In Germany, the federal government is currently working on the implementation of the copyright reform with the declared aim of “avoiding upload filters as much as possible”. The most recent draft bill already casts doubt on the seriousness of this goal, in which the obligations to use upload filters are significantly tightened. The official positioning against upload filters becomes completely implausible when looking at Brussels.

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Diana Levine, CC-BY

) In the Edit Policy column, former MEP Julia Reda comments on developments in European and global digital policy. In doing so, she wants to show that European and global network policy developments can be changed and encourage political commitment.

In the EU, too, the federal government is promoting the mandatory use of upload filters. Germany holds the EU Council Presidency until the end of the year and in this role represents the national governments in negotiations with the European Parliament on current legislative procedures. The next round of negotiations on the Terrorism Regulation will take place next Thursday, a legislative initiative with which the European Commission wants to enable authorities to force even small platforms to use upload filters.

Dispute over terror filters between Parliament and Council Parliament has remained tough on this matter so far: By The massive protests against the adoption of the copyright reform, many MPs are well aware of the dangers of upload filters. Again and again, the voluntary blocking of alleged terrorist content leads to collateral damage. Journalistic reports on terrorism or documentation of human rights violations by civil society organizations such as the Syrian Archive are particularly affected by false closings. The parliamentary position on the Terror Ordinance, which was passed shortly after the copyright reform, therefore explicitly excludes mandatory upload filters.

Of all things Germany, the country where the protests against upload filters were greatest, is now the move to anchor filtering obligations in the Terror Ordinance. For the negotiation on 29. In October the German Presidency drew up a “compromise proposal” that does not deserve the name. According to this proposal, platforms that are requested by authorities to take action against terrorist content should be obliged to take action against them. In contrast to the copyright reform, this obligation applies not only to profit-oriented companies, but also to non-commercial platforms. In a first step, the platforms should be able to decide for themselves which measures to take against terrorist content. However, if the authority does not consider these measures to be sufficient, it can prescribe the use of upload filters.

Federal government on Law and Order- Course If the European Parliament approves the proposal of the German Council Presidency on Thursday, it would be tantamount to surrender. Unlike in the European Parliament, the terror filters in the Council of Ministers were able to win a majority right from the start. But the federal government could also find it difficult to explain if its active role in negotiating the Terror Ordinance receives more public attention. Already during the copyright reform, the official line of the federal government was that upload filters were actually rejected, but that they would exceptionally support them in order not to endanger the outcome of the negotiations as a whole. In the case of the Terror Ordinance, Germany is now conducting the negotiations itself and therefore has all the means available to filter the