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Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges

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  Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2017-08-22 00:40 +0200
    Re: Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> - 2017-08-23 09:50 +0200
      Re: Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> - 2017-08-23 11:10 +0200
        Re: Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> - 2017-08-23 11:50 +0200
          Re: Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> - 2017-08-23 23:00 +0200

#9443 — Debian infrastructure in the EU / copyright challenges

There has been some discussion about the potential impact of the latest
copyright legislation[1] on sites/services that share source code or
facilitate collaborative development services.

The EU vote on those rules potentially takes place in about 2 months.

One of the key concerns is that while such sharing won't be banned,
compliance with the laws would be costly.  For a volunteer and
non-profit organization like Debian, this is obviously unpleasant.

While it is the EU right now, this type of thing could appear anywhere
(e.g. the US or a country that leaves the EU but copies EU laws to
maintain market access)

DSA has been talking about a new 5-year plan to start replacing
hardware[2] from 2017 onwards, this will potentially be costly in terms
of volunteer effort and finances and it would be useful to ensure both
the location of the hardware and the strategies used for producing
Debian will be resilient against bumbling lawyers and politicians
throughout the life of that infrastructure.

Has there already been any discussion or assessment of these risks
within Debian or other communities?

How much of the new hardware may potentially be located in the countries
concerned?

This type of situation is not completely new - for many years, we had
the non-US issues[3] which only ended in sarge / 2005.

Regards,

Daniel


1.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/eu-internet-advocates-launch-campaign-stop-eus-dangerous-copyright-filtering
2. https://micronews.debian.org/2017/1486409314.html
3. https://wiki.debian.org/non-US

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#9447

* Daniel Pocock:

> There has been some discussion about the potential impact of the latest
> copyright legislation[1] on sites/services that share source code or
> facilitate collaborative development services.

Do you have a link to the text of the proposal?  The EFF probably
misrepresents its contents.  It seems unlikely that a specific
approach to copyright review will be mandated.

I think we are already removing “meme”-type content from packages for
copyright reasons, so it is unclear to what extent Debian would be
affected.

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#9448

On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 09:36:08AM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Daniel Pocock:
> 
> > There has been some discussion about the potential impact of the latest
> > copyright legislation[1] on sites/services that share source code or
> > facilitate collaborative development services.
> 
> Do you have a link to the text of the proposal?

Not found nor apparently even linked anywhere on the EFF site, they seem to
refer to http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=17200

> The EFF probably misrepresents its contents.  It seems unlikely that a
> specific approach to copyright review will be mandated.
> 
> I think we are already removing “meme”-type content from packages for
> copyright reasons, so it is unclear to what extent Debian would be
> affected.

The EFF's campaign sounds alarmist, but this doesn't imply it's untrue.
Here's an analogy:
"By keeping a coal plant for just two days, you're a murderer!"
Which, on the face value is wrong:
* murder requires intent towards a specific person, so here it's
  manslaughter
* no jurisdiction currently makes such a long causal chain criminal
Also, what constitutes a "coal plant" is unclear as you can have a coal
generator in your cellar; this particular sound bite matches the count
of plants >=30MW.
Yet in this analogy the sound bite actually grossly _underestimates_
the problem: it takes only short-term airborne pollution in mind, so fails
to account for much more dangerous global warming, etc.
But just think if you used this sound bite -- most people would call you
an alarmist kook, right?


So with this in mind, let's see the wording of the proposal:

# Article 13
#
# Use of protected content by information society service providers storing
# and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject matter
# uploaded by their users
#
# 1. Information society service providers that store and provide to the
# public access to large amounts of works or other subject matter uploaded
# by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to
# ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the
# use of their works or other subject matter or to prevent the availability
# on their services of works or other subject matter identified by
# rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers.  Those
# measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies,
# shall be appropriate and proportionate.  The service providers shall
# provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the
# deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting
# on the recognition and use of the works and other subject matter.
# 
# 2. Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in
# paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are
# available to users in case of disputes over the application of the
# measures referred to in paragraph 1.
# 
# 3. Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation
# between the information society service providers and rightholders through
# stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and
# proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among
# others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies
# and their effectiveness in light of technological developments.

Debian _does_ "store and provide to the public" (with an extensive network
of mirrors, even) "large amount of works" (which, unlike previous such
proposals, are not in any way limited to just music and videos -- software
packages are also copyrighted works.  Packages also often include images,
sometimes music (games) and rarely videos.) "uploaded by users" (DDs are
not employees, and we do take a large amount of sponsored uploads from
contributors with no formal relation at all).

The main archive probably is less in a danger, those provided by Alioth
seem more problematic.  The former would be the target of SCO-likes who are
few, the latter would fall to far more likely campaigns against GitHub and
such.

-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁ Vat kind uf sufficiently advanced technology iz dis!?
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀                                        -- Genghis Ht'rok'din
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ 

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#9449

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 11:02:51 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:

> Not found nor apparently even linked anywhere on the EFF site, they seem to
> refer to http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=17200

Thanks for digging up this document.
 
> # Article 13
> #
> # Use of protected content by information society service providers storing
> # and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject matter
> # uploaded by their users

Question 1: What are "information society service providers"? This is
not defined in this document, but it refers (on page 20) to
"Directive 2000/31/EC" [0] which is about e-commerce and says (on
page 3):

  The definition of information society services already exists in
  Community law in Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and
  of the Council of 22 June 1998 laying down a procedure for the
  provision of information in the field of technical standards and
  regulations and of rules on information society services (4) and in
  Directive 98/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of
  20 November 1998 on the legal protection of services based on, or
  consisting of, conditional access (5); this definition covers any
  service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by means
  of electronic equipment …

I don't think that Debian falls under this regime (we don't do
e-commerce for remuneration).

(18) mentions all kinds of non-remunerated activities but it still
talks about "a wide range of economic activities which take place
on-line".
(19) again talks about "pursuit of an economic activity … place of
establishment of a company".

And Art.2 "Definitions" (c) finally reads:

  ‘established service provider’: a service provider who effectively
  pursues an economic activity using a fixed establishment for an
  indefinite period. The presence and use of the technical means and
  technologies required to provide the service do not, in themselves,
  constitute an establishment of the provider;


Question 2: What about the "uploads by their users"? Since Debian
doesn't allow random people to upload random stuff to its servers
which Debian then promotes, I think this also doesn't apply.


Cheers,
gregor


[0] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32000L0031&from=EN

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#9451

* gregor herrmann:

> Question 2: What about the "uploads by their users"? Since Debian
> doesn't allow random people to upload random stuff to its servers
> which Debian then promotes, I think this also doesn't apply.

Correct, and Debian provides training to DDs to recognize potential
copyright infringement, and new packages also need to pass a separate
review step.

That leaves mailing lists and the wiki.  I don't see how
copyright-infringing content wouldn't be low-quality content as well,
so if that happens to a significant degree, we'd have to filter it
anyway to keep those resources useful.

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