More Than 60 Groups, Companies Urge EU To Step Up Copyright Reform

A range of civil society groups and companies today urged the European Union to embrace a more ambitious agenda for reform of the Union’s copyright law.

The list of companies and organisations includes the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), Mozilla, Creative Commons, European Digital Rights, Center for Democracy and Technology, European Internet Service Providers Association (EuroISPA), International Federation of Libraries and Associations, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bitkom and many more.

A press release from CCIA is reproduced below.

Today, CCIA and over 60 civil society organisations and trade associations representing Internet users, online services, startups, publishers and research and educational institutions from all over the European Union urge European lawmakers to put the reform on copyright in the Digital Single Market back on the right track.

In an open letter, the signatories denounce the copyright proposal as “backward-looking”, and failing “to meet the expectations of European citizens and businesses”. They urge the European Parliament and the European Council to “embrace a more ambitious agenda for positive reform” and to “oppose the most damaging aspects of the proposal”, by rejecting:

• the implementation of mandatory filters for user-uploaded content, which would impose private censorship upon European citizens; and
• the creation of new exclusive rights for press publishers, which would strongly undermine the free flow of information on the Internet;

The following can be attributed to CCIA Europe Public Policy Manager Maud Sacquet:

“The copyright proposal would cause the end of Internet as we know it. Today’s open-letter shows the alarm amongst a wide range of stakeholders, from start-ups to citizen rights advocates, the technology industry, libraries and research institutes across the European Union. CCIA urges the European Parliament and Council to put the copyright reform back on the right track. There is still time”.