Datawrapper joins protest against Article 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive

Gregor Aisch

Mirko Lorenz

David Kokkelink

How the Datawrapper publish step could look like under the proposed EU copyright

Datawrapper has joined the protest against the planned reform of the EU Copyright Directive. We signed an open letter against the reform which was sent out to every Member of the European Parliament on Monday.

The proposed legislation, which the Parliament of the European Union is voting on on March 27, could significantly affect the internet and all “content sharing service providers” — including Datawrapper.

Most notably, Article 13 states that

online content sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorized acts of communication to the public of copyright protected works and other subject matter

It is unclear how this would affect Datawrapper. Since databases in the EU can fall under the protection of copyright ^[1], this could mean that we need to “make best efforts” to check all datasets uploaded to Datawrapper against potential copyright claims.

With thousands of datasets uploaded to Datawrapper every day, it goes without saying that this task would be nearly impossible for us to achieve, and it would severely reduce exchange of data for information purposes, for everyone.

If you live in the EU, please join us in the protest by contacting your representative in the EU Parliament and urge them to vote against the reform.

1. According to the EU Database Directive, any database “which, by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the author’s own intellectual creation, shall be protected as such by copyright” ↩︎

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Gregor Aisch

(he/him, @gka@vis.social) is a co-founder of Datawrapper. He started working on Datawrapper in 2012 and spent four years making graphics at The New York Times. Gregor is on sabbatical until fall 2024. He lives in Berlin.

Mirko Lorenz

(he/him, @mirkolorenz@vis.social, LinkedIn) is a co-founder of Datawrapper and a member of the advisory board. Before that, he served as CEO and later co-CEO of the company for almost 10 years since its inception in 2012. Mirko lives in Cologne.

David Kokkelink

(he/him, @DavidKokkelink) is a co-founder and co-CEO of Datawrapper. Originally a software developer, he works across our customer-facing and product development teams to make sure Datawrapper is headed in the right direction. David lives in Berlin.

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