Brussels, 8 October 2019: 61 European trade associations, including EuroISPA, urged Member States to ask the European Commission to reconsider its proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation in an open letter.

The draft ePrivacy Regulation was proposed in January 2017. However, several questions about the essential aspects of the proposal remain unanswered. The current ePrivacy proposal has generated great uncertainty across a wide range of industries, whose efforts to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) risk being jeopardised by an incoherent ePrivacy text.

Therefore, while the signatories fully support the objectives of the proposal, they ask for a fresh new attempt to reassess the proposal. The arrival of a new European Commission in November and European Parliament represents an opportunity for a fresh start in the debate, which can only happen if the proposal is fundamentally reassessed in light of the many outstanding concerns, the new legislative landscape and technology development.

You can read the full letter here.

We are happy to share EuroISPA’s report on Priority Flagging Partnerships in Practice.

The document provides a first structured insight into best practices from companies with priority flagging partnerships in place in order to improve their management of illegal content online, where the information was gathered through a written survey shared amongst EuroISPA Forum Members and external companies.

A broad range of ISPs, including online marketplaces, social networks, search engines and providers of content delivery networks shared their input and insights. Thanks to this survey, we gathered information on the variety of stakeholders involved, on the existing selection processes, on the rights and duties of priority flaggers, on the different types of content reported, etc.

The report can be found here

Brussels, 26 March 2019 – EuroISPA regrets that the majority of the European Parliament endorsed the Copyright Directive reform, with its Articles 11 and 13 featuring in the final agreement.

Innocenzo Genna, Chair of the Innovation and Growth Committee, commented: “A majority of policy-makers in the European Parliament ignored the concerns of more than 5 million users, civil society, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, creative SMEs and startups, innovative media and publishers,  and the Internet industry at large”.

EuroISPA members are concerned that upload filters necessary to comply with Article 13 will impact the competitiveness of European SMEs, while pushing overly cautious platforms to remove potentially legal content in order to avoid liability, with detriment for users’ rights. Furthermore, Article 11 on press publishers’ rights could limit European users’ ability to share snippets and hyperlinks online, due to unclear and partial carve-outs included in the text.

As the Copyright Directive will be transposed at the national level, EuroISPA’s national members will make concerted efforts to minimize the damage for the Internet ecosystem across Member States and address the lack of clarity in same areas of the proposal.

Brussels, 14 February 2019 – EuroISPA regrets the outcome of yesterday’s trilogue, where the representatives of the European Parliament and the Council approved the Copyright Directive reform.

With this decision, the negotiators clearly showed that the concerns of civil society, users, academia, industry, founders of the Internet, and the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression continuously fell on deaf ears. Recently, even the music, audio-visual, broadcasting and sports sectors – originally strong proponents of this provision – joined the protest against Article 13.

Innocenzo Genna, Chair of the Innovation and Growth Committee, stated: “These rules will impose upload filters on platforms, impacting the competitiveness of European innovative SMEs, and leading to the over-blocking of legal content. Article 11, if adopted, would change the Internet as we know it:  an ancillary copyright would affect small platforms and innovative online publishers, while limiting  the ability of European users to use hyperlinks and share snippets online. Ultimately, this would have a significant negative impact on freedom of expression in Europe”.

Furthermore, the Copyright Directive reform would lead to further fragmentation of the Digital Single Market, instead of harmonisation, as Member States with different legal cultures will implement it differently and create legal uncertainty for the industry.

As the EU elections approach, the Members of the European Parliament should use this opportunity to vote this reform down – a vote closely watched by the EU electorate. As more than 4 million concerned citizens signed a petition to voice their concerns, EuroISPA calls on MEPs to reject the current text, in order to explore new constructive solutions during the next European legislature.

Brussels, 20 November 2018: EuroISPA and several European and national trade associations sent a letter on the Copyright Directive reform to the EU Institutions.

The letter supports the exclusion of hyperlinks and snippets from the scope of the proposal, as well as limiting the scope to active platforms which give access to phonograms, broadcasts, films or musical works.

EuroISPA urges the European Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament to strive towards a balanced approach in the remaining trilogue negotiations.