URGENT EU activism action (Yes this affects the UK too!) [before June 20, 2018]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbk47b/europe-copyright-rules-content-id

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xpZzOIDd9I&t=9m39s

https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cybersecurity/2018/06/15/article-13-and-the-great-copywall-of-europe/

Article 13 coverage begins around 1/3 of the way down the page. https://www.politico.eu/article/politico-pro-morning-tech-ai-in-uk-security-spotlight-copyright-showdown/

“Translated into practical terms, this means that sites with major holdings of material uploaded by users will be required to filter everything before allowing it to be posted. The problems with this idea are evident. It represents constant surveillance of people’s online activities on these sites, with all that this implies for loss of privacy. False positives are inevitable, not least because the complexities of copyright law cannot be reduced to a few algorithmic rules that can be applied automatically. That, and the chilling effect it will have on people’s desire to upload material, will have a negative impact on freedom of expression and undermine the public domain.”

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/how-eus-copyright-reform-threatens-open-source-and-how-fight-it

“The European Union’s proposed new copyright directive threatens freedom of expression, collaboration, and diversity online. We urge the European Parliament and the Council to oppose mandatory upload filters that would impair free knowledge and innovation on the internet.”

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/06/06/european-copyright-directive-proposal/

and another from Wikimedia…

"Even in its amended version, this proposed directive would require that websites with large amounts of user uploaded content add mandatory upload filters. What this means is that websites would be required to have algorithms check all user uploads against a database of content and block those that are detected as infringing copyrights from appearing online.

We are very concerned about potential impacts that the proposal would have on Wikipedia, which largely addresses infringing content through community mechanisms. Such proposals put too much weight in the power of technologies for automatic content detection—be it artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or hash-based file identification—without considering the impact on human-driven models of content moderation."

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/06/14/dont-force-platforms-to-replace-communities-with-algorithms/

5 Page [PDF] legal interpretation from EDRI calls out this specific Article 13’s ambiguity. (I additionally note this likely holds grave concern for DECENTRALISED social platforms)

Who are the UK’s 73 Members of the European Parliament?

World-class Therepeutic Drug Monitor (TDM) and Chemist from Cambridge [Cambridge Univsersity alum] who creates open source tools [ContentMine.org] to look-up academic papers:

“In summary the proposals are a mess, and unworkable. They bring confusion, rather than clarity and by default bring total power to “copyright owners”. If they are passed they will destroy knowledge-based innovation in Europe which will pass either to Silicon Valley, SE Asia or the Middle East. Knowledge innovators and companies in Europe are now “chilled” by copyright law and fearful of action. By default they will move to countries with more permissive laws, or simply close.”

https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2018/06/07/european-copyright-cancel-articles-3-11-and-13/