Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. Article 13 was part of a draft of a European copyright directive and required platforms that host user-generated content to have measures in place to prevent their users from violating copyright laws, sparking controversy. « The text only requires that [platforms] either license or remove copyrighted material. »
- « Studios tend not to enforce their rights against YouTube gamers in order to avoid the PR implications of being heavy-handed with fans, and because the videos can have significant promotional value, » said Ms Berry.
- « Platforms unable or unwilling to pay licensing fees would need to shut down or disallow users from sharing links with snippets, » said Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda.
- They could only do that by directly monitoring all content uploaded to their sites.
- The concerns about Article 13 are wide-ranging, including unease about the cost of compliance for smaller companies, and out-and-out censorship of the internet.
« The parliament’s approach is unrealistic in many cases because copyright owners often disagree over who owns what rights, » she wrote. « If the owners cannot agree, it is impossible to expect the open platforms that host this content to make the correct rights decisions. » Boiled down, all this article is saying is that any websites that host large amounts of user-generated content (think YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) are responsible for taking down that content if it infringes on copyright. Proponents of the Directive on Copyright argue that this means that people are listening to, watching and reading copyrighted material without the creators being properly paid for it. On April 15, 2019, the European Council – the political body composed of government ministers from each of the 28 EU member states – voted to adopt into EU law the copyright directive as passed by the European Parliament in March.
Google has been particularly vocal about the proposed law, which it says could « change the web as we know it ». Unless the Polish court case changes anything – and that’s a big if – individual member states will have two years to turn the new rules into their own national law. To help clear things up, here’s WIRED’s guide to the EU Directive on Copyright. The objections to Article 11 are less vocal, but they’re out there nonetheless. It’s unclear what exactly would have to be licensed (snippets? headlines? links themselves?) so the jury is out on how much of an impact it might have.
YouTube was possibly one of the most vocal opponents to Article 13 at the time, but there were also plenty of voices outside the entertainment sector with strong opinions. One of the most active voices was Parliament member Axel Voss, who often took to X (called Twitter at the time) to defend the Directive, with such tweets as the one pictured below. Let’s examine how people responded to Article 13 before the draft was revised. Many people felt that Article 13 wouldn’t protect individuals but instead might silence them, unlike the GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation.
The final version of a controversial new EU copyright law has been agreed after three days of talks in France. How much of an article has to be shared before a platform has to pay the publisher? It’d also prevent social platforms from showing any kind of « snippet » of news stories, making it ultimately harder to share and link to content. The last EU-wide copyright law was put in place in 2001, when the internet was a dramatically different place to how it is today.
The rule would apply to if someone downloaded Beyoncé’s new music video from YouTube then reuploaded it onto their personal channel. YouTube would have to implement technology to recognise the content as copyrighted material and alert Beyoncé’s management. That management would then be able to order YouTube to take down or modify the video at their discretion.
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Article 13 no longer exists — in its current form as Article 17, it’s much less contentious and makes exceptions for users to post content like memes, parodies, criticisms, and reviews. The screenshot below shows a tweet from the user-dependent media platform of a “mockup” of what might’ve happened to YouTube if draft Article 13 passed. No, Article 13, which became Article 17 in the final version of the directive, did not end up banning internet memes.
YouTube is by far the most vocal critic of Article 13, with the firm making a big effort to promote opposition to the directive among its creators and users. A popup on the YouTube website and app directs users to a page with the title « #saveyourinternet » which includes a video from YouTube explaining the firm’s objections to the directive. In the video, Matt Koval, a content strategist at YouTube argues that – in its current form – Article 13 « threatens hundreds of thousands of creators, artists and others employed in the creative economy. » The article intends to get news aggregator sites, such as Google News, to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms.
Article 13: Europe’s hotly debated revamp of copyright law, explained
The biggest issue is that in an effort to save time and resources, most websites would just ban copyrighted material outright in their terms of service. That would allow them to avoid risking even the whiff of legal trouble. Because the content is dictated by terms of service, not the law, there’d be little chance for the new https://www.dowjonesanalysis.com/ uploader to appeal. Currently, the onus is on the uploader to ensure the content they are sharing doesn’t breach copyright law. The law would force social media platforms to take more direct responsibility for policing uploaded content. Big tech companies will likely put their own, costly solutions in place for doing this.
After years of debate and negotiations, politicians have passed sweeping changes following a final vote in the European Parliament. The internet may not have as much content generated from within Europe, however, so if you’re a fan of British humor or Europe’s take on popular memes, your experience of being online may be the poorer for it. Everything you upload onto the internet will be checked for copyright beforehand, so this could mean no more making memes or https://www.forex-world.net/ edits for your favorite fan Tumblr, among many other things. There are fears it could outlaw news aggregators as we know them or even prevent any sites other than giants like Google, which could afford a license, from linking to articles at all. A second part of the draft legislation, Article 11, is also raising eyebrows. This section stipulates that companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft may have to pay publishers for showing snippets of news articles.
The Directive on Copyright has gained vocal critics on both sides of the debate, but you can broadly chunk up defenders and detractors into two categories. On May 23, the Polish Prime Minister’s office announced it would bring a court case against Article 13 to the Court of Justice of the https://www.forexbox.info/ European Union. In a tweet, the Prime Minister’s office said that the entire directive « fuels censorship and threatens freedom of expression. » One random discord server I was in just linked everyone to saveyourinternet.eu because apparently EU is trying to kill internet as we know it.
Ultimately, it all depends how much internet platforms invest in artificial intelligence. If the AI is good enough to work out the difference between a meme and thieving copyrighted material, Article 13 could work. Obviously big technology companies like YouTube and Facebook already have technology like this in place. However, if the legislation passes all websites where users upload content would have to implement the same technologies.
Why Did People Worry Article 13 Would Ban Memes?
The internet is all aflutter today over the vote on ‘Article 13’ by the EU parliament. The future of the Internet is still wholly unknown — but at least for now, we can still share hilarious memes. But technology is adapting rapidly, and Europe has already passed other regulations that impact the digital space. The Copyright Directive officially took effect on June 7, 2019, and the Member States had until June 7, 2021, to establish laws supporting the directive. Along with this petition, potentially impacted services like YouTube have adopted campaigns using the hashtag #SaveYourInternet.
Six member states (Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden) voted against adopting the directive while three (Belgium, Estonia and Slovenia) abstained from the vote. Now that the EU has agreed on a final text for the directive, the European Parliament will vote on the legislation. If it passes, it’ll come into force in each EU country over the next two years. « Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users, » they said. Alex Voss, rapporteur of the European Parliament for the copyright directive, for one. He suggested the law and believes its criticisms are highly exaggerated.
German MEP Julia Reda suggested services would have to « buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload » and called it an « impossible feat ». YouTube’s current Content ID gives copyright owners the right to claim ownership of content already live on YouTube. The system then allows them to either block the video or monetise it by running advertising against it.
« Article 13 as written threatens to shut down the ability of millions of people – from creators like you to everyday users – to upload content to platforms like YouTube, » she wrote. This is the part of the Directive on Copyright that has most people worried. It’d force all online platforms to police and prevent the uploading of copyrighted content, or make people seek the correct licenses to post that content. For the most part this would mean filters that check content as it’s uploaded would be mandatory for platforms including Facebook, Instagram, GitHub, Reddit and Tumblr, but also many much smaller platforms. The reason why this article has been dubbed the “meme ban” is that no one is sure whether memes, which are often based on copyrighted images, will fall foul of these laws.