On 29 May 2017, AEEPP and ANSO together with over 60 civil society and trade associations – representing publishers, journalists, libraries, scientific and research institutions, consumers, digital rights groups, start-ups, technology businesses, educational institutions and creator representatives – signed this open letter to the Competitiveness Council Ministers and to European Parliament Rapporteur MEP Therese Comodini Cachia and her colleagues, urging them to put the EU copyright reform back on track.
We called on the ‘European lawmakers to oppose the most damaging aspects of the proposal and to embrace a more ambitious agenda for positive reform’, highlighting three key messages:
- Article 11 (press publishers’ right): Do not create new copyrights. Remove any creation of additional rights such as the press publishers’ right in Article 11.
- Article 13 (‘censorship filter’): Do not impose private censorship on EU citizens by filtering user uploaded content. Article 13 should be removed from the copyright negotiations and dealt with in appropriate contexts.
- Articles 3-9: Put Europe on the map by enabling innovation, research and education. European lawmakers can do so by taking positive steps in revisiting Articles 3 to 9 which cover areas such as innovation, research and education, to ensure that these provisions are applied broadly and uniformly across the EU, without being overridden by contractual terms or technological protection measures, and that the proposed text and data mining exception benefits all persons with legal access to content.
The letter concludes by calling upon the European lawmakers “to deliver a reform that is fit for purpose in the digital environment and that upholds and strengthens fundamental principles such as the rights of citizens to freedom of communication and access to knowledge”.