It's time to fix copyright in Europe.
Copyright law affects everything you do on the internet—from sharing news articles to uploading your vacation photos to contributing knowledge to Wikipedia.
In the EU, your actions are governed by a copyright framework that urgently needs an update. Wikimedia supports forward-looking copyright rules that empower people to learn and share information with the world.
On September 12, the European Parliament will vote on changes to a copyright law that will dictate how we communicate in the digital age. Almost two decades after the last copyright reform, Europe has the rare opportunity to fix copyright by adopting rules that reflect how people create and share online today, not the one-sided vision of creation currently embodied in European law. Wikimedia wants a law that safeguards the public domain and does not mandate ineffective pre-filtering of content.
The decisions we take now will either foster an environment under which Wikipedia and knowledge can flourish, or diminish people’s ability to freely collaborate on the internet.
The Wikimedia movement thrives in regulatory environments that foster a collaborative and open internet. Wikipedia is made possible by people who act as both consumers and creators, reading, writing, editing, and illustrating articles about millions of subjects. Volunteer contributors to Wikipedia source their contributions to any number of sources on the internet, including news organizations, academic journals, and more. With the EU considering new regulations to harmonize copyright, we have an opportunity to promote laws which reflect and embrace the way people use the internet every day. Wikimedia advocates for copyright policies that allow for the flexibility of what it means to be an online creator and a consumer today and allows people to access and freely share information, culture, and history online.
Practically, what this means is that Wikimedia opposes any proposals which would impose such strict liability on platforms for user uploads that they are force to employ systems to filter content before it is published, limiting the information users share and the ways in which they share it. We also support a number of exceptions to and safeguards for copyright which would allow internet users to fully find and share knowledge online, including safeguards for public domain works and exceptions for user-generated content, photographs of public places and artwork, and copying for text and data mining purposes. As explained in our materials below, each of these small changes will bring the EU one step closer to creating a copyright framework that empowers the way citizens already use the internet.
It is important that MEPs know that the direction of copyright in Europe is important to people like you who use the internet every day to create, interact, and share knowledge online. The most important step you can take to help is to contact your MEP via our landing page: https://fixcopyright.wikimedia.org.
You can also help by translating and sharing the resources on this page into your language, tweeting about the proposal using the hashtag #fixcopyright, adding community-created resources to this page, or participating in events in Brussels and Strasbourg.
NB: Most of these are written with only the European Commission proposal in mind and might not reflect the latest developments in the European Parliament.
Your Internet is under threat. Here's why you should care about European Copyright Reform.
Sacrificing freedom of expression and collaboration online to enforce copyright in Europe?
We are asking the community to translate, print, tweet, and share the flyers below in the lead up to the vote on September 12. If you would like to translate these texts, please get in touch with us at policy@wikimedia.org.
This page was last edited on 10 September 2018, at 15:22.