130 EU businesses sign open letter against Copyright directive (Art. 11 & 13)

Post date

March 19, 2019

Categories
    Author

    Jos Poortvliet

    Warn MEPs about massive damage Copyright directive would do to EU economy.

    Stuttgart, Germany – March 19, 2019 – Nextcloud Founder and CEO Frank Karlitschek addresses an open letter urging members of the EU Parliament to vote against Articles 11 and 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive. The letter, which was signed by more than 130 companies and business alliances from 16 European countries, was sent to each member of the EU Parliament.

    As founder and CEO of Nextcloud I fear that Articles 11 and 13 of this directive create a serious disadvantage for European startups. The fact that more than 100 companies from different European countries signed our text within a few days shows that I am far from being the only one. I urge every politician to protect European businesses and vote against Article 11 and Article 13.

    said Karlitschek.

    At the end of March, the EU parliament will have to vote on the Copyright Directive. Two articles in this directive – Articles 11 and 13 – will seriously jeopardize the success of business enterprises.

    Find the open letter with its list of signatures below, as well as links to a downloadable PDF and our blog post.

    About Nextcloud
    Nextcloud offers the industry-leading, fully open source, self-hosted Content Collaboration Platform, combining the easy user interface of consumer-grade cloud solutions with the security and compliance measures enterprises need. Nextcloud brings together universal access to data through mobile, desktop and web interfaces with next-generation, on-premise secure communication and collaboration features like real-time document editing, chat and video calls, putting them under direct control of IT and integrated with existing infrastructure.
    Nextcloud’s easy and quick deployment, open, modular architecture and emphasis on security and advanced federation capabilities enable modern enterprises to leverage their existing file storage assets within and across the borders of their organization. For more information, visit nextcloud.com or follow @Nextclouders on Twitter.

    Links:

    Press contact
    Nextcloud GmbH
    Jos Poortvliet
    Hirschstrasse 26
    D-70173 Stuttgart, Germany
    e-mail: pr@nextcloud.com


    Public letter to members of the European Parliament

    March 19th, 2019

    Dear Members of the European Parliament,

    The companies signing this letter to the European Parliament are urging you to vote against Articles 11 and 13 of the proposed copyright directive. The text of the trilogue agreement would harm the European economy and seriously undermine the ability of European businesses to compete with big Internet giants like Google.

    We support the goal of the legislation to protect the rights of creators and publishers, but the proposed measures are inadequate to reap these benefits and also fail to strike a fair balance between creators and all other parts of society. The success of our business enterprises will be seriously jeopardized by these heavy-handed EU regulations.

    Especially Article 13 is dangerously experimenting with the core foundation of the Internet’s ecosystem. Making companies directly liable for the content of their users forces these businesses to make billions of legal decisions about the legality of content. Most companies are neither equipped nor capable of implementing the automatic content filtering mechanisms this requires, which are expensive and prone to error.

    Article 11 is creating a completely new intellectual property right for press publishers. The experience with similar laws in Germany and Spain raises serious doubts about the expected benefits, while the negative impact would be very real. An additional layer of exclusive rights would make it harder to clear the necessary legal hurdles to start new projects. It will make entrepreneurs more hesitant to just launch new projects. Europe would lose any chance to play a significant role on the world stage. Startups that build services based on aggregated online information would go out of business, and every company that publishes press summaries of their apance in the media would be in violation of this law.

    Although the purpose of these regulations is to limit the powers of big US Internet companies like Google or Facebook, the proposed legislation would end up having the opposite effect. Article 13 requires filtering of massive amounts of data, requiring technology only the Internet giants have the resources to build. European companies will be thus forced to hand over their data to them, jeopardizing the independence of the European tech industry as well as the privacy of our users. European companies like ours will be hindered in their ability to compete or will have to abandon certain markets completely.

    Given all of these issues it is noteworthy that the final trilogue agreement lacks meaningful safeguards for small and medium enterprises. The broad scope of this law would most likely lead to less new companies being founded in Europe and existing companies moving their headquarters out of Europe. For all those reasons we urge every pro-Startup politician to vote against Article 11 and Article 13.

    Sincerely,

    Frank Karlitschek, Founder & CEO, Nextcloud GmbH, Germany
    Jutta Steiner, CEO & Founder, Parity, United Kingdom
    Alan Duric, CTO/COO and Co-Founder, Wire, Switzerland
    Jon Karlung, CEO Bahnhof AB, Sweden
    Stefan Lingler, CTO, finderly Gmbh, Austria
    Philippe Kalaf, CEO, Collabora Limited, United Kingdom
    Till Faida, CEO, eyeo GmbH, Germany
    Cătălin Frâncu, Founder, dexonline.ro, Romania
    Ruth Schöllhammer, Chairwoman of the Managing Board, Deutscher Gründerverband, Germany
    Sam Tuke, CEO, phpList, United Kingdom
    Peter Ganten, Founder and CEO, Univention & Chairman, Open Source Business Alliance, Germany
    p≡p Security SA, Luxembourg
    Lenard Koschwitz, Senior Director Global Policy, Allied for Startups, EU/Global
    Erik Muttersbach, CTO, FreightHub, Germany
    Nitrokey UG, Germany
    Dom Hallas, Executive Director, The Coalition for a Digital Economy (COADEC), United Kingdom
    Tobias Gerlinger, CEO, Owncloud, Germany
    Adela Zábražná, Executive Manager, SAPIE – The Slovak Alliance for Innovation Economy, Slovakia
    Travis Todd, Co-founder, Silicon Allee, Germany
    Harald Kapper, CEO, Kapper Network-Communications GmbH, Austria
    Tim Pritlove, Owner, Metaebene Personal Media, Germany
    Bernd Hilmar, CEO, VIRTEXXA Cloud Services SRL, Romania
    Frank J. Dürring, Dipl.-Inf. (FH), CEO, condero Aktiengesellschaft, Germany
    Markus Raunig, Managing Director, AustrianStartups, Austria
    Mirko Lorenz, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Datawrapper, Germany
    Brian Joseph, CEO, Kopano BV, Netherlands
    Dr. Detlef Oertel and Erol Ülükmen, Managing Directors, uib gmbh, Germany
    Julia Szopa, President of the Board, Startup Poland, Poland
    Paolo Vecchi,CEO, Omnis Cloud, Luxembourg
    Timo Hetzel, Managing Director, Undsoversum GmbH, Germany
    Maddalena Falzoni, CEO, MaadiX, Spain
    Ralf Becker, CEO, Birgit Becker, CEO, Egroupware GmbH, Germany
    Gianmarco Carnovale, Chairman, Roma Startup, Italy
    Ulrich Brandner, CEO, CIB software GmbH, Germany
    Steffen Weber, CEO, ComputerBase GmbH, Germany
    evenly GmbH, Germany
    Pierre Beyssac, CEO & Founder, Eriomem.net, France
    Stefan Scholz, CEO, Zellwerk GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Schallert.com e.U., Austria
    Factory, Germany
    Nicolas Chauvat, CEO, Logilab, France
    Maik Aussendorf, Managing Director, Bareos GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Richard Marx, COO, Assanti Insurance Technologies, Netherlands
    Philippe Hemmel, President, Arawa, France
    Fabio Natali, Director, Reckon Digital, United Kingdom
    Sebastian Jabbusch, Founder and CEO, Public Impact UG, Germany
    Labarama, Austria
    Mario Behling, CEO, OpnTec GmbH, Germany
    Daniel Hansson, Founder and Owner, T&M Hansson IT AB, Sweden
    Lars Fassmann, Founder and CEO, chemmedia AG, Germany
    Alexander Todorov, CEO, Open Technologies Bulgaria, Ltd, Bulgaria
    Dr. Detlef Hühnlein, CEO, ecsec GmbH, Germany
    Tom Knienieder, CEO, peaknetworks e.U., Austria
    Karsten Klein, CEO, metaeffekt GmbH, Germany
    Thierry Leblond, CEO, Scille, France
    Dirk Ahrnke, Managing Director, it:25, Germany
    Gerhard Sternath, CEO/CFO, LINBIT HA-Solutions GmbH, Austria
    Bernhard Reiter, Managing Director, Intevation GmbH, Germany
    Alexey Volkov, Founder and CEO, On My Disk, Slovenia
    Marcel van Duijvendijk, CEO, Wind Engineering Solutions, Netherlands
    Bozena Jarosz, CEO, SecN UG, Germany
    Dr.ir Rick van Rein, CTO, OpenFortress B.V., Netherlands
    Dirk Kutsche, CEO, pro-ite GmbH, Germany
    Anne Dillard, Pierre Fumet & Cyril Lacoux, Managing Directors, EASTER-EGGS, France
    Felix Arndt, CEO, fnordserver, Germany
    Oscar Ortega, CEO, BTACTIC, Spain
    Clemens Toennies, CEO, Blue Systems GmbH, Germany
    Ajdin Gazija, CEO and Christian Machalitzky, CTO, NOBUGS IT GmbH, Austria
    Dirk Breunich, CEO, Donner & Doria Werbeagentur GmbH, Germany
    Dennis Pennings, CTO, Good Cloud BV, Netherlands
    Silvina Furnadzhieva, CEO, Double Click Systems Ltd., Bulgaria
    Samuel John, CEO, OtoJig GmbH, Germany
    Marius Quabeck, CEO, NerdZoom Media, Germany
    Martin Wiederkehr, CEO & Partner, Ops One AG, Switzerland
    Mario Peshev, CEO, DevriX Ltd., Bulgaria
    Steffen Lindner, CEO, Portknox.net, Germany
    Tada.city, Netherlands
    Omnis Systems Ltd, United Kingdom
    Alexander Nimmervoll, Managing Director, Generalize-IT Solutions OG, Austria
    Nadine Nüsse, CCO, Innovo Cloud GmbH, Germany
    Christopher Neal, Director, Twist Development Limited, United Kingdom
    Werner Klinger, CEO, Neodiffusion, France
    Liane Hampe, Managing Director, xmera e.K., Germany
    Markus Frei, Managing Director, Linuxfabrik, Switzerland
    Dr. Richard Heigl, Co-Founder and CEO, Hallo Welt! GmbH, Germany
    Sander Venema, Owner, Asteroid Interactive, Netherlands
    Harald Dittmar, CEO, sys-pro GmbH, Germany
    Daniel Huhardeaux, CEO, TOOTAi, France
    Johan Poortvliet, Owner, Adjoadvies bv, Netherlands
    Philipp Süß, Managing Owner, Ingenieurbüro Süß & friends, Germany
    Patricia Moncorgé, CEO, Editions D-BookeR, France
    Ralf Guttmann, CEO, Hyperspace GmbH, Germany
    Patrick Babonneau, CTO, Eralog, France
    Thomas Michalak, Owner, Nimmerland Nextcloud Service, Germany
    Huib Verweij, Owner, X-Scale, Netherlands
    Nicolas Lantz, Founder and CEO, UBICORE, France
    Oliver Breidenbach, Director (CEO), Boinx Software Ltd., Germany
    360ict, Netherlands
    Just Software AG, Germany
    Frédéric Da Vitoria, Owner, FDV Informatique, France
    Stefan Vartolomeev, CEO & Founder, Pisateli BG, Bulgaria
    Claudia Behr, Owner, computer & communication, Austria
    Johan Bernhardsson, CEO, Kafit AB, Sweden
    Clara Guinea Jaime, CEO, WIKIVITAS SL, Spain
    Holger Schlichting, Managing Director, PRAXISFELD GmbH, Germany
    Romain Hurdequint, Founder, The Daily Board Co., France
    Jörg Günther, Main shareholder, AFI Solutions GmbH, Germany
    Oslandia, France
    Ingo Wichmann, CEO, Linuxhotel GmbH, Germany
    Inventia Plus S.L., Spain
    Jérémie Lesage, Company Manager, JECI SARL, France
    Philip Bräunlich, Managing Director, Gerrit van Aaken, Managing Director, whitespace GmbH, Germany
    Reinhold Baudisch, CEO, Michael Doberer, CEO, durchblicker.at, Austria
    Robert Gavin, Managing Partner, Sören Tschiersch, Managing Partner, Flens IT Solutions GmbH, Germany
    Hal Hughes, Director, TeeBase UK Ltd., United Kingdom
    Sebastian Software GmbH, Germany
    Florent Manens, CEO, BeeZim, France
    Linnart Unger, Founder and Managing Director, Studio GOOD digital GmbH, Germany
    Ing. Mag. Dr. Vincenz Leichtfried, CEO, LV7 Media Services, Austria
    Mark Heckes, Managing Director, complingua GmbH, Germany
    Andrej Stojanovič, CEO, A-com spletne storitve, Slovenia
    Ingomar Otter, Director Technology & Innovation, Valtech Mobility GmbH, Germany
    Josef Mayerhofer, Executive Director, WVNET, Austria
    Bär Tiger Wolf GmbH, Germany
    Julien Fastré, Administrator, Champs Libres Cooperative SCRLFS, Belgium
    fullstax GmbH & CO. KG, Germany
    Bauspenglerei Sukup-Groetzer OG, Austria
    Biker-Boarder, Germany
    Autonom Health GesundheitsbildungsGmbH, Austria
    Nerdlichter AG, Germany
    Tripple Internet Content Services, Austria
    Yaltik, France
    Konrad Koch, CTO, pantaBio AG, Germany
    Nicolas Ducoulombier, Founder and CEO, Sébastien Ducoulombier, Founder and CEO, Julien Steinhauser, CEO, Les Développements Durables, France
    Ansgar H. Licher, Co-Founder & CEO, Martin Werthmöller, Co-Founder & CTO, Lwsystems GmbH & Co. KG, Germany


    Signatories after publication

    Mathias Bartholomäus, CEO and founder, studio.201 software GmbH, Germany
    Tomas Vondra, Technical director, Home at Cloud, Czech Republic
    Marcus Toth, CEO, Beamy Lake GmbH, Austria
    Christopher Atlan, Owner, Letter Opener GmbH, Austria
    Dennis Nissen, CEO, naymspace GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Max Seelemann, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Ulysses GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Torsten Markmann, Managing Director, Uplinked UG, Germany
    Pavel Volk, Owner, Pavel Volk – Bischofstein, Czech Republic
    Reinblau eG, Germany
    Błażej Sołtowski, CEO & Co-Founder, MLabs sp. z o.o., Poland
    Dennis Nissen, CEO, naymspace software GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Maik Derstappen, CEO, Derico, Germany
    Peter Faxe Lachenmair, Owner, lachenmair.info – it consulting, Germany
    Redon Skikuli, Business Development, Collective68, Albania
    Aris Ntatsis, CEO, Onscreen Web Services, Greece
    Nikos Roussos, Founder, Autoverse, Greece
    Eduardo Díaz Comellas, CEO, Ultreia Comunicaciones, SL, Spain
    Ricardo Cristof Remmert-Fontes, Owner, Midvinter Holzhandwerk, Germany
    Youthweb e.V., Germany
    Elio Quoshi, Founder, Ura Design, Albania
    Jérôme Marchini, founder, paquerette.eu, France
    Pedro Fernandes, Founder, TugaTech, Portugal
    Fabian Spielberger, CEO, Pepper Media Holding GmbH, Germany
    Jasir Baftijari, Founder, JABA e.K., Germany
    Ole Emken, Co-Founder & CEO, medienweite GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    Daniel Weingart, Freelancer, Medien & Design, Germany
    Christian Steiauf, Sales Manager, Endpoint Protector GmbH, Germany
    Pierre Chevalier, géologue et informaticien, Sémofi, France
    Bastian Allgeier, CEO, Bastian Allgeier GmbH, Germany
    Julian Mair, Co-Founder, Hotel Tirolerhof des Mair Manfred & Co. KG, Italy
    David Lopez, SerenaMail, Spain
    Speed U Up, Austria
    Daniel Bönisch, Founder and CEO, UEBERBIT GmbH, Germany
    Jacobo Vidal, Co-Founder & CEO, Arengu, Spain
    Michael Wegge, CEO & Founder, Firesource UG, Germany
    Benjamin Schröter – CEO, Founder & Wolfram Bernhardt – CEO, Founder, Rhein-Spree Software Engineering GmbH, Germany
    Valentin Born, owner, born2webdesign, Germany
    Arnaud Launay, CEO, Cusae, France
    Dr. Ingo Keck, CTO, Moringa Science Publishing UG, Germany
    Peter Faxe Lachenmair, owner, lachenmair.info – it consulting, Germany
    Georg Stefanowitsch, OHNE LIMIT, Germany
    Eleftherios Tzouanakis, owner, CretaDrive, Greece
    Peter Gierl (CTO), markt.de GmbH & Co KG, Germany
    Konrad Greilich, Thomas Möhle, Marius Hoppe (Founders), Bitkomplex UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Germany
    Damien Accorsi – Dirigeant, Algoo, France
    Markus Winzer, Prokurist, E. Winzer GmbH & Co KG, Austria
    Founder, Saber, UK
    Fernando Alava, owner, PixyBit SLU, Spain
    Xavier Colombel, CEO, Le Reacteur, France
    CEO & Co-founder, Tiptapp, Sweden
    Jerome Leclanche, Director, Goveni Limited, Ireland
    Florian Traverse, CTO and founder, RockSolead, France
    Christian Maas, Founder, myNFP, Germany
    Tillmann Carlos Bielefeld, CEO, Maerketing Europe OÜ, Estonia
    Evan Murs, owner, Opentruss – Ethicity, Ireland
    Kenny Levinsen, Founder and CEO, Levinsen Software IVS, Denmark
    Martijn Vos, founder, Vosdev, Netherlands
    Thomas Schweizer-Bolzonello, CEO, Intelliance, Estonia
    Founder, Screenaware UG, Germany
    Florian Wesch, CEO, inlua GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
    David Sinclair (CEO), Codebreeze, Sweden
    Loris Cuoghi, Founder & CTO, AArtificiale, France
    Vinay Sajip, Red Dove Consultants Limited, UK
    Andrea Borghi, CEO, W Key s.r.l., Italy
    Damjan Maticic, CEO, Koofr, Slovenia
    Dmitriy Akulov, CEO, PerfOps, Poland
    George Kastelakis, CEO, Ignimedia EE, Greece
    Rasmus Porsager, Founder, Porsager IVS, Denmark
    Sylvain Kerkour, CEO, Phaser Security France
    Stefan Keller, CEO, Keller & Neudecker GdbR, Germany
    Robin Jakobsson, Wavy AB, Sweden
    Bert Defoor founder, Gardica, Belgium
    Hakon Eide, CEO, Personal Software Ltd, UK
    CTO, DreamApply.com, Estonia
    Jan Rychter, Founder, PartsBox.io, Poland
    Bart van Bragt, Founder, Bokt.nl, Netherlands
    Dr. Bernd Niklas Klein, CTO, ZENNER IoT Solutions GmbH, Germany
    Johan Christenson, CEO, City Network, Sweden
    Dawid Wiktor, Founder & CEO, Media Scope Group, Estonia
    Ghislain Fabre, Open-Elearning, France
    Founder & CEO, Abilian SAS, France
    Patrick Broeckers, CEO, opwoco GmbH, Germany
    Andreas Gebhard, CEO, Newthinking Communications GmbH, Germany
    François Armand, CTO, Rudder.io, France
    Tanel Raud, Owner and Manager, Hinnavaatlus OÜ, Eesti
    Rene Saare, CTO, Folderit Ltd, Estonia
    IBTC Rüdiger Alich, Markus Gerards und Marcel Weber GbR, Germany
    Rory Koehler, CEO, Bibimapp Ltd, Ireland
    Andreas Schroth, CEO, hPage Ltd., Malta
    Stephan Fürnrohr (CEO), Selbstdenker AG, Germany
    Mathias Höbinger, CEO and co-founder, ShapeDiver GmbH, Austria
    Sebastian Denef, CEO & Co-Founder, OWN.space, Germany
    Nicola, owner,, Alix Società cooperativa, Italy
    Niall McCarthy, CEO, Crust Technology Ltd, Ireland
    Francisco Puga, Co-Owner, iCarto, Spain
    Sebastian Lasse, journalist, Redaktorcms, Germany
    RebelWeb, Netherlands
    Li Cai, CEO, Doypp GmbH, Germany
    Simon Dückert, CEO, Cogneon GmbH, Germany
    Maximilian Schieder, Zeug e.K., Germany
    Morgan Leijström, CEO, Tribun AB, Sweden
    Friedrich Stagl, Founder & CEO, OwnCube, Austria
    GreenNet, UK


    Signing the letter (after publication)

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