Notification Detail

European Digital Rights (EDRi) is an association representing 44 human rights organisations from across Europe that defend rights and freedoms in the digital environment. This submission has been developed with the contributions of our members epicenter.works, Access Now and Article 19.

Summary

On 3 September 2020, the Austrian government released a legislative package to tackle online hate speech. Besides a comprehensive justice reform, the package also contains a bill that creates new obligations for online platforms to remove potentially illegal user-generated content (the so-called Kommunikationsplattformen-Gesetz, or KoPlG for short). On 1. September 2020, Austria notified the draft law to the European Commission in accordance with Directive (EU) 2015/1535.

EDRi strongly advises the European Commission to postpone the Austrian draft KoPlG for the following reasons:

• The draft legislation would seriously hinder the fundamental right to freedom of expression and opinion by creating chilling effects and limit the right to conduct business for SMEs;

• It de facto puts in the hands of platforms within scope the responsibility to enforce the law, although they neither have the necessary knowledge nor the ability to do so;

• Its scope is disproportionate and may affect community-led, non-for-profit as well as small service providers in an unequal and disproportionate manner in contrast to Big Tech companies;

• There is no evidence substantiating the claim that the proposed rules would be an effective and proportionate remedy to deal with the problem of online illegal hate speech in Austria;

• The penalties foreseen in the draft legislation are disproportionate and will certainly lead the platforms to stay on the safe side and thus, to potentially overblock legitimate content in order to escape the threat of disproportionate fines;

• The Commission should prevent the introduction of national measures that would compromise the adoption of the future Digital Services Act package by the European Parliament and the Council in the same field and thus, preventing harmonised legislative landscape across the EU.
  
  Please consult our full contribution attached.
  

Dear European Commission,

Wikimedia is a global network of associations, project communities and a foundation that has dedicated itself to making knowledge free and accessible globally. Our most popular projects are Wikipedia, Wikidata (a free database storage for structured data that can be edited and read by machines and humans) and Wikimedia Commons (a multimedia archive). All three projects are open, free, self-governing and the largest in their respective catogry, succefully competing with commercial, for-profit projects. They belong to the world and can thus be considered as the online equivalent of "public spaces" or the "commons".

We have been and continue to be engaged, together with our Austrian chapter Wikimedia Österreich, in the national debates (https://www.wikimedia.at/offener-brief/). As this is a legislative project that will have consequences way beyond the Austrian borders, we take the liberty to also engage the the EU level consultation.

We would highly recommend for the Austrian legislator postpone its plans until after the European Commission has presented its own legislative package known as the Digital Services Act. The reasons for this are manifold:

1. We are doing our utmost to keep up with all laws and legislations across Europe and, indeed, the world. But it is simply impossible. If we want to make space for alternative platforms to compete with gatekeepers we need clear rules across Europe. Otherwise we help entrench very large gatekeeper platforms who can simply pay for carrying the legal risk.

2. As opposed to the carve-outs of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, the proposed Austrian national law, as it currently stands, does not exclude all non-for profit Wikimedia projects , which are following the fules by and large. Both Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata remain within scope, although they are not meant to be targeted by the legislator. Again, this creates at least partial contradictions between EU-level and national principles. 

I remain available for any feedback or comments.

Sincerely,

Dimitar Dimitrov

EU Policy Director

Wikimedia