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The negotiations of the new EU copyright directive are coming to a close. The parliamentary committee for Legal Affairs (JURI) will vote on the directive on 20-21 June 2018. Since JURI is the main committee for this directive, the result of their vote will be the official recommendation for the European Parliament, when they vote about the directive at a later date.

Free Software Foundation (FSFE) and OpenForum Europe (OFE) have researched how the proposed directive may affect free and open source software, and the communities that develop them:

The proposed Copyright Directive has the clear potential to harm Europe’s competitiveness and growth in this area. Importantly, it could also restrict important fundamental rights of developers and internet users, without achieving a proportionate benefit. In particular, the proposed Article 13 could create barriers for the development of source code by imposing liability on platforms used by developers, harming a sector fundamental for the Digital Single Market. Therefore, both OFE and the FSFE consider that the proposed Article 13 should be redrafted in order to be consistent with the existing legal framework around intermediary liability, as established by the e-Commerce Directive.

The 5th of July Foundation has today signed the #SaveCodeShare open letter, which will be handed over to members of the EU parliament before the vote.

Sign the open letter here:

#SaveCodeShare

Read more about the proposed Copyright Directive over at Julia Reda:

EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

Since January 1, 2018, Karl Andersson is the new Executive Director of the 5th of July Foundation.

Karl comes from the publishing business and has a strong commitment to freedom of expression. He has been part of the foundation’s core associates since the start, but his focus has until now been on the editorial side, as a podcast host, news editor and web designer.

As Executive Director, Karl will focus on the development of new services that enhance security, privacy and liberty for internet users, as well as maintenance, including marketing and further development, of the foundation’s existing services, mainly Integrity VPN.

Karl can be reached at karl (at) 5july.org (Optional public key, fingerprint: 1DC3 5A97 1854 5C89 1B0B 7B8F BD0E 885C 4C4F 7E4D).

It’s the 5th of July 2016 today, and it’s been four years since the UN Human Rights Council adopted the “Resolution on the Promotion, Protection, and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet”.

The 5th of July Foundation took its name from the day that bore those great aspirations:

Let’s promote, protect and enjoy human rights on the internet!

New podcast on internet politics

Our latest project to do this is a podcast, which covers internet politics in a broad sense. It’s in Swedish (so far) and we call it “5 juli-podden”. You can listen on for example Itunes, Soundcloud or Youtube.

Blog anniversary

Today also marks the two year anniversary for our resident blogger HAX, who is also co-host of the podcast. We’re celebrating by giving hax.5july.org a little facelift. As always, it’s somewhat of a challenge to make a blog work smoothly and look tasty without letting third party companies (read: Google) put their code on your pages.

Expanding our services

So far the “promotion” of human rights on the internet. What about the “protection” and the “enjoyment”?

It’s for those purposes that we run our privacy services: A free disposable email service (still beta), a free encrypted Jabber chat server, and our paid VPN service Integrity VPN, which we are now expanding, so that customers of more internet providers will have the choice to enhance the security, privacy and liberty of their everyday communication.

So that’s a brief update on our doings. We look forward to many interesting developments in the coming year. Cheers!

There is an important legal battle going on between the oldest independent ISP in Sweden, Bahnhof (which has always stood up for privacy on the internet) and The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS).

Our sponsored blogger, writer and thinker HAX comments the latest installment in this battle: Bahnhof won a temporary injunction which allows them to refuse to hand over certain data to authorities. Read about it here.

5th of July Foundation is happy that its board member Wilhelm Dahlborn wrote the appeal that the court now listened to.

There is also a legal case going on between Swedish telecom/internet provider Tele2 and that same authority, PTS, about data retention. The second highest administrative court in Sweden has sent that case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in Luxemburg. On April 12, there will be an oral hearing in this case.

5th of July Foundation firmly supports the right to use encryption technology without backdoors or interference. Ideally all communication via the Internet should be encrypted.

We are therefore happy to announce that we have just started using Let´s Encrypt to issue the certificates that we use on our https web servers. Let us cite from their own presentation:

“Let’s Encrypt is a new Certificate Authority:  It’s free, automated, and open.”

Let’s encrypt is supported by Electronic Frontier Foundation and many major Internet corporations and organisations.

P.S. Our resident blogger HAX often comments on the politics of encryption and questions relating to freedom of communications. Read him! And yes, “he” uses a certificate from Let’s Encrypt since today also!