van Bragt, Founder, Bokt.nl, Netherlands

Dr. Bernd Niklas Klein, CTO, ZENNER IoT Solutions GmbH, Germany

Johan Christenson, CEO, City Network, Sweden

Dawid Wiktor, Founder & CEO, Media Scope Group, Estonia

Ghislain Fabre, Open-Elearning, France

Founder & CEO, Abilian SAS, France

Patrick Broeckers, CEO, opwoco GmbH, Germany

Andreas Gebhard, CEO, Newthinking Communications GmbH, Germany

François Armand, CTO, Rudder.io, France

Tanel Raud, Owner and Manager, Hinnavaatlus OÜ, Eesti

Rene Saare, CTO, Folderit Ltd, Estonia

IBTC Rüdiger Alich, Markus Gerards und Marcel Weber GbR, Germany

Rory Koehler, CEO, Bibimapp Ltd, Ireland

Andreas Schroth, CEO, hPage Ltd., Malta

Stephan Fürnrohr (CEO), Selbstdenker AG, Germany

Mathias Höbinger, CEO and co-founder, ShapeDiver GmbH, Austria

Sebastian Denef, CEO & Co-Founder, OWN.space, Germany

Nicola, owner,, Alix Società cooperativa, Italy

Niall McCarthy, CEO, Crust Technology Ltd, Ireland

Francisco Puga, Co-Owner, iCarto, Spain

Sebastian Lasse, journalist, Redaktorcms, Germany

RebelWeb, Netherlands

Li Cai, CEO, Doypp GmbH, Germany

Simon Dückert, CEO, Cogneon GmbH, Germany

Maximilian Schieder, Zeug e.K., Germany

Morgan Leijström, CEO, Tribun AB, Sweden

Friedrich Stagl, Founder & CEO, OwnCube, Austria

GreenNet, UK

Signing the letter (after publication)

If you want to sign the public letter with your company, please fill in the form below.

Note that your company name will be added to a separate list below the existing signatories.