Copyright reform, state of play
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Holst, Walter van
Helgadóttir, Ásta
Copyright reform is on the European agenda, the European Parliament has taken its position and it is now the European Commission's turn. This session is about what is good and bad in the Parliament's position, how we got there and what is likely to happen soon.
 I'm Asta Helga Dottir. I'm completely transparent with everything. I have quite a few hats. One of them is that I'm a pirate in the Pirate Party Iceland. But currently I'm wearing my international modern media institute hat. And here I am presenting for EME, which is an Icelandic NGO that is doing modern media lobbying of some sort. And... And what do you have? My hat I'm wearing here is of Freisgift, a Dutch NGO focused on freedom of expression and free flow of information. But that's a volunteer thing. My day job is writing contracts, but that's not interesting now. Just a short introduction, because we are going to dive into quite complicated EU policy work in this talk and how we can actually influence it. So this is... What is happening in the EU right now is basically we have the chance to reform the copyright law, because we can reform the InfoSoc directive of 2001, what was originally made to reform and harmonize copyright in Europe. Jean-Claude Junker, commissioner, he has made an internal digital market as a policy, and you cannot have an internal digital market without actually having harmonized copyright. So therefore we are actually trying to reform copyright, and that is not as easy as it should be. Yeah, as an illustration of the problems of the InfoSoc directive, it was intended to harmonize so-called... among other things, so-called exceptions in copyright, meaning, for example, the right to quote is a pretty widespread exception in copyright, that you may use fragments from books as quotations, sometimes narrow, sometimes wider, and this picture is the Atomium in Brussels, and it's in the copyright by the architect, and a lot of European member states do not have a panorama exception, or some do, and in the case of Belgium, it's so extreme that basically for any reproduction of the Atomium, you need permission of the rights holders, which are represented by the Belgian version of Gema. And apparently it's so scary that Wikimedia doesn't even dare to publish a photo of the Atomium, but only a picture of a model of the Atomium, which from a copyright perspective doesn't really matter, but the Sabam, the Belgian collecting rights organization, claims worldwide licensing demands worldwide royalties from any picture of the building of the Atomium, but that's just Belgium. France does the same with famous buildings, but some European member states don't have any such a very specific... most member states will have exceptions to this right for very practical reasons. And because the Infosock Directive didn't make any exceptions mandatory, there are more combinations of exceptions possible in copyright law across the European Union, and there are actually stars in our galaxy, because there are so many typical exceptions possible. If you calculate the maximum number of permutations you could have in terms of exceptions, you get into the billions. In 2012, a copyright consultation was launched by the European Commission, which means that they were trying to get information about from end users, from authors, from rights holders, about what is their experience and what is their opinion about current copyright legislation. They got over 10,000 responses, and this is like one of the biggest response groups ever, that has ever been collected, when it comes to general opinion about copyright. Most of them, 58.7%, were from normal people and users, consumers, which is absolutely great. That has never happened before. The second largest group was actually authors. This copyright consultation created a lot of work for the European Commission, so they actually had to hire like 13 new interns to do all that work, and it's actually quite favorable for those who actually want to reform copyright. It basically says that end users are frustrated. They are not really sure what is happening, what they can do, what they can't do, and it's generally confusing. Authors as well, they are not very happy with the current status quo. They do not see themselves as being renumerated fairly. They are stuck in this myth that the end users are taking away all their money, but in fact, when they actually express their opinions, you can actually read that there is power imbalance between the authors and the right holders. So that is actually something that needs to be fixed. The rights holders, the copyright holders, those are not necessarily the authors. Those are the big labels, those are the book publishers, those are the media. They just like it, like how it is. It's fine. It's good for them because the system is basically made to serve their interest currently. It is not very much made to actually serve the author's interest because this is copyright, not author's right that we are trying to reform. And that is something that is not very clear for most people. So there are actually two major tracks going on in European legislation regarding copyright. One of them is the fact that Janklard Juncker has made copyright reform a priority. And by the way, if anyone has questions, the floor is open as far as we are concerned. The other bit is there is also an ongoing process to revisit the enforcement rules for copyright. And they are kind of tied together. The enforcement rules are not about what you can or can't do with a work, but they are to what extent a rights holder can enforce their copyrights. And they vary from let's say willful infringement of copyright as a crime. It's an example of criminal enforcement of copyright, which happens in some member states. Another example of the enforcement rules is the fact that it's quite unusual in Europe. If you lose a dispute in court over copyright, you may be confronted with the actual costs of the winning party. When you are in court in most European member states and you have to pay the cost of the winning party, they are typically used as so-called nominal costs. They are not the actual costs. But if it's a dispute about copyright or patent law, etc., you may end up having to pay the actual bill of the other party's lawyers. This is an example. This has nothing to do with the copyright itself, but in a way it can be enforced and how painful that can be. And basically right now, two so-called non-legislative reports in the European Parliament. A non-legislative report means there is no actual legislation being discussed because the Parliament cannot initiate legislation on its own, at least not at the European level. But they are important because the Parliament is taking certain positions. And if you later down the line have an actual legislative initiative by the Commission, which is expected to happen rather soon as far as copyright is concerned, those positions will influence the actual outcomes of the further debate of such a legislative proposal. Actually, the Commission typically takes non-legislative reports already in consideration before making proposals for legislation. Well, the big one, or the most famous of the two, is the report being worked upon by Julie Reda right now. And the other one is hardly ever mentioned, is a non-legislative report. And the rapporteur of that is Pavel Svoboda, who is a Christian Democrat. And we'll get to the substance of both reports now. So, the Reda report was published in January this year, if I'm not mistaken. And it is good, I would say. It is not terribly bad, but it's not perfect. It actually addresses one of the most issues that most people were actually presenting in the copyright consultation. But it fails to mention, for example, specific authors' rights. It does not deal with file sharing, because that is very taboo. You're not allowed to talk about file sharing, especially not if you want to be taken seriously. But the greatest thing that the Reda report actually tries to demand is that they want to have the same exceptions for all European member states. And that is something which will be incredibly difficult. And that is not something which is only on the parliament level. This is also a problem with the commission. And then when they actually had the trial log, which is when the council, the commission and the parliament are actually writing the law, like getting together with the law, it is maybe likely, if we just, like, assume how the real politics in the EU actually work, that many of the council states will basically say no, that they don't want exceptions about panorama, freedom of panorama, or freedom of parody. In some countries, you're not actually allowed to make jokes. It also addresses the importance of quotation, that that is supposed to be technically neutral, which is not how it is right now, because if you have, like, a video, that is not necessarily considered to be an actual quote in some member states. So it's the current framework of copyright is extremely difficult and problematic in many regards. And the Redo report makes a fairly good case that we actually have to reform it. And it is, I would say that if you want to have copyright reform, and I'm assuming that, I mean, most people would like to see some reform happening, then we should try to support that to some extent. So the amendments of the Redo report were 556, and this is all the amendments that were published. And this is a lot of paper, like 300 pages. And it's basically all over the place. We have good amendments, we have bad amendments. We have quite much deleted from the original report. So there's actually a question, will there be anything left of the report in June when it will be, like, gone through the final voting? And that is actually an issue that we have to really seriously take into consideration. Like, how much value will this report actually have in the end? We started with a fairly good document, not perfect, of course, but what will we have in the end? Maybe we'll have something which is completely pro-extreme copyright, which is supporting the labels' right and the rights-holders' right, but not necessarily valuing author's rights or end-user's right. So it might actually turn around in our hands. We don't know yet. Yeah, the Subodar report is slightly more conventional in the sense that we've had for about two or three decades now this legislative trend of more copyright is, by definition, better. And if there's more infringement, that means we need even more copyright because the infringement is obviously a horrible thing to happen. And like Astar said, the radar report is quite good. It would have been excellent if you were a Christian Democrat or a Social Democrat, which he is not, for a prior to slightly disappointing. Subodar is a Christian Democrat. And his report on renewal of looking again at the enforcement rules is normal bad, let's say, in terms of copyright, or actually sometimes not even completely bad, which is a happy thing in the European Parliament when we were talking about copyright. And is that funny? The consultation Astar talked about, basically the vast majority of respondents on the consultation said, we need no harsher enforcement rules. We should focus on simplifying copyright. The Subodar report, which is about enforcement, does make zero reference to that consultation at all. It only refers to an earlier consultation strictly on enforcement, which got the normal amount of responses, let's say, 300, and like the over 10,000 for the recent copyright. There's quite a bit of focus in that report on what is called all actors in the supply chain. And that's a euphemism for the role of internet service providers. So we get into, basically in the current state, the report is a fairly thinly veiled call for ISP liability for online infringement, among other things. There's also a lot of emphasis in the report on so-called consumer awareness, basically meaning the rules are not stupid, you are stupid, at least that's how I read it. And therefore people should be educated more about the very great importance of copyright, your creativity and all that. However, some of the good parts are that it actually does mention that there is a need for new business models to funding the arts. And it's also interesting for non-legislative reports, it's not only just in the jury committee, it's the committee on legal affairs of the European Parliament, there's over 100 amendments, it's actually quite a lot for a non-legislative report. It's not as massive as in the case of the radio report, but it's still a sign that the debate is heating up. Of those 100 amendments, by and large, several rather good ones, I'm quite hopeful that there will be actually a reference to the need to balance copyright with fundamental rights, like the freedom of expression, and in the context of copyright enforcement, privacy and data protection is also a relevant human right. But also quite ridiculous ones. There are an example, and I'll show you the quote on the next slide, that infringements, copyright infringement are actually used to fund terrorism and organize crime, and other ones that imply that without copyright, you can't have innovation or creative activities happening, as if the Renaissance never happened at all. This is a quote from an amendment to the Foboda report, which is currently in discussion, whereas counterfeiting is generally linked with a black economy and organized crime through financial contributions. This means that my old stash of home-taped 80s poor Simfa Rock apparently is linked to organized crime, which I find rather interesting, given how unorganized it is. So... And basically the current state is both reports have been discussed among various committees, but the most important one, a committee in this process, the legal committee, will vote today on this Foboda report. So if you happen to have any time to call your MEP, that might be nice. And on June 16th, the radar report will be voted upon, and that has been postponed for the simple reason that there is a stalemate about the radar report. Some of the maximalists are so much opposed to anything which is reasonable and good in that report that they have decided to postpone the vote and try to figure out in the meantime. There's a special bad role by Cavada, Jean-Marie Cavada, a French liberal who's mostly together with Christian Democrats very much opposed to anything, any form of meaningful report, to the point that his fellow liberals are completely fed up with Israel and this, but they cannot for political reasons say too much about that. Other part of the timeline is that somewhere at the end of this year, the commission actually will have a new legislative proposal as a successor of the Infosock directive. And the quarter three, quarter four in 2015, new Infosock directive, that means that then the label lobbyists will actually go out and they will be everywhere in Brussels. This will be like one of the biggest lobbying terms in maybe the history of the year. No, the biggest lobbying frenzy was around the data protection regulation. This is actually going to be in pair with the data protection regulation. We don't know exactly because it hasn't happened yet, but it's very likely that all the lobbyists will be in Europe trying to make sure that the copyright rules will not be favorable to the public, but rather to the labels because that is actually what copyright currently is about. It's not so much about the status of the author, it's not too much about the status of the end user, but rather to try to keep the status quo of the people who are gaining the most money from the copyright industry. What can be done? You as a citizen in Europe, even if you are a foreigner or do not have EU citizenship, you actually can call an MEP. You can mail them, you can tweet them. Some people have been suggesting that everybody should send them a postcard, probably with a picture of the Atomrium or maybe Paris, the Eiffel Tower by night and telling them that we actually need to reform copyright. Current status is just not very favorable to anybody but the actual industry. That is just how it is. I'm not saying that we are going to abolish all authors' rights. I'm trying to say that we actually have to put a better balance between the authors and the right holders and the end users. That is something that we actually need to start to achieve. If you want to get more involved, three European digital rights actually has done a great job on collecting everything that you need to know about what is happening, what has happened, what is being done. They have one-pagers' briefings on the reports, next steps, etc. and they are actually doing a great job. If you want to support them, I know that they actually need money because they are a poor NGO in Brussels and they are more or less one of the few ones who are actually trying to lobby for the VEDA report. As well, if you need more information, then julia.veda's homepage, sanficon.eu, is actually quite frequently updated. They have some very interesting infographs that make their side of the story. That is also an excellent way to actually get more familiar with what is going on. Do we have time left for questions? Okay. Thank you. APPLAUSE We would love to have some questions. If anybody has questions, please get up, show your hand, and I'll give you the microphone. Hi, good morning. It's not really a question. I just would like to make you aware that tomorrow night at 7 o'clock at Wikimedia here in Berlin, there will be a discussion with Julia Reda, Dimitar Dimitrov from Wikimedia and also Joe McNamee from ERI. So if anyone is interested in finding out more about this and being able to pose questions to all these people, join Wikimedia tomorrow at 7. Thank you. Thank you. Any additional questions from the audience? Okay. Just, I would be interesting to have your opinion on how it's all going to play out. So just think a little bit in the future, be imaginative, and say what is likely to happen with copyright reform in the EU? What could happen is that Julia, due to all those amendments, and especially the bad ones going through, will be forced to withdraw her name from the report. So it would no longer be the Reda report, but someone else in the jury committee as a reporter. And the resultant report will be kind of a pretext for the commission for the extension of the existing trend. This is the first time in over a decade that there is a chance for positive development in copyright law in Europe. This is a bleak scenario. Another possible scenario is that her report will remain at its core, but will be compromised very much. So there will be some reform, but it will be very limited. It will kind of be a preservation of the status quo and the removal of some of the most ridiculous parts of copyright across the European Union. Geoblocking is an example. That is a topic that has fairly strong support across the political spectrum. That is one of the things that could disappear in such a scenario. And the least likely scenario is that the report will go through and scape, but I find that very unlikely. I think the second scenario just brought up is the best we can hope for right now. And then of course we don't really know what specific member states are going to do when they actually get to have their say. I know that the French are very in love with the current status of the Infosock Directive, and they basically sent a mass email to all the French MEPs saying that, oh, this is absolutely terrible. We have to make sure that this does not go through. So it's actually going to be a very interesting... It will be very interesting to see how it plays out if we will actually manage to get anything out of this, or if the copyright maximalists are too strong and we are just not interested enough to actually have a proper copyright reform. That could happen. Hopefully if we engage, if we do something, then something might happen. If we do nothing, nothing will happen. That's it. The very short version is these reports are the starting position of an uphill battle anyway. And the question is, do we get a very bad starting position for the uphill battle or just a reasonably okay one? And like Asda said, sometimes in matters, especially when it comes to copyright, it's sometimes more a matter of which country an MEP is from or what the member states will do than the actual political color of that MEP. You have, let's say, Greek Christian Democrats that are very progressive on copyright matters, and you have friends' greens that are very, very conservative when it gets to copyright. Political colors not necessarily indicate how people will operate on a topic like this. So... Hello. It's just a detailed question. I would like to know these reports when they are endorsed by the parliament. I used to incite the commission to draft the proposal, right? Yes, and it's also... When the proposal is there, it would be a bit strange that the parliament would change his opinion completely about certain elements of the proposal and would act contrary to what is already in those non-legislative reports. Although parliament can be very short of memory, so that sometimes happens regardless. So the stake is for one to maintain good dynamics in the parliament, but also I would like to know if there is one common report, how much time would it take for inside the commission to draft something, or can we know, can we anticipate how long the commission would take to come up with something the parliament then would react to again? The commission has given itself a deadline of the fall of this year to come up with a proposal on this infosock directive. On the enforcement side, I'm less sure, because it also ties into TTIP. So that could last a bit longer, I'm afraid, or maybe not afraid. But anyway, our time is up. Thank you very much for listening. Please get engaged. This is actually a unique opportunity to influence EU policy because the documents are actually on our site. The consultation report that is. So, tweet your MEP, write them, just make sure that they know that you are actually watching. Thank you.
 I'm Asta Helga Dottir.  I'm completely transparent with everything.  I have quite a few hats.  One of them is that I'm a pirate in the Pirate Party Iceland.  But currently I'm wearing my international modern media institute hat.  And here I am presenting for EME, which is an Icelandic NGO  that is doing modern media lobbying of some sort.  And...  And what do you have?  My hat I'm wearing here is of Freisgift,  a Dutch NGO focused on freedom of expression and free flow of information.  But that's a volunteer thing.  My day job is writing contracts, but that's not interesting now.  Just a short introduction,  because we are going to dive into quite complicated EU policy work  in this talk and how we can actually influence it.  So this is...  What is happening in the EU right now is basically we have the chance  to reform the copyright law,  because we can reform the InfoSoc directive of 2001,  what was originally made to reform and harmonize copyright in Europe.  Jean-Claude Junker, commissioner,  he has made an internal digital market as a policy,  and you cannot have an internal digital market  without actually having harmonized copyright.  So therefore we are actually trying to reform copyright,  and that is not as easy as it should be.  Yeah, as an illustration of the problems of the InfoSoc directive,  it was intended to harmonize so-called...  among other things, so-called exceptions in copyright,  meaning, for example, the right to quote is a pretty widespread exception in copyright,  that you may use fragments from books as quotations,  sometimes narrow, sometimes wider,  and this picture is the Atomium in Brussels,  and it's in the copyright by the architect,  and a lot of European member states do not have a panorama exception,  or some do, and in the case of Belgium,  it's so extreme that basically for any reproduction of the Atomium,  you need permission of the rights holders,  which are represented by the Belgian version of Gema.  And apparently it's so scary that Wikimedia doesn't even dare to publish a photo of the Atomium,  but only a picture of a model of the Atomium,  which from a copyright perspective doesn't really matter,  but the Sabam, the Belgian collecting rights organization,  claims worldwide licensing demands worldwide royalties from any picture of the building of the Atomium,  but that's just Belgium.  France does the same with famous buildings,  but some European member states don't have any such a very specific...  most member states will have exceptions to this right for very practical reasons.  And because the Infosock Directive didn't make any exceptions mandatory,  there are more combinations of exceptions possible in copyright law across the European Union,  and there are actually stars in our galaxy,  because there are so many typical exceptions possible.  If you calculate the maximum number of permutations you could have in terms of exceptions,  you get into the billions.  In 2012, a copyright consultation was launched by the European Commission,  which means that they were trying to get information about from end users, from authors, from rights holders,  about what is their experience and what is their opinion about current copyright legislation.  They got over 10,000 responses, and this is like one of the biggest response groups ever,  that has ever been collected, when it comes to general opinion about copyright.  Most of them, 58.7%, were from normal people and users, consumers, which is absolutely great.  That has never happened before. The second largest group was actually authors.  This copyright consultation created a lot of work for the European Commission,  so they actually had to hire like 13 new interns to do all that work,  and it's actually quite favorable for those who actually want to reform copyright.  It basically says that end users are frustrated.  They are not really sure what is happening, what they can do, what they can't do,  and it's generally confusing.  Authors as well, they are not very happy with the current status quo.  They do not see themselves as being renumerated fairly.  They are stuck in this myth that the end users are taking away all their money,  but in fact, when they actually express their opinions, you can actually read that  there is power imbalance between the authors and the right holders.  So that is actually something that needs to be fixed.  The rights holders, the copyright holders, those are not necessarily the authors.  Those are the big labels, those are the book publishers, those are the media.  They just like it, like how it is. It's fine.  It's good for them because the system is basically made to serve their interest currently.  It is not very much made to actually serve the author's interest because this is copyright,  not author's right that we are trying to reform.  And that is something that is not very clear for most people.  So there are actually two major tracks going on in European legislation regarding copyright.  One of them is the fact that Janklard Juncker has made copyright reform a priority.  And by the way, if anyone has questions, the floor is open as far as we are concerned.  The other bit is there is also an ongoing process to revisit the enforcement rules for copyright.  And they are kind of tied together.  The enforcement rules are not about what you can or can't do with a work,  but they are to what extent a rights holder can enforce their copyrights.  And they vary from let's say willful infringement of copyright as a crime.  It's an example of criminal enforcement of copyright, which happens in some member states.  Another example of the enforcement rules is the fact that it's quite unusual in Europe.  If you lose a dispute in court over copyright, you may be confronted with the actual costs of the winning party.  When you are in court in most European member states and you have to pay the cost of the winning party,  they are typically used as so-called nominal costs.  They are not the actual costs.  But if it's a dispute about copyright or patent law, etc.,  you may end up having to pay the actual bill of the other party's lawyers.  This is an example.  This has nothing to do with the copyright itself, but in a way it can be enforced and how painful that can be.  And basically right now, two so-called non-legislative reports in the European Parliament.  A non-legislative report means there is no actual legislation being discussed  because the Parliament cannot initiate legislation on its own,  at least not at the European level.  But they are important because the Parliament is taking certain positions.  And if you later down the line have an actual legislative initiative by the Commission,  which is expected to happen rather soon as far as copyright is concerned,  those positions will influence the actual outcomes of the further debate of such a legislative proposal.  Actually, the Commission typically takes non-legislative reports already in consideration  before making proposals for legislation.  Well, the big one, or the most famous of the two,  is the report being worked upon by Julie Reda right now.  And the other one is hardly ever mentioned, is a non-legislative report.  And the rapporteur of that is Pavel Svoboda, who is a Christian Democrat.  And we'll get to the substance of both reports now.  So, the Reda report was published in January this year, if I'm not mistaken.  And it is good, I would say.  It is not terribly bad, but it's not perfect.  It actually addresses one of the most issues that most people were actually presenting  in the copyright consultation.  But it fails to mention, for example, specific authors' rights.  It does not deal with file sharing, because that is very taboo.  You're not allowed to talk about file sharing, especially not if you want to be taken seriously.  But the greatest thing that the Reda report actually tries to demand is that they want to have the same exceptions  for all European member states.  And that is something which will be incredibly difficult.  And that is not something which is only on the parliament level.  This is also a problem with the commission.  And then when they actually had the trial log, which is when the council, the commission and the parliament are actually writing the law,  like getting together with the law, it is maybe likely, if we just, like, assume how the real politics in the EU actually work,  that many of the council states will basically say no, that they don't want exceptions about panorama,  freedom of panorama, or freedom of parody.  In some countries, you're not actually allowed to make jokes.  It also addresses the importance of quotation, that that is supposed to be technically neutral,  which is not how it is right now, because if you have, like, a video,  that is not necessarily considered to be an actual quote in some member states.  So it's the current framework of copyright is extremely difficult and problematic in many regards.  And the Redo report makes a fairly good case that we actually have to reform it.  And it is, I would say that if you want to have copyright reform,  and I'm assuming that, I mean, most people would like to see some reform happening,  then we should try to support that to some extent.  So the amendments of the Redo report were 556,  and this is all the amendments that were published.  And this is a lot of paper, like 300 pages.  And it's basically all over the place.  We have good amendments, we have bad amendments.  We have quite much deleted from the original report.  So there's actually a question, will there be anything left of the report in June  when it will be, like, gone through the final voting?  And that is actually an issue that we have to really seriously take into consideration.  Like, how much value will this report actually have in the end?  We started with a fairly good document, not perfect, of course,  but what will we have in the end?  Maybe we'll have something which is completely pro-extreme copyright,  which is supporting the labels' right and the rights-holders' right,  but not necessarily valuing author's rights or end-user's right.  So it might actually turn around in our hands. We don't know yet.  Yeah, the Subodar report is slightly more conventional in the sense  that we've had for about two or three decades now this legislative trend  of more copyright is, by definition, better.  And if there's more infringement, that means we need even more copyright  because the infringement is obviously a horrible thing to happen.  And like Astar said, the radar report is quite good.  It would have been excellent if you were a Christian Democrat or a Social Democrat,  which he is not, for a prior to slightly disappointing.  Subodar is a Christian Democrat.  And his report on renewal of looking again at the enforcement rules  is normal bad, let's say, in terms of copyright,  or actually sometimes not even completely bad,  which is a happy thing in the European Parliament when we were talking about copyright.  And is that funny?  The consultation Astar talked about,  basically the vast majority of respondents on the consultation said,  we need no harsher enforcement rules.  We should focus on simplifying copyright.  The Subodar report, which is about enforcement,  does make zero reference to that consultation at all.  It only refers to an earlier consultation strictly on enforcement,  which got the normal amount of responses, let's say, 300,  and like the over 10,000 for the recent copyright.  There's quite a bit of focus in that report on what is called all actors in the supply chain.  And that's a euphemism for the role of internet service providers.  So we get into, basically in the current state,  the report is a fairly thinly veiled call for ISP liability for online infringement,  among other things.  There's also a lot of emphasis in the report on so-called consumer awareness,  basically meaning the rules are not stupid, you are stupid,  at least that's how I read it.  And therefore people should be educated more about the very great importance of copyright,  your creativity and all that.  However, some of the good parts are that it actually does mention  that there is a need for new business models to funding the arts.  And it's also interesting for non-legislative reports,  it's not only just in the jury committee,  it's the committee on legal affairs of the European Parliament,  there's over 100 amendments,  it's actually quite a lot for a non-legislative report.  It's not as massive as in the case of the radio report,  but it's still a sign that the debate is heating up.  Of those 100 amendments, by and large, several rather good ones,  I'm quite hopeful that there will be actually a reference to the need to balance copyright  with fundamental rights, like the freedom of expression,  and in the context of copyright enforcement, privacy and data protection  is also a relevant human right.  But also quite ridiculous ones.  There are an example, and I'll show you the quote on the next slide,  that infringements, copyright infringement are actually used to fund terrorism  and organize crime,  and other ones that imply that without copyright,  you can't have innovation or creative activities happening,  as if the Renaissance never happened at all.  This is a quote from an amendment to the Foboda report,  which is currently in discussion,  whereas counterfeiting is generally linked with a black economy  and organized crime through financial contributions.  This means that my old stash of home-taped 80s poor Simfa Rock  apparently is linked to organized crime,  which I find rather interesting, given how unorganized it is.  So...  And basically the current state is both reports  have been discussed among various committees,  but the most important one, a committee in this process,  the legal committee, will vote today on this Foboda report.  So if you happen to have any time to call your MEP, that might be nice.  And on June 16th, the radar report will be voted upon,  and that has been postponed for the simple reason  that there is a stalemate about the radar report.  Some of the maximalists are so much opposed to anything  which is reasonable and good in that report  that they have decided to postpone the vote  and try to figure out in the meantime.  There's a special bad role by Cavada, Jean-Marie Cavada,  a French liberal who's mostly together with Christian Democrats  very much opposed to anything, any form of meaningful report,  to the point that his fellow liberals are completely fed up with Israel and this,  but they cannot for political reasons say too much about that.  Other part of the timeline is that somewhere at the end of this year,  the commission actually will have a new legislative proposal  as a successor of the Infosock directive.  And the quarter three, quarter four in 2015,  new Infosock directive, that means that then the label lobbyists  will actually go out and they will be everywhere in Brussels.  This will be like one of the biggest lobbying terms  in maybe the history of the year.  No, the biggest lobbying frenzy was around the data protection regulation.  This is actually going to be in pair with the data protection regulation.  We don't know exactly because it hasn't happened yet,  but it's very likely that all the lobbyists will be in Europe  trying to make sure that the copyright rules will not be favorable to the public,  but rather to the labels because that is actually what copyright currently is about.  It's not so much about the status of the author,  it's not too much about the status of the end user,  but rather to try to keep the status quo of the people  who are gaining the most money from the copyright industry.  What can be done?  You as a citizen in Europe, even if you are a foreigner  or do not have EU citizenship, you actually can call an MEP.  You can mail them, you can tweet them.  Some people have been suggesting that everybody should send them a postcard,  probably with a picture of the Atomrium or maybe Paris, the Eiffel Tower by night  and telling them that we actually need to reform copyright.  Current status is just not very favorable to anybody but the actual industry.  That is just how it is.  I'm not saying that we are going to abolish all authors' rights.  I'm trying to say that we actually have to put a better balance  between the authors and the right holders and the end users.  That is something that we actually need to start to achieve.  If you want to get more involved,  three European digital rights actually has done a great job  on collecting everything that you need to know about what is happening,  what has happened, what is being done.  They have one-pagers' briefings on the reports, next steps, etc.  and they are actually doing a great job.  If you want to support them, I know that they actually need money  because they are a poor NGO in Brussels and they are more or less one of the few ones  who are actually trying to lobby for the VEDA report.  As well, if you need more information,  then julia.veda's homepage, sanficon.eu, is actually quite frequently updated.  They have some very interesting infographs that make their side of the story.  That is also an excellent way to actually get more familiar with what is going on.  Do we have time left for questions?  Okay.  Thank you.  APPLAUSE  We would love to have some questions.  If anybody has questions, please get up, show your hand,  and I'll give you the microphone.  Hi, good morning.  It's not really a question.  I just would like to make you aware that tomorrow night at 7 o'clock  at Wikimedia here in Berlin, there will be a discussion with Julia Reda,  Dimitar Dimitrov from Wikimedia and also Joe McNamee from ERI.  So if anyone is interested in finding out more about this  and being able to pose questions to all these people, join Wikimedia tomorrow at 7.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Any additional questions from the audience?  Okay.  Just, I would be interesting to have your opinion on how it's all going to play out.  So just think a little bit in the future, be imaginative,  and say what is likely to happen with copyright reform in the EU?  What could happen is that Julia, due to all those amendments,  and especially the bad ones going through,  will be forced to withdraw her name from the report.  So it would no longer be the Reda report,  but someone else in the jury committee as a reporter.  And the resultant report will be kind of a pretext for the commission  for the extension of the existing trend.  This is the first time in over a decade that there is a chance  for positive development in copyright law in Europe.  This is a bleak scenario.  Another possible scenario is that her report will remain at its core,  but will be compromised very much.  So there will be some reform, but it will be very limited.  It will kind of be a preservation of the status quo  and the removal of some of the most ridiculous parts of copyright across the European Union.  Geoblocking is an example.  That is a topic that has fairly strong support across the political spectrum.  That is one of the things that could disappear in such a scenario.  And the least likely scenario is that the report will go through and scape,  but I find that very unlikely.  I think the second scenario just brought up is the best we can hope for right now.  And then of course we don't really know what specific member states are going to do  when they actually get to have their say.  I know that the French are very in love with the current status of the Infosock Directive,  and they basically sent a mass email to all the French MEPs saying that,  oh, this is absolutely terrible.  We have to make sure that this does not go through.  So it's actually going to be a very interesting...  It will be very interesting to see how it plays out  if we will actually manage to get anything out of this,  or if the copyright maximalists are too strong  and we are just not interested enough to actually have a proper copyright reform.  That could happen.  Hopefully if we engage, if we do something, then something might happen.  If we do nothing, nothing will happen.  That's it.  The very short version is these reports are the starting position of an uphill battle anyway.  And the question is, do we get a very bad starting position for the uphill battle  or just a reasonably okay one?  And like Asda said, sometimes in matters, especially when it comes to copyright,  it's sometimes more a matter of which country an MEP is from  or what the member states will do than the actual political color of that MEP.  You have, let's say, Greek Christian Democrats that are very progressive on copyright matters,  and you have friends' greens that are very, very conservative when it gets to copyright.  Political colors not necessarily indicate how people will operate on a topic like this.  So...  Hello. It's just a detailed question.  I would like to know these reports when they are endorsed by the parliament.  I used to incite the commission to draft the proposal, right?  Yes, and it's also...  When the proposal is there, it would be a bit strange that the parliament would change  his opinion completely about certain elements of the proposal  and would act contrary to what is already in those non-legislative reports.  Although parliament can be very short of memory, so that sometimes happens regardless.  So the stake is for one to maintain good dynamics in the parliament,  but also I would like to know if there is one common report,  how much time would it take for inside the commission to draft something,  or can we know, can we anticipate how long the commission would take  to come up with something the parliament then would react to again?  The commission has given itself a deadline of the fall of this year  to come up with a proposal on this infosock directive.  On the enforcement side, I'm less sure, because it also ties into TTIP.  So that could last a bit longer, I'm afraid, or maybe not afraid.  But anyway, our time is up. Thank you very much for listening.  Please get engaged. This is actually a unique opportunity to influence EU policy  because the documents are actually on our site.  The consultation report that is.  So, tweet your MEP, write them, just make sure that they know that you are actually watching.  Thank you.
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