Upload Filters Will Always Be A Bad Idea, But Germany's New Implementation Of Article 17 Is An Attempt To Provide Some Protection For Users, Which Others May Follow

from the but-what-will-the-CJEU-say? dept

The EU's Copyright Directive was passed back in 2019, and the two-year period for implementing the law in national legislation is almost up. The text's contradictory requirements to stop infringing material from being posted online without imposing a general requirement to monitor users, which is not permitted under EU law, has proved difficult for governments to deal with. France aims to solve this by ignoring even the limited user protections laid down by the Directive. Germany has been having a rather fraught debate about how exactly Article 17, which implicitly requires upload filters, should be implemented. One good idea to allow users to "pre-flag" as legal the material they upload was jettisoned. That led to fears that the country's implementation of Article 17 would be as bad as France's. But the final version of the law does attempt to ensure that automated filters -- now admitted as indispensable, despite earlier assurances they were optional -- do not block user uploads that are not infringing on copyright. Communia explains:

the German implementation relies on the concept of "uses presumably authorised by law", which must not be blocked automatically. For an upload to qualify as "presumably authorised by law", it needs to fulfil the following cumulative criteria:

The use must consist of less than 50% of the original protected work,
The use must combine the parts of the work with other content, and
The use must be minor (a non-commercial use of less than 15 seconds of audio or video, 160 characters of text or 125 kB of graphics) or, if it generates significant revenues or exceeds these thresholds, the user must flag it as being covered by an exception.

Although it's good that this "presumably authorised by law" use is enshrined in law, the actual limits are absurd. For example, the name alone of the EU Copyright Directive in German is longer than 160 characters. Copyright holders can still challenge the legality of material, but platforms have to keep the uploads online until the complaints have been reviewed by a human. As former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda writes on the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (Society for Civil Liberties) site, there's another feature of the new German law that might help keep upload filters in check, at least a little (original in German, translation via DeepL):

In order to enforce freedom of expression and artistic freedom against upload filters gone wild, the draft law provides for a right of association action for non-commercial associations dedicated to protecting the interests of users. These associations can take legal action against platforms that repeatedly block legal content. In addition, users will be able to claim damages against false copyright claims. The Society for Civil Liberties will use these possibilities if it becomes necessary.

Those are important new options for getting material back online, and discouraging over-blocking. Reda notes that there is also good news for popular online activities such as caricature, parody and pastiche, which will be permitted without restrictions:

This copyright exception includes memes, remixes, mashups, fan fiction and fan art. The German government's draft proposal was to restrict this right to remix in the German copyright reform, although it was adopted as mandatory at the EU level as part of Article 17. The German government's proposal that these uses should only be allowed "provided that the extent of the use is justified by the specific purpose" generated an outcry in the fan fiction community. This has apparently had an effect, because the [German parliament's] legal committee has removed this restriction. Fans in Germany can now look forward to a solid legal basis for fan art and remix culture.

The new German copyright law also brings in copyright exceptions for online teaching, and text and data mining. Cultural institutions such as libraries or archives will be permitted to make their collections available online if these works are no longer commercially available. Those are all welcome, but it is the implementation of Article 17 that is likely to have the most impact. As the Communia blog post notes:

the German implementation law sets a new standard for the implementation of the [Digital Single Market] directive. This is especially true for the implementation of Article 17. With the Commission having missed the chance to issue guidance for the member states in a timely manner [discussed previously on Techdirt], other member states who seek to implement Article 17 in a fundamental rights-compliant way should look at the German law for guidance.

Since the new Germany copyright law could become the model for other EU nations as they implement Article 17 -- except for France, of course -- it's good news that it has a number of positive elements. Those are likely to prove crucial if -- or rather when -- the EU Copyright Directive faces another legal challenge at the CJEU, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Poland has already lodged one). The complaint is likely to be that Article 17 cannot be implemented without violating the fundamental rights of users. In that case, the CJEU will have to decide whether Germany's innovative approach goes far enough in preserving them.

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Filed Under: article 17, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, fair dealing, fair use, germany, presumably authorized by law, snippets, upload filters

It Took Four Months And Thousands Of Dollars To Overturn One Manifestly Stupid Upload Block: Imagine How Bad It Will Soon Be With EU Copyright Directive's Blanket Use Of Filters

from the this-is-gonna-be-bad dept

The upload filters required by the EU's Copyright Directive are not yet in operation -- even though France seems keen to bring them in as soon as possible. So we have been spared for the moment the inevitable harm to freedom of speech and loss of online users' rights that this ill-conceived and dishonest legislation will cause. But a minor case in the Czech Republic provides a foretaste of what is to come. It concerns the Czech file-sharing and hosting site Ulož.to. TorrentFreak has the details:

Late last year, the Municipal Court in Prague ruled that Ulož must filter and block files that reference the word "Šarlatán" ('Charlatan') which is also the name of a Czech movie.

Blocking files that merely reference a particular word is a ridiculously crude approach: all kinds of material will be caught and blocked. Fortunately, the stupidity of this move, requested by the movie distributor Cinemart, was understood by the High Court in Prague when Ulož appealed against the order. However, it took four months to overturn the preliminary filtering order, during which time Ulož was obliged to comply with the lower court's instructions. Not unreasonably, it is now seeking compensation for the unnecessary work this entailed, as well for its legal costs:

Ulož is seeking 585,000 Czech Koruna (~$27,320) to compensate for the filtering and monitoring costs, and another 200,000 (~$9,340) to cover the legal costs and fees.

In itself, it's hardly a ground-breaking result. But even for this minor case, it required considerable amounts of time and money before a manifestly unjust ruling was thrown out. Imagine how things will be once the EU's new upload filters start to operate. They will give rise to many cases -- hundreds? thousands? more? -- where material is wrongly blocked, but where sites are unwilling to allow it to be posted on appeal. Most members of the public will give up at this point, deterred by the prospects of unknown costs for what are likely to be far more complex legal questions than the simple one considered in Prague. All-in-all, the isolated case of Ulož does not bode well for what will soon be the painful everyday reality of copyright across the whole of the EU.

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Filed Under: article 17, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, prague, upload filters

European Commission's Attempt To Backtrack On Its Promise To Defend Fundamental Rights In Upload Filter Implementations May Backfire Badly

from the well-played,-Advocate-General dept

One of the most disgraceful aspects of the EU Copyright Directive saga was the shameless way its supporters swore that upload filters would not be required -- despite the evident fact that there was no other way to implement the new law's requirements. And indeed, once the legislation was passed, France lost no time in pushing for upload filters. Worse, its own implementation ignored what few protections there were for users' fundamental rights. Fortunately, back in 2019, the Polish government made a formal request for the EU's top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), to throw out upload filters. That is still grinding its way through the EU's legal system, but its mere existence could play an important role as EU member states grapple with the impossible task of passing national laws to implement the EU Copyright Directive.

To help them do that, the European Commission said it would release guidance on how to reconcile the contradictory requirements of upload filters and user rights. As a post by Communia accompanying an open letter to the Commission (pdf) explains, the first draft made it clear that national implementations of Article 17 -- upload filters -- must contain built-in protection that limits the automated blocking of uploads to situations where material is "manifestly" infringing. Since that promising start, there has been no sign of the final guidance. Instead, as Communia notes, there has been lots of lobbying against user rights:

Over the past few months the final version of the guidance has been the object of intense, behind the scenes, political wrangling between different parts of the Commission. In February, MEPs critical of the principles expressed in the draft guidance held a closed door meeting with Commission representatives and select Member States opposing the Commission's position. In the following week a high ranking member of the Cabinet of Executive Vice President Magrete Vestager -- who oversees this file -- received a delegation of rightholder organisations who have been rallying against the principles underpinning the Commission's draft guidance to discuss the Copyright Directive.

It looks increasingly likely that the European Commission is planning to cave in to the usual copyright bullies. But it has a major problem in the form of the Polish action at the CJEU. If its guidance fails to defend fundamental user rights, and national implementations ignore them, it is more likely that the CJEU will strike down Article 17:

a weakened version of the guidance would also undermine the Commission's credibility with the CJEU, who ultimately needs to decide on the fundamental rights compliance of Article 17. Having argued that the upcoming guidance would signal a strong commitment to protecting users' fundamental rights, any weakening of this position by the Commission would give the Court additional reasons to annul Article 17 (as requested by the Republic of Poland).

It seems the European Commission has been unwilling to release its long-awaited and watered-down guidance because it wanted the CJEU's adviser, the Advocate General, to publish his opinion before the bad news came. But the Advocate General has outplayed the European Commission. He has announced that he won't be releasing his opinion until July, rather than this week, as originally planned. By then, the draft guidance will have been issued, because EU member states must implement the Copyright Directive soon. So either the European Commission defends user rights in its official implementation guidance, or else it risks having the Advocate General and CJEU throw out upload filters completely.

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Filed Under: article 17, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu commission, eu copyright directive, fundamental rights, upload filters, user protections

Chanel Loses Trademark Dispute With Huawei Over Latter's Logo

from the smells-like-a-loss dept

It's no secret that Chanel, the famous French luxury brand most notable for concocting things that make us smell better, is also a voracious protector of its trademarks. As evidence for this, one needs only to recall that the company once bullied a 2-person candy purveyor over its use of the number "5". The point is, when Chanel comes a-calling complaining about trademarks, you really need to view it all with narrow eyes.

Chanel's years-long trademark row with electronics company Huawei is no different. This story begins way back in 2017, when Huawei attempted to register a logo for its hardware division with EUIPO.

The dispute dated to 2017 when Huawei sought approval from the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), a trademark body, to register its computer hardware trademark which has two vertical interlocking semi-circles.

Privately owned Chanel objected, saying that the design was similar to its registered French logo of two horizontal interlocking semi-circles used for its perfumes, cosmetics, costume jewellery, leather goods and clothing.

How similar are the logos? Well, the answer is very, very similar... if you mean that they are exact opposites.

The Chanel logos are on the bottom and the Huawei logo in question is up top. Yes, there's a circle enclosing both symbols. Yes both include interlocking shapes. But beyond that, the logos are essentially opposites. And, frankly, not the kind of opposite that calls to mind Chanel's logo at all. Add to all of that the fact that these two companies compete in wildly different markets and it's fairly crazy that Chanel thought it should kick off this dispute to begin with.

But it did. And then, in a 2019 decision by the trademark office, it lost. The trademark office indicated that the logos really weren't similar at all. For some reason Chanel appealed that decision and lost there too.

The French luxury house subsequently challenged the ruling at the Luxembourg-based General Court, which dismissed the appeal in its ruling on Wednesday.

"The figurative marks at issue are not similar. The marks must be compared as applied for and registered, without altering their orientation," the tribunal of judges said.

The tribunal said the visual differences in the two logos were significant.

"In particular, Chanel's marks have more rounded curves, thicker lines and a horizontal orientation, whereas the orientation of the Huawei mark is vertical. Consequently, the General Court concludes that the marks are different," it said.

It's a decision as right as Chanel's decision to start this fray was wrong. There is little if any chance of public confusion in this case, given the differences in the branding coupled with the divergent markets in which these companies operate.

The better question is why famous brands so often feel the need to gum up the works like this to begin with?

Filed Under: eu, luxury brands, trademark
Companies: chanel, huawei

Driven Mad By Its Hatred For Big US Internet Companies, French Government Implements EU Digital Services Act Before It Even Exists

from the to-hell-with-the-consequences dept

The future Digital Services Act (DSA), dealing with intermediary liability in the EU, is likely to be one of the region's most important new laws for the online world. At the moment, the DSA exists only as a proposal from the European Commission. In due course, the European Parliament and the EU's Member States will come up with their own texts, and the three versions will ultimately be reconciled to produce legislation that will apply across the whole of the EU. As Techdirt reported last month, the Commission's ideas are something of a mess, and the hope has to be that the text will improve as the various arms of the EU start to work on it over the coming months.

The French government, however, is unwilling to wait before it can start imposing intermediary liability on the US Internet giants it seems to hate so much. It has decided to bring in key parts of the DSA immediately -- even though it doesn't formally exist -- using what it calls a "pretranscription" of the proposed EU law. Next Inpact has the details (original in French), but what matters most is the way the "pretranscription" of the DSA clashes with an important existing EU law, the e-Commerce Directive. The European Commission explains:

While the e-Commerce Directive remains the cornerstone of digital regulation, much has changed since its adoption 20 years ago. The DSA will address these changes and the challenges that have come with them, particularly in relation to online intermediaries.

The DSA is intended to update and supersede the e-Commerce Directive. But until the DSA is passed -- something that is years off -- the e-Commerce Directive remains in force, and is incompatible with France's local pretranscription. The best the politicians in France can come up with to justify this extraordinary course of action, which cuts across how the EU is supposed to work collectively to draw up laws that apply uniformly across the whole region, is that all-purpose excuse -- the threat of terrorist attacks. Even the French Senate's Law Committee warned of the "extreme legal fragility" of the government's logic here. In reality, it's just another case of the French government keen to bash Internet companies as soon as it can, and to hell with the political, economic or social consequences.

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Filed Under: digital services act, dsa, eu, france, internet regulation

Imminent Win For The Public Domain: Court Likely To Compel Musée Rodin To Release Its 3D Scans Of Sculptor's Works For Free

from the why-even-fight-this? dept

Back in 2019, Techdirt wrote about a fascinating case involving a bogus CC license on a 3D scan of a 3000-year-old bust of Nefertiti. The person at the heart of the saga was the artist and open access activist Cosmo Wenman. His web site has some background on what he calls his "freedom of information projects":

For more than a decade, museums around the world have been making high-quality 3D scans of important sculptures and ancient artifacts. Many institutions freely share those 3D scans with the public, allowing us to view, copy, adapt, and experiment with the underlying works in ways that have never before been possible. But some keep their scans out of public view, and I've been trying to help them see the light.

Following his success in liberating the 3D scan of Nefertiti, Wenman is now trying to do the same with 3D scans of the works of the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Many of these scans have been created by the Musée Rodin in Paris. There is a long and entertaining article (in the original French and an English translation - pdf) about Wenman's pursuit of the 3D scans, and of the Musée Rodin's refusal to share them. Wenman took an interesting tack, claiming that the museum's 3D scans were documents subject to France's freedom of information (FOIA) laws. It worked:

In late 2018 I sent a formal demand to Musée Rodin for access to all its 3D scans, citing French freedom of information laws. When the museum refused to comply, I brought the matter before the French government.

In June of 2019 the French government agency that oversees FOIA matters announced its first-of-its-kind opinion, in my favor; 3D scans produced by French national museums are in fact administrative documents and are subject to public disclosure. Musée Rodin is required by law to give the public access to its 3D scans of Rodin's works.

Another victory for Wenman, then, but rather a hollow one. Despite the French government agency's ruling, Musée Rodin continues to withhold the 3D scans. Wenman went on to file a suit against the museum in the Administrative Tribunal of Paris. Wenman wants the court to compel the museum to comply with the law, and to impose "significant" financial penalties for any delay. After more than a year with no response, the court directed the museum to present a defense. At the time of writing, Wenman is still waiting. However, given the unequivocal nature of the rulings against the Musée Rodin, he is confident:

Musée Rodin is going to fight, but I expect to win. The outcome will affect every national museum in France, inform policies at institutions around the world, and have interesting effects on the art market.

I’m shooting for a victory for open access, and freedom and innovation in the arts.

The knock-on effects of one person's dogged pursuit of a few computer files could have a major impact on the wider availability of 3D scans of sculptures and ancient artifacts -- a real win for the public domain.

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Filed Under: 3d scans, copyright, eu, france, nefertiti, public domain, rodin

Is The Digital Services Act Going To Make A Huge Mess Of Website Liability In The EU?

from the sounds-like-it dept

I've been so focused of late on issues related to Section 230 in the US, that I've had barely any time to devote to the Digital Services Act in the EU, which is the EU's ongoing efforts to rewrite intermediary law in the EU. The reports I have followed have been a mix of concerns, with the admission that it at least appeared that EU politicians were trying to get a good grasp on the issues and trade-offs and not rush in with a totally horrible plan. That doesn't mean the end result is good, but so far it does not appear to be totally disconnected from reality, as with many similar proposals we've seen around the globe.

Joan Barata has a good report looking at the the current state of intermediary liability in the latest DSA proposal and notes that it's... kind of a mess. Basically, as is often the case with intermediary liability laws, very few policymakers have experience with the actual issues, and thus they can't take into account how various provisions will actually work in practice. Frequently that means that proposals are worded vaguely, and no one will really know what they mean until after a series of lengthy, confusing, and expensive court decisions.

As Barata notes, the DSA appears to retain the basic liability protections that have existed for the last two decades in the EU in the form of the E-commerce Directive (which is weaker than Section 230's protections in the US, but are roughly equivalent in saying that websites should not be held liable for 3rd party content). The big difference with the E-commerce Directive is that websites do need to remove content "upon obtaining actual knowledge or awareness" of "illegal activities." Of course, what exactly is meant by "obtaining actual knowledge or awareness" becomes a tricky question at times and did involve some lawsuits.

The DSA, though, moves the liability situation further away from Section 230 and more to a DMCA style "safe harbor" situation, by establishing that knowledge can be obtained through "notices":

Apart from the provisions included in Article 5, Article 14(3) establishes that notice and action mechanisms fulfilling certain criteria give rise to actual knowledge or awareness.

The DSA tries to avoid the classic "moderator's dilemma" issue by saying that even though knowledge or awareness could make you liable, you don't necessarily lose your liability protections if you carry out your own investigations:

Article 6 clarifies that intermediaries may not lose their liability protections “solely because they carry out voluntary own initiative investigations or other activities aimed at detecting, identifying and removing, or disabling of access to, illegal content, or take the necessary measures to comply with the requirements of Union law, including those set out in this Regulation”.

But what does that mean in practice? You can lose the protections if you know about illegal stuff on your website, but you don't lose them if you are doing your own investigation. But at what point does finding stuff during your own investigation magically morph into knowledge or awareness? Well, the answer seems... contradictory. Basically, it sounds like the current draft of the DSA hangs an awful lot of weight on the word "solely." If illegal content is discovered "solely" via an investigation, then a site might retain its protections -- but if that same content is discovered in any other way, then the site may have knowledge and face liability. This... is going to be confusing.

And, again, this tends to be the problem with all of these proposals. They want to encourage sites to moderate to clean up bad stuff, but if they mandate liability for having knowledge of bad stuff, you incentivize less searching. But now you are still left in a weird, twisted position, where you say "okay, you can search, but if you find stuff, you're no longer liable for it... unless you also have separate knowledge of it." And how do you manage that?

This is actually one of the many reasons why -- despite all the criticism it receives -- Section 230 gets the balance right. It gives websites a free hand in moderating content, but does so in a way that many, many other forces come into play in pressuring the company to be a good actor in the space. Public pressure, user concerns, media coverage, and advertiser pressure, all serve to push websites to improve their moderation practices. Too many people, however, think that without a law mandating such things, nothing happens. That's wrong. We're seeing every website continually work to create better policies not because of the risk of some confusing and potentially very costly law, but because they don't want their site to be a dumpster fire of awful.

Filed Under: confusion, digital services act, dsa, e-commerce directive, eu, intermediary liability, knowledge, monitoring, notices, section 230

The Lies Told About The EU Copyright Directive's Upload Filters May Help Get Them Thrown Out In Court

from the freedom-to-conduct-business dept

Although the main fight over the EU's Copyright Directive was lost back in March 2019, there are plenty of local battles underway. That's a consequence of the fact that an EU Directive has to be implemented by separate national laws in each of the region's 27 member states. Drawing up the local legislation is mostly straightforward, except for the controversial Article 17, which effectively brings in a requirement to filter all uploads. Trying to come up with a text that meets the contradictory obligations of the Directive is proving difficult. For example, although the law is supposed to stop unauthorized uploads, this must not be through "general monitoring", which is not permitted in the EU because of the e-Commerce Directive.

As the various countries struggle to resolve these problems, it is no surprise that they are coming up with very different approaches. These are usefully summed up in a new post on the Kluwer Copyright blog. For example, France is implementing the Copyright Directive by decree, rather than via ordinary legislative procedures. As Techdirt reported, the French government is pushing through an extreme interpretation that ignores requirements for user protections. Germany, by contrast, is bringing in wide-ranging new law that contains a number of positive ideas:

a new "minor use" exception that would legalise minor uses of third party works on online platforms.

In addition, the proposal also introduced the ability for uploaders to "pre-flag" any uploads as legitimate, protecting them from automated blocking.

It limited the scope of the requirement for platforms to obtain licences to "works that users typically upload". Platforms can meet their best efforts obligation to obtain authorisation by approaching collective management organisations and by responding to licence offers from rightsholders with a representative repertoire.

There is an irony here. One of the main reasons for introducing the Copyright Directive was to make copyright law more consistent across the EU. Article 17 is causing copyright law there to diverge even more.

The Kluwer Copyright blog has two more recent posts about Article 17, written by Julia Reda and Joschka Selinger. They look at an aspect of upload filters that could be of crucial importance in the case brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) by Poland, which seeks to have upload filters removed from the Copyright Directive.

On several occasions, the CJEU has thrown out blocking injunctions for violating the service providers' freedom to conduct a business. In a recently published study on behalf of German fundamental rights litigation organization Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte e.V., the authors of this blog post argue that when ruling on the request for annulment of Article 17, the CJEU will have to balance all relevant fundamental rights, including the freedom to conduct a business. In this blog post, we will put the spotlight on this under-examined fundamental right. In part 1, we will discuss its relevance for the court case pending before the CJEU. We will examine the ways in which Article 17 places new burdens on online platforms that are fundamentally different from the voluntary copyright enforcement schemes employed by some of the larger platforms today. In part 2, we analyse those new platform obligations in light of the CJEU case law on the freedom to conduct a business and discuss the role of the proportionality mechanism included in Article 17 (5). We find that the legislator may have grossly underestimated the impact of Article 17 on the freedom to conduct a business.

The basic argument is simple. During the debate on the Copyright Directive, its supporters were deeply dishonest about how it would work in practice. They repeatedly claimed that it would not require upload filters, and denied that it would be hard to implement in a way that was compatible with existing EU laws. Unfortunately, the politicians in the European Parliament were taken in by these claims, and passed what became Article 17 without amendments.

But the case before the CJEU gives another chance to point out the truth about upload filters. The fact that they only exist for things like music and video, not all copyrightable material as Article 17 requires; that those don't work well; and that even these flawed systems can only be afforded by Internet giants like Google. In practical terms, this means that smaller companies that allow user uploads will be unable to comply with Article 17, since it would require the use of technology that would be expensive to develop or license, and which wouldn't even work properly. As such, a key argument in the CJEU case will be that upload filters represent an unjustified interference in the freedom to conduct a business in the EU, and should be thrown out. Let's hope the CJEU agrees.

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Filed Under: article 17, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, france, general monitoring, germany, upload filters, user protections

Turns Out That Brexit Means Rotting Pigs' Heads, And Losing An EU Copyright Exception

from the taking-the-orphans-hostage-again dept

Surprising no one who understands anything about international trade, the UK's departure from the EU -- Brexit -- is proving to be disastrous for its economy. Among the latest victims are Scottish fishermen, who are no longer able to sell their catches to EU customers, and the UK meat industry, which has tons of rotting pigs' heads on its hands. And it turns out that Brexit will be making copyright worse too.

It concerns the slightly obscure area of what are traditionally called "orphan works", although "hostage works" would be a better description. Whatever you call them, they are the millions of older works that are out of print and have no obvious owners, and which remain locked away because of copyright. This has led to various proposals around the world to liberate them, while still protecting the copyright holders if they later appear and assert ownership. One of these proposals became the 2012 EU Directive "on certain permitted uses of orphan works". It created a new copyright exception to allow cultural institutions to digitize written, cinematic or audio-visual works, and sound recordings, and to display them on their Web sites, for non-commercial use only. As Techdirt noted at the time, the Directive was pretty feeble. But even that tiny copyright exception has been taken away in the UK, following Brexit:

The EU orphan works exception will no longer apply to UK-based institutions and will be repealed from UK law from 1 January 2021.

UK institutions may face claims of copyright infringement if they make orphan works available online in the UK or EEA, including works they had placed online before 1 January 2021.

Now, in order to use orphan works in the UK, people must pay a recurring license fee based on the number of works involved. As a result, the British Library has started withdrawing material that it had previously digitized under the EU orphan works directive:

As many of you know, back in 2015 the British Library, working closely with partners at Jisc's Journal Archives platform and with copyright holders, digitised and made freely available the entire run of Spare Rib magazines. We are delighted that this resource, documenting a vibrant and important period of women's activism in the UK, has been so well used by researchers and those interested in the Women's Liberation Movement.

It is therefore with considerable regret that we are confirming that the resource, as a result of the UK leaving the European Union, will no longer be available following the end of the transition period. The decision to close down the Spare Rib resource once the UK leaves the EU was made on the basis of the copyright status of the digitised magazine, which relies heavily on the EU orphan works directive.

Brexit was sold on the basis that it would make things better in the UK. And yet the change to copyright brought about by Brexit turns out to make things worse for scholars and the general public. It seems that pigs' heads are not the only thing rotting thanks to Brexit.

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Filed Under: brexit, copyright, eu, orphan works, uk

Irony: German Chancellor Merkel Upset At Twitter For Banning Trump; Meanwhile Germany Demands Social Media Blocks Dangerous Content

from the square-the-circle dept

Lots of folks are reporting on the news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now said that she finds Twitter's decision to ban Donald Trump "problematic."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted Twitter’s decision to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday, according to Reuters.

“Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president’s accounts have been permanently suspended.”

Of course, this totally leaves out the fact that Germany is among the countries leading the charge in forcing internet companies to remove "dangerous" or "terrorist" content. I mean, it was only three years ago when the infamous NetzDG law went into effect, giving social media companies 24 hours to remove "obviously illegal" content, with threats of fines up to €5 million for employees of these companies if they magically fail to delete such content.

As we've pointed out, this is an impossible standard to meet, and it's likely to get worse. The law has been a total dumpster fire with websites rushing to remove all sorts of content (including criticism of Angela Merkel...), to avoid facing penalties under the law.

On top of this, Germany has been among those pushing for new rules, such as the Terrorist Content Regulation that would give companies only an hour to remove "terrorist content."

So it seems a bit rich for Merkel to now whine when Twitter shuts down Trump's account. Of course, I've heard two semi-defenses of Merkel's statement here. The first is that she's distinguishing between removing specific tweets and shutting down the full account. And the second is that in the EU, they distrust corporate power, but are more trusting of government power. So they're okay if the government decides to block certain content, but not comfortable with companies doing the same.

Indeed, the next part of Merkels' statement seems to highlight that both of those claims explain this weird cognitive dissonance:

Seibert said that, while Twitter was right to flag Trump’s inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far. He added that governments, not private companies, should decide on any limitations to freedom of speech.

But... that doesn't hold up to any amount of serious scrutiny at all. After all, even if it is the government that passed the NetzDG law, and is working on other laws like the Digital Services Act and the Terrorist Content Regulation, every one of those laws then basically hands off the decision making to those companies. They never pick and choose which content is bad, they just tell the companies that if they mess up, they may face huge fines and/or criminal prosecution. That leads to massive over-censorship.

Indeed, it creates such a liability for companies that they will frequently overblock to avoid that liability. It's just not worth it.

So, the whole thing is ridiculous. It's yet another version of the "nerd harder" response from politicians, claiming that this kind of blocking is a bridge too far, but that other kind of blocking is fine, and if you mess it up in either direction (blocking too much or too little) you'll get in trouble.

This is what's so frustrating in all of this. People who have no idea how all of this works seem to expect that there's some magic way to do the perfectly correct amount of moderation. They're wrong. There's always, always, always, going to be disagreements about the proper amount of moderation, and Merkel's been part of the problem in pressuring companies to take down too much. It's quite ridiculous for her now to complain that companies are doing what she and her government have been demanding all along.

Filed Under: angela merkel, content moderation, donald trump, eu, germany, netzdg
Companies: twitter