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Luxembourg: Save the Internet from the Copyright Directive Take Action Contact Luxembourg’s Negotiators Today! This month, the EU hopes to conclude the Copyright in the Single Digital Market Directive, with no sign that they will improve or delete Articles 11 and 13. This is a dangerous mistake, because these articles have the power to crush small European tech startups, concentrating power in the hands of American Big Tech, while exposing half a billion Europeans to mass, unaccountable algorithmic censorship. We had hoped that the EU and national government negotiators would delete Article 13, the “censorship machines” rule that requires online platforms to hand their users’ videos, texts, audio and images to black-box machine learning filters that would unilaterally decide whether that content might infringe copyright and thus whether it should be censored or allowed to be published. Instead, the current text goes to enormous lengths to obscure its mandate for AI filters. The...

Sweden — and You! — Can Save the Internet from the Copyright Directive The European Union is on the brink of handing even more power to a handful of giant American tech companies, in exchange for a temporary profit-sharing arrangements with a handful of giant European entertainment companies — at the expense of mass censorship and an even weaker bargaining position for working European artists. It’s been more than four months since EU parliamentary negotiators and representatives of Europe’s national governments disappeared behind closed doors to make the new Copyright in the Single Digital Market Directive ready for a vote. Despite all that time and all that blissful solitude, they have not managed it. TAKE ACTION WRITE TO SWEDEN’S EU NEGOTIATORS AND SAY NO TO ARTICLE 13 AND 11 The Directive has the same problems it’s had from the start:  Article 11: A proposal to make platforms pay for linking to news sites by creating a non-waivable right to license any links from for-...

Poland, Take Action Now: Tell Negotiators to Oppose Article 13 and 11 Six years ago, Polish netizens thronged the streets to save Europe from ACTA , a US-originated treaty that would have imposed broad censorship and surveillance on the Internet in copyright’s name. Today, Poles are centre-stage again , fighting against “ACTA2”: the Copyright in the Single Digital Market Directive, and your help has never been more desperately needed. TAKE ACTION NOW Tell Poland’s Negotiators to Oppose Article 13 and 11 This month, the EU will negotiate the latest (and possibly final) draft of the Directive, and we are dismayed (but not surprised) to learn that none of its deficiencies — rules that would lead to worse censorship and market concentration that even ACTA — had been improved upon. In fact, in some ways, these are now worse . The EU and its member-states have been negotiating since September, but they have not found any way to improve on the Directive’s two controversial clause...

Germans Can Help Save the Internet from the Copyright Directive! This month, the EU is seeking to finalise the Copyright in the Single Digital Market Directive, and there’s little hope hope that they would improve or delete Articles 11 and 13, which have the power to crush small European tech startups, concentrating power in the hands of American Big Tech, while exposing half a billion Europeans to mass, unaccountable algorithmic censorship. TAKE ACTION NOW Write to Germany’s EU Negotiators and say No to Article 13 and 11 We had hoped that the EU and national government negotiators would delete Article 13, the “censorship machines” rule that requires online platforms to hand their users’ videos, texts, audio and images to black-box machine learning filters that would unilaterally decide whether these infringed copyright and thus whether they would be censored or allowed to be published. Instead, the current text goes to enormous lengths to obscure its mandate for AI filters. Th...