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What Can the Copyright Directive Vote Tell Us About the State of Digital Rights?

Accepted submission by canopic jug at 2018-07-09 03:44:49
Digital Liberty

Andres Guadamuz has written a blog post analyzing why last Thursday's vote by the JURI Committee to reject fast-tracking the proposal concerning "harmonization" of copyright in the EU went as it did [infojustice.org]. The rejection of fast-tracking means that the issue will still come up for a general vote in parliament in September but the interesting part is that for the first time in Europe a wide coalition has managed to defeat powerful media lobbies, at least for now. He goes into how this was possible and what needs to happen in September.

The main result of this change from a political standpoint is that now we have two lobbying sides in the debate, which makes all the difference when it comes to this type of legislation. In the past, policymakers could ignore experts and digital rights advocates because they never had the potential to reach them, letters and articles by academics were not taken into account, or given lip service during some obscure committee discussion just to be hidden away. Tech giants such as Google have provided lobbying access in Brussels, which has at least levelled the playing field when it comes to presenting evidence to legislators.

Earlier on SN:
The EU's Dodgy Article 13 Copyright Directive has Been Rejected [soylentnews.org] (2018)
EU Committee Approves Controversial Copyright Directive [soylentnews.org] (2018)
Censorship Machines Are Coming: It’s Time for the Free Software Community to Use its Political Clout [soylentnews.org] (2018)
Mulled EU Copyright Shakeup Will Turn Us Into Robo-Censors [soylentnews.org] (2018)
EU Study Finds Even Publishers Oppose the "Link Tax" [soylentnews.org] (2017)


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