The Final Version of the EU's Copyright Directive Is the Worst One Yet

TeaAddict · Feb 21, 2019

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/final-version-eus-copyright-directive-worst-one-yet

Despite ringing denunciations from small EU tech businesses, giant EU entertainment companies, artists' groups, technical experts, and human rights experts, and the largest body of concerned citizens in EU history, the EU has concluded its "trilogues" on the new Copyright Directive, striking a deal that—amazingly—is worse than any in the Directive's sordid history.

The Copyright Directive was always a grab bag of updates to EU copyright rules—which are long overdue for an overhaul, given that it's been 18 years since the last set of rules were ratified. Some of its clauses gave artists and scientists much-needed protections: artists were to be protected from the worst ripoffs by entertainment companies, and scientists could use copyrighted works as raw material for various kinds of data analysis and scholarship.

Both of these clauses have now been gutted to the point of uselessness, leaving the giant entertainment companies with unchecked power to exploit creators and arbitrarily hold back scientific research.

Having dispensed with some of the most positive versions of the Directive, the trilogues have also managed to make the (unbelievably dreadful) bad components of the Directive even worse.

Under the final text, any online community, platform or service that has existed for three or more years, or is making €10,000,001/year or more, is responsible for ensuring that no user ever posts anything that infringes copyright, even momentarily. This is impossible, and the closest any service can come to it is spending hundreds of millions of euros to develop automated copyright filters. Those filters will subject all communications of every European to interception and arbitrary censorship if a black-box algorithm decides their text, pictures, sounds or videos are a match for a known copyrighted work. They are a gift to fraudsters and criminals, to say nothing of censors, both government and private.

These filters are unaffordable by all but the largest tech companies, all based in the USA, and the only way Europe's homegrown tech sector can avoid the obligation to deploy them is to stay under ten million euros per year in revenue, and also shut down after three years.
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And thats not all:

Article 11, which allows news sites to decide who can link to their stories and charge for permission to do so, has also been worsened. The final text clarifies that any link that contains more than "single words or very short extracts" from a news story must be licensed, with no exceptions for noncommercial users, nonprofit projects, or even personal websites with ads or other income sources, no matter how small.
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Emphasis mine

There are so many more layers to this disgusting bill. Anyone who cares anything about free speech, or a free internet, should oppose this catastrophic bill. Despite being in the EU, this legislation will effect virtually the entire world, if major tech companies like Google and Facebook are forced to follow these rules.

China is pretty good at censoring and controlling its internet services, but the EU has found a way to censor not only their citizens, but the whole world!

Antiduopolist · Feb 21, 2019

Wow.

Spooky · Feb 21, 2019

No wonder Britain voted to leave.

It's only getting worse.

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The Final Version of the EU's Copyright Directive Is the Worst One Yet

TeaAddict Active Member

Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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The Final Version of the EU's Copyright Directive Is the Worst One Yet

TeaAddict Active Member

Antiduopolist Well-Known Member

Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

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