15 February 2023

Incoming: Spare Slots for Freelance Work in 2023


I will soon have spare slots in my freelance writing schedule for regular weekly or monthly work, and major projects. Here are the main areas that I've been covering, some for nearly three decades. Any commissioning editors interested in talking about them or related subjects, please contact me at glyn.moody@gmail.com. I am also available to speak on these topics at relevant conferences around in the world, something I have done many times in the past. 

Privacy, Surveillance, Encryption, Freedom of Speech 

Over the last decade, I have written hundreds of articles about these crucial areas, for Techdirt, Privacy News Online, and Ars Technica. Given the increasing challenges facing society in these areas, they will remain an important focus for my work in the future. 

Copyright

I have also written many hundreds of articles about copyright. These have been mainly for Techdirt, where I have published nearly 1,900 posts, CopyBuzz, and Walled Culture. Most recently, I have written a 300-page book, also called Walled Culture, detailing the history of digital copyright, its huge problems, and possible solutions. Free ebook versions of its text are available. 

EU Tech Policy and EU Trade Agreements: DSA, DMA, TTIP, CETA 

I have written about EU tech policy for CopyBuzz, focussing on the EU Copyright Directive, and for Privacy News Online, dealing with major initiatives such as the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the Artificial Intelligence Act. Another major focus of my writing has been so-called "trade agreements" like TTIP, CETA, TPP and TISA. "So-called", because they go far beyond traditional discussions of tariffs, and have major implications for many areas normally subject to democratic decision making, notably tech policy. In addition to 51 TTIP Updates that I originally wrote for Computerworld UK. I have covered this area extensively for Techdirt and Ars Technica, including a major feature on TTIP for the latter. 

Free Software/Open Source

I started covering this topic in 1995, wrote the first mainstream article on Linux for Wired in 1997, and the first (and still only) detailed history of the subject, Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution in 2001, for which I interviewed the world’s top 50 hackers at length. 

Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Government, Open Everything 

As the ideas underlying openness, sharing and online collaboration have spread, so has my coverage of them, particularly for Techdirt. I wrote one of the most detailed histories of Open Access, for Ars Technica, and its history and problems also form Chapter 3 of my book Walled Culture, mentioned above. 

Europe 

As a glance at some of my 580,000 (sic) posts to Twitter, and 18,000 posts on Mastodon, will indicate, I read news sources in a number of languages (Italian, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Georgian in descending order of capability.) This means I can offer a fully European perspective on any of the topics above - something that may be of interest to publications wishing to provide global coverage that goes beyond purely anglophone reporting. The 25,000 or so followers that I have across these social networks also means that I can push out links to my articles, something that I do as a matter of course to boost their readership and encourage engagement. 


London 2023

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:42 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

14 February 2023

Moody: the works

A list of links to all my non-tech writings:

Essays

Glanglish - with audio versions - new post

Travel writings

Novels

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:13 am 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

18 December 2022

Where to find me on Mastodon

Since Elon Musk is trying to ban any mention of Mastodon on Twitter, I thought I'd just make it as easy as possible to find me on the former.  I'm at 

I look forward to meeting lots of you there, where we can discuss the continuing and inevitable decline of Twitter under Musk.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 7:32 pm 0 comments

Labels: , ,

13 January 2021

Doing the Business: a novel about the office

Back in November, during the UK's second lockdown, I put online my novel about travel and tourism – "Egyptian Romance" – since it was the closest I or most people would get to visiting these or any other places.  As we enter the third UK lockdown, I thought I'd post the novel I wrote afterwards, about another activity that is now similarly rare and exotic: working in an office.

"Doing the Business" is about the particular social dynamics of the office, specifically within a magazine publishing company.  It is even more archaeological, because it describes how magazines were produced before computers.  But its main themes are gloire and amour, which I hope will provide a little distraction, just as they have down the centuries...

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:41 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

01 January 2021

Glanglish, and other Weekly Essays

In 1990, before I had a go at writing a couple of novels, I put together Glanglish, a collection of short essays.  They are about nothing in particular, and were more in the nature of five-finger exercises for my writing (and thinking).  I aim to post one a week, which I'll add to the list below.

Glanglish

The weekly essay - with audio
Chiral asymmetries - with audio
Wallpaper - with audio
The knife's deity - with audio
Ludwig van who? - with audio
Rubbish - with audio
The new Jesuits - with audio
Systemic dis-ease - with audio
Weird messages - with audio
Looking at glass - with audio
Placing words in English - with audio
The plane truth - with audio
Meta-physicality - with audio
Accidents and substance - with audio
Colonising names - with audio
The crown in the jewel - with audio
The Turing point - with audio
Thoughts for your pennies - with audio
Repeatability - with audio
Intraviewing - with audio
Socratic wisdom - with audio
Invisible royalty - with audio
The oscillating universe - with audio
Digital reality - with audio
Forever Eden - with audio
Pravda - with audio
Glanglish - with audio
Scarlatti's cat - with audio
The check-out - with audio
The finite brain - with audio
8.8.88 - with audio
Silly farts - with audio
The contingent apple - with audio
The profit of the beard - with audio
What masterpiece? - with audio
Spot the similarity - with audio
Cacography - with audio
Windy city - with audio
Corporeal integrity - with audio
Counting the cost - with audio
Dire diary - with audio
Three sciences - with audio
Antics - with audio
God in the body - with audio
The insolence of the inanimate - with audio
Hoardings - with audio
Stargazing - with audio
Truckling on - with audio
Nostalgia for Brezhnev - with audio
Dalliance - with audio
Booting up - with audio
Getting the idea - with audio

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:02 am 0 comments

Labels: , ,

09 November 2020

Egyptian Romance: a novel about travel

Once again, many people are under lockdown.  Once again, travel is hard, or impossible.  During the first lockdown, I published my black notebooks recording most of my travels over the last thirty-odd years.  So I thought this second lockdown might be a good moment to publish some more travel-related writing.

"Egyptian Romance" is a novel, but one based on information I gathered during my own trip to Egypt in 1990, which I published as a series of four posts earlier this year.  It represents a re-working of my black books from that trip in a form that some may find easier to read.  It can therefore be seen as part of a series, which includes A Partial India - a re-working of my travel notebook for India, and Walks with Lorenzetti, which re-visits a 1988 trip I made to Venice. 

Empire's End

or

The Tale of a Tourist


Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:22 am 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , ,

03 August 2020

Introduction to Moody's Black Notebook Travels

I have two great regrets in my life.  One is eating a chicken sandwich in Varanasi, shortly before flying to Kathmandu.  This gave me the worst food poisoning I have ever experienced, nearly killed me, and meant that I missed a unique opportunity to visit Lhasa before it was turned into a Chinese Disneyland.  The other regret involves three Inter-rail trips that I made in 1979, 1980 and 1981.  They were extraordinarily rich in sights and experiences.  Stupidly, though, I did not keep a travel diary at that time, so all I have are vague, if important, memories of what I saw, thought and felt.

At least I was able to learn from these two huge blunders.  Afterwards, I no longer ate chicken sandwiches in exotic lands, and I kept travel diaries for all my major trips.  The latter took the form of black notebooks, bought from Ryman's, in two formats: one small enough to fit in a pocket, and another, slightly larger, that I kept in the travel bag I used for longer journeys. 

I now have dozens of these notebooks sitting behind me, filled with my illegible scrawl.  I have been meaning to turn them into digital texts for some years, and to bring them into the 21st century, but have never got around to it until now.  I am not transcribing them in any set order, but will place links to them below, as they go online, ordered chronologically.  There is no overall plan, no overall significance.  They are just what they are: quick thoughts jotted down in black notebooks, captured moments of a specific time and place.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:00 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , , , ,

01 August 2020

Walks with Lorenzetti: Venice, Memory, Tourism

Just as A Partial India was a re-working of my travel notebook for India, so Walks with Lorenzetti re-visits a 1988 trip I made to Venice.  A Partial India and the notes it is based on try to capture the unrepeatable impact of seeing India for the first time.  Walks with Lorenzetti is quite different.  Although it was a particularly intense few days in Venice, it was far from my first trip there.  I brought with me other memories of the city and elsewhere, as well as various kinds of relevant knowledge built up over the years before.

Walks with Lorenzetti therefore goes beyond simply re-working one of my travel notebooks.  It weaves in other major strands, including three of the city's greatest creators and their art: the music of Vivaldi, the paintings of Canaletto, and the writing of Goldoni.  Above all, it follows in the footsteps of another book: Guido Lorenzetti's Venice and its Lagoon, a forgotten masterpiece that deserves to be better-known.  I hope the following pages will help to achieve that.

Foreword

Preamble

Introductory Chapters

The book
The itineraries
The man

The Twelve Itineraries

I - First act: eighth itinerary
II - First night movement: Allegro più ch’è possible
III - First portrait: Antonio Vivaldi
IV - Second act: ninth itinerary
V - Second night movement: intermezzo
VI - Second portrait: Carlo Goldoni
VII - Third act: third itinerary
VIII - Third night movement: capriccio
IX - Third portrait: Antonio Canaletto
X - Fourth act: fourth itinerary
XI - Fourth night movement: finale
XII - Fourth portrait: itinerant biographies

Recollections

The personal tempest

Venice and its Lagoon

Souvenir

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:43 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , , , ,

20 July 2020

A Partial India

In October and November 1986, I went to India for the first time.  It was an important experience,  which I tried to capture as it happened in one of my black travel notebooks, now online as three blog posts.  They are essentially unedited transcriptions of what I wrote as I journeyed.  As such, I hope they possess a certain immediacy and freshness.  But they are also necessarily unstructured, other than by each day's itinerary, rather long, and therefore perhaps rather hard to read.

The experiences of those three weeks were so rich for me I decided to re-work my notes into shorter, more digestible pieces, which together form what I called A Partial India.  Partial, because they obviously captured only a tiny part of the vast land, its people and civilisation; partial, too, because it was born of my gratitude for the experiences India gave me.  

A third of a century later, it describes an India which no longer exists, if it ever did.  Given my inevitable lack of comprehension of India's subtleties during that first journey, perhaps this is the best I can now hope for: that the evident non-existence today of the land I described will make Partial India of mild historical interest to others.

For want of anything better, I organised my memories under arbitrary alphabetical headings, which are as follows:

A is for Agra
B is for Books
C is for Camels
D is for Delhi
E is for English
F is for Fatehpur Sikri
G is for Gandhi
H is for Horns
I is for Incense
J is for Jaipur
K is for Kashmir
L is for Large
M is for Mosques
N is for Nights
O is for Ochre
P is for Poverty
Q is for Queuing
R is for Raj
S is for Shangri-La
T is for Trains
U is for Udaipur
V is for Voyaging
W is for Work
X is for Xenophilia
Y is for Yamuna
Z is for Zenana

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:13 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , ,

18 October 2019

Brexit Vote: Please Write to Your MP Today

As people may have heard, there is a rather important vote on Brexit tomorrow.  It's going to be very close, so I would like to urge everyone in the UK to write to their MP, asking them to vote against what is in every respect a terrible deal.  

It will not only harm the economy, and the most vulnerable people in UK society, it will also open the way for a catastrophic, crash-out "No Deal" Brexit, with no way for Parliament to stop it.  In short, it's a trap, and one that some foolish MPs seem content to walk into.  

FWIW, here's what I've just sent to my MP.  Please feel free to adapt it for your own communication.  You can find your MP's email address at the wonderful free site WriteToThem, which you can also use to send your message.

This is just a quick note to ask you to vote against the UK government's proposed Brexit agreement tomorrow.
I think you already know its deep problems -  not least the fact that it simply delays, but cannot prevent, a No Deal Brexit, which seems favoured by extreme Brexiters.  But I would also like to urge you to talk to other Labour MPs who seem willing to vote for it in the mistaken belief that it is what their constituents want.
As you know, the present deal will result in a massive hit to the UK economy, which will affect the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society.  It will lead to workers' rights being eroded, along with crucial environmental protections being jettisoned.  Throw in the fact that a US trade deal will see much of the NHS privatised, and the cost of drugs greatly increased, and it is hard to understand how any Labour MP could contemplate voting for this terrible deal.  I hope you can help them to see this.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 10:37 am 0 comments

Labels: , ,

03 March 2019

This Could Be The Most Important Email You Will Ever Send To Your MEP

As most people reading this will know by now, the deeply-flawed EU Copyright Directive faces one final vote in the European Parliament soon.  If it passes there, it will become law.  That means we have one final chance to stop it, by writing to our MEPs now.

Those with good memories will remember that we stopped the equally pernicious Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at the last minute, against all the odds, by writing huge numbers of emails to MEPs, and taking to the streets.  People are already taking to the streets in Germany and elsewhere, and the emails have started flowing, much to the surprise of MEPs.  We need to increase their number greatly to convince MEPs to vote against the worst aspects of the proposed law.

I and others have written so much about the Copyright Directive and its three terrible ideas, that I will only present summaries here, along with links to more detailed information.

First there is Article 3, which covers text and data mining (TDM).  This is an exciting technique for discovering new information by analysing large quantities of text or data.  It is vitally important for the AI technique of machine learning.   And yet Article 3 stupidly limits permission to carry out TDM freely to research institutions.  This means EU startups will be unable to depend upon it as they grow, whereas those in the US and China can.  This guarantees that the EU will become an AI backwater.  More details here:

Why The Copyright Directive Lacks (Artificial) Intelligence

The Right To Read Is The Right To Mine

Article 11 is the "link tax" or "Google tax".  Neither is a very good name.  Really, it is about making every company pay to use even the tiniest snippets from news articles – perhaps even for using more than one word.  What's particularly ridiculous about this idea, is that it has been tried twice – in Germany and Spain – where it failed both times.  It will undermine the key innovation of the Web – hyperlinking information – with no benefit for the newspapers that are pushing for it.  More details here:

Article 11: Driven By Rhetoric, Not By Arithmetic

Finally, and most dangerously, there is Article 13.  Even though those drafting the proposal have cynically avoided the term, it makes the use of automated filters inevitable for most sites holding material uploaded by the public.  Those filters are unable to capture the complexities of EU copyright law, and will therefore over-block to be on the safe side.  In particular, it is impossible for such filters to tell the difference between unauthorised copies of material, and memes that use the same material.  So even if memes are not banned in the text, the end-effect will be for many of them to be blocked.  More details about all these aspects in the following pages:

You Wouldn’t Steal A Meme: The Threat From Article 13

MEPs’ Email Says Article 13 “Will Not Filter The Internet”; Juri MEP’s Tweet Says It Will

Article 13: Putting Flawed Upload Filters At The Heart Of The Internet

Article 13: Making Copyright Unfit For The Digital Age

Article 13: Even Worse Than The Us DMCA Takedown System

Time To Tell The Truth About Article 13

Why Article 13 Is Not Just Dangerous Law-Making, But Deeply Dishonest Too

Fix The Gaping Hole At The Heart Of Article 13: Users’ Rights

Article 13 Is Not Just Criminally Irresponsible, It’s Irresponsibly Criminal

As well as the serious harm the proposed Copyright Directive will cause to the Internet as we know it – born of ignorance or indifference on the part of those drafting it – what is extraordinary about the whole saga is the contempt shown for EU citizens and their views.  Recently, the European Commission published an article that called those opposing the Copyright Directive part of a "mob".  The European Parliament put out a tweet that was full of half-truths and intentionally misleading statements.

The continuing and concerted attempt to belittle EU citizens who dare to argue against the EU's proposed Copyright Directive mean that this is no longer just about copyright or the Internet.  It is about democracy in the EU.  The European Commission and European Parliament are trying to shut down dissent on this topic, just as they did for ACTA.  It is therefore vitally important for EU citizens to write to their MEPs to express their concerns about the Copyright Directive, and also about the way their right to participate in the law-making process has been seriously harmed.  You can use this page to search for MEPs in any EU Member State; in the UK you can use WriteToThem.

I normally provide a sample email text, but on this occasion, I won't.  That's because one lie that is being put about by supporters of the Copyright Directive is that emails to MEPs are being sent by "bots", paid for by Google and others, and not by real people.  For this reason, it is vital that you use your own words when you write to your MEP.  Your email does not need to be long or detailed, but it must be genuine (and polite) if it is to be convincing.  Helping us is the fact that elections for the European Parliament are imminent, so MEPs should be keen to be seen to listen their constituents – something you may wish to mention.

Despite constant claims that the EU Copyright Directive won't affect the Internet, this is simply not true.  It is, without doubt, the most serious threat we have faced since ACTA.  It is vital that, like ACTA, we stop it.  We did it then, we can do it now.  Please write to your MEPs today - it could be the most important email you will ever send them.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 10:42 am 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 September 2018

Quick Letter to MEPs about Article 13 of Copyright Directive

Yesterday, I wrote a post asking people to write to their MEPs about the imminent vote in the European Parliament on the Copyright Directive.  Here's what I've just sent to me MEPs.  As you can see, I decided to concentrate on the worst aspect of the Directive, Article 13, in order to make as much impact as possible.

As you know, on Wednesday there is a plenary vote on the proposed reforms of the EU copyright system.  I am asking you to ensure that today's vibrant Internet is not undermined by Article 13.  Although this is presented as necessary in order to force Internet companies to license material on their sites, the framing is wrong on several counts.

Copyright already allows artists and companies to demand that infringing material is taken down from sites or licensed.  There is no need to extend copyright by making licensing mandatory.  The main consequence of compulsory licensing is that major sites will bring in upload filters – it is the only way they can track what is uploaded in order to pay licensing fees, and to block any material that is not licensed. 

Such upload filters will easily morph into instruments of censorship.  Moreover, upload filters are always imperfect, and will inevitably block legal material.  As a journalist, I've written about recent cases of upload filter failures in the EU:

http://copybuzz.com/copyright/article-13-even-worse-than-the-us-dmca-takedown-system/

The net effect of upload filters will be to dissuade European citizens from using the Internet creatively, and turning them into passive consumers.  This will represent an impoverishment of European culture both online and offline.

I would therefore urge you to support amendments to Article 13 that do not make licensing – and thus upload filters – mandatory.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 9:07 am 0 comments

08 September 2018

Please Write (Yes, Again - Sorry) to Your MEPs to Stop the EU Copyright Directive from Seriously Harming the Internet

Back in June, I wrote a long post about the proposed update to EU copyright law. As I explained, there are some bad ideas being proposed, notably upload filters (Article 13), and ancillary copyright for news publications (Article 11), that will seriously harm the Internet in the EU. I won't repeat everything I wrote there: the bad ideas are still in play, despite minor amendments that have been proposed to give the impression that problems have been addressed. They haven't.


But I will ask you to write, once more, to your MEPs, as I did again in July, asking them to defend the Internet in the key European Parliament vote on Wednesday, 12 September. Once more, a short email is quite sufficient: the most important thing is to convey the seriousness of the situation. At its simplest, we need to remove Article 11 and Article 13 completely – they are not salvageable – and to amend Article 3 to allow companies to carry out text and data mining (TDM).

As well as the posts mentioned above, here are few more articles I have written on this topic in recent months, which you may find useful in writing emails to your representatives.

Article 13

Article 13: Putting Flawed Upload Filters At The Heart Of The Internet

Article 13: Making Copyright Unfit For The Digital Age

Article 13: Even Worse Than The Us DMCA Takedown System

You Wouldn’t Steal A Meme: The Threat From Article 13

Don’t Let Upload Filters Undermine The Public Domain

Upload Filters, Copyright And Magic Pixie Dust

Article 11

Article 11: Driven By Rhetoric, Not By Arithmetic

Article 3

Why The Copyright Directive Lacks (Artificial) Intelligence

The Right To Read Is The Right To Mine

But really, the details aren't so important at this stage: just write something – the simpler, and more direct the better – perhaps using WriteToThem if you are in the UK, or SaveYourinternet if you are in the EU. If we don't manage to beat off this implicit attack on the Internet in the vote on Wednesday, we will probably hobble the Internet in the EU forever, with knock-on effects around the world. It's that serious.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 5:00 pm 0 comments

04 July 2018

Countering the Latest Misinformation about the EU Copyright Directive

Tomorrow the European Parliament will vote on whether to send its version of the Copyright Directive text to "trilogues" for final negotiations. As I've written here before, this would be disastrous for the Internet in the EU. However, efforts to prevent that happening are having an impact. The MEPs on the JURI committee that drew up the current flawed text have just sent a short document to all MEPs to try to convince them to vote to move on to the trilogues (you can read it on Techdirt). It is full of misinformation, which I would like to debunk here so that people can explain to their MEPs – either in an email, or by phone – why the claims made in the JURI note are false.

I'll concentrate here on what it says about Article 13, which will bring in upload filters, since the threat it represents to the Internet is greater, and the misinformation in the JURI paper most egregious. For example, it says:

It aims to make platforms accountable, but not all platforms. Article 13 needs to be seen in conjunction with article 2 of the draft directive.

And explains:

Only those that are active, so that optimize the content posted online.

However, it fails to point out that "optimisation" includes trivial processes like changing the order of material. In other words, any site that does anything other than offer a storage medium is "active", and will thus be obliged to impose upload filters. Moreover, it truly is any site, of any size. Whereas before, supporters of Article 13 insisted it would only apply to the largest sites, JURI now says the following:

Any platform is covered by Article 13 if one of their main purposes is to give access to copyright protected content to the public.

It cannot make any difference if it is a “small thief” or a “big thief” as it should be illegal in the first place.

Small platforms, even a one-person business, can cause as much damage to right holders as big companies, if their content is spread (first on this platform and possibly within seconds throughout the whole internet) without their consent.

In view of such a small business potentially causing such a tremendous damage to right holders, the compromise text does not foresee any exemption for SMESs.

This is a huge and remarkable change, because it means even the smallest business or startup will have to licence or filter uploads. The JURI document tries to claim this isn't a problem because:

However, the text provides safeguards that will benefit SMEs. Measures must be appropriate and proportionate.

But that vague definition still places a huge burden on smaller companies, and pretty much guarantees that startups will avoid the EU, and set up shop elsewhere.  Finally, two pieces of misinformation are repeated yet again. One concerns filters:

no general filtering measures are included in Article 13. The text even emphasizes that this practice is prohibited

The text can prohibit the practice as much as it likes, but general filtering is precisely what Article 13 requires – there is no other way of doing it. Which means that companies will either break the law by not implementing general filtering, or break it by doing so. Finally, there is the old nonsense that Article13

does not threaten freedom of expression or fundamental rights.

The meme, mash-up, the gifs are already allowed and included in an existing exception and will still be after the adoption of this directive (article 5, directive 2001/29/EC

3. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the rights provided for in Articles 2 and 3 in the following cases: (k) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche

As I've pointed out before, this exception is optional, and currently not available in 19 EU Member States. Implying that memes are safe is duplicitous in the extreme, and shows how desperate supporters of the Copyright Directive are.

Please contact your MEPs to explain how things really stand, and perhaps point out that the fact the JURI briefing is reduced to spreading serious misinformation is an indication there are no real arguments in favour of this bad law.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:09 am 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , ,

02 July 2018

Please Write a *Short* Email to Your MEPs Today about EU Copyright Directive

A couple of weeks ago, I urged people to write to their MEPs about an important vote in the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament (JURI).  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, we lost that vote.

However, this is not the end of the story.  On Thursday, there is a vote by the whole of the European Parliament on whether the copyright directive should be amended, or whether it can enter "trilogue" negotiations, which occur when the text is more or less agreed.  It is therefore vital that MEPs vote to give themselves the chance to reconsider key sections of this deeply-flawed text, rather than allowing it to pass on to the trilogues.  Here is a fuller explanation of what is going on.

My previous post explained the background to the copyright directive, and my email to MEPs then was quite long.  This time, a simple message to MEPs is all that is needed.  Please contact them, using either WriteToThem (in the UK), or SaveYourInternet.eu in the EU.

If you use the latter, please change the example text and put things in your own words.  Supporters of the copyright directive are claiming that these letters are a "spam" campaign by big companies, and not real emails from constituents.  We need to counter that with a flood of genuine communications.  For this week's vote, short and simple is best.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 9:13 am 0 comments

Labels: , , , ,

13 June 2018

Please Write to Your MEPs to Stop EU Copyright Directive from Seriously Harming the Internet

Next week, a crucial vote will be held by the Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament (JURI). It concerns the proposed copyright directive, which is moving through the EU's legislative process. Unfortunately, there are two extremely dangerous elements in the current text that will harm the Internet in the EU if passed: basic details about them can be found in this post I wrote for Ars Technica. A third element needs a tweak.

As the Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda explains, it currently looks as if the two bad elements will be accepted by JURI. But the vote is close, and EU citizens have an important opportunity to ask their representatives to influence the outcome of that vote. I urge you to do so, and soon.

You can use the free services WriteToThem, or a new site called SaveYourInternet, to send an email to your MEPs in just a few seconds. The latter site offers some text you can use about one of the problematic parts of the copyright directive, Article 13. However, you may wish to urge your representative to fight against the other bad idea, Article 11. Both of these are explained in the text below, which is what I have sent my MEPs.

Please feel free to draw on this if it is helpful, but it will be more effective if you express yourself in your own words. The most important thing is to send something – no matter how short – asking MEPs to help stop the copyright directive from harming the EU's Internet.

As a journalist who has been covering the Internet for 24 years, I am deeply concerned about the proposed copyright directive that is currently working its way through the EU legislative process. I am writing to ask you to alert your colleagues on the JURI committee to the deep problems with two sections in particular: Article 13, and Article 11. Both need to be removed.
Article 13 will require sites with a large number of user uploads either to license everything they make publicly available, or proactively to stop copyright material being posted. The first option is not practical when dealing with a fragmented market where there is no central licensing agency. And even where such an agency exists, it will not cover every possible upload.
The second option requires sites to prevent unauthorised copyright material from being posted. The only way to achieve this is through a general filtering mechanism. Unless every file is checked when it is uploaded, and compared against a database of copyright material, there is simply no way to know whether it infringes. The fact that a recent JURI version of the directive's text says "The implementation of measures by service providers should not consist in a general monitoring obligation" is irrelevant, because there is literally no other way of achieving the stated aim.
The EU's e-commerce law specifically forbids EU countries from imposing "a general obligation on providers... to monitor the information which they transmit or store." But legal issues aside, there are technical problems too. The upload filters required to block copyright material will be, of necessity, automated – the volume of uploads makes this inevitable. But it is impossible to create a system that encapsulates the subtleties of EU copyright law: even courts have problems navigating their way through this extremely complex field.
As a result, upload filters will be imperfect. The future financial risks of allowing copyright material to be posted means that upload filters will always err on the side of caution, and over-block. This will lead to legitimate material being blocked by mistake. It will have a chilling effect on public domain materials, criticism, parody, and popular Internet memes that frequently draw on copyright material. In short, it will greatly impoverish the EU's Internet, and lead to a massive assault on citizens' freedom of expression. Since licensing is impractical, and upload filters cannot work, Article 13 must be dropped completely.
Despite claims to the contrary, this will not harm the copyright industry. Research carried out on behalf of the European Commission at a cost of €370,000 suggests that unauthorized uploads are not a pressing problem: "In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements."

The other problematic part of the proposed directive is Article 11, which would introduce an ancillary copyright for news publications. As you doubtless know, this has been tried twice, in Germany and Spain, and failed both times to achieve its aim of revivifying newspapers. It's not hard to see why. The snippets that appear in search engines direct more readers to news sites: they are beneficial for publishers. Trying to force Internet companies to pay for the privilege of sending more traffic to news sites makes no sense. It is no wonder that Google refused to do so in Spain, with serious negative consequences for publishers there.
Some publishers argue that sites are using material from their news publications without payment. There are two situations here. If large amounts of text is being taken, those sites can be sued for copyright infringement under existing laws. If only snippets are taken, as is the case for Google, then this is not infringement, since it is simply using those snippets to direct interested readers to the original article. The snippets are not substitutes for the full text, but tasters encouraging further exploration. In neither case is there any need for additional copyright.
However, if Article 11's "snippet tax" is brought in, it will inevitably lead to fewer links being made to news sites. The public will be less well-informed at a time when misinformation is a growing problem, while publishers will lose visitors. The actual monies from the tax are likely to be small. The German experience shows that very little money is collected in practice. To summarise, then, an ancillary copyright is not necessary, and if brought in will be harmful to the public, with only a tiny benefit for publishers. As with Article 13, Article 11, too, needs to be removed.
Finally, a quick word about Article 3. The idea behind this – to allow text and data mining (TDM) of resources – is excellent. This is a crucial area for things like artificial intelligence, and the EU desperately needs legal certainty here. However, as it currently stands, TDM would not be available to most companies unless they pay additional fees. This makes no sense at a time when the EU is rightly trying to encourage digital startups in the region. TDM will be vital for many services and products, and if companies cannot be assured that they will be able to use this approach when they grow, but will be penalised for being successful, then they will simply set up elsewhere. That is hardly a win for the EU.
The basic rule for TDM is simple: the right to read a text is also the right to mine a text. This means Article 3 needs to be amended to allow any companies, of any size or age, to carry out TDM on texts to which they have legal access.

I apologise for the length of this email, but the topics are complex and important. However, the actions required are very simple: Articles 13 and 11 must be dropped, and Article 3 must be changed. If these amendments are not passed, the effect on the Internet in the EU will be very serious, both in terms of harming the rights of EU citizens, and of discouraging innovation by startups in this region. I therefore ask you to urge your colleagues to make the changes I have suggested.
Thank you for your help in this vital matter.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 3:04 pm 0 comments

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)