“Fake news” is the newest, fakest justification for the EU link tax

The European Commission today released a proposal on combating fake news. It includes a call for the extra copyright for news sites or “link tax”, which is part of the copyright reform plans currently hotly debated in Parliament and Council. In parallel, rapporteur Axel Voss is also trying to add this justification for the law […]

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EU protection for whistleblowers is coming

After years of public pressure, the European Commission has just published a groundbreaking legal proposal to protect people who expose wrongdoings in Europe from lawsuits and retaliation.

The Commission used to resist calls for a whistleblower directive, saying that this was outside EU competence. To show that it could be done, my group in the European Parliament, the […]

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Censorship machines are coming: It’s time for the free software community to discover its political clout

Free software development as we know it is under threat by the EU copyright reform plans.

The battle on the EU copyright reform proposal continues, centering on the plan to introduce upload filters. In short, online platforms would be required to monitor their users’ uploads and try to prevent copyright infringement through automated filtering. As […]

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