<nettime> Copy & Paste in Brussels

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

It's interesting how ideas and experiences shift shapes over time.

For the few years now there has been a particularly German obsession
with plagiarism in academic dissertations. Initially, this has been
employed to embarrass political figures and promote a self-righteous
discourse of academic pedantry, but it has also led to a distributed
infrastructure/community for checking unacknowledged sources in texts.

And now, this infrastructure is used for quite different purposes:
matching lobbying text to legal documents that are being drafted by
the EU.

While nobody can be surprised by the fact that lobbyists do shape
legislation, it's still revealing to this this nicely visualized and
connected to the names of the MPs who did the actual copy & pasting.


-> www.lobbyplag.eu

Felix





Tory MEPs 'copy and paste Amazon and Google lobbyist text'

Senior Conservative MEPs have been accused of cutting and pasting text 
from lobbyists from Amazon, Google and other major online enterprises 
directly into legal amendments to European Union legislation on consumer 
data protection

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9865977/Tory-MEPs-copy-and-paste-Amazon-and-Google-lobbyist-text.html

The European Parliament is debating a new EU "general data protection 
regulation" with important implications for how internet search engines 
and online retailers handle users' personal information, including 
sensitive health, background and credit details.

The legislation, proposed by the European Commission a year ago, is 
going through the EU assembly, which has the power to amend the law, 
triggering a huge lobbying campaign by the internet industry to change 
the regulations.

Campaigners for tighter privacy laws covering social media and online 
retailers have published research at www.lobbyplag.eu showing close 
links between the wording of industry proposals and amendments tabled in 
the European Parliament's committees.

The campaigners have charted what they claim are "striking similarities 
between proposed amendments and lobby papers written by representatives 
of Amazon, eBay, the American Chamber of Commerce and the European 
Banking Federation". "Dozens of amendments are being copied 
word-for-word from corporate lobby papers," they said.

Privacy campaigners are concerned that industry amendments tabled by 
MEPs will dilute legal requirements allowing companies to water down 
tough new rules on the processing of sensitive, personal information and 
loosening a requirement for mandatory data protection supervisors within 
businesses.

Malcolm Harbour, Conservative MEP for the West Midlands and chairman of 
the parliament's committee on the internal market and consumer 
protection, which is overseeing the legislation, has been accused of 
copying over 25 per cent of his amendments from industry.

Research found that 14 out of 55 amendments tabled by Mr Harbour were 
"copied directly from lobby papers", with the senior Tory also taking a 
coordinating role in getting other MEPs, to table similar changes in 
other committees.

Sajjad Karim, Conservative MEP for the North West of England and a 
member of the parliament's committee on legal affairs, proposed 
amendments "with over 23 per cent copy-pasted content".

Another Tory, Giles Chichester, MEP for South West England and Gibraltar 
and a member of the committee on industry, research and energy, followed 
with "over 22 per cent copy-pasted content".

While there is no suggestion of wrongdoing or breaches of the 
parliament's rules, privacy campaigners fear that MEPs are listening to 
industry and not consumers.

"We would hope that MEPs are taking all sides of the argument into 
account when making law, not just the richest and most powerful 
corporate interests," said Anna Fielder, a trustee of Privacy International.

Mr Harbour insisted that listening to industry, and privacy campaigners, 
was part of the democratic process and "disputed" the 25 per cent figure 
found.

"Many of our points were aimed at making the regulation fit for small 
enterprises, many of whom feel that their businesses would be threatened 
by the costs generated from certain provisions in the original proposal. 
That was why we modified a number of the detailed requirements," he said.

"I do not believe we should immediately discount proposed amendments 
when they come from businesses that make use of and are responsible for 
protecting personal data. I will continue to consider all amendments on 
the basis of their merits in making the proposal more workable."

Mr Karim and Mr Chichester declined to comment, but Conservative sources 
said that they had followed Mr Harbour's lead in tabling amendments.


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