Posted on 06/20/2018 6:11:49 PM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
The End of All That's Good and Pure About The Internet
https://gizmodo.com/the-end-of-all-thats-good-and-pure-about-the-internet-1826963763
Rhett Jones June 20 2018
The EU has passed an Internet link tax on anyone who links to any EU published content. The tax will be levied against individuals or organizations in any country due to mutual copyright treaty conventions.
Article 11 Article 11 has been variously called the link tax or the snippet tax. Designed to mitigate the power over publishers that Google and Facebook have amassed in the last decade, it codifies a new copyright rule for linking to news organizations and quoting text from their stories. Online platforms will have to pay for a license to link out to news publishers, and this will theoretically help support organizations that are vital for public information and drive users to their homepages.
That all sounds decent in principle, but Article 11 doesn’t bother to even define what constitutes a link. Details will be left to the 28 individual countries in the EU to figure that out. That opens the door for political abuse of how news is spread in each country, and it will likely have the opposite of its intended effect.
Google can afford a license, there’s no guarantee smaller organizations can. Member of European Parliament Julia Reda is firmly opposed to Article 11 and 13. She recently wrote on her website: “Instead of one Europe-wide law, we’d have 28, with the most extreme becoming the de-facto standard: To avoid being sued, international internet platforms would be motivated to comply with the strictest version implemented by any member state.” In response to her MEP counterpart Alex Voss’s defense of Article 11, Reda gave The Next Web an illustration of how the differences between countries could play out:
The sentence ‘Angela Merkel meets Theresa May,’ which could be a headline of a news article, cannot be protected by copyright, because it is a mere statement of fact and not an original creation. Mr. Voss said repeatedly that he wants these purely factual statements to be covered by Article 11, that the protection granted to press publishers will therefore be much broader than even what the journalists themselves get.
Reda also pointed out that egregious sampling or wholesale theft of news content is already illegal under current copyright law. There’s no reason to believe that Facebook with its fancy link license will ever face penalties for users posting an entire article on their wall. But when Facebook decides it doesn’t like your particular political point of view, it’ll be a lot harder for you to start a small platform and express it.
The consequences of Article 11 and Article 13 remain a matter of speculation, but the nature of the legislation—both its design and its vagueness that makes it ripe for abuse—make it all but inevitable that they will leave the internet torn and tattered in its wake. Here are some likely victims.
Memes
Even if you think that people who pirate music should be executed and all news organizations are the devil, you probably like memes. Well, whoever took a picture of that one guy looking at that one girl instead of the other girl, will be having a field day running around filing complaints against any platform that uses it without permission. Just kidding, that guy sold the photo to iStock, a subsidiary of photo-licensing giant Getty Images. No fair use means you’ll have to go shoot your own photo to caption and make it clear that anyone is allowed to further caption it in the pursuit of creating a meme.
The EU has just voted to censor the internet and imposes web article link taxes for any references to EU published content.
EFF, EPIC, and freedom aligned groups and politicians made appeals right up to today's vote. The EU has broken the internet and free speech.
If this stands, expect Drudge, FR and other conservative news sites to severely limit content.
Jim and John, please stay up on related developments and how we can help you and FR. Thanks+
The European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs just voted ‘yes’ on highly controversial parts of the EU’s new Copyright Reform. The controversial articles — 11 and 13 — effectively establish link tax, censorship machines, and ban memes.
There was heavy resistance to the contested articles from internet activists, lobbyists, and members of European Parliament (MEPs), but all was for nought and the articles passed with a 13:12 and 15:10 majority.
Opposers of the link tax and censorship machines argued that it threatened the openness of the internet and made it less free. You can read TNW’s detailed dive into the viewpoints of the articles’ lovers and haters, but the opposition can be shortly summed up like this:
Article 11 (a.k.a. link tax) would force anyone using snippets of journalistic online content to get a license from the publisher first — essentially outlawing current business models of most aggregators and news apps. This can also possibly threaten the hyperlink and give power to publishers at the cost of public good.
Article 13 (a.k.a. censorship machines) will make platforms responsible for monitoring user behavior to stop copyright infringements, but basically means only huge platforms will have the resources to let users comment or share content. People opposed to the proposal worry that this could lead to broader censorship, threatening free speech via parody, satire, and even protest videos.
So is it all over?
The committee’s vote doesn’t automatically make the Copyright reform and its controversial articles law. Instead, it cements the European Parliament’s stance on the issue — which is highly influential — before entering the final stage of the legislation process.
However, there is a way to change that. Plenary is the European Parliament’s tool to bring matters out of committee and put up for a vote in the Parliament itself, i.e. have all 751 MEPs vote instead of only 25. But there needs to be enough support in Parliament for this to happen, so opposers have already started campaigning for a plenary session.
The Copyright Reform and its impact on our internet is an important issue, so hopefully it will be brought before the representatives of all European citizens.
What you can do to make that happen is to contact your MEP and make your voice heard. You can find a full list of MEPs here and tips on grabbing your MEP’s attention here and here.
WORLD
Time to move to the dark web.
Thanks for informing.
Non EU country press and content handlers are just waking up to what an Awful mess the EU is creating. (What’s new)
And when AFP steals breaking news photos from Twitter and charges for them???
Google gonna go broke paying for all of those links!
We need to take control of the internet back and turn access to it off for the Third World EU.
I’d like to see them try to collect it.
Btt.
US Federal Trade Commission and International Copyright laws ensure legality here in USA.
If it weren’t for the fact that some Brit links are better at covering the U.S. than our MSM, I’d hardly care.
Otherwise, my attitude is, “screw ‘em”, let them try to “tax” material originating outside the EU, or somehow prove it.
Let the EU go dark.
This is Breaking / Frontpage news that affects this site and paying members. Please consider featuring this as such for FR member awareness and action.
If this stands, FR will be severely hampered / closed down.
I don’t doubt the legality here, I doubt the ability to enforce/collect here.
“FR will be severely hampered / closed down.”
Not enough hyperbole here. We just ban UK links like we did Getty images, etc. believe it or not, FR can survive without links to the Daily Mail.
Obama let the Internet go, and the first thing the EU did was try to slap a tax on content, a direct attempt to control access to information. One more time when the obvious comes true.
The “Anti-Drudge Rule”
Good thing the Britts aren’t in the EU anymore.
Oh wait.........
You don’t get it.
Every photo, meme, story linking to a story with ANY content originating from any EU country’s source will be subject to tax and penalty.
Don’t take my word for it.
Look at all the non-EU content providers who are protesting this, ie: Wikipedia’s Jim Wales, EFF, EPIC, etc.
Please become versed on this before dismissing.
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