EDRI: “On 25 May, the European Council agreed to a negotiating position on the draft copyright directive. This  will allow the presidency of the Council to start negotiations with the European Parliament on mass monitoring and filtering of internet uploads and a chaotic new “ancillary copyright” measure that will make it harder to link to and quote news sources. Despite a large number of demands from a wide range of different stakeholders (including EDRi and  Copyright for Creativity) to keep working on the text in order to create some semblance of balance, the Council decided to finalise its position with a flawed text. This position, as well as the mandate to the Council to negotiate, was voted against by Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Belgium and Hungary. [Update on 30 May] Now it is the turn of the European Parliament to adopt its negotiating position. The Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament (JURI) is voting on 20 and 21 June to agree on their standpoint. There is still time to act to prevent the most dangerous parts of the proposal. In the table below and here, you can find the mapping prepared by the MEP Julia Reda on where political parties in the EP stand regarding both the snippet tax and the censorship machine proposals. Due to the relative size of the groups and the splits in some of them, the balance is in favour of these measures, so there is a realistic danger that these policies can become law…”

See also: Don’t let the EU break our Internet – tell your MEP  to save it before 20 June – “On 20-21 June, the European Parliament will vote on the Copyright Directive. Members of the parliament are the only ones that can stand in the way of bad copyright legislation. Tell them you need them to protect your Internet against surveillance and censorship machines!”