For years, my colleagues in the European Parliament and I worked on the EU copyright reform – on improving the Commission’s original proposal, but above all, on preventing the worst. More than 5,000,000 signatures made the petition against Article 13 the biggest in EU history. Many activists invested their time and passion into the fight. […]
more ›Digital Markets Act: Dispute over press publishers shows what’s wrong with EU legislation
This article was first published in German at Übermedien.de on March 31, 2022.
Last week, the EU reached an agreement on a core piece of platform regulation, the Digital Markets Act. The Digital Markets Act contains rules for digital companies with high market power, so-called gatekeepers. These are large companies that provide an exceptionally widely […]
more ›GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright
This is a slightly modified version of my original German-language article first published on heise.de under a CC-by 4.0 license.
GitHub is currently causing a lot of commotion in the Free Software scene with its release of Copilot. Copilot is an artificial intelligence trained on publicly available source code and texts. It produces code suggestions […]
more ›Reforming Copyright with the Shuttleworth Foundation
From March 1, I am embarking on a new project. With the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation, I will be returning to my home town of Berlin to work full-time on advancing access to knowledge and culture through copyright reform. Read their announcement here or below.
Many were disappointed after the European Parliament adopted the […]
more ›France proposes upload filter law, “forgets” user rights
When the European Union adopted the new copyright directive, including its infamous Article 17, the upload filtering provision, it gave Member States time until June 2021 to introduce the new rules into their national copyright laws. France, the most fervent supporter of Article 17, apparently has no time to lose and just presented the new […]
more ›FOSSA and the EU’s Cybersecurity legislation
Now that my mandate in the European Parliament has come to an end, there is one important project that will still go on until the fall of this year: The European Free and Open Source Software Audit project – FOSSA for short – that was initialised in 2014, is coming to an end. After running […]
more ›Will the EU Parliament uphold or reject “terror filters” on April 17?
The controversial EU regulation on terrorist content online is making its way through the European Parliament close to the end of the mandate – traditionally a time MEPs face an extreme amount of pressure to pass laws that may have otherwise received more time and attention.
On Monday, April 8, the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home […]
more ›How your MEPs voted on internet freedoms – and why your minister of agriculture will have the final say on April 15
After the European Parliament adopted the Copyright Directive last week without even considering changes, one final step remains: Its approval by the Council of Ministers.
Last chance to stop upload filters
The Council vote is now scheduled for Monday, April 15. That day’s meeting happens to be the Agriculture and Fisheries Council – so it […]
more ›Tomorrow’s copyright vote explained
There is unprecedented public opposition against Article 13 and other aspects of the EU Copyright Directive: This weekend, up to 200.000 people took to the streets across Europe. Meanwhile, the petition against it has reached the incredible milestone of 5 million signatures. Will the European Parliament listen?
(Scrollable panorama photo from the Berlin protest)
Tuesday, […]
more ›The text of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive has just been finalised
In the evening of February 13, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council concluded the trilogue negotiations with a final text for the new EU Copyright Directive.
For two years we’ve debated different drafts and versions of the controversial Articles 11 and 13. Now, there is no more ambiguity: This law will fundamentally change the […]
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