Free Software, Open Access, And Open Science Groups Join Fight Against EU Copyright Directive's Terrible Ideas

from the how-to-destroy-Europe's-science-and-tech-future-in-one-easy-move dept

Techdirt has been covering the EU's plans to "modernize" copyright law for years now, and noted how things seem to be getting worse. Two ideas -- the so-called link tax and the upload filter -- are particularly one-sided, offering no benefits for the public, but providing the copyright industry with yet more monopolies and powers to censor. That much we knew. But two new initiatives reveal that the harmful effects are much, much broader than first thought.

The first, dubbed "Save Code Share", comes from the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), and the open source organization OpenForum Europe (disclosure: I am an unpaid Fellow of the associated OpenForum Academy, but have no involvement with the new project). The two groups are concerned about the impact of Article 13 of the draft text (pdf) -- the upload filter -- on coding in Europe, as they explain in a white paper:

large businesses, SMEs and individuals relying on current tools to develop software, especially in FOSS [free and open source software] or collaboratively, could be faced with automated filtering which could engender 'false positive' identifications of infringing software, which in turn could cause developers' dependencies randomly to disappear and so literally "break" their builds, resulting in lost business, lost productivity, less reliable software, and less resilient infrastructure.

The problem they identified is that widely-used version control systems (VCS) like GitHub seem to meet the definition of "information society services" laid down by the proposed EU Copyright Directive, and as such would be required to filter all uploads to block copyright infringements. Moreover, as the white paper points out, developer Web sites would not only be held responsible for any material uploaded by users without permission of the copyright holders, but would also seem liable for illegitimate distributions of derivative works in violation of the applicable license.

GitHub and other similar services could also be required to sign licensing deals with other copyright holders, although what kind and with whom is totally unclear. That's because the ill-thought-out Article 13 was designed to catch unauthorized uploads of music and videos, not of software; but its current wording is such that it would seem to apply to VCS platforms as much as to YouTube -- a ridiculous situation. Destroying the indigenous software industry in Europe is presumably not the EU's intention here, and so the FSFE and OpenForum Europe call for Article 13 to be deleted completely.

The other new initiative, an open letter from a coalition of European academic, library, education, research and digital rights organizations, agrees, and wants Article 11 -- the link tax -- thrown out too. Here's why:

The extension of this controversial proposal [the link tax] to academic publications, as proposed by the [European Parliament's Industry, Research and Energy] Committee, significantly worsens an already bad situation. It would provide academic publishers additional legal tools to restrict access, going against the increasingly widely accepted practice of sharing research. This will limit the sharing of open access publications and data which currently are freely available for use and reuse in further scientific advances. If the proposed ancillary right is extended to academic publications, researchers, students and other users of scientific and scholarly journal articles could be forced to ask permission or pay fees to the publisher for including short quotations from a research paper in other scientific publications. This will seriously hamper the spread of knowledge.

Similarly, the coalition believes that the upload filter required by Article 13 of the current Copyright Directive draft will have a major, negative impact on the world of open access and open science:

The provisions of Article 13 threaten the accessibility of scientific articles, publications and research data made available through over 1250 repositories managed by European non-profit institutions and academic communities. These repositories, which are essential for Open Access and Science in Europe, are likely to face significant additional operational costs associated with implementing new filtering technology and the legal costs of managing the risks of intermediary liability. The additional administrative burdens of policing this content would add to these costs. Such repositories, run on a not-for-profit basis, are not equipped to take on such responsibilities, and may face closure. This would be a significant blow, creating new risks for implementing funder, research council and other EU Open Access policies.

These latest interventions are important because they show that the reach of the Copyright Directive's worst elements is much wider than originally thought. They emphasize that, by lobbying for these extreme measures, the copyright industry seems not to care what collateral damage it causes in the EU, whether to the public at large, to the local software industry, or to the entire process of scientific research. The white paper and open letter provide additional, compelling reasons why both Article 11 and Article 13 should be dropped from the final legislation. If they aren't, the danger is that the full potential of the huge and rapidly-growing high-tech ecosystem in Europe will be sacrificed in order to prop up the relatively small and sclerotic copyright industries that refuse to adapt to today's digital environment.

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Filed Under: copyright, copyright directive, eu, open access