On Thursday 28. March 2019 09.47.34 Christian Imhorst wrote:

in our last press release on the EU Copyright Directive, Alexander Sander says:

"The exclusion of Free Software code hosting and sharing providers from this directive is crucial to keep Free Software development in Europe healthy, solid and alive"

How do we come to this conclusion? We can probably give thanks to Microsoft for their good lobby work, that they could get an exception for GitHub (maybe the purchase of GitHub had finally probably something good):

"Open source software developing and sharing platforms like GitHub should remain out of scope." [1]

I must say that I feel uncomfortable about emphasising companies like GitHub in any advocacy campaign. GitHub and their corporate parent are quite able to look after their own interests, and while there may be common cause with the FSFE on this particular matter, I find it difficult to take such entities seriously on matters of "defending the Internet" (and all the other familiar rhetoric) when those entities have pursued a predatory strategy of consolidating collaborative activities and works on their own proprietary platforms.

Finally, I don't think this will help us. Other open source platforms, such as Mastodon instances, have to install upload filters if they don't want to end up in court. I am not a lawyer and I can't find a section in the directive that contains the opposite or can dispel my concerns about this. Can our legal team tell us what does

"Providers of services such as open source software development and sharing platforms,[...] are also excluded from this definition" [2]

in the "EU Copyright Directive" exactly mean for free and open source software projects that are not "software development and sharing platforms"?

I would need to spend a lot longer looking at the text, which looks in many ways like the usual "fudge" when conflicting interests need to be accommodated in a hastily conceived way. So there are things like revenue and customer thresholds before companies are affected by various obligations, which just seems like bad law to me.

Presumably, everyone must neatly fit themselves into commercial and non- commercial categories, which as we know from actual experience can be genuinely challenging. For example, can content licensed under CC-BY-NC be used on a site with adverts generating revenue? And so on.

Still, I guess the usual established multinational (but ostensibly European) media interests were able to see their wishes attended to, with all the costs and repercussions once again handed over to everyone else to bear.

Next, Alexander says in our names:

"We call on the European Commission to promote the dissemination of Free Software filter technologies, including financial support, for instance"

No, I won't do that and I completely disagree! I urge the FSFE to argue *against* uploadfilters and censorship. Because it doesn't matter if the censorship machine has an open or a closed license, At the end of the day uploadfilters serve censorship and censorship has to be abolished. There's already enough free software being abused for purposes of oppression and to spy on privacy in the surveillance capitalism, we don't need another one.

Here I agree with you. It seems the attitude is that there may be business opportunities for Free Software and so these should be happily pursued. Although I strongly believe that Free Software should be properly funded, this should never take place at the expense of basic rights and freedoms.

The FSFE enters dubious territory if it starts acting as an agent for business interests. Indeed, in some places there are different kinds of incorporation for organisations acting in this way, and crossing the line between these two kinds of entity could have legal (as well as ethical) consequences.

But what I miss from much of what is said is how this affects me as someone who wants to share my code via my own channels, rather than as a participant in some kind of data-farming megaupload site for code. I almost couldn't care less what GitHub would have to do to comply with legislation, but I care very much what I would be required to do.

And as I wrote in an article recently, it is no longer enough to think that since Free Software is in some way protected, there is no need to uphold other causes, rights and freedoms and that they can be ignored or neglected. Free Software is a consequence of having those other things, not a singular goal in its own right.

I hope that we will reconsider our goals we shared in this press release.

Christian Imhorst

Agreed, and I notice that for me, at least, your name and badge appeared first in the list of supporters on the "Save Code Share!" site, which seemed like an appropriate sign that I should respond!

Paul

Hi Christian,

Just a quick update here: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Edit of 28 March 2019: The original version of this press release urged the European Commission to act to avoid filtering-monopolies, but our description of our position on filters was unclear and incomplete. The FSFE is not, and has never been, in favour of developing "fundamentally flawed filtering technologies". The FSFE has been fighting against upload filters since the beginning, e.g., as a signatory of Copyright for Creativity or Create Refresh, and joined more than 80 organisations asking the EU member states to reject the harmful Article 13 (now, Art. 17). The FSFE will support solutions to preserve users' right to be in control of technology and ethical standards for service operators. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190326-01.en.html

Happy hacking! Florian