Brussels, 25 May 2018 – Today, the Bulgarian Presidency was granted a mandate to negotiate with the European Parliament on the Copyright Directive reform. EuroISPA is seriously concerned that the compromises reached on Articles 11 (press publishers’ rights) and 13 (filtering measures) will hurt the European Internet industry. We call on the European Parliament and the Council to improve the text in the upcoming negotiations by adopting a more proportionate and targeted approach.

Article 11 – a danger to European users’ fundamental rights

It is unclear how Article 11 will benefit press publishers, especially bearing in mind catastrophic precedents in Spain and Germany. EuroISPA regrets that the text leaves it to Member States the freedom to determine whether a snippet of a press publication falls in the scope of the article. This will simply create 28 different regimes in the EU, generating legal uncertainty for the industry, and limiting the free and open nature of the Internet. In this context, we call for Member States to consider a reasonable compromise that had broad support, a presumption of transfer of rights to news publishers.

Article 13 – over-blocking and censorship

Article 13 makes intermediaries liable for uploads by their users, completely circumventing the E-Commerce Directive. Furthermore, it requires businesses to put in place filters to assess the legality of copyright-protected content – this will lead to over-blocking and censorship of lawful content, thus endangering European users’ fundamental freedoms.

The law-makers should clearly exclude from the scope of the text electronic communication services, including internet access providers, and, as the music industry has been their main concern in drafting this text, reduce it to phonograms. Furthermore, the obligations to remove content expeditiously should be based on knowledge of an illegal use of content, in line with the e-Commerce Directive, and not merely on information by the rightholder stating that it owns the work.

A proportionate and targeted approach

EuroISPA calls on the European Parliament and the Council to adopt a more proportionate and targeted approach in their upcoming negotiations, as suggested above. We stand ready to further collaborate with the Council and the European Parliament to contribute the perspective of European Internet Services Providers and work towards a good compromise for European citizens and the European Internet industry.

Brussels – 7 May 2018: The European Internet Services Providers Association continues to grow: Czech media and technological house Seznam.cz has joined its Industry Forum and further strengthened the association.

Seznam.cz is a leader within the Czech digital market. It offers over twenty services including full text search, online maps, a company catalogue, an e-mail service with 8 million of accounts, news services, TV broadcasting, a comparison tool and advertising. Seznam.cz’s homepage is visited by an average of 6,5 million users per month, searching for news and information, connecting with friends, and using services to improve their everyday life, such as price comparison tools and original audiovisual content.

Seznam.cz’s Deputy CEO Aleh Drohal commented: “As a European Internet player, we are glad to join a community representing the European Internet sector. Seznam.cz is looking forward to being an active voice within EuroISPA and participating in a dynamic dialogue with EU policy-makers.”

As the EU Institutions work on important policy topics such as the copyright reform, tackling illegal content online, cybersecurity, e-privacy etc., it is more important than ever that the European Internet sector speaks with one voice to preserve an innovation-friendly legislative environment for all Internet players.

You can find further information on Seznam.cz’s activities at this link.

Brussels, 26 April 2018–  EuroISPA has co-signed a letter with 145 organisations asking the EU Council not to rush negotiations on the Copyright Directive. We are deeply concerned that the latest text proposed by the Bulgarian Presidency does not reflect a balanced compromise. More time is needed in order to find a balanced approach.

The open letter was signed by European and global organisations, as well as national organisations from 28 EU Member States, representing human and digital rights, media freedom, publishers, journalists, libraries, scientific and research institutions, educational institutions including universities, creator representatives, consumers, software developers, start-ups, technology businesses and Internet
service providers.

Please find here the abovementioned letter: Open_Letter_on_Copyright_Reform_27_April_COREPER_Meeting

Brussels, 1st March 2018: Upon the adoption of the European Commission’s Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal content online, EuroISPA has reiterated that the rule of law must not be sacrificed in the fight against illegal content online. Today’s Recommendation demands that Internet intermediaries are bound to suppress content at the request of state investigators or vigilante actors, without any independent assessment of legality. This places Internet businesses at risk of violating their obligations to respect fundamental rights in the online sphere.

The Recommendation proposes the use of automated filters to assess the legality of content, which will lead to over-blocking and censorship of lawful content. Proactive measures, especially in combination with such automated filtering methods, clearly run counter to recent jurisprudence of both the Court of Justice of the European Union as well as Member State court rulings.

Burdening Internet intermediaries with such immense responsibilities is not only troubling due to the lack of court oversight, it also serves to further reinforce the worrying trend of the privatisation of law enforcement online. This deeply disquieting tendency is further sharpened by the Recommendation’s encouragement of dealing with disputes with an out-of-court settlement mechanism, and by the extremely limited time frame of just one hour, within which Internet intermediaries are expected to remove content upon referral. EuroISPA is especially alarmed as such extreme time constraints clearly reflect that European law-makers fail to understand that such obligations would be almost impossible to put in place for the vast number of small and medium size businesses all over Europe.

EuroISPA is furthermore troubled by the recommendation that Internet intermediaries should simply comply with demands to remove content from private vigilante organisations, which the European Commission designates as “trusted flaggers”. The proliferation of such entities, with the suggestion to extend these competences further to users and copyright holders, shows the Commission’s worrisome acceptance of the absence of court oversight and supports a system afflicted with a clear lack of impartiality: the entity making the complaint would often be the same which assesses the validity of the complaint.

Such an approach would also have severe detrimental effects on the current system of hotlines, whose valuable work on tackling Child Sexual Abuse Material online would be undermined.  EuroISPA thus points out that, without the need of a court order, the increased power of referrals and take down or access restriction orders by competent authorities, will make it impossible to uphold due process and the rule of law online.

EuroISPA, and its over 2,500 member companies from all areas of the European internet ecosystem, have long been and continue to be dedicated in leading the fight against illegal content online, notably through its Members responsible for national hotlines, as well as supporting anti-malware and anti-spam initiatives across Europe. We reiterate our call for a policy framework to tackle illegal content online only in the context of due process and strong judicial oversight. Fundamental freedoms of European Internet users must be upheld, which can only be ensured through a system underpinned by court authority.