Internal:Public Policy/Freedom of Panorama

From public policy mailing list

French freedom of Panorama

• Wikimédia France launched a petition to convince the French Senate to amend the current proposal and adopt a full Freedom of Panorama exception.
• Any help with the petition welcome: https://www.change.org/p/s%C3%A9nat-pour-une-libert%C3%A9-de-panorama-claire-et-sans-restriction
• In parallel they built up a comprehensive campaign site: http://libertedepanorama.fr/

Designated official by EU

• See https://twitter.com/zoyashef/status/709781163951439872
• Reda on this topic: https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/709758419465543682
• Something about a designated official on this topic

Unfortunate Swedish high court decision

• http://www.thelocal.se/20160404/wikimedia-breaks-copyright-laws-with-pics-of-public-art
• bad news. The Swedish Supreme Court ruled according to the will of the Visual Copyright Society in Sweden, regarding images of public art online, more specifically in the case of our service Offentligkonst.se, a service of ours that is using images from Wikimedia Commons. This interpretation means that Freedom of Panorama became restricted and that the public space shrunk. It is a great loss for our projects. Next we will talk to our lawyers and see what our remaining legal options are. Intensive efforts to influence our elected officials to change the outdated and problematic clauses in the law are likely to be initiated during the year. We appreciate any lessons learned that exist regarding the work you guys have done in your countries. Some useful links (in Swedish):
• The legal argumentation from the court: http://www.hogstadomstolen.se/Domstolar/hogstadomstolen/Avgoranden/2016/2016-04-04%20%C3%96%20849-15%20Beslut.pdf
• Our press release: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressreleases/hoegsta-domstolen-vaeljer-att-krympa-det-offentliga-rummet-istaellet-foer-att-gaa-paa-wikimedia-sveriges-linje-1360834
• A time-line of what has happened: https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offentligkonst.se/St%C3%A4mning

It seems that the decision is unusually terrible, and also somewhat strange legally ; a public-policy-list discussion on April 4 gets into the details more.

Right to be forgotten

• paper on the Right to be Forgotten in the EU (via RedLatAm mailinglist): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2627383 -- Jan Gerlach, Public Policy Manager, WMF, 149 New Montgomery Street

EU on intellectual property rights April 15

• Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov via lists.wikimedia.org , Mar 23 to Publicpolicy
• The European Commission's consultation on the enforcement of intellectual property rights is due on 15 April. [1] The main goal for us here will be to avoid increasing a platform’s responsibility to monitor and remove UCG.
• We are currently starting to work on our responses [2], which will be in line with the answers submitted to the related "Platforms Consultation".
• One question is, however, which category Wikimedia fits in. The Commission wants everyone to chose one of the following roles applying to them: “citizens, consumers and civil society”, "rightsholder", "member of judiciary or lawyer", “intermediary” or "public authority". Depending on the hat you pick you get a slightly different set of questions. It seems apparent that we could fit into at least two or even three of the these.
• We had a similar puzzle last time and solved it by having the FKAGEU submitting [3] as civil society and the WMF sending in a registered letter emphasising the importance of intermediary protection. Such an approach is also possible this time around, but I wanted to check back with the group on what your thoughts are. Having several movement entities playing different roles might actually be an advantage here.
• we're still waiting for the consultation that will include copyright exceptions. This is not it.
• [1]http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=8580&lang=en
• [2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/IPRED_Consultation
• [3]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Answers_Consultation_FKAGEU.pdf
• [4]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Comments_on_EU_Platforms_Consultation%281%29.pdf

WM DE new policy atty

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:38 AM, John Hendrik Weitzmann <john.weitzmann@wikimedia.de> wrote: I'd like to introduce myself to all of you in my new role Legal and Policy Advisor at Wikimedia Deutschland, reporting to Christian Rickerts.

• he was at CC before