Tag Archives: european union

The Green Deal and Digital Agenda: Opportunities for Libraries

In the last month, the European Commission has launched two flagship initiatives which look set to focus much of the attention of its President, Ursula von der Leyen, in the coming years.

Delivering on broader commitments, notably to the SDGs, they offer a more concrete and targeted response to two key trends – the growing role of digital technology in all parts of our lives, and climate change.

Each initiative – the European Green Deal and Shaping Europe’s Digital Future – includes a set of proposals and actions, aiming to place the region in a position of strength, while acting to safeguard lives, livelihoods, and values.

Given the role that these two documents are likely to have, it is worth already looking at what they mean for libraries, and where there may be value in pushing for more acknowledgement of the role that libraries can play in achieving their goals.

 

The European Green Deal

The first of the two documents to appear was the European Green Deal.

Ever since her nomination as President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen has highlighted her commitment to action around climate change.

In this document, she sets out a path forward on this. As can be expected, this covers policy action in areas which are traditionally associated with climate change (emissions reduction, green energy, circular economy, energy efficiency, clean transport, environmentally-friendly food chains, protection of biodiversity and reducing pollution).

However, it also calls for sustainability to be mainstreamed into wider EU and national policies, and in turn for other priorities such as equality and growth are also integrated into climate action.

 

So what does this mean for libraries?

Already, the importance of information is recognised, both at the individual level in helping individuals take specific decisions between products, and at a continent-wide level in supporting research and data sharing. Libraries are a key part of the information infrastructure of any country, and so have a key role to play in success.

But there is also strong potential for libraries in references to the need for building awareness and motivation to act more broadly. Many libraries are already engaged in sustainability education, providing an excellent community space for building awareness of the need for change.

The Green Deal already refers to how schools and universities do this, but if we are to reach entire populations – for example to hold the citizen dialogues promised by the Green Deal, libraries must also be included.

Libraries are – furthermore – excellent candidates for efforts to promote renovation and refurbishment. As public spaces, they can act as models for communities of what is possible, building awareness more broadly.

Finally, it is to be hoped that as the implementation of the Green Deal moves forwards, there will be recognition of the role of culture and heritage in climate action. For more, see the work of the Climate Heritage Network, and IFLA’s own exploration of how libraries contribute to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

 

Shaping Europe’s Digital Future

The second major policy document focuses on the different questions raised by the growing role of digital technology in our economies, societies and democracies.

While the previous Commission already saw scattered actions around particular aspects of digital – copyright and terrorist content for example – Shaping Europe’s Digital Future aims to set out a more comprehensive roadmap.

It does this by looking in turn at the individual level (ensuring that everyone has the connectivity and skills they need to make the best of the internet), markets (promoting competition, innovation and consumer rights) and civic life (freedom of speech, diversity of content, and the fight against crime).

The Agenda also underlines the international dimension, both in terms of setting rules and supporting digital development. While this remains to be defined, the whole Agenda is defined by a desire to find a European approach to the internet, and to maintain the possibility to enforce this.

What’s the library angle?

The most obvious is the strong focus on digital skills. With over seven million adults a year in Europe accessing the internet for the first time in libraries, and many more taking part in training activities, this is an area where libraries have a proven potential to contribute. The current consultation on the Digital Education Action Plan – one of the actions foreseen in document – offers an opportunity to highlight this point.

There are further opportunities however. The growing recognition that Europeans need high quality connectivity to the internet can start with libraries. Support through programmes such as WiFi4EU should not limit themselves to lower speed connections. In turn, this allows libraries to become hubs for small businesses, researchers and innovators.

The promise of further efforts to protect privacy and ensure individual rights online is also welcome, but it will be important to take care that such efforts do not in fact just reinforce the position of existing major players, or cause unintended harm to libraries and their users.

One way to ensure this is to use the potential of libraries to help empower people more broadly, not only through media literacy, but through raising awareness of everyone’s rights.

Clearly, these ideas should also form a pillar of the work the EU does in its neighbourhood and globally, ensuring that more people have libraries which can act as hubs for connectivity and skills, in line with the objectives of the agenda.

 

We are at an early stage in the current Commission’s term, but in these two areas, the potential for libraries to contribute – if properly engaged – is clear. We look forward to working further with the European authorities to make this happen.

The Good, The Bad and (Avoiding) the Ugly: A Way Forwards on the Copyright Directive

Discussions around the European Union’s draft Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market are as tense as ever. Strong divisions have emerged between and among Member States and Members of the European Parliament around controversial proposals for a new press publishers’ right (Article 11) and an (effective) obligation on internet platforms to filter content (Article 13).

These disagreements stand in contrast to the consensus that has emerged around other provisions in the Directive, which will help libraries and cultural heritage institutions in their work to promote innovation, support education and enable preservation and access to heritage.

Such measures, in line with the EU’s own international obligations, cause no unreasonable prejudice to rightholders, and indeed will support creativity and discovery.

The fear must be that a failure to find agreement on Articles 11 and 13 will lead to calls for the rejection of the Directive as a whole. This would be a huge loss for innovation, education and heritage in Europe, and would be hard to explain to Europe’s voters, given the public support for such measures received from all sides of the debate so far.

This blog offers more detail on the situation so far, and sets out the case for avoiding this worst-case scenario.

 

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. ACJ1, CC-BY-NC-SA https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/4684652569The Good – Achievements So Far

The draft Directive already contains a lot of good. Starting from a reasonably positive base in September 2016, discussions among MEPs and Member States have led to improvements in provisions around text and data mining, teaching, preservation, and out-of-commerce-works – Articles 3-9.

If these elements of the Directive pass, EU citizens will:

  • Be able to engage much more easily in text and data mining. This will provide a significant boost to research into Artificial Intelligence in particular, at a time when Europe risks being left behind other countries who have been far more ready to update their legislation.
  • Have more opportunities to learn using digital tools, including in libraries. This will further democratise education, and help ensure that everyone can continue to learn throughout life.
  • Continue to enjoy access to Europe’s cultural heritage into the future, thanks to changes that will give libraries and cultural heritage institutions the clear right to take digital copies of books and other materials for preservation purposes.
  • Gain new access to works which are in-copyright but out-of-commerce, and so otherwise can only be found within the walls of libraries.

This is a good result, in and of itself. It will offer important clarity to libraries and cultural heritage institutions and allow them to fulfil their missions in the digital age. It will break down one of the most significant barriers to realising the potential of text and data mining, a Commission priority since 2012.

Moreover, given the EU’s own international obligations under the Berne Convention, it will not cause any unreasonable prejudice to authors. Instead, today’s authors will benefit from wider discovery of their work, including the rediscovery of works which are no longer in print. The authors of tomorrow will find it easier to read, study and innovate.

This is not to mention other elements of the text on the table that will provide additional rights to authors, including the possibility to reclaim rights and to benefit from greater transparency about revenues made on the basis of their work.

These provisions have enjoyed a large degree of consensus, with agreement relatively early on in discussions between Parliament and Council. Stakeholders from all sides of the discussion have been ready to signal their support for these steps, or at least their readiness to accept them.

 

The Bad – Sticking Points

However, it has long been clear that not all of the Directive is consensual. The two most contentious elements – Articles 11 and 13 – look to create new rights or rules for situations which are arguably specific to individual markets, and indeed individual providers – the situation of newspapers faced with GoogleNews, and of record companies faced with YouTube.

As has been argued repeatedly, the proposals on the table – a new right over very short fragments of text from newspapers, and an obligation on all online platforms to filter content uploaded by users – are likely to make the problem worse.

Not only will they strengthen the hand of the existing dominant players (who are best placed to negotiate with content producers, introduce filters or make payments), but they risk causing major collateral damage, for example to educational and scientific repositories run by libraries.

It is therefore unsurprising that there is so much disagreement about these articles.

Most recently, and just days after the agreement of a new Treaty between the countries, France and Germany disagreed about whether smaller internet platforms should be excused from the obligation to filter all user content for potential copyright infringement.

Even though this particular dispute has been agreed, there are many more still open, underlining how flawed the approach to these articles currently is.

In short, while there is support for effective ways of sustaining high quality journalism and curtailing illicit uses, the proposals on the table are not the answer.

 

The Ugly – The Nuclear Option

There are crucial meetings due in the coming days which aim to find a way forwards. Steps have been made to create some minor flexibilities in Articles 11 and 13, for example to reduce the burden on small platforms, as well as limited protections for the educational and scientific repositories that support open access and open educational resources.

Friends scene. Source: https://devrant.com/rants/1546587/this-will-happen-in-java-when-you-declare-the-class-with-wrong-nameHowever, there are already complaints from some who had previously supported Articles 11 and 13, who are unwilling to accept anything less than the highly flawed original proposals.

Most worryingly, these calls are accompanied by demands to reject the entire Directive.

This would be the worst of all worlds. All of the progress already made to date on Articles 3-9 would be at risk, despite already having been subject to consensus. The years of work that have gone into these would potentially be lost, and with it an opportunity to support clear public interest goals in Europe.

As an election approaches, it would be difficult to explain to voters why a flagship piece of legislation has been sunk, merely because there was disagreement on one part.

It is therefore time to reflect on the value of delaying those parts of the Directive which are clearly not yet mature, and proceeding with those that are. This would allow the European Union to chalk up a useful ‘win’.

Instead of rushed discussions now, a full and holistic discussion on how to achieve these goals, reviewing all relevant policy tools, is needed, and could be a useful job for the next Parliament.