EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

by TheFinnster Thu Sep 13, 2018 12:34 am

The European Parliament has voted in favor of the Copyright Directive, a controversial piece of legislation intended to update online copyright laws for the internet age.

The directive was originally rejected by MEPs in July following criticism of two key provisions: Articles 11 and 13, dubbed the “link tax” and “upload filter” by critics. However, in parliament this morning, an updated version of the directive was approved, along with amended versions of Articles 11 and 13. The final vote was 438 in favor and 226 against.

The fallout from this decision will be far-reaching, and take a long time to settle. The directive itself still faces a final vote in January 2019 (although experts say it’s unlikely it will be rejected). After that it will need to be implemented by individual EU member states, who could very well vary significantly in how they choose to interpret the directive’s text.

The most important parts of this are Articles 11 and 13. Article 11 is intended to give publishers and papers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories, allowing them to demand paid licenses. Article 13 requires certain platforms like YouTube and Facebook stop users sharing unlicensed copyrighted material.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved

The fight is far from over there is still time to stop this attack on freedom of speech it will be up for final aproval in january 2019 so make your voice heard you can join the letter campaign @ https://savetheinternet.info/
Its early days and hard to say how this will all play out but my worst fear would be that smaller sites like this becomeing penalized for simply quoteing and shareing links to media outlets witch by the sounds of things may be the reality of this fundamental change to the internet.
Whole thing strikes me as one huge attack on freedom of speech and will be the death of fair use policy's and will ultimatly force more pepole on to the dark web.

by Brutus Fri Sep 14, 2018 12:07 am

I cannot help comparing the present trend to a more general reactionary climate.
It is not only the upholding of "copyrights" that is approved, it is the concept that everything must belong to someone.
It fits with the development of a rentier society, one that see the accumulation of wealth and the means to protect it, as its central tenet.

The loss or at least, the depreciation of human rights, is a necessary consequence of the the upholding of property rights.

It has happened before in history and the result has always been a violent social reshaping, where emphasis is returned to creativity from conservation and wealth redistributed.

I stress the obvious: our planet do not belong to anyone, we belong with all other life, to it.
What is therefore discussed are the means of enforcing the will of someone on others.
It is in this respect that legislative power, military spending and propaganda should be interpreted.

This also suggest the natural limit of this social trend. When power is more and more concentrated the need to protect balloons and the resistance increases.
Try to control the Internet can eventually only lead to its shutting down and/or the creation of alternatives out of the repressive control.

Book censorship of yesteryear is perhaps a suitable precedent to be borne in mind.

We will all have our part to play but not an easy road ahead.

EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

Re: EU approves controversial Copyright Directive, including internet ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’