Unfortunately, that’s in itself fake news. The link tax won’t help fight fake news – it will make the problem worse.

The two main reasons are:

1. Putting a price tag on spreading articles from legitimate press publications (or at the bare minimum, adding legal uncertainty) is guaranteed to end up decreasing the circulation of professional news. The visibility of other sources will in turn be boosted, including fake news and propaganda.
2. The link tax will disadvantage small, new and independent publishers who rely on being listed in aggregators and having their content shared on social media. As a result, innovation in the sector and media pluralism will be harmed, which will impede the diverse and vibrant news ecosystem we need to effectively counter fake news.

Academic consensus against

In an open letter released on Wednesday, 169 scholars (including professors of journalism studies) say the plan will “play into the hands of producers of fake news” because it will “restrict further the circulation of quality news”, and thus “not guarantee the availability of reliable information so much as the dominance of fake news”.

Previous studies found that the link tax “may well set back the function of the press as public watchdog” and ”will not foster quality journalism”.

Journalists oppose it

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project calls the link tax “a giant step backward in the fight against misinformation”, because it “would severely limit the ability of OCCRP and other independent media organizations to provide accurate and fair reporting”.

A coalition of innovative publishers representing hundreds of news outlets – who the Commission claims would benefit from the link tax – are likewise fighting against the plan, warning that it will “stifle media pluralism” and have “serious negative effects on the quality of the press”.

After years of experience with the similar German law, the journalists’ association DJV concluded: “Best abolish it”.

Competent conservatives disagree

Dorothee Bär, Germany’s new Digital Minister and a member of the staunchly conservative CSU, said that she rejects the extra copyright for news sites because it “hasn’t stood the test” and “doesn’t work”.

The CDU’s internet policy spokesperson in the German Bundestag – a fellow party member of both Günther Oettinger (who originally proposed the law) and Axel Voss (who is pushing to make it even worse) – likewise recognises the link tax as “extremely dangerous” and “a bad proposal”, correctly warning that it may lead platforms to remove real news and thus elevate dubious sources.

Jumping on the buzzword bandwagon

The Commission’s own high level expert group on fake news and disinformation did not recommend the neighbouring right. This supports the suspicion that it was included not for factual reasons, but in an attempt to jump on a buzzword bandwagon to shore up support for the Commission’s struggling proposal.

When the neighbouring right proposal was originally presented, combating fake news was not given as a motive. Adding it as a retroactive justification, unsupported by a proper impact assessment, is mission creep that’s in conflict with the much-touted principles of “better regulation”.

What to do instead

If the Commission is serious about fighting fake news, it needs to correct its course on the neighbouring right immediately.

• The “presumption rule”, an alternative proposal supported by the Greens/EFA group as well as former Parliament rapporteur Therese Comodini and multiple member states in the Council, would help publishers enforce existing copyrights without sabotaging the circulation of legitimate news.
• The Greens/EFA group today launched a report on alternative models of financing investigative journalism, which suggests a number of policy solutions.
• Regulating ad targeting, as I argued in Parliament last week, may be the best option: Ending the profiling arms race, in which internet giants gather ever more data on us in order to ever more precisely target ads, would not just protect our privacy and eliminate one way of delivering fake news to those most susceptible to it, but also return a share of the advertising market to content businesses like the news.

To the extent possible under law, the creator has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

Lead image: Alan Levine, Flickr

Originally published on Julia Reda’s blog

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The Assembly seeks to unite citizens in trans-local and trans-european solidarity to overcome Europe’s current challenges and reinvigorate the political process for the 21st century. The commons can be understood as a bridging paradigm that stresses cooperation in management of resources, knowledge, tools, and spaces as diverse as water, Wikipedia, a crowdfund, or a community garden. Their Call describes commoning as:

…the network-based cooperation and localized bottom-up initiatives already sustained by millions of people around Europe and the world. These initiatives create self-managed systems that satisfy important needs, and often work outside of dominant markets and traditional state programmes while pioneering new hybrid structures.

The Assembly emerged in May from a diverse, gender balanced pilot community of 28 activists from 15 European countries, working in different domains of the commons. New people are joining the Assembly every week, and ECA is inclusive and open for others to join, so that a broad and resilient European movement can coalesce. It seeks to visibilize acts of commoning by citizens for citizens, while promoting interaction with policy and institutions at both the national and European levels.

Part of a broader movement

The rapid embrace of commons as an alternative holistic, sustainable and social worldview is in part an expression of unease with the unjust current economic system and democratic deficiencies. The commons movement has exploded in recent years, following the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom in 2009 for her work on managing common resources. It has also seen overlap with other movements, such as the Social and Solidarity and Sharing Economy movements, peer to peer production, and Degrowth.

Michel Bauwens, part of the ECA and a prominent figure in the peer-to-peer movement, explains:

“All over the world, a new social movement is emerging, which is challenging the ‘extractive’ premises of the mainstream political economy and which is co-constructing the seed forms of a sustainable and solidary society. Commoners are also getting a voice, for example through the Assemblies of the Commons that are emerging in French cities and elsewhere. The time is ripe for a shoutout to the political world, through a European Assembly of the Commons.”

The Call includes an open invitation to Brussels from November 15 to 17, 2016 for three days of activities and shared reflection on how to protect and promote the commons. It will include an official session in the European Parliament, hosted by the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services, on November 16 (limited capacity).

You can read and sign the full text of the Call, also available in French, Spanish, and soon other European languages, on the ECA website. There is an option to sign as an individual or an organization.

For more information, visit http://europeancommonsassembly.eu/ or follow @CommonsAssembly on Twitter for regular updates.

Media Contact: Nicole Leonard contact@europeancommonsassembly.eu

The post On the rise: European Commons Assembly Networking, unity and policy around the commons paradigm appeared first on P2P Foundation.