At the end of May, UK consumer and citizens' rights groups joined together to call on regulators to ensure new rules on online copyright infringement properly protect consumers (PDF).

Past research has shown that many service providers give in far too easily to claims by third parties regarding copyright infringement. Administrators remove material that is being complained about without consulting users or even checking the accuracy of the claim.

Some European countries are taking steps that may stop service providers being so quick to take action. Iceland's parliament will soon be debating the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. Prompted by concerns about press freedom, the initiative may also help fans: when passed, it's likely to require copyright holders to obtain an order from a judge before they can approach service providers to demand material is taken down.

This is in stark contrast to the lack of due process in the "three strikes" programs already in place or being proposed in many European countries. These will allow ISPs to sever the connections of broadband users accused of illegal file sharing on three occasions on nothing more than the word of a third-party company monitoring network traffic. Regulators seem determined to press ahead with these measures despite research published in France earlier in the year showing that copyright infringement has actually increased since France introduced its "three strikes" HADOPI law in 2008. May 2010 saw Irish ISP Eircom launch the pilot of its "three strikes" program, and Ofcom in the UK has just released a draft code of practice for a similar scheme.

It seems likely, therefore, that consumers' rights groups in Europe will face an uphill struggle in persuading legislators and regulators to adopt policies that will start with a presumption of innocence on the part of consumers and allow fair use and transformative use of copyrighted or trademarked work. The Committee for Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament will be voting in June on a report on "strengthening intellectual property rights" which advocacy group La Quadrature du Net has called "copyright and patent dogmatism at its worst".

With the Archive of Our Own committed to defending fanworks against legal challenges, the OTW agrees that European service providers should not be required to give in too easily to copyright owners' legal threats in the absence of any independent judgement about infringement. Without attention to consumers' rights, "three strikes" policies could interfere with access to fanworks.

Here's a roundup of recent articles that might be of interest to fans.

* Academia as a Commons: David Bollier's speech at Amherst talks about the ways in which academia should be a model for intellectual and creative sharing. Instead, he lists the ways in which "a series of court cases have also reduced the scope of fair use rights", preventing scholars from quoting letters, printing images, citing song lyrics, copying coursepacks, etc. Bollier argues that students are being taught only about copyright infringments and not about fair use, which is to say "their lawful ability to copy and share information under certain circumstances." Many of the battles that fans are facing to preserve their values--collaboration, community, noncommerciality--are also being fought in academia.

* Copyright @300 was a conference held at UC Berkeley School of Law to explore "the past and future of copyright law." Much of the conference is now online in the form of .mp3s or .pdf summaries of arguments. Fans who are interested in the ways in which copyright may be evolving may want to listen in.

* Rodo, one of our German translators, reports on how the large, multifannish German archive fanfiktion.de/ was sent cease and desist letters by a group of opticians arguing trademark infringment. At issue is the fanon term "Lichtbändiger" (aka Lightbender) in Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic; fans created the term to parallel canon's Airbanders, Waterbenders, Firebenders and Earthbenders. But it turns out Lichtbändiger is also the brand name of certain eyeglasses. After consulting a laywer, the archive owners decided to remove the "offending" stories. While we understand their decision (in that they probably don't have the means to argue the point), we have to ask: is there really any potential for confusion there? Should companies be able to own words regardless of context?

* A group of European digital rights organizations, libraries, consumers' rights groups, and ISPs have released Copyright for Creativity – A Declaration for Europe, an appeal to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and Member States, to adopt sane copyright practices that will encourage innovation, education, accessibility, creativity, and participation.

TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube's content filters have stopped allowing uploads of new iterations of the Hitler meme - you know, the hundreds of videos where Hitler rants about...Windows Vista, or Sarah Palin, or how much the Phantom Menace sucked. (Those videos.) The article, Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies reports that newer version of the meme have been replaced with, "This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds," despite the obvious claims to fair use (transformation! parody! politics! speech! endless back-and-forth creativity and engagement); they also think it is likely that the filtering system will slowly crawl its way through and delete all the others.

YouTube's filter won't even allow its users to make the obvious response: Hitler Reacts to YouTube Blocking "Hitler Reacts" Video Parodies. There's something satisfyingly, if depressingly, ironic here, just the way there was when amazon deleted purchased copies of Orwell's 1984 off the Kindle.

I have often described the coming battle over online video as Godzilla vs. Mothra--that is to say, a battle which will be fought out among corporate behemoths much more powerful than any vidder. Reel one of this monster movie is starting: Viacom vs. Google. This week, both sides released paperwork detailing their claims and accusations; at stake is YouTube, and even more specifically, the DMCA's "safe harbor" provision--which is just the little detail which has made most of the internet possible. (Short, IANAL version: "safe harbor" means that you can't hold internet services liable for everything their users do with them. If streaming sites, web ISPs, social networks, etc. had to guarantee that nobody would ever use them to do, publish, or share anything illegal, they wouldn't be able to function.)

Probably the funniest part of this week's news comes from YouTube's blog post on the subject, in which they argue that Viacom is basically full of sockpuppets:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom...As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Is it too much to hope that Viacom flounces and deletes all its journals in a huff?