The whole internet generation is up in arms – reason is article #13 of the revised EU Copyright Directive, due for final parliamentary vote late March.
In a nutshell, the directive will make all commercial platforms older than 3 years, that have “online content sharing” “liable for unauthorized acts of communication to the public of copyright protected works and other subject matter” (Quotes from https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/).
This affects only (your) YouTube kids, right?
Unfortunately, not. Article 13 is not only about video – images, photos, music and texts are also copyright protected works (including this article, by the way).
Under the new regulation, _all_ sharing sites, and that includes professional networks such as LinkedIn or Xing, will become liable for copyright violations of their users and will have to take reasonable measures to prevent such violation to occur (hence the #uploadfilter).
Prior to publishing any user-generated content, any provider will have to make sure that the text, image or video does not contain any copyrighted material – if it fails to do that, it will open itself up for litigation (not mentioning the link tax here, for brevity and readability), which will pose a significant financial risk.
As an example, let’s look at this text: No platform whatsoever can determine for sure whether I have written this text myself (for the record: I did) or whether I copied it from one or more sources on the internet. The best option to avoid litigation thus is to disable uploads from users, and only buy content from well-known publishers.
That’s what everybody is afraid of – the end of user-generated content, the end of Social Media, and the end of professional networking sites.
Article 13 will not protect artists, and it will not do anything to help them secure an income from their work. This claim is being perpetuated by a lot of organizations, unfortunately it turns out to be false once you read the actual text of the directive; intention and execution seem to be quite a bit out of sync here.
We have only days, or possibly a couple of weeks left before the final vote, and we need to act now!
Convinced? Call your MEPs and help them make the right decision:
Not yet? Here are some more resources:
- https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/
- https://april.org/un-mois-pour-donner-de-la-voix-voter-pour-l-article-13-c-est-attaquer-nos-libertes
- https://savetheinternet.info/
- https://www.stopacta2.org/
Thank you!
(Image copyright by www.savetheinternet.info)
