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EFF Special Consultant issues letter to EU bodies

 

23 October 2018

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have issued a further letter to EU bodies amidst trilogue negotiations of the Copyright Directive. The letter draws attention to the key contentious articles (11 and 13), describing these as “ill-considered”, with “significant deficiencies” in the text. Whilst the EFF note that both articles are fundamentally flawed “bad ideas”, suggested amendments to the text are submitted. In respect of article 13: a requirement of strong identification criteria for rights holder take-down requests with penalties for false claims; transparency of take-down content statistics, and; a process for striking off claimants from trusted lists. In respect of article 11: ensuring a ‘safe harbour’ for personal, non-commercial linking, and; an option for opt-outs for press-publishers who do not wish to enforce a ‘link tax’ (with further detail from the EFF on article 11’s impact on open access and Creative Commons available here). EFF’s intervention is commented by techdirt in the context of Italy’s changed position on the Copyright Directive, establishing a potential blocking minority against the Directive on the Council.