Act now to stop Europe from adopting the world’s worst filtering law!

Stop the #censorshipmachine!

By EDRi · June 7, 2017

We have been fighting against censorship of the internet in Europe for years. Now is the crucial moment for everyone to engage and stop the censorship machine!

The European Commission has proposed that private companies should filter ALL of your uploads to the internet for copyright purposes. While this will not protect author’s rights, it would undermine the freedom of expression and cause enormous harm to the free and open internet by imposing censorship on EU citizens.

On the morning of 8 June, a critical Committee of the European Parliament will vote on the proposal. If the parliamentarians hear enough voices rejecting the proposed upload filtering, we have a better chance of protecting our rights and the internet for future generations!

What can you do?

1. Call a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in one easy step, for free, using this “chat roulette”.
2. Send an e-mail to a member of the IMCO Committee (list can be found here) or any other member of the European parliament.

Here are some arguments you can include in your e-mail or call:

The proposal would require internet companies to filter all uploads to the internet, which means more restrictions on legal content. Europe would be setting an awful standard for the rest of the world, in fact, it would be using much of the same technology to limit its citizens’ freedom of expression that is used in China for political censorship.
The filtering proposals are illegal, as they have been rejected twice by the highest court of the EU, which ruled that obligatory filtering is a breach of the fundamental rights of citizens.
The proposal also contradicts existing EU law, which states that Member States must not impose general monitoring obligations on internet companies.
Google and Facebook can afford these filters, what about everyone else? Proposal hurts smaller companies and start-ups, since only the internet giants will be able to cope with uncertainty caused by the unclear and unpredictable filtering requirements. No one knows how much European companies would have to invest in multiple different filters (for video, for audio, for images, etc).
Filters don’t even work that well! Different types of content are easier or more difficult to detect in a filter. How would the companies know what kind of filters are good enough in case they are taken to court?

You can copy this text to an email, customise it, and send to an MEP.

Most importantly, you should send the MEPs a clear message that you oppose upload filtering, and that you expect parliamentarians to ensure protection of your freedom of expression by REJECTING the Copyright proposal and the most recent amendments by MEP Pascal Arimont.

Act now to fix copyright and keep the internet free and open!

Read more:

Consumer protection MEPs launch attack on consumers (31.05.2017)
https://edri.org/enditorial-consumer-protection-meps-launch-attack-on-consumers/

Killing parody, killing memes, killing the internet? (08.05.2017)
https://edri.org/killing-parody-killing-memes-killing-the-internet/