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CentralNotice/Request/Danke, aber Nein Danke

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Danke, aber Nein Danke

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Central Notice Settings

What is the campaign duration?
  • 2nd May 2018 → 4th May 2018
Which projects will you be targeting?
  • Wikipedia
What languages will you be targeting?
  • One Language (German)
Do you wish to show banners to Logged In users, Anonymous Users or Both? Do you want to target users with a specific number of edits or average monthly?
  • Both logged in users and anonymous users

What countries will your campaign target?

  • DE

Banner/Campaign Diet:

  • To be determined by Central Notice admin

What is the purpose of the campaign? How will you measure the success of the campaign?

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Description - A large coalition of civil society groups and organisations is advocating for Free Knowledge in the ongoing legislative process of the EU copyright reform (proposed EU Directive for a Digital Single Market; short: DSM Directive), the first such reform since more than a decade and with implications for decades to come. Several Wikimedia chapters are involved in this, both directly and as partners in larger structures like the FKAGEU and EDRi.

The core goal on which all civil society advocates converge is to stop those parts of the reform that would massively increase intermediary liability for copyright infringement, and would require automatic content filters to be installed on all platforms where users can upload content. The respective Article 13 has developed into the most fought-over part of the reform project.

EU legislative process happens in 2 separate houses, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, the latter being the forum of the governments of the 28 EU Member States. While the notorious Article 13 seems to be amended in the right direction in the European Parliament, the developments in the Council are worrying: Automated filters for all platforms with User Generated Content (UGC) are still on the table there.

This is somewhat surprising, since Germany brings a lot of weight into the Council negotiations, especially in regards to copyright legislation, and the newly formed federal government in Germany has explicitly ruled out upload filters in their coalition agreement. However, the last public position paper that came out of the former acting federal government mentions automated filters as a quite possible measure to enforce copyright on platforms, see pages 4 (German) and 8 (English).

The result is a situation of positional limbo:

The new government has not yet declared a position that would be consistent with their coalition agreement, so that the position paper of the former acting government remains de facto influencial in the Council of the EU. This is aggravated by the fact, that the Council negotiations a pressed forward by several states. Thus, the time for an update to the Council position of the German government, one that honours their coalition agreement, would be now.

Wikimedia Deutschland's policy and legal team has urged the new government to openly state that they are willing to act on their coalition agreement and block filtering in the Council negotiations. We have approached the justice minister and her copyright department on this several times, without any tangible results. In the meantime, many have approached us to be more public about this demand, and for that a limited banner campaign on DE:WP was suggested.

The campaign is meant to highlight the risks that the copyright reform and especially filtering requirements would produce for Free Knowledge on the net, to highlight this to people who use Wikipedia as part of their daily lifes and who are usually not aware of such legalistic developments. The banner would lead to a page explaining the backstory in detail, offering also ways to get in touch with the WMDE policy team if people want to know more or want to help with the advocacy work against filters. At the same time the banner would require the government to react and declare whether they will do as promised in the coalition agreement or not.

The title "Danke, aber Nein Danke" (roughly "Thanks, but no thanks") picks up the fact that in the problematic position paper referenced above, Wikipedia is expressly mentioned as one platform that is not to be hurt by the envisioned copyright enforcement measures. While this carve-out can be regarded as a positive gesture, it would not at all suffice to safeguard Free Knowledge on the net, which is an ecosystem of which WP is only one – albeit important – part. Not even Wikimedia Commons would. Regarding repositories like WM Commons, later versions of the legislative proposal that emerged and vanished throughout the process gave somewhat vague definitions for a repository carve-out – wording changing between versions – which contained the requirement of a repository needing to be "not-for-profit" and "for educational purposes" to be exempt. Even the first of these requirements is, depending on the exact terminology, not clearly present with Commons, given the fact that all content under CC BY, CC BY-SA and other public licenses is licensed also for commercial purposes. The second requirement is clearly not met by Commons, as education may be a purpose of the WM Commons but not the main, let alone the only purpose.

In the way it is phrased, the campaign leverages the WP being mentioned by lawmakers to make them understand that Free Knowledge and freedom of speech are network properties, not a site or a type of sites that could be easily separated from the rest of the net. On the landing page there will also be an explanation why anti-trust law and other instruments would be much better suited to achieve what the legislation wants to do, which is primarily strengthen the position of authors and copy industries vis-a-vis internet giants.

Update, May 1st, 00:16: After several discussions we decided to go for slightly softer title and message, towards "Danke, aber das reicht nicht!", translating to "Thanks, but that's not enough!". This is closer to the core point, being the connectedness of Free Knowledge beyond WM projects and the implications this should have on regulation.

Metrics - Number of hits on the landing page; communication by the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (leading on the German position in the copyright reform)

What banner(s) will you use? What will be your landing page?

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Banners - The banner will be quite flat, contain only a headline and two lines of text + shortlink and feature the WMDE logo to indicate that this is primarily a chapter campaign

Landing Page - Will be built in time, probably an iteration of https://blog.wikimedia.de/2017/11/20/nofilter-bedrohen-geplante-upload-filter-die-wikipedia/
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Type of grant - none

Link to grant - none

Discussion

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  •   Support Automatic upload filters are a serious threat to the Free Knowledge, in this case especially for Wikimedia Commons. Our communities are very good in finding copyright violations quickly. The very low numbers of DMCA requests are a confirmation of our work. Raymond (talk) 14:44, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support similar to the campaign on de-wp to keep Freedom of Panorama, this is also a fundamental threat to how we operate. Braveheart (talk) 15:26, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond. Absolutely. --Code (talk) 18:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Contra Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a platform for political activism. If you want to express protest against legislation please support the relevant platforms, there is no lack of them.--Aschmidt (talk) 18:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond. Absolut ein Thema, welches für die Umsetzung der Wikipedia als Enzyklopädie wichtig und grundlegend ist. -- Gustavf (talk) 05:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond. --Joergens.mi (talk) 06:09, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support das betrifft uns an der Substanz, nicht nur Wikipedia sondern vor allem Commons. --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 08:13, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond. Tschüß --Raboe001 (talk) 08:20, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support This is a legislative threat to Wikipedia, so of course we have to protest against it. --Harald Krichel (talk) 08:50, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong   Support per Raymond. While I am absolutely opposed to any involvement of Wikimedia in daily politics, or the endorsement of political positions by Wikimedia, the proposed upload filters are an imminent threat to freedom of information and to the dissemination of free knowledge. Automatic upload filters are definitely not superior to a community determined to exclude copyright violations, they are not necessary, and they threaten our work. --Cimbail (talk) 11:58, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support, yes it does effect us, since Wikimedia is not only Wikipedia. And "Danke, nein Danke" should put that across to legislators. And there are also other institutions that don't have the clout of Wikipedia/media. They need our solidarity. --Wuselig (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Wikipedia/Wikimedia should be very careful and should exercise great restraint when engaging in policy debates. The burden of proof is on the applicant's side to demonstrate how Wikimedia and its projects might be directly affected by the policy decisions. I believe that the applicants have met exactly this requirement. These filter requirements are a direct and imminent threat for any open content and collaborative project and the currently discussed remedies do not offer Wikimedia projects the kind of protection that would defuse the threat. -- Mathias Schindler (talk) 14:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support creating free knowledge is political activism and we should not be hindered to do so by governments who want to keep the people dumb :) --Sargoth (talk) 15:30, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond & Sargoth. -- MichaelSchoenitzer (talk) 20:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Per Raymond. The neutrality of Wikipedia is not a suicide pact, we should not prevent ourselves from expressing one of the best-informed opinions when Free knowledge or Human Rights are threatened. Rama (talk) 05:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I (added this request and) would like to reply to the neutrality tpoic: The regulation underway will directly determine whether WMF as host provider of WM projects will be obliged to implement certain thechnologies. This makes all WM projects including their communities stakeholders in this, while the neutrality requirement – at least in my understanding – is a factor rather regarding external things, outside the Wikiverse. And even regarding that outside space, where many sources of information referenced in WP and other WM projects will be affected by the regulation, there seems to be a good case for the WM communities being stakeholders rather than neutral observers. John Weitzmann (WMDE) (talk) 15:52, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support per Raymond and Rama. De728631 (talk) 00:12, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support --A.Savin (talk) 03:22, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • This notice does not give correct information as the cited last public position paper mainly is about commercial platforms and expressively mentions wikipedia stating to exclude e.g. Wikipedia and scientific platforms.--Oursana (talk) 09:23, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • This critique seems unfounded, as the request states very clearly: "Wikipedia is expressly mentioned as one platform that is not to be hurt by the envisioned copyright enforcement measures.", going on to explain why the Free Knowledge ecosystem is affected regardless of this carve-out. The only thing that might require more details could be why WM Commons is also not clearly exempt from the measures, based on the latest proposals. I thus added 3 sentences to that paragraph. John Weitzmann (WMDE) (talk) 05:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are many proposed texts but I've not yet seen one where free knowledge projects and wikis (all Wikimedia projects included) would be safe. Maybe you mean the amendment which excludes "online encyclopedias", but as noted that doesn't clearly include Wikimedia Commons, let alone Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikibooks and the others. Nemo 05:09, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Ziko (talk) 20:14, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Central Notice admin comments

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  Approved following formal WMF review - Seddon (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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