#censorshipmachine

Another petition in the fight against the Copyright Directive by the EU Parliament and Council.

“But it’s only an European issue, why drag the US into it?”

Because the Internet is GLOBAL, attempting to censor it in one end WILL affect GLOBALLY. Not to mention the Copyright Directive will only inspire the American leaders who already had hardons for ACTA and SOPA and other attempts in the past to censor the Internet. If the EU pulls this through, US will follow. Once you lost connection to European users and content creators, you won’t stay safe for long.

PETITION TO REPEL THE COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE

Join the StopACTA2 Discord Server!

EDIT: I like making predictions, but this post may be overly alarmist. Read this article for a more realistic take. The vote this was focused on is over anyway, so look for more recent news and come to your own conclusions.

Even the posts that are tagged with both almost exclusively talk about article 13.

Like guys. Guys guys guys. I love memes and fandom too.

But article 11 makes websites pay any website they link to.

Do you think they're just gonna... do that? Or will they stop making links, making it even harder to verify anything you read online?

Legitimate organizations like newspapers are already struggling to survive in the internet age. Let's punish them financially for adapting to the new platform, just to make sure they go under, shall we?

Links are more expensive = they're used less often = it's normal for something completely true to use no citations = more difficult to distinguish whether something's fake or just European

Platforms that don't want to spend more money could just... disable links. Tumblr already does in the ask box. Think about how difficult that is when you're trying to back up your point.

Ironically, paying for links makes people less likely to cite intellectual property they're using. Not that that will matter, because article 13 means the death of fair use.

This affects everyone. The internet has no borders, and this will affect much more of the content that you consume than you realize. That's before you think about the dangerous precedent this sets for other countries.

If the ignorance of people scares you now, just wait. Or better yet, make a fuss before July 4th/5th (2018).

Europeans: Contact you MEPs.

As someone from the EU, I’m terrified.

If Article 13 goes through then we could loose all these sites and more due to copyright. Please sign this petition:

The #SaveYourInternet fight against Article 13 continues

On 12 September 2018, all 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) got a chance to shape the European copyright reform with a plenary vote.

The outcome: 366 MEPs blatantly ignored your calls asking them to #SaveYourInternet, as they adopted the copyright #CensorshipMachine.

What’s next: The JURI Committee Rapporteur, MEP Axel Voss, has been granted a mandate to start informal negations with the representatives of the EU Member States (Council) and the European Commission (EC), so-called ‘trilogue negotiations’, the black box in the EU policymaking process. See EDRi’s explainer for more details on the remainder of this process.

Article 13 only benefits big businesses

Due to the collateral damage created by the vague and overly broad wording of Article 13, only big platforms and powerful rightholders will benefit from its adoption, to the detriment of all other stakeholders.

Bad for Users

Users will have access to less content and will be unable to share their content with others, even when it’s legal. Moreover, any complaint mechanisms will be easily bypassed if blocking is done under the pretense of a terms and conditions violation, rather than as a result of a specific copyright claim.

Bad for Creators

If platforms become directly liable for user uploaded content they will arbitrarily remove content based on their terms and conditions. As a result, many creators will see their content get blocked too. And, as less platforms survive the burden of this provision, creators will have less choice on where to share their creations.

Bad for competition

Before the link tax fucks me over!

Please sign this, I don’t care if you’re not in the EU, this is like net neutrality - but 100 times worse. If this passes, I will never come back to Tumblr, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, DeviantArt - NADA. 

Update - 2/7/18

Can you imagine if all the memes you love were taken away from you?

Welp, that might be happening, if you, like myself, live under the jurisdiction of the European Union.

Article 13 is a provision in the proposed EU Copyright Directive mandating that all content uploaded to the internet be monitored and potentially deleted if a likeness to existing copyrighted content is detected. This provision will be voted on by the end of 2018

Whether a creator or a consumer, everyone who uses the internet will be affected by this law — which is why we all need to speak out against it.

This is likely to impact all creators such as cartoonists, gamers, illustrators, photographers, documentary filmmakers, animators, musicians, DJs, and dancers,– bloggers, journalists, and technologist.

Online platforms will be required to implement complex and expensive filtering systems and will be held liable for copyright infringement, potentially incurring fines that threaten their economic viability. Article 13 would restrict the ability of Internet users to consume content, meaning no more memes.

This will likely have an affect on all blogging platform, notably this one. I’m not sure how it will impact myself and the content I produce, but in the worst case scenario, it will impede on this blog’s ability to post content.

So what can you do?

5th July is the final day to lodge a challenge to the implementation of the 13th Article, meaning the internet needs you to spam the living hell out of your MEPs. 

If you’re in the EU, you can do this over the phone or by tweeting or email (if you are as antisocial as me). Information about how you can do this, plus information about the planned attack on the internet’s autonomy can be found here.

If you are elsewhere, you can help stoke the flames of resistance by making memes! Ridicule the EU in your work, highlighting the issues and forcing them to self-censor their own institution. Templates can be found here. 

If we can come together as an internet community we can oppose those who are trying to deny our access.

Cheers.