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Category: EU

  • EDRi on EU copyright reform and AVMSD

    Youtube »

  • EU Copyright: Experts say no to link tax and censorship machine

    Julia Reda, Pirate MEP: Experts unanimously slam EU copyright expansion plans – but are politicians listening? »

  • EU AVMSD: It’s not censorship to censor legal content

    The EU is in the process of updating the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD).

    As one could expect, this opens the floodgates when it comes to regulating and censoring content such as video (and even animated GIF:s) on a number of platforms. This includes otherwise legal content.

    Today the EU E-Commerce Directive gives service providers and platforms some reasonable protection. EDRi explains…

    That Directive protects freedom of expression by ensuring that internet companies are not unduly incentivised to delete content. It does so by limiting liability to situations where they fail to act diligently upon receipt of a notice of the illegality of the content in question.

    But with the revised AVMSD things might change…

    The Council and the Parliament want a wide variety of content to be regulated – anything that (based on the wisdom of the provider, in the first instance) might impact the physical, mental and moral development of minors. At the same time, video-sharing and (some) social media platforms are expected to restrict content that is an “incitement to violence or hatred” by reference, for example, to sex, racial or ethnic origin, disability, age, or sexual orientation.

    The content that the providers will be required to regulate is not, or not necessarily, illegal. As a result, it is argued that this privatised regulation of freedom of expression does not breach the E-Commerce Directive, because the obligation is to regulate content. In short, restriction of legal content is not a breach of rules that cover illegal content.

    So… according to EU logic, it’s not censorship if you censor legal content?

    The Council also wants video-sharing and social media platforms to regulate live-streamed video.

    This revision is turning into a mess. And for once it’s not the copyright industry that is pushing the changes. It’s politicians – aiming to regulate what you can or cannot say (or even joke about).

    If this becomes law, platforms like Youtube and Facebook will have to introduce new terms and conditions narrowing down the scope of what is acceptable for users to upload. Doing so, they most certainly will be overly cautious – to stay on the safe side when it comes to EU regulation.

    It all boils down to the EU – once again – pushing private companies to use their terms and conditions to limit in other ways legal free speech.

    EDRi: AVMS Directive: It isn’t censorship if the content is mostly legal, right? »

    / HAX

  • EU to regulate animated GIFs and morality of Youtube content

    The current proposal, which proposes even more obligations on video-sharing platforms, is horribly contradictory and unclear. It does contain, however, a reasonable amount of comedy, which is an innovation for the EU institutions. For example, this legislation on “audiovisual” content covers, on the basis of Parliament compromise amendments, “a set of moving images”, which would cover, for example, an animated GIF. (…)

    On a more serious note, the proposal requires badly defined video-sharing platforms to take measures to protect children from content that would harm their “physical, mental or moral development” (“moral” added by the Parliament to various new parts of the Directive). This involves measures to restrict (undefined) legal content.

    EDRi on the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD): AVMS Directive – censorship by coercive comedy confusion »

  • The NSA SWIFT hack

    Reuters: Hacker documents show NSA tools for breaching global money transfer system »

    Documents and computer files released by hackers provide a blueprint for how the U.S. National Security Agency likely used weaknesses in commercially available software to gain access to the global system for transferring money between banks, a review of the data showed.

    On Friday, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers released documents and files indicating NSA had accessed the SWIFT money-transfer system through service providers in the Middle East and Latin America. That release was the latest in a series of disclosures by the group in recent months.

    Told you so.

    Below, video from the hearings on NSA and mass surveillance in the European Parliament, 24 September 2013 – where Europol and many others try to steer clear of the SWIFT issue. (Some translation problems during a few minutes in the video, but it soon gets better.)

    Youtube »

  • EU: The DRM problem

    German Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda has published an open-letter signed by UK MEP Lucy Anderson, raising alarm at the fact that the W3C is on the brink of finalising a DRM standard for web video, which — thanks to crazy laws protecting DRM — will leave users at risk of unreported security vulnerabilities, and also prevent third parties from adapting browsers for the needs of disabled people, archivists, and the wider public.

    Boingboing » MEP to Commission: World Wide Web Consortium’s DRM is a danger to Europeans »

  • EU copyright expansion to kill startups?

    MEP Julia Reda: Copyright expansion plans would kill EU startups »

  • European Parliament worried about EU-US Privacy Shield

    New rules allowing the US National Security Agency (NSA) to share private data with other US agencies without court oversight, recent revelations about surveillance activities by a US electronic communications service provider and vacancies on US oversight bodies are among the concerns raised by MEPs in a resolution passed on Thursday.

    In short, the EU-US Privacy Shield (replacing the »Safe Harbour«-agreement) falls short – especially considering the actions of the new US administration.

    Data Privacy Shield: MEPs alarmed at undermining of privacy safeguards in the US »

  • EU censorship of social media launched

    A database set up jointly by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube aims to identify “terrorist and radicalising” content automatically and to remove it from these platforms. (…)

    It appears that no research whatsoever has been done on the likely impact of this initiative, including no review mechanisms on its impact and no way of establishing whether the initiative has counter-productive effects. (…)

    The role of judicial and law enforcement authorities in this process has, unsurprisingly, not been mentioned.

    EDRi: Social media companies launch upload filter to combat “terrorism and extremism” »

  • EU to target encrypted apps

    Last week, the UK’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that WhatsApp risked becoming a “place for terrorists to hide.” Then, like many others that have used this tired old trope, she went on to call for the development of some magic unicorn key to unlock all encrypted communications, one that was somehow available only to those on the side of truth, beauty, law and order, and not to the other lot. In doing so, her cluelessness was particularly evident, as her invocation of the “necessary hashtags” emphasized, but she’s not alone in that. Despite the chorus of experts pointing out for the thousandth time why it’s not possible, the EU Justice Commissioner has just said that the EU must have magic unicorn keys, too.

    • Techdirt: EU Plans To Weaken Encrypted Communications Despite Countless Warnings It Can’t Be Done Safely »
    • Ars Technica: Cryptic crypto clash: EU justice chief holds “intensive talks” with IT giants »
    • Euractiv: EU to propose new rules targeting encrypted apps in June »