According to critics of a new EU law, memes, remixes, and other similar content will be banned from the web if a recently proposed copyright law is passed.The law, known as the "Copyright Directive," will be voted on later this month by the European Parliament, and lawmakers suggest that this will protect content creators in the internet age.
However, one of the primary reasons why the internet age has brought us so much innovation and novelty is because of the fact that such a large aggregate of people are able to share their ideas and build upon the ideas of others to create something uniquely special.
Article 13 of the proposed bill calls on platform providers such as Google, Facebook, and web hosts to "take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rights-holders for the use of their works".
This type of policy would create a slippery slope that could very quickly lead to a situation where platforms are required to add a filter for the content that is shared through them, which will restrict the ability for creators to do something as simple as creating a meme or a remix of a song.
When the law was first suggested, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and 56 other civil society organizations sent an open letter to European lawmakers, warning of the possible implications of this law.The letter reads:
"Article 13 introduces new obligations on internet service providers that share and store user-generated content, such as video or photo-sharing platforms or even creative writing websites, including obligations to filter uploads to their services. Article 13 appears to provoke such legal uncertainty that online services will have no other option than to monitor, filter and block EU citizens’ communications if they are to have any chance of staying in business. ...Article 13 would force these companies to actively monitor their users' content, which contradicts the "no general obligation to monitor" rules in the Electronic Commerce Directive. The requirement to install a system for filtering electronic communications has twice been rejected by the Court of Justice, in the cases Scarlet Extended (C 70/10) and Netlog/Sabam (C 360/10). Therefore, a legislative provision that requires internet companies to install a filtering system would almost certainly be rejected by the Court of Justice because it would contravene the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business and the right to freedom of expression, such as to receive or impart information, on the other."
Last week, Jim Killock, executive director of the UK's Open Rights Group, told the BBC that "Article 13 will create a 'Robo-copyright' regime, where machines zap anything they identify as breaking copyright rules, despite legal bans on laws that require 'general monitoring' of users to protect their privacy. Unfortunately, while machines can spot duplicate uploads of Beyonce songs, they can't spot parodies, understand memes that use copyright images, or make any kind of cultural judgment about what creative people are doing. We see this all too often on YouTube already."
"Add to that, the EU wants to apply the Robocop approach to extremism, hate speech, and anything else they think can get away with, once they put it in place for copyright. This would be disastrous," Killock added.
Intellectual property is often sold as a legal measure to protect artists from scammers who may attempt to replicate their brand, but more often than not these types of legal avenues are taken advantage of by opportunists and exploited by publishers to the detriment of truly creative people. In the past, it was nearly impossible to implement such control over the internet, but now with complicated algorithms and the compliance of silicon valley tech companies, freedom on the internet under constant threats.
Then I support this law
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This is the way psychopaths think. They want control. More control. All the control isn't enough.
And they do not care about "creative" people. They will just make new "stars" to keep the population "entertained".
So, they want as much patent, copyright and other legal red tape as they can get. Of course, none of it works, accept for huge corporations with lots of lawyers.
I hope this is where the interwebs diverts and just ignores intellectual property. While simultaneously, make original creators easy to find.
I had a friend who did graphics work. They designed some cards.
Somebody at Hall-market made a set of cards that looked EXTREMELY similar to theirs.
They were well in their right to sue Hall-market for copyright infringement, but what would really happen is that Hall-market would pull the cards, and then immediately sue them for all their lost earnings. Hall-market would bury them in court costs in a court case that would be dragged out forever.
So... copyright? For T.H.E.M. inc®? yes. For me and thee? No.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO GETS IT!
Copyright does protect 'us'. It only serves the lawmakers, Industry crony's and their middle men, who want to leech off the actual creator.
Wow, what a tough one to decide on. On one had, we need protection for people's intellectual property. On the other hand, we certainly don't want robo squelching of things that aren't really infringements, and we CERTAINLY don't want liberal/left platform designers (who used our tax money to get a major boost) censoring speech they don't like. This debate is going to need to be had and closely considered.
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This is complete utter bullshit, why would you want to ban memes? it doesn't make sense? I mean on steemit it may do but on platforms like facebook and google it doesn't absolutely make sense at all, because most of them are just for fun.
It's like saying they've invented a law which copyrights jokes made by comedians.
Its no bullshit, this is happening, their also talking about taxation of hyperlinks
Now they're just going crazy, how can you tax hyperlinks, how is that even possible. If you told me this years ago I would've called bullshit on this because in no way this is actually true.
I made my duck search an english article, and this is what she found. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150708/15115331584/eu-politicians-try-to-create-new-link-tax-to-protect-newspapers-who-dont-like-sites-linking-free.shtml
As I have said in my post about this; it's only the beginning and will end badly for freedom. It is restrictive and has an hidden motive giving the corporation control over the market 💯🐒
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A very complicated problem because artists want to be acknowledged and if the means exist, paid for their work. The laws and algorithms that are being put in place are taking the freedoms from the re-creators instead of “splitting” the recognition between two(or more) artists. It is becoming hard for up and coming artists and creators to expand on ideas and make a living. I do understand that original artist have rights, but they sometimes are the sole benefactors when someone puts their artist spin on top it goes viral, and they “monetize” it. It’s a vicious circle of have and have nots.