EU Copyright reform

Dear all,
I'm quite excited at the idea of meeting you all again next week at the
RDA 11th plenary, and make progress together on our common agenda.
In the meanwhile, I would like to attract your attention to some dangerous
provisions that concern our own mission as researchers, developers, and
archivists, contained in the forthcoming EU copyright reform directive.
While primarily targeted at the entertainment industry, some of the blanket
provisions contained in this directive are so broad that they directly
endanger Open Science and Free Software all together. In particular,
Article 13 imposes to all and any platform that allows deposit of contents
covered by copyright to install "automatic content filter" that prevent
deposit of content potentially infringing third parties' copyright. I'm
sure you see why this is disruptive for archives, open science and all
forms of collaborative development.
There are two organised actions that started working to contact the
parliament and obtain modifications in the directive to safeguard our
(=scientists, archivists, and developers) work.
- http://sparceurope.org/copyrightreform
is an open letter from scientists and libraries organised bu SPARC
- https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170908-01.en.html
is a campaign from free and open source developers, and industry
players,
that has already produced an impressive whitepaper analysing the
forthcoming directive
and to which I have contributed over the summer
It is important to support their action, and organise other actions too,
before the discussion at the parliament starts.
Just before RDA, a series of events will be organised in Brussels to convey
messages to the legislators, and I'll be in one of them, see the agenda
here:
https://www.communia-association.org/2018/03/06/join-us-european-copyrig...
I'll be happy to report on this if we have a few minutes to spare during
our meeting on Thursday.
Of course, this is of the highest importance for EU citizens, but I would
suggest that everybody take a look to what is coming here, as history shows
that ideas (bad and good) have a tendency to spread :-)
All the best
--
Roberto Di Cosmo
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Computer Science Professor
(on leave at INRIA from IRIF/University Paris Diderot)
Director
Software Heritage E-mail : ***@***.***
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Bureau C123 Twitter : http://twitter.com/rdicosmo
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