 Thanks for bearing with us. Last talk of the day, I'm going to introduce Regan. Coincidentally, this is the second time she's closing the devil for us. She closed it last year as well. She's leading U.I. public policy for Mozilla. She's based out here in Brussels. She's a proud Kenukian and an honorary Belgian. And loves Poutine and Belgium beer. Thank you. Hello. Hi. So I'm Regan McDonald. I'm senior EU policy manager at Mozilla in the public policy team. I'm based here in Brussels and I work on EU legislation. I work on privacy, on data protection, net neutrality, and copyright. So today I want to tell you a little bit about Mozilla's copyright campaign here in Europe. Something that we're investing a lot of time and a lot of effort into improving. So first good news. After nearly a decade, the European Commission has finally come forward with a proposal to reform copyright. And frankly, it couldn't have come soon enough. The copyright framework that we have now is from 2001. This predates the smartphone. We were still using VHS. It's very fragmented and a little bit confusing and out of date. So we were very excited to know, and in fact, encouraging the European Commission and the EU institutions to reform legislation to bring copyright into the 21st century, to think about how to add flexibility, to create a regulatory environment that would foster and encourage creativity and innovation online. So the bad news is the copyright reform that we have right now, that is right now being debated by the European Parliament and the Council, is not the copyright reform that we need. This reform focuses a lot on some major industry rights holders. And it is very much focused on enforcement. It does very little to address what the user can do and would not, in our view, promote innovation or creativity online. Rather, some of these proposals risk undermining that. And so before I go into, I mean, what I basically want to do in the 20 minutes is give you guys a general overview of the four major issues that we are focusing on in this copyright reform, and then give you an idea of how you can help. Because we need your voices in this debate. But I first just want to explain why Mozilla, which is an organization that builds the Firefox web browser and as a global community, why we care about copyright reform. Well, first, we're a mission-driven organization. We want to ensure that the internet remains a global public resource that's open and accessible to all. And also as being a community, a global community of makers and builders and hackers, we want to make sure that, especially in legislation, people are allowed and in fact encouraged to take something and to make something new, to actually express themselves and to build something. So we want to make sure that the laws kind of have that potential and are not actually restrictive. And so copyright law actually can dictate a lot of what you can and can't do. And so that's why we want to make sure that this copyright reform in Europe actually ends up benefiting users, benefiting innovation and not the other way around. And so just as a disclaimer, we're not trying to abolish copyright. I feel like I should just say that we think that copyright can be perfectly a great mechanism. I mean, ostensibly, it's supposed to be built as a kind of remuneration, incentives idea, which can advance all sorts of cultural things or scientific progress to remunerate creators. This can be good, but not if it's not balanced. If it's maximalist copyright and is only benefiting a handful of stakeholders and it doesn't actually take account for all of the different actors in the web ecosystem, then it needs to be reformed. We need to have a balanced copyright reform. So I will go briefly through the four issues that we're focusing on. And I even put the articles if you want to get wonky. And I have a little handout that also explains these four issues as well. So the first one is upload filters. This is Article 13. This is probably the most dangerous proposal that is in the copyright directive right now. And basically what it proposes is three things. One, to make platforms, open platforms that host large amounts of copyrighted content to become liable for that content, which means they become liable for the actions of their users. The second thing it would require is that any of these platforms that are hosting large amounts of copyrighted content would have to conclude some kind of deals or agreements with rights holders. It doesn't specify exactly what, but maybe that means licensing agreements, but essentially they would seek permission from rights holders before having that copyrighted content on their platforms. And the third thing, which is the most concerning, is that in order to uphold these agreements that they make, they have to make sure that they are not infringing these agreements, so they must implement filters, content recognition technologies to make sure that these deals are upheld. And this applies to all kinds of copyright, not just music, but all sorts of copyright. And it's not just for YouTube and other major platforms, but it would extend to Wikipedia, to GitHub, to anything. Reddit, take your pick. So we really need to reduce that article and bring it back in line with EU law. And the second thing we want to do, which actually is not in the proposal, but this is something that we feel is missing in order to add a sort of user-focused right for copyright that is missing right now, and that's a user-generated content exception. So we want to add this to make it legal and, in fact, encourage the types of ways that content and information and culture is accessed, remixed, and shared online. And we think that from Mozilla's point of view, it would really take the spirit, I think, of the open-source community and put that into copyright law. So we would like to see that included. The third thing is a neighboring right for press publishers. That's in Article 11. You might have heard this, we called a snippet tax, or Google tax, has anyone heard of that? A few people. Okay, so basically this is a proposal to extend copyright. So this would extend to press publishers for the uses of their press publications online. What that means, I think, because the article doesn't exactly specify, that major press publications would get to charge different aggregators for indexing their content based on the snippet, so a handful of words, or the title, plus the hyperlink. We're opposed to this for a number of reasons. One, it's a failed policy. Two, it has a lot of negative implications for access to information. And three, it hurts smaller players and creates more burdens to entry into the market. This has already been attempted in Germany and Spain, and has failed miserably. In Spain, where this is still implemented, a handful of startups had to close their doors because they either couldn't afford to pay for these press snippets, or just because of the legal certainty that was created. In Germany, from a competition point of view, this was actually quite bad, because a few small aggregators had to close their doors, but it also entrenched the power of one of the major aggregators, which was Google. So Google News and Google Search. So in 2013, when this law was negotiated, a lot of the focus centered around Google, around these big ad-driven based platforms that need to pay their fair share. But since it has been implemented, these large platforms haven't paid a cent. So it doesn't really seem to accomplish anything, and it hasn't benefited even the publishers. And it also has the negative implication of reducing information online. So we would like to see that removed from the proposal. And the last thing is in Article 3, and that's TDM. It's text and data mining. This is a new exception that the European Commission has proposed. Text and data mining is basically a way to read large data sets. It's an algorithm or software that you can apply in order to mine a bunch of articles at the same time. So we think that in a big data universe, it is key to be able to read and to understand large data sets. Unfortunately, the exception would only apply to research institutions. So that's one step forward, but we need much, much, much, much more. So if you're an independent researcher, if you are a data journalist, if you're an NGO, if you're a startup, this would not actually apply to you. So we want to make sure that text and data mining can actually apply to the full range of beneficiaries and not just research institutions. And so finally, we really, really need your help. This directive is now being negotiated. It's going through the EU sausage machine. The Commission has proposed it, and now it's being debated in the European Parliament and in the Council. So in your Member States and in the Parliament, people really need to hear your voice. And something I can say from being in Brussels, speaking at a lot of events and having a lot of meetings, the debate around copyright, it becomes very emotive and is very unfortunately binary, so unhelpfully binary. So the broad debate is really big major platforms or big companies from Silicon Valley versus the rights holders, versus the press publications, the music and film industry. But it fails to actually understand all of the different levels of stakeholders that are going to be impacted by this. The levels of creators and makers. And so you guys are creators, those who make software, those who build software, who are making the internet better. So we really need you to weigh in and to talk to your MEPs, to talk to your members of European Parliament, but even to talk to people in your country about how important this is so we can shift the balance to make sure that we get a copyright reform that actually works for us and supports the interests of everyone in the web ecosystem rather than just a handful, a handful of few major, major, major companies. So that's my presentation. I'm happy to take questions because I went as fast as I could. I also even brought a handout if some of you guys want. And my email address. So something that Mozilla will be doing on Change Copyright. We have some videos and a petition. Over the next few weeks we will be updating. We will have a new petition coming and we will be mobilizing people to take action at key moments in the debate in the European Parliament. And we'll also be organizing a series of events across Europe. So we've already started doing that in Germany and France and we would like to do more. So if you're interested in participating in these events or even organizing some of them, please feel free to contact me. And yeah, thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Yes, I'm so glad you said that. Because, oh, the question was is filtering actually lawful in the EU and is there a plan to actually stop this from happening? So the answer is yes and yes a million times. So I was reading, when you read article 13 I have this feeling that we're all living in this Trump augmented reality universe where like law doesn't matter and facts clearly don't matter. But yes, in the EU especially, there is case law and there is legislation that it prevails over this that is supposed to say, that says that platforms are not supposed to have a general monitoring obligation. They're not supposed to have to filter and monitor every single thing that gets uploaded on their platforms. This was designed for a lot of reasons but one of which is because there's also privacy laws here and you can't at the one hand protect privacy and data protection as a fundamental right and at the same time filter every single thing that's going up. So there are a lot of plans. This is our major issue. We want to bring the proposal at the very least in line with existing law and CJU case law and there's a number of different organizations that are working on copyright that are also organizing campaigns currently. The community network, EDRI so they're all coming together and I think they'll be coming up with platforms and definitely ways to raise awareness about this but then also channel people's voices to say no, we don't want upload filters. Yeah, so we'll definitely be focusing on that I think. Yes? Yeah, that's a good question. So Mozilla, this is like our second wave of the campaign. When we first started to get our community communities aware and raise awareness about this that we're working on copyright and that copyright reform was coming down the pipes we had focused on a bunch of different issues including the freedom of panorama which is one exception that has not been included in the directive but we thought it was a relatively low hanging fruit and basically the freedom of panorama is the copyright exception that allows you to take pictures of buildings or graffiti or art and to share it online. Some countries in the European Union don't yet have that such as France and it's quite scattered depending on which building and which kind of art across the EU. So we were of course pushing for that as well. That would be great if that was included and if in an event if it comes up of course that will be something we would talk about. Wikimedia is also still very focused on this. But yeah, so I think for the next round we want to know that we have an actual tangible proposal that ranges from threats that are very serious threats to thinking about how we can improve it. I think most likely our campaign and our engagement with the community in those events will focus on those four areas. But we're very flexible I mean we'll be working with there's a different range of stakeholders we're working with right so there's like the Communion Network that focuses a lot on education which is another exception that could be improved so this is also something that we would support in the science community it would be maybe more about text and data mining startups it might be more about UGC exception or fair use or fair dealing so I think it's more broad but just for us and certainly the advocacy that I'm doing in Brussels is really kind of narrowed on that but I think for our events it's very open. Yes and then sorry were you first? Okay and then yes definitely. So we have so there's a number of large associations that are working on copyright that of course we all have our sort of different perspectives and approach these issues from a different angle we all more or less want the same thing which is a modern copyright reform that actually looks forward to the 21st century and not backwards. So there is a coalition called the C4C the Copyright for Creativity and this is a kind of umbrella platform basically which brings together some companies like CCIA as a member but also the digital rights NGOs like edury and open rights group the libraries all sorts of different players so we actually use that as a kind of coordinating tool to work together and so we don't always necessarily do like joint campaigns necessarily but we're all certainly talking I think those that are interested in actually getting better copyright reform a lot of people have the same similar issues and so we try to work together as much as possible and to amplify certain voices and to support others wherever we can. Yes. So the thing about EU policymaking also the question was should we do what is the purpose of doing another wave and are we basically starting over so the thing about EU policymaking is that it is a very, very slow game so this legislation has been or this potential reform has been under discussion for over five years and now that we have a directive the whole process of it going through the European Parliament going through the council and then coming together with the commission and the parliament and the council to negotiate a final agreement by the time we get done with that it's at least a year so I think that the European Parliament wants to finish this by the end of 2017 I think it will be very difficult to do that but so to answer your question it's just to say if we want to really have an impact and mobilize especially different voices to add to this campaign it has to be a kind of sustained long-term effort and so in the first wave it was more I would say because we didn't have the proposal yet it was more of like hey we're working on copyright this is important and this is how it impacts you now that we have a proposal we want to kind of take it to the next level to say hey this is what we're working on this is what the directive says this is how it needs to be fixed and here's how your voice can matter and so finding ways for instance like to get those communities to take the next step and to actually contact their members of European Parliament or even to contact people in their own government these are I think like potentially game changing elements because once especially elected officials they hear from people who vote for them trust me they change their mind they really really do and so I think that that's kind of our thinking of doing like a second wave of mobilization and we'll do a third wave too yes I love you two great questions one was on another exception that I didn't cover on education and two was on a little bit more details on the process in the European Parliament so first on the education exception yes it does concern us it concerns everyone we definitely want to work especially with our partners in the community association to make that exception better basically what the exception does is like the text and data mining exception it's like yay great they're proposing an exception to be harmonized in the EU which is a good step for education great step but the exception is only limited to where licensed materials cannot be acquired so that means that if you're a school or an education institution if you can buy the copyrighted works then you will not apply to the exception which isn't really addressing the problem my husband is a teacher in Belgium and I can tell you the problem is not finding licensed works the problem is absolutely the cost and the legal uncertainty of like what kind of snippet or what size of the copyrighted work you're allowed to share with your classroom so we and then it also does limit it to schools I guess in a sense that doesn't take account of the ways that education is actually um acquired like long time learning like even doing you know the education stuff that we do so yes we would like to see that extended the community network I believe they have launched a campaign now it's called copyrightforeducation.org and so this is also something that I will be doing an event actually in Kennesland with one of the community members in Amsterdam at the end of this month that will focus on education so it's certainly something that we are following very closely and we're mostly leaning on our partners who are like experts in this area to make sure that that exception is broadened as well so it's useful to everyone and then the second question on the process so it's being negotiated in the European Parliament right now there's a bunch of different committees that are formulating opinions on it right now this is actually the best time because the groups are right are just at the end of their kind of like digestive period of coming up with their group positions so group positions haven't completely solidified which means that talking to them and reaching out and saying hey I care about this or this should be this way is a really good time to influence them um there will be votes on those committee opinions um next month um but then the main opinion and I can if anyone is so inclined come and talk to me after and I can link you to like there's more detailed timelines um but yeah I mean the main committee opinion will be deliberated in March and I think they want it to be voted by end of summer like June July but it might actually be September so it's possible that this could actually you know the next six months will be game changing for what we actually get in this reform but then after the parliament comes up with this position it's still the council has to come up with their position um so it's happening there's like two negotiation tracks happening in parallel um the parliament is easier to get to because they are an elected institution um the council which is the collection of member states a little bit harder because they're not elected um and their positions are normally more entrenched um which is why we're focusing on the movement building piece of bringing people and mobilizing people inside of their country because that makes a difference if people in Spain and Italy and Germany and France etc are talking about copyright reform and want better reform then this will actually change the dynamic hopefully in the council as well as the European parliament um I wouldn't like anyone mining that data but okay so that's a great question about text and data mining um whether or not it would actually complicate privacy concerns um so that's a good distinction because when I first got into this and I heard text and data mining I was like what I don't want to enable data mining to everyone um but this does not this does not deal with privacy protected content so the ability to actually I know the word mine is confusing because we also say like mining and harvesting of data but these are actually separate concepts and data mining exception that we're talking about here would basically allow people that have lawfully acquired works like text like let's say um a whole bunch of research on AI to be able to read it like this and to find these statistics and to make a graph like a visualization um the guardian for instance and lots of journalists use this as a way of looking through text and coming up with visualizations so this is all on like lawfully like legally acquired work like text and not about getting into privacy issues about you know breaking into backdoors and mining people's metadata or anything like that so it's a separate thing from the privacy and security and data protection that we have and it wouldn't override it more questions or are you guys guys done for this copyright it's path seven oh my gosh okay alright okay well thank you so much for being so engaging