Voices so loud the EU cannot ignore them  14/05/2016 by Tom Hirche

Last Thursday, OpenMedia's Ruth Coustick-Deal met with the MEPs Julia Reda, Marietje Schaake, Vicky Ford, Josef Weidenholzer and Daniel Dalton to deliver all 3737 responses people from all over the EU submitted using the Save the Link survey on the European Commission's public consultation on online platforms.

This public consultation contained some questions for rightsholders only. The European Commission explained that the decision to introduce an ancillary copyright for press publishers would depend on the outcome of this survey. Soon after, OpenMedia had created it's own survey gathering the opinion of thousands of European citizens on an ancillary copyright, but the Commission refused to take them into account.

That was when OpenMedia decided to bring these opinions directly to the European Parliament. All of the 5 MEPs mentioned before are members of the European Parliament's Digital Agenda Intergroup who also campaign against a "link tax" besides other things.

The Commission is currently running another survey which you need to answer if you want to keep the Net free from a tax on links. Again, you can use this simple tool doing so or check out this answering guide.

It is not over yet, but such a loud opposition cannot be ignored!

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