Last week, the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) ignored all advice by data scientists, creators and experts and voted for the Article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive. This could mean the end of web-based Citizen Science.
Main part of this new Copyright Directive Article is an Upload Filter - which would enforce all tools, websites and platforms to filter all uploads by users.
This could mean that every time a Citizen Scientist contributes images via a CitSci app or project`s website the upload must be checked by a filter by law. Beside the danger of creating a huge censorship machine for the whole web, implementing such filters and maintaining them all time is an enormous and expensive task.
Secondly by making the projects or platforms of Citizen Science legally liable for all user uploaded content, running a Citizen Science project with User Generated Content (UGC) like image uploads can be a huge legal risk in the future, if Article 13 becomes law. Furthermore, Article 13 threatens discussion platforms, blogging platforms, code sharing platforms and many other things, we all use on a daily basis.
That all together can put a stop to Citizen Science projects with the option to upload images, audio or other media files in Europe.
And there is not much time, but a European Parliament vote can still put it to a halt - so let's take action now.
What can we do?
1) email or call your EU representatives
2) sign the petition
3) spread the word
ad 1) Main hub for taking action is https://saveyourinternet.eu/ - on this website you can easily search for your local EU representatives and send them eMails. - especially the EPP fraction is supporting the Article 13, so lets get in contact with them first.
ad 2) there is an official petition on change.org to sign here: https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet
ad 3) please spread the word and share https://saveyourinternet.eu/ with your users, stakeholders and friends!
You can also send a tweet to your EU Members of Parliament via the https://saveyourinternet.eu/ platform in the "Be a hero - tweet your MEP" section.
best regards and let`s #saveyourinternet!