AG DSN

Dear members,

Article 13 has been on everyone's lips in recent weeks and will be voted on in the European Parliament on the 25th of March. In concrete terms, Article 13 is part of the planned copyright reform aimed at strengthening copyright on the Internet. To this end, platform operators are to be made obligated to identify and effectively prevent copyright infringements. The idea behind this reform is to be welcomed for the time being, but this obligation will have far-reaching consequences which will affect many services.

"Measures for the recognition of copyright are effective content recognition technologies that should be used appropriately. (Quote, Article 13, EU legislation)

The implementation of this reform means that platform providers must proactively filter content to detect copyright infringements. The sheer volume of images, videos, text, and music uploaded daily makes manual review impossible. Instead, automated methods will be used to compare content with algorithms against databases of known works.

1. Algorithms can poorly detect the difference between allowed media, such as satire and quotes, which will lead to unlawful blocking.

2. An infrastructure is needed for filtering. However, only the major providers (Facebook, Google, ..) have the necessary resources to build them. Smaller providers, on the other hand, have to buy the technology, which makes the small providers dependent on the big ones and gives them access to even more data.

3. The existing filter infrastructure can also be used very easily for other purposes, e.g. to filter certain political statements.

We the board of the AG DSN, are therefore clearly against Article 13. Its implementation will lead to a massive restriction of freedom of expression and development on the Internet. In addition, Article 13 strengthens the large Internet groups and contributes to the monopolization of content. If you want to defend yourself against Article 13 with us, we call on you to take part in the demonstration on 23rd March [3].

[1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urheberrechtsreform-Der-Kampf-gegen-Artikel-13-4323738.html

[2] https://www.everbill.com/uploadfilter-artikel-13-was-ist-das/

[3] https://netzpolitik.org/2019/immer-mehr-demonstrationen-gegen-uploadfilter-schon-vor-dem-grossen-aktionstag/

As announced our general assembly took place 2018-12-05. We passed our budget for 2019 and changed our team regulation. Additionally we discussed our self-conception and our future.

The complete minutes can be found here (login needed), unfortunately both are only available in German.

In agreement with the ZIH we made the decision to abolish the traffic limit.

In order to maintain an excellent service quality for all of our members, we continue monitoring the traffic consumption. If one disturbs the network usage of other members, we will consequently disable the network access of that person.