Gregory Engels, “Freedom to Share”: If we are successful, we need to be taken seriously!

Gregory Engels is an organiser from the European citizens' initiative "Freedom to share” which is campaigning for changes in the copyright rules, to allow free sharing of copyrighted material and at the same time to reimburse the authors in a fair way. 

Gregory Engels: We came up with the idea for the European citizens' initiative because we feel it is a major issue that the current copyright rules are inhibiting the way people use culture, the way how people use the Internet. Basically, we think that the copyright rules are wrong and old, coming from old centuries. We felt the only way to make the copyright rules adhere to what people's reality is, sharing content on the Internet, would be through a European citizens' initiative. That would be the only way to change the copyright rules from the very top, from the European level, because it's not a national decision. The copyright rules are written on a transnational level, it's not a national issue. Every country has slight differences, but the whole framework of rules is set on the European level.

"We feel the current rules are wrong. They do not actually protect the authors, they do not protect the consumers, they only favour a small group of copyright corporations and this is not right".

Back in 2019, we saw a wave of protests across Europe, with people protesting against the new European Copyright Directive and specifically against article 13 that would force the platforms to install filters to monitor all copyrighted material that's been uploaded on them. We saw that even though the protests were very numerous, the politicians chose to ignore them, so we felt that if we made another petition or another protest action that would go unheard.

"We looked what are the tools that we have in order to address the copyright legislation and address directly the European Commission, and we realised that the European citizens' initiative is the right tool for that".

Through the European citizens' initiative we are addressing directly the Commission and if we are successful, we need to be taken seriously.

Q: How difficult was it to get the Initiative registered?

Gregory Engels: The process of registering the European citizen's initiative is a long one, but for us finding the team, the core team of seven people from seven different countries was the easiest part, we did it like in a day.

To actually register the official text, to submit it to the European Commission, this was more complicated. To have the IT set up was quite a complicated task, even that we felt that we knew what we're doing. We choose to set up our own signature collection platform and for that we needed to have it audited, and this took us quite a long time.

If we were to do it again, we would do it differently:

"we would rather start with building up a support network and get more organisations before the start".

You can, in the preparation phase, already have something like 30 - 50 organisations from across Europe, that would support you from the very start. Our European citizens' initiative is not being run only by individuals, but also by associations and organisations from across Europe. What we learned is that it would be good to have this support network of organisations before actually launching the Initiative, so it would be good to have this supporting network right from the start. We started building it quite late in the game and we basically lost some time on that. It would be much more effective if we had had this support network of organisations and individuals before the European citizens' initiative had been registered.

Q: What in your opinion works best when campaigning for your Initiative?

Gregory Engels: We had big plans for last year's campaigning - to go to the music festivals and talk to the people who are waiting in line and tell them about the European citizens' initiative and why it is important to change the copyright rules, to support the artists and to support culture, and to collect signatures from the people while they are waiting in line, because they have time, and they are there for culture. That was a great plan, that has not worked because of the Covid pandemic... We have drastically changed our approach, and so

"what we found works best currently is involving more organisations"

and asking them to spread the word, to tell their individual members about the European citizens' initiative, to invite people from our team to talk at their events, so we can spread the word. For that we need a large number of supporting organisations and we are more dependent on having those partners rather than having individual volunteers. We don't need individual volunteers who would collect signatures that much right now.

Q: How do you motivate your partners?

Gregory Engels: We are using an open source platform to collect signatures, that can be installed in parallel on multiple websites. Basically, we give every single partner their own widget, so they can collect signatures in their own web space and it looks like the signature collection system is native to their website, so they can also get a bigger crowd, increase the audience that they can talk to. So, as they collect signatures for their own newsletters, they also collect signatures for us, for the European citizens' initiatives; and this is a win-win situation for the partners and for us.

Q: What is your advice to other Initiative organizers about signature collection?

Gregory Engels: My advice to the organisers of other European citizens' initiatives is to get a supporting network of organisations in the countries that you focus on, but also in other countries, so that you can involve the people who would collect signatures for you. Basically, that's the advice because you cannot do everything all on your own, you're just seven people - organisers, and it takes quite a while, quite a lot effort to collect one million signatures across Europe.

Q: What was your experience with the European Citizens’ Initiative Forum and which features have been most useful to you?

Gregory Engels: The European Citizens' Initiative Forum is a place to go, to ask questions if you have any. I personally have read a lot of other people's questions and the answers to them, and what surprised me is that everything is actually translated into the 22 official European languages!

There are videos and recordings of past events where people have discussed different features. I looked through a lot of those videos, and even that I haven't actively contributed with material myself, I think this Forum is very helpful. There is a large amount of information and it's very valuable because it's focused directly on organising of the European citizens' initiative.

One last piece of advice that I could give: reach out to other people who are running a European citizens' initiative at this time, or have done it previously, because you can actually support each other, and you can also profit from the experience and learn, and also don't be afraid! We are all in the same boat!

Watch “Meet-And-Greet Initiative Organisers” with Gregory Engels