Gerv Markham

The current EU copyright reform proposal puts pressure on platforms to monitor and filter all content, including uploaded FLOSS software, for copyright infringement (article 13), proposes a new 20-year license for news snippets (article 11), and limits who can access datasets -- including open data. Any of these would be terrible outcomes. Let's demand better copyright reform.

“In the near future, it will become possible to book a commercial space flight — a sub-orbital trip to any destination you like. Think of how complex the laws will have to be when space flight goes from something done only by a few, to anyone, and eventually everyone. Now imagine if we decided to govern that industry by taking the Highway Traffic Act and adding the words “in space”. This is a lot like how we’ve updated copyright law for the web. Mostly, we just took the old law, and added the words “digital” and “online”. And that's worked out just about as well as you’d expect it to." (Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons)

The current EU copyright reform proposal puts pressure on platforms (which is badly defined, so includes sites like Gitlab, Github and SourceForge) to monitor and filter all content for copyright infringement (article 13), proposes a new 20-year license for news snippets (article 11), and limits who can access datasets -- including open data. Any of these would be terrible outcomes. Let's demand better copyright reform.

In this session, representatives from Mozilla's Policy team will tackle the following questions:

• What's happening with the EU Copyright Reform?
• How will Articles 11 + 13 affect the Internet experience in Europe?
• How will the proposed reform affect the FLOSS ecosystem in Europe? The rest of the world?
• Why is this happening?
• What is Mozilla doing about it, and what can we do about it?

Why should you care? Because we believe in "default open"; because we want to grow the open source community, and because the internet continues to be in danger of being ruled by politics.

(Disclaimer: we won't be discussing the right of governments or the EU Parliament to propose or enforce internet regulation. We're working within the existing system, not against it at the moment.)

Please note that this talk was originally scheduled to be given by Melissa Romaine who is no longer able to attend. It will now be given by Giannis Konstantinidis and Gervase Markham.

Please note that this talk has been cancelled as Gervase Markham is no longer able to attend due to sickness. Our apologies for this inconvenience.

Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) is Mozilla's program for supporting open source projects financially and with security audits. Find out about our successes so far, and how you can apply for help for your project.

There are 3 main tracks in MOSS - "Foundational Technology" for projects Mozilla already uses, "Mission Partners" for projects doing work in line with Mozilla's mission, and "Secure Open Source", where we provide professional code-read security audits for key pieces of open source software.

So if your software is used by Mozilla in any way (part of Firefox, deployed in our infra, used on desktops, or any other way you can think of), or if your project does something you think furthers Mozilla's mission (check the manifesto, and our current work and where we are focussed), and money would help you do what you do better or faster, you should find out about MOSS and consider applying. We don't accept applications directly for the Secure Open Source track, but you are welcome to come and make your case to the presenter as to why giving your project a free code-read security audit from a professional audit firm would make the world a better place.

So, come to the presentation to find out about our successes so far, our plans for the future, and how you can apply for help for your project.

Seamless secure (TLS) connections on the internet are underpinned by the Web PKI - a system where Certificate Authorities (CAs) issue identity certificates to people and sites, and clients such as browsers have a "trusted root" list of those they think will do that job right. Mozilla runs the only open and transparently root program, which defines what Firefox (and probably your Linux distro) trusts; this talk explains how we use that power to make the Internet a safer and more secure place.