Imagine the EU declares war on the internet and nobody turns up
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McNamee, Joe
Imagine Europe is passing the world’s worst censorship law and nobody cared. The EU is preparing to adopt new legislation on copyright which is far worse than ACTA in 2012: It includes an obligation for upload filters (Article 13) that would build a system where citizens face Internet platforms blocking the upload of their content, even if it is a perfectly legal use of copyrighted content. It is high time to mobilise and fight for the deletion of Article 13! This talk explains how the EU proposal threatens human rights and the functioning of the internet.
 The good thing about this is that it's English. So first of all, I'm Executive Director and NOS Chair. Secondly, I have a curse. A curse has been placed upon me that every week or every two weeks, I'm standing in front of a group of people who are hungry, who want to have lunch. And me talking is the only thing that stops them from eating. I'm sorry, it's the curse, it's not me, I'll be quick, I promise. So, Edry has German members like CCC, Digital Gesellschaft, Digital Garage, FIF. I'm going to spend a lot of time attacking the EU, the European Commission, the European Parliament. I am wildly enthusiastic, pro-European. I grew up in a village where we had one of those black phones that you had to wind up. And now we have broadband. And part of the reason we have broadband is because it's one of the many things that the EU has done to liberalise telecommunications. So nothing is so good that it can't be done badly. And at the moment, we're doing things badly on a European level in the net internet policy area. We, you friends, have been very successful in recent years. You and we got angry about data protection, we got the general data protection regulation. We got angry about ACTA, we defeated ACTA. We defeated ACTA so energetically that we defeated legislative proposals that you don't even know exist or existed. There was a criminal sanctions for intellectual property enforcement directive that was sitting on the shelf waiting for ACTA that was never proposed because the strength of our community stopped it. You also killed Sincere Zula's internet blocking and its European friend, the child exploitation directives proposal on blocking. It's time to get angry again. The EU is at war with the internet again. It's at war with the internet, with through the copyright directive and its evil misshapen brother, the audiovisual media services directive. Everyone is being quiet. The German parties are being quiet ahead of the German elections. If nobody asks them what's going on, then maybe they can get through the elections without having to promise anything. Julia Reda tweeted yesterday or the day before that it's time for them to stand up and so far I've seen little. The European institutions hope that the directives are passed by the end of this year because that's far enough ahead of the 2019 elections for everyone to forget about what happened. How is this internet aside happening? How is the internet at war with the internet? How is the EU at war with the internet? The EU has a thing called the better regulation agenda. In the middle of the better regulation agenda, we have a conscious strategy to make bad regulation for the internet. By creating legal confusion for internet companies that only the biggest internet providers can cope with, providers can be coerced, they can be pressured into imposing restrictions, they can be pressured into filtering and blocking and surveillance, this can generate more restrictions but more unaccountable restrictions, restrictions that can be challenged in a much more difficult way in court because the choice of poison is left to the providers and their private contracts with you and is not directly imposed by law. By not imposing the restrictions explicitly by law, the European Commission can avoid being held accountable. It matters little for the European Commission that the Charter of Fundamental Rights requires restrictions to be provided for by law. It seems to matter little for the European Commission that the central role of the Commission is to be the guardian of the treaties. The speed and brazeness with which facts are ignored and laws being rejected by the EU in these measures is so extreme that it would make Donald Trump blush with embarrassment. This lack of accountability, this chaos is what the traditional TV stations have been lobbying for because they see a short-term interest in doing so. It's what the copyright industry has been lobbying for in their short-term interest. It's what the publishing industry has been lobbying for in their short-term interest. It's power without control and power without control is poison for honesty, it's poison for transparency. So friends, it's time to get angry again and it's time to get active again. Thank you. I have to mention briefly the Audiovisual Media Services Directive because the good thing about it is that it's so bad, it's actually quite funny. Under the Parliament's position and the Council of the European Union's position, the definition of video covers things that aren't video. The definition of user-generated video doesn't require the content and question to be user-generated or video. It regulates companies as Audiovisual Media Services that aren't Audiovisual Media Services. It creates liability in practice but not in law. So what are these social media companies that aren't Audiovisual Media Services meant to do? They're meant to take all necessary measures to protect us from all types of discrimination, which may be legal, may not be legal. We don't know, they don't care. On the basis of sex, race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation. Oh, and Google and Facebook and friends will have to take measures to protect the moral development of our children. By the by, these companies are generally based on Ireland and a little interesting thing about Ireland. Ireland has a blasphemy law. Did you know that? So God knows what they're going to do. They're going to have to also implement technical measures to be developed by regulators, develop self and co-regulation and governments will be able to interfere with their contracts with you. So that's the Audiovisual Media Services directive. The Copyright directive. The Copyright directive is a nuclear attack on the internet. It's a nuclear attack on logic and truth. It has measures like ancillary copyright proposed by the German publisher Springer. It was proposed by German commissioner Gunther Oettinger. He gets around, doesn't he? It was proposed following a meeting between Oettinger and rights holders where only rights holders were allowed to participate. It was driven through allegedly by Junker's head of cabinet, the German Martin Selmaier. The new rapporteur, German conservative MEP Axel Voss, supported among others by German Green MEP Helga Trüpel. Oh, and I forgot to mention the joint rapporteurs for the Audiovisual Media Services directive, an SPD German MEP and a CDU German MEP. Oh, and both of them are on the boards of regional German TV stations, but that's okay. I don't know why it's okay, but it's okay. So the Copyright directive. It can't be that bad, can it? Well, it proposes monitoring everything that's being uploaded to the internet, but don't worry, because monitoring everything is not a general obligation to monitor. They're only looking for millions of file identifiers. That's a specific search, not a general search. Helga Trüpel tweeted this, so it must be true. It's like when you go to the airport and they look through your bags. They're only looking for anything they can find. They're not looking for, it's not a general search. And don't worry, it's legal. They tell us, except it's in direct contradiction. I had to rewrite this twice. I originally thought it was in direct contradiction to two European court rulings. I was wrong, so I changed it. It's in direct contradiction to three European court rulings. I was wrong. It's actually in direct contradiction to four European court rulings. But don't worry, they tell us. It only applies to providers that actively promote content, except it interprets literally anything that a provider does as being active promotion in contradiction to the European court. But don't worry, because it only applies to infringing material, they tell us. But it's not. It is a first shoot and ask questions later approach where you can forget about copyright flexibilities and limitations. Don't worry, they tell us. It's going to be cheap for providers to impose, except it isn't. Google spent tens of millions of dollars on their filtering solution. Google is safe. European startups, European hosting companies, they have a problem. It's economic self-harm. It's Europe discriminating against European companies. Don't worry, they say. It doesn't change provider liability. But NMEP tweeted only this week that she voted for it because she wanted additional liability for internet providers. And it does change liability for internet companies, but only for copyright. So you have one level for copyright and a lower level for all minor things like terrorism and child abuse. And don't worry, they tell us. It's only about making Google pay, except Google already pays. Maybe they don't pay enough. Maybe we can have rules to get them to pay more. Google already has invested in intrusive and flawed upload filters. The proposal was designed around Google. All internet companies in Europe will be regulated as if they were Google. Guess what? They're not. So, under the proposal, pretty much every EU hosting company would have to install filters for pictures, text, audio, audio-visual content, sport, any other work that is protected. But the good news is that this is all possible because it is being imposed indirectly by providers. They're being pushed into it. They're being asked which poison that they want to choose, which means that it's their choice and not the law's choice, which means it's not the EU's fault. So what now? There will be a vote in a few weeks in the European Parliament Committee, the Legal Affairs Committee. The MEP in charge, Axel Voss, his number is on the internet. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. The other members of the Legal Affairs Committee would love to hear from you. I'm sure they would love to hear how great you think their work is, both on copyright and the link tax and ancillary copyright. Later on in the year, the Council will make its decision on its position. The Council delayed a bit because there's something happening in Germany where Germany doesn't want to make any statement until after the election. So, don't disturb the voters ahead of the election. And then there will be trilogs, which Thomas mentioned a moment ago. Trilogs won't keep you much longer. Trilogs are an amazing thing. In the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 17 members of the Culture Committee voted in favour of the Culture Committee's vote. That became the position of the European Parliament. 17 MEPs deciding for 351 MEPs. That's the Parliament position. The Council is even better. The Council had a meeting with all of the ministers. Lots of ministers, particularly from smaller member states that aren't protecting big broadcasters, said, this is ridiculous. This is unclear. This is an attack on free speech. This is an attack on legal certainty. The Presidency of the Council said, thank you, can we turn off the cameras? The video is online if you don't believe me. And the Presidency of the Council said, so how many countries have a fundamental objection to this text? Ireland had, the UK had, the Netherlands had, Luxembourg had, Sweden, Finland. There wasn't enough for a blocking minority. So the Presidency said, OK, on that basis, we are adopting the Council position. The Council position was adopted with zero votes in favour. So now the Council, with the text supported by zero votes in favour, the Parliament, with the text that was supported by 17 MEPs, now have closed door meetings that are not public where the documents aren't public. And at some stage in the future, a deal will be done behind closed doors that nobody has accountability for. And that will be put to the vote in the European Parliament as a done deal that can't be changed. That is very similar to what's going to happen with the copyright directive, except the number of MEPs and the Legal Affairs Committee is smaller than in the Culture Committee. So there won't even be 17 MEPs adopting the Council, the Parliament position. And then at some stage in the future, behind closed doors, behind closed doors where the documents will be shared with the copyright lobby, a deal will be arranged and it will be too late to change anything. The time, ladies and gentlemen, friends, to stop this absolute bloody insanity is now. The time to save the internet for future generations is now. The time to stop this bloody nonsense is now. Julie Radier speaking later on, she will give you more of the detail. If you think what I told you is scary, what she's going to tell you is even worse. So without keeping you from your lunch even more, we stopped ACTA, we got the GDPR, we stopped the criminal sanctions IPR enforcement directive, we stopped Sincere Zula, we stopped its European equivalent. If you care enough to be here, you care enough to help us stop this nonsense. Thank you.
 The good thing about this is that it's English.  So first of all, I'm Executive Director and NOS Chair.  Secondly, I have a curse.  A curse has been placed upon me that every week or every two weeks, I'm standing in front  of a group of people who are hungry, who want to have lunch.  And me talking is the only thing that stops them from eating.  I'm sorry, it's the curse, it's not me, I'll be quick, I promise.  So, Edry has German members like CCC, Digital Gesellschaft, Digital Garage, FIF.  I'm going to spend a lot of time attacking the EU, the European Commission, the European  Parliament.  I am wildly enthusiastic, pro-European.  I grew up in a village where we had one of those black phones that you had to wind up.  And now we have broadband.  And part of the reason we have broadband is because it's one of the many things that the  EU has done to liberalise telecommunications.  So nothing is so good that it can't be done badly.  And at the moment, we're doing things badly on a European level in the net internet policy  area.  We, you friends, have been very successful in recent years.  You and we got angry about data protection, we got the general data protection regulation.  We got angry about ACTA, we defeated ACTA.  We defeated ACTA so energetically that we defeated legislative proposals that you don't  even know exist or existed.  There was a criminal sanctions for intellectual property enforcement directive that was sitting  on the shelf waiting for ACTA that was never proposed because the strength of our community  stopped it.  You also killed Sincere Zula's internet blocking and its European friend, the child exploitation  directives proposal on blocking.  It's time to get angry again.  The EU is at war with the internet again.  It's at war with the internet, with through the copyright directive and its evil misshapen  brother, the audiovisual media services directive.  Everyone is being quiet.  The German parties are being quiet ahead of the German elections.  If nobody asks them what's going on, then maybe they can get through the elections without  having to promise anything.  Julia Reda tweeted yesterday or the day before that it's time for them to stand up and so  far I've seen little.  The European institutions hope that the directives are passed by the end of this year because  that's far enough ahead of the 2019 elections for everyone to forget about what happened.  How is this internet aside happening?  How is the internet at war with the internet?  How is the EU at war with the internet?  The EU has a thing called the better regulation agenda.  In the middle of the better regulation agenda, we have a conscious strategy to make bad regulation  for the internet.  By creating legal confusion for internet companies that only the biggest internet providers can  cope with, providers can be coerced, they can be pressured into imposing restrictions,  they can be pressured into filtering and blocking and surveillance, this can generate more restrictions  but more unaccountable restrictions, restrictions that can be challenged in a much more difficult  way in court because the choice of poison is left to the providers and their private  contracts with you and is not directly imposed by law.  By not imposing the restrictions explicitly by law, the European Commission can avoid  being held accountable.  It matters little for the European Commission that the Charter of Fundamental Rights requires  restrictions to be provided for by law.  It seems to matter little for the European Commission that the central role of the Commission  is to be the guardian of the treaties.  The speed and brazeness with which facts are ignored and laws being rejected by the EU  in these measures is so extreme that it would make Donald Trump blush with embarrassment.  This lack of accountability, this chaos is what the traditional TV stations have been  lobbying for because they see a short-term interest in doing so.  It's what the copyright industry has been lobbying for in their short-term interest.  It's what the publishing industry has been lobbying for in their short-term interest.  It's power without control and power without control is poison for honesty, it's poison  for transparency.  So friends, it's time to get angry again and it's time to get active again.  Thank you.  I have to mention briefly the Audiovisual Media Services Directive because the good  thing about it is that it's so bad, it's actually quite funny.  Under the Parliament's position and the Council of the European Union's position, the definition  of video covers things that aren't video.  The definition of user-generated video doesn't require the content and question to be user-generated  or video.  It regulates companies as Audiovisual Media Services that aren't Audiovisual Media Services.  It creates liability in practice but not in law.  So what are these social media companies that aren't Audiovisual Media Services meant to  do?  They're meant to take all necessary measures to protect us from all types of discrimination,  which may be legal, may not be legal.  We don't know, they don't care.  On the basis of sex, race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language,  religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority,  property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation.  Oh, and Google and Facebook and friends will have to take measures to protect the moral  development of our children.  By the by, these companies are generally based on Ireland and a little interesting thing  about Ireland.  Ireland has a blasphemy law.  Did you know that?  So God knows what they're going to do.  They're going to have to also implement technical measures to be developed by regulators, develop  self and co-regulation and governments will be able to interfere with their contracts  with you.  So that's the Audiovisual Media Services directive.  The Copyright directive.  The Copyright directive is a nuclear attack on the internet.  It's a nuclear attack on logic and truth.  It has measures like ancillary copyright proposed by the German publisher Springer.  It was proposed by German commissioner Gunther Oettinger.  He gets around, doesn't he?  It was proposed following a meeting between Oettinger and rights holders where only rights  holders were allowed to participate.  It was driven through allegedly by Junker's head of cabinet, the German Martin Selmaier.  The new rapporteur, German conservative MEP Axel Voss, supported among others by German  Green MEP Helga Trüpel.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the joint rapporteurs for the Audiovisual Media Services directive,  an SPD German MEP and a CDU German MEP.  Oh, and both of them are on the boards of regional German TV stations, but that's okay.  I don't know why it's okay, but it's okay.  So the Copyright directive.  It can't be that bad, can it?  Well, it proposes monitoring everything that's being uploaded to the internet, but don't  worry, because monitoring everything is not a general obligation to monitor.  They're only looking for millions of file identifiers.  That's a specific search, not a general search.  Helga Trüpel tweeted this, so it must be true.  It's like when you go to the airport and they look through your bags.  They're only looking for anything they can find.  They're not looking for, it's not a general search.  And don't worry, it's legal.  They tell us, except it's in direct contradiction.  I had to rewrite this twice.  I originally thought it was in direct contradiction to two European court rulings.  I was wrong, so I changed it.  It's in direct contradiction to three European court rulings.  I was wrong.  It's actually in direct contradiction to four European court rulings.  But don't worry, they tell us.  It only applies to providers that actively promote content, except it interprets literally  anything that a provider does as being active promotion in contradiction to the European  court.  But don't worry, because it only applies to infringing material, they tell us.  But it's not.  It is a first shoot and ask questions later approach where you can forget about copyright  flexibilities and limitations.  Don't worry, they tell us.  It's going to be cheap for providers to impose, except it isn't.  Google spent tens of millions of dollars on their filtering solution.  Google is safe.  European startups, European hosting companies, they have a problem.  It's economic self-harm.  It's Europe discriminating against European companies.  Don't worry, they say.  It doesn't change provider liability.  But NMEP tweeted only this week that she voted for it because she wanted additional liability  for internet providers.  And it does change liability for internet companies, but only for copyright.  So you have one level for copyright and a lower level for all minor things like terrorism  and child abuse.  And don't worry, they tell us.  It's only about making Google pay, except Google already pays.  Maybe they don't pay enough.  Maybe we can have rules to get them to pay more.  Google already has invested in intrusive and flawed upload filters.  The proposal was designed around Google.  All internet companies in Europe will be regulated as if they were Google.  Guess what?  They're not.  So, under the proposal, pretty much every EU hosting company would have to install filters  for pictures, text, audio, audio-visual content, sport, any other work that is protected.  But the good news is that this is all possible because it is being imposed indirectly by  providers.  They're being pushed into it.  They're being asked which poison that they want to choose, which means that it's their  choice and not the law's choice, which means it's not the EU's fault.  So what now?  There will be a vote in a few weeks in the European Parliament Committee, the Legal Affairs  Committee.  The MEP in charge, Axel Voss, his number is on the internet.  I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.  The other members of the Legal Affairs Committee would love to hear from you.  I'm sure they would love to hear how great you think their work is, both on copyright  and the link tax and ancillary copyright.  Later on in the year, the Council will make its decision on its position.  The Council delayed a bit because there's something happening in Germany where Germany  doesn't want to make any statement until after the election.  So, don't disturb the voters ahead of the election.  And then there will be trilogs, which Thomas mentioned a moment ago.  Trilogs won't keep you much longer.  Trilogs are an amazing thing.  In the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 17 members of the Culture Committee voted  in favour of the Culture Committee's vote.  That became the position of the European Parliament.  17 MEPs deciding for 351 MEPs.  That's the Parliament position.  The Council is even better.  The Council had a meeting with all of the ministers.  Lots of ministers, particularly from smaller member states that aren't protecting big  broadcasters, said, this is ridiculous.  This is unclear.  This is an attack on free speech.  This is an attack on legal certainty.  The Presidency of the Council said, thank you, can we turn off the cameras?  The video is online if you don't believe me.  And the Presidency of the Council said, so how many countries have a fundamental objection  to this text?  Ireland had, the UK had, the Netherlands had, Luxembourg had, Sweden, Finland.  There wasn't enough for a blocking minority.  So the Presidency said, OK, on that basis, we are adopting the Council position.  The Council position was adopted with zero votes in favour.  So now the Council, with the text supported by zero votes in favour, the Parliament, with  the text that was supported by 17 MEPs, now have closed door meetings that are not public  where the documents aren't public.  And at some stage in the future, a deal will be done behind closed doors that nobody has  accountability for.  And that will be put to the vote in the European Parliament as a done deal that can't be changed.  That is very similar to what's going to happen with the copyright directive, except the number  of MEPs and the Legal Affairs Committee is smaller than in the Culture Committee.  So there won't even be 17 MEPs adopting the Council, the Parliament position.  And then at some stage in the future, behind closed doors, behind closed doors where the  documents will be shared with the copyright lobby, a deal will be arranged and it will  be too late to change anything.  The time, ladies and gentlemen, friends, to stop this absolute bloody insanity is now.  The time to save the internet for future generations is now.  The time to stop this bloody nonsense is now.  Julie Radier speaking later on, she will give you more of the detail.  If you think what I told you is scary, what she's going to tell you is even worse.  So without keeping you from your lunch even more, we stopped ACTA, we got the GDPR, we  stopped the criminal sanctions IPR enforcement directive, we stopped Sincere Zula, we stopped  its European equivalent.  If you care enough to be here, you care enough to help us stop this nonsense.  Thank you.
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