Over the next five years, we need to remove the barriers that prevent knowledge institutions from fulfilling their public mission in the digital environment. Specifically, we need a targeted legislative intervention – a Digital Knowledge Act –  that enables knowledge institutions to offer the same services online as offline.

Such a regulation would require a few surgical interventions in copyright law, such as the introduction of a unified research exception (see our Policy Recommendation #9) and an EU-wide e-lending right (see our Policy Recommendation #10). However, it would mostly involve measures that fall outside of the scope of recent copyright reform discussions.

Above all, we’re envisioning a number of safeguards that would protect knowledge institutions against the abuse of property rights. Due to the complex and fragmented state of European copyright law, many institutions shy away from fully exercising their usage rights. We believe that an exemption from liability for those who act in good faith and believe that their activities are legal would mitigate this chilling effect (see our Policy Recommendation #17).

Another limiting factor for knowledge institutions in the digital realm are unfair licensing conditions. We believe that rightsholders should be obliged to license works under reasonable conditions to libraries as well as educational and research institutions.

Finally, knowledge institutions should be allowed to circumvent technological protection measures where locks prevent legitimate access and use of works, such as uses covered by limitations and exceptions (see our Policy Recommendation #13).

These demands are far from new and even the idea of a Digital Knowledge Act has been floating around in Brussels policy circles for a long time. Now it is up to the incoming legislators to show that they have the political will to tackle these problems in a comprehensive manner to unlock the full potential of Europe’s knowledge institutions.

The post A Digital Knowledge Act for Europe appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

This development is particularly worrying regarding modern technological devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. Due to the complexity of these devices, a single broken or outdated component may render the whole device unusable. As these products are often extremely resource intensive in their production, the possibility to repair a faulty component could go a long way to reduce waste and improve sustainability.

EU to the rescue?

The good news: The EU is aware of the issue and has proposed a solution. In March, the European Commission proposed a Directive on common rules promoting the repair of goods. The proposed legislation aims to establish common rules to promote the repair of goods, and increase the level of consumer and environmental protection by making it easier for professional repairers to assess information and goods that are necessary to repair a product, such as technical documentation and spare parts.

The bad news: While the proposal makes a number of important steps, it fully disregards one of the key obstructions to repairs especially in modern products, namely copyright restrictions.

What could possibly go wrong?

Take the example of John Deere. Several years ago, the company which manufactures a wide range of machinery including tractors as well as household devices such as lawnmowers sparked a public debate following their decision to prohibit the repair of their tractors by third-parties on the basis of copyright restrictions. The company argued that despite the fact that a farmer may own the tractor, the underlying software which oftentimes has to be modified as part of a repair, is copyrighted by John Deere. As a result, farmers as well as professional third-party repairers were prohibited from fixing the machines and instead all repairs had to be conducted by shops specially authorised by the company, leading to delays and opening the door to predatory pricing.

Importantly, this argument is not exclusive to John Deere. In fact, many car manufacturers (including BMW, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen and many more) argue that modifying the software in a purchased car violates copyright provisions.

The problem is also not limited to the US as proven by Apple when, in the late 2010s, the company fought a 3-year legal battle all the way up to the Norwegian Supreme Court to stop an independent repair shop from conducting screen replacements on iPhones on the grounds of trademark violations.

Where do we go from here?

In order to stop these practices and empower consumers, the EU legislator in the new Directive must make it clear that copyright and related rights shall not prevent the repair of goods.

Furthermore, in order to narrow the knowledge gap and reduce the risk of consumers becoming the victim of abusive pricing, consumers should also be granted access to repair information, such as manuals and spare-part catalogues.

The post Towards a meaningful right to repair appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

At the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which took place in March, we witnessed a major shift in the EU’s position on international lawmaking in the area of exceptions and limitations to copyright (L&Es). The discussions also brought to light the rationale of the demandeurs of a Broadcast Treaty, deepening the civil society’s concerns about the impact of a new copyright-like right on the public domain and public interest activities.

Exceptions and limitations: a departure from the EU’s stance on text-based negotiations

The last time the most important forum at the global level for copyright rulemaking engaged in text-based negotiations on L&Es was a decade ago, in the lead-up to the adoption in 2013 of the Marrakesh Treaty. After the treaty was adopted, many developed countries claimed that the international instrument for persons with print disabilities was meant to be an exception, and opposed the drafting of any other instrument on copyright exceptions, be it binding or non-binding (such as a joint recommendation or a model law).

This stance was repeated ad nauseam over the years, particularly by the EU. So much so that not even the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated clearly how important it is for schools and cultural heritage institutions to be able to operate remotely and across borders, seemed to remove them from those crystallised positions. 

This status quo remained until the last SCCR, when developed countries finally showed a change of heart. While still opposing the drafting of a legally binding instrument, the EU stated that it was willing to discuss non-binding instruments:

In this context, as consistently expressed in the past, we would like to remind, however, that the EU and its member states cannot support work towards legally binding instruments at the international level or any preparations in this regard. However, we stand ready to continue to engage constructively under this Agenda Item to reflect further on the other possible non-binding instruments and ways how WIPO can best help to provide guidance to WIPO member states to address the problems faced by institutions and people with disabilities including through the introduction of meaningful exceptions and limitations in their respective national laws. (…)

However, as the week proceeded, it became apparent that France wanted to soften the EU statement delivered by the Commission. The only EU country to ask for the floor, France made the following intervention, repeating what had been the EU’s position until that point:

In this regard, France has reservations regarding the fact that the conversation on L&Es could touch upon normative instruments. The continuation of discussions in L&Es should be founded on the exchange of best practices at the national level (…).

Frustrated with these continued attempts to divert the conversation away from concrete language to address the problems and solutions faced by educators, researchers, and cultural heritage institutions, in our statement we threatened not to return to the Committee:

We come here, year after year, to defend the rights of teachers and researchers. We support your discussions. We bring evidence. We talk to you, the person that was here before you and the person that will come after you. It’s a massive effort. Yet, every year, we leave this room empty handed, with no binding instruments, no soft laws, nothing that could make a difference. Do know that we question if we should come back.

We further shared the story of Jonas, a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, who we interviewed for our publication “Nobody puts research in a cage”. We explained his struggles with accessing the data sources he uses in his research remotely and sharing his research results with colleagues for purposes of verification and validation of his research. And we read his words out loud, hoping they could make a difference in the discussions:

Perhaps they did. At the end of the last day of SCCR/43, the Committee finally agreed to approve the revised African Group proposal for a work program on L&Es, which includes drafting work towards “objectives and principles and options for implementation at national level”. The Chair was tasked with advancing information sharing and consensus building on L&Es between SCCR meetings and given the option to create working groups of member states supported by experts to produce outcomes for consideration by the Committee.

Broadcast Treaty: increasingly difficult to grasp!

The discussions on the protection of broadcasting organisations against unauthorised retransmission and related uses were centred around the Chair’s Second Revised Draft Text for the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty, which continues to raise substantial issues of concern. 

While there seems to be a common understanding that any potential treaty should be narrowly focused on signal piracy and not extend to post-fixation activities, there are still many important issues to be agreed upon, including fixation rights, a perpetual term of protection, and limitations and exceptions.

The revised draft text contains important changes to the L&Es provision. Yet, none of the exceptions are mandatory, not even those that are already mandatory for copyrighted works (such as quotation, news of the day, and providing access for the visually impaired). Furthermore, unlike the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the text does not even mandate the contracting parties to achieve a fair balance between the rights and interests of authors and rightsholders, and those of  users. 

Equally concerning is the idea to give contracting parties the option to protect signals by means of a fixation right. This would grant broadcasters a new lawyer of exclusive rights over the programme-carrying signal on top of the rights they already have on the signal content, effectively extending the scope of protection beyond the mere signal. This is particularly concerning when the signal content is already in the public domain, as it would allow broadcasters to re-appropriate public domain broadcasts. Broadcasters are sitting on huge collections of public domain content and are the only ones that have complete, high-quality copies of those materials. Prohibiting the fixation of signal would mean preventing access to, and re-use of, the public domain material itself. 

When questioned why public domain materials were not being excluded from this new layer of rights, the facilitators made it clear that this was intentional. They claimed that broadcasters needed to be incentivised to promote public domain works to the public. We found this reasoning nonsensical and asked why corporations would need copyright-like incentives to use materials that are free for anyone to use and for which they would not need to pay any copyright licence fees. However, none of the facilitators were able to provide a response.

The next SCCR will take place in Geneva on November 6-8. This time, the Committee will meet for three days instead of five, and attendees will be asked to forego making oral opening statements and general declarations, in order to allow the Committee to focus on substantive discussions. Certainly something to look forward to!

The post Finally, something to look forward to at WIPO appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

We made the following statement regarding limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 7):

Dear Delegates,

We come here, year after year, to defend the rights of teachers and researchers. We support your discussions. We bring evidence. We talk to you, the person that was here before you and the person that will come after you. It’s a massive effort. Yet, every year, we leave this room empty handed, with no binding instruments, no soft laws, nothing that could make a difference.

Do know that we question if we should come back. The only reason why we persist is because we cannot stand talking with those researchers and teachers about the challenges they face when researching newspapers or showing Youtube videos in Zoom classes, and turn our backs on them.

So today, I’ll use the 1 minute that I have to let you hear from one of them, in the hope that this will be it, that these will be the words that will also make you stand for them.

Jonas is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, and we interviewed him for our publication “Nobody puts research in a cage”.

Jonas is struggling because he cannot have remote access to the data sources he uses in his research and also because he cannot share his research results and underlying resources with colleagues for purposes of verification and validation of his research. In his words:

We are studying book reviews in Swedish newspapers from 1906, 1956 and 2006. We want to train the computers to understand different expressions in their context. We also have a dream that feels more and more likely, insane at first but now maybe real? That is, to train a text corpus to identify what is a book review!
To access material from 1956, we have to go to the National Library Lab in Stockholm. It is a small glass cage with three data terminals. You sit in the lab, annotate. Access to it costs SEK 70,000 the first year, and 35,000 in the following years. You are not allowed to take data in or out, all labs must be done in the cage.
The transparency is non-existent. If someone wants to verify the results, they also have to buy the license for a lot of money. An incredible anxiety!

End of quote.

Thank you.

The post SCCR/43: COMMUNIA Statement on Limitations and Exceptions appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

We made the following statement regarding the protection of broadcasting organisations (Agenda Item 5):

COMMUNIA works to defend the public domain and in our opinion the proposed broadcast treaty is a threat to the public domain and usage rights.

The current version of the draft treaty allows countries to protect broadcasters with exclusive rights without sufficient balance or consideration for the societal needs related with access to knowledge and information.

Broadcast signals carry content that plays an essential informational, cultural and educational role in our society. It is therefore crucial to ensure that the rights-based model currently under discussion does not create an additional obstacle to education, research and the activities of cultural heritage institutions.

Let us give you an example. We recently interviewed EU researchers to better understand the needs and challenges faced by them. A Swedish researcher told us that they use broadcasts as sources of scientific research. They research public discourse and they analyse mainly radio broadcasts and daily newspapers. With the current legal framework they already face considerable copyright-related obstacles. In their words “We really get into copyright issues and there it has been very messy.”

So why make things harder for them? This treaty needs to get rid of fixation rights. It needs to mandate that the parties achieve a fair balance by means of exceptions, and it needs to have the same mandatory exceptions that we have in Berne and in the Marrakesh Treaty. And this is just a start. We count on you to make it right.

The post SCCR/43: COMMUNIA Statement on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

We offer you an opportunity to join our advocacy efforts to advance cutting-edge copyright reform and work with a network of activists, researchers, and other practitioners in Europe and the United States.

This is a remote position, but you must be located in the Brussels area and should be able to attend meetings in Brussels on short notice.

It is possible to work part-time, but you should be available to work at least 24h/week for us.

Primary responsibilities

As a Policy Advisor, your primary responsibility will be to promote COMMUNIA’s policy objectives in the EU context and expand COMMUNIA’s network in the Brussels policy space. In addition, you will work on our public communication efforts.

Policy

• Represent COMMUNIA and promote COMMUNIA’s policy goals at consultations, hearings and events;
• Work with COMMUNIA’s directors and core team members to draft responses to consultations, policy papers and other policy documents;
• Expand COMMUNIA’s network in the Brussels policy space;
• Track relevant developments in copyright and related policy areas of interest to COMMUNIA.

Communication

• Work with COMMUNIA’s directors and core team members to create communication materials, including blog posts, social media content, policy handouts and newsletters;
• Plan, organise and run in-person, hybrid and virtual events, including promotion and follow-up communication with participants and attendees.

Qualifications and skills

• University degree in political science, law, or related field;
• Strong identification with COMMUNIA’s mission and policy objectives;
• Relevant prior experience in the field;
• Basic knowledge of copyright and copyright-related challenges for users in general and in education, research and the cultural heritage sector;
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build/maintain a network in the Brussels policy space (prior experience in a similar position a plus);
• Good writing and communication skills (ability to speak and write concisely in different formats and for different audiences, blogging, social media etc.);
• Good knowledge of the workings of the European institutions and EU policy processes;
• Project management skills (structured and target-oriented approach, good time management, experience with online/offline/hybrid event planning a plus);
• Proficient computer skills (familiarity with the Google suite and Slack or similar frameworks, knowledge of WordPress a plus);
• Excellent level of English (native or fluent). Good command of French is an advantage.

Application process

Please apply by sending your CV and motivation letter to work@communia-association.org. The deadline for applications is January 31st, 2023.

Only applicants with a valid residence and work permit for Belgium will be considered.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at the same email address.

Further information

Salary

We offer a salary starting at €55.000/year for a full-time position commensurate with relevant skills and experience.

Work environment and location

COMMUNIA is an international association incorporated under Belgian law that advocates for policies that expand the Public Domain and increase access to culture and knowledge. We are driven by our public interest mission and we have a proven track record of impact in EU and national legislation.

COMMUNIA is a fully distributed organisation with members in Europe and the US. This position is in a remote working environment, but based in the Brussels area. Availability for occasional travel and high-speed broadband access are required. A laptop is supplied.

We are an equal opportunities employer and we are committed to ensuring equality and promoting diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to job applicants (or “you”). COMMUNIA will collect and use your personal data during the recruitment process, to manage the process and reach a hiring decision. This includes assessing your skills and qualifications for this particular role, verifying your information and communicating with you.

We collect only personal data that you have provided to us in your application, data from interviews (if applicable), and data provided to us by your referees (if applicable). We may also obtain data relevant to your professional life from publicly available sources for the purpose of confirming the accuracy of the information presented by you. We base this processing on our legitimate interest to build a decision base in order to reach a hiring decision.

If you are accepted for a role at COMMUNIA, your personal data will be included in our staff records. If you are not successful, your personal data will be deleted from our records within three months from the application deadline.

We take care to allow access to your personal data only to those who are involved in the recruitment process. We will not share any personal data with other third parties ​​unless we have a legal obligation to do so.

You have the right to access, correct, update, or request deletion of your personal data from our records. You also have the right to object to, or restrict, processing of your personal data, as well as to data portability, and to report any misuse of your personal data.

If you have any questions or requests relating to this Privacy Policy, please contact us at communia@communia-association.org.

The post We Are Looking for a Policy Advisor appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

Today, the A2K Coalition is launching its website with demands for education, research and cultural heritage.

Access to knowledge is not enjoyed equally across the world. Crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency, highlight the barriers that the current copyright system poses for those who learn, teach, research, create, preserve or seek to enjoy the world’s cultural heritage.

The international copyright system has failed to keep pace with advancing technology and practices, including for digital and cross-border activities. Consequently, we have been unable to seize the possibilities that exist to promote access to, and use of, knowledge to fulfill human rights and achieve more equitable, inclusive and sustainable societies.

The members of the A2K Coalition represent educators, researchers, students, libraries, archives, museums, other knowledge users and creative communities around the globe. Our individual missions are varied but we all share a vision of a fair and balanced copyright system.

In addition to our mission statement and demands, the A2K Coalition website features evidence to substantiate our claims. Three maps track the state of copyright limitations and exceptions for online education, text and data mining, and preservation across most countries in the world. Currently, only the text and data mining map is fully implemented, but the maps for online education and preservation will follow soon. The website is available in English, French and Spanish language versions.

We invite you to explore the A2K website and spread the word about the A2K Coalition.

The post Global Civil Society Coalition Promotes Access to Knowledge appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The International Association on the Public Domain looks to expand its advocacy work and engage in strategic litigation in Europe.

COMMUNIA has been awarded an eight-year grant of three million euros by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. This opens a new chapter in the history of the organisation, which was founded in 2011 as an EU thematic network and has been one of the most active civil society organisations on European copyright reform in recent years.

Arcadia’s open access programme supports work that improves access to human knowledge and helps make information free for anyone. With Arcadia’s generous support, COMMUNIA will expand its policy work for copyright reform and initiate strategic litigation, aiming to establish itself as the principal advocacy organisation for the Public Domain in Europe.

Portuguese copyright expert Teresa Nobre and German access to knowledge activist Justus Dreyling are joining COMMUNIA as co-directors to advance COMMUNIA’s mission and organisational development.

“We have witnessed decades of narrowing of the Public Domain through the expansion of the scope of copyright protection and the creation of new exclusive rights. It is time to reverse this trend. To achieve this goal, we are committed to making COMMUNIA an even stronger voice for the Public Domain in policy debates in Europe and beyond,” says COMMUNIA’s incoming Policy Director Justus Dreyling.

COMMUNIA’s advocacy work is based on a set of 20 policy recommendations, which were launched in May of this year. In the future, COMMUNIA will also defend the Public Domain and usage rights in court through strategic litigation.

“The public domain belongs to all and is often defended by no-one. We want to change that. COMMUNIA wants to play a new role in reshaping copyright and defending the Public Domain against misappropriation. We are prepared to make our vision a reality through advocacy and judicial means,” explains Legal Director Teresa Nobre.

About Arcadia

Arcadia is a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It supports charities and scholarly institutions that preserve cultural heritage and the environment. Arcadia also supports projects that promote open access and all of its awards are granted on the condition that any materials produced are made available for free online. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $910 million to projects around the world.

The post COMMUNIA Receives Eight-Year Grant from Arcadia appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The position of the European Commission is particularly interesting here as Article 17(10) explicitly tasks the EU’s executive body with “issue[ing] guidance on the application of this Article […] to balance fundamental rights and of the use of exceptions and limitations”. When the Commission published its guidance on the 4th of June 2021 it wisely noted the following:

The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the case C-401/19 2 will have implications for the implementation by the Member States of Article 17 and for the guidance. The guidance may need to be reviewed following that judgment.

Even though it is rather obvious that the CJEU judgment does indeed call for the revision of the guidance, the Commission has so far been silent on its plans to review it. This makes the publication of a Interdisciplinary Mapping report on the Copyright Content Moderation in the EU by the European Commission-funded ReCreating Europe project very timely. The 300-page report by João Pedro Quintais, Péter Mezei, István Harkai, João Carlos Magalhães, Christian Katzenbach, Sebastian Felix Schwemer, and Thomas Riis concludes with a series of “Recommendations for Future Policy Actions” (pdf — pages 300-302) most of which focus on the implications of the CJEU judgment for the Commission’s guidance. With regards to the Commission’s guidance, the researchers note:

• Considering the potential for legal uncertainty and fragmentation of the digital single market as regards copyright content moderation, we recommend that the Commission reviews its Guidance on art. 17 CDSMD (COM/2021/288 final) in order to provide clearer guidelines on the definition of OCSSPs, especially for small and medium-sized online platforms. […]
• We further recommend that the Commission reviews its Guidance in order to provide guidelines from the perspective of EU law as to the concrete implications of a “user rights” implementation of paragraph (7) in national laws. This should include, to the extent possible, concrete guidance on what type of actions users and their representatives (e.g., consumer organisations) may take against OCSSPs to protect their rights. […]
• We further recommend that the Commission’s Guidance is updated to fully reflect the Court’s approach in case C-401/19, as regards the complementary role of complaint and redress mechanisms under paragraph (9).
• The Commission should review its Guidance to clearly align it with the Court’s judgment in case C- 401/19, namely by clarifying that: (1) OCSSPs can only deploy ex-ante filtering/blocking measures if their content moderation systems can distinguish lawful from unlawful content without the need for its “independent assessment” by the providers; (2) such measures can only be deployed for a clear and strictly defined category of “manifestly infringing” content; and (3) such measures cannot be deployed for other categories of content, such as “earmarked content”. Member States should further adjust their national implementations of art. 17 CDSMD to reflect these principles.
• Take into consideration the approach proposed by the AG Opinion on how to limit the application of filters to manifestly infringing or “equivalent” content, including the consequence that all other uploads should benefit from a “presumption of lawfulness” and be subject to the ex-ante and ex-post safeguards embedded in art. 17, notably judicial review. In particular, the AG emphasized the main aim of the legislature to avoid over-blocking by securing a low rate of “false positives”. Considering the requirements of the judgment, in order to determine acceptable error rates for content filtering tools, this approach implies that the concept of “manifestly infringing” content should only be applied to uploaded content that is identical or nearly identical to the information provided by the rightsholder that meets the requirements of art. 17(4) (b) and (c) CDSMD.

Taken together, these recommendations would significantly improve the value of the Commission’s guidance and fix the glaring flaws that were introduced into the guidance in response to political pressure from rightsholders. In making these recommendations, the ReCreating Europe research team has effectively done the Commission’s homework and presented the Commission with a clear basis for bringing the guidance in line with the requirements and limits developed by the CJEU.

Given that a number of Member States are still working on their national implementations, the Commission should not waste time and issue an updated version of the guidance as soon as possible.

The full report also contains a number of additional policy recommendations. These include recommendations directed to member states that mirror parts of the recommendations for the Commission listed above. The final two recommendations focus on strengthening the position of creators who seek to monetize their content via online platforms and a recommendation to increase the transparency of automated copyright content moderation practices by online platforms by leveraging the provisions of the recently adopted Digital Services Act.

The post EU Commission-funded research report urges the Commission to fix its flawed Article 17 guidance appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

The judgment raises a host of important questions for the enforcement of copyright law as well as for the compatibility of upload filters with fundamental rights even beyond copyright law. To discuss these consequences, together with Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte we are jointly organizing the “Filtered Futures” conference on Monday, September 19^th 2022, in Berlin.

We are inviting papers from all disciplines contributing to the conference theme. To present your work at Filtered Futures, please complete the submission form by July 10^th, 2022. The form asks for a short abstract of your talk. All applicants will be notified by July 22^th, 2022.

In addition, we will offer an opportunity to present your work to a broader audience through the COMMUNIA website or a dedicated publication.

It will be possible for a limited number of people to attend the conference without presenting their work. Please request participation with: uploadfilter@freiheitsrechte.org

Participation will be free of charge. A light lunch will be served. A limited budget to support travel and accommodation expenses for presenters is available.

Possible topics for conference contributions include:

1. The impact of the ruling on existing national implementations of Article 17:
   1. How are verbatim implementations to be interpreted?
   2. Does the Court mandate or enable a harmonized EU-wide technical implementation of Article 17 by platforms?
   3. Do any national implementations violate the standards set by the ruling?
   4. What role will the Commission guidance play in application of Article 17?
2. Rights and obligations of rights holders and users:
   1. standards for “information provided by rightsholders”
   2. enforcement of user rights
   3. measures against misuse of copyright enforcement tools
   4. sanctions for non-compliance beyond platform liability?
3. Minimum fundamental rights safeguards for the use of upload filters:
   1. different standards for voluntary (based on terms and conditions) and mandatory filtering by platforms?
   2. Do filters sufficiently distinguish between legal and illegal uses?
   3. ex-ante safeguards for use of upload filters
4. Impacts on the relationship of Article 17 to other norms:
   1. intermediary liability for platforms that don’t qualify as OCSSPs
   2. Digital Services Act
   3. other sector-specific content regulation (TERREG, protection of minors)
5. Implications of the ruling on CJEU freedom of expression case-law:
   1. prior restraint and its necessary safeguards
   2. scope of ban on general monitoring obligations

The post Filtered Futures: a Conference to examine upload filters after the CJEU ruling on Art. 17 appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.