THE REASON WHY THE EUROPEAN DIRECTIVE ON COPYRIGHT MAY MEAN THE DEATH OF INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT

The President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called it “a victory for all citizens”, but many on the Internet are against it.

On September 12th 2018, the Parliament of the European Union, meeting in Strasbourg, has voted in favor of the new European copyright directive, necessary to start negotiations with the European Council.

Approved with 438 votes in favor, 226 against and 39 abstentions, the directive opens the way for negotiations with the Council and the Commission, in order to reach a definitive version of the reform. The final vote is scheduled for January 2019.

After the approval of the EU Parliament, it will be up to the member states to implement the directive, directly incorporating its content with a national law.

Some, like the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, take up the cudgels for the new directive.

“The Copyright Directive is a victory for all citizens. Today the European Parliament has chosen to defend European and Italian culture and creativity, putting an end to the digital far-west“, Tajani commented on Twitter.

Likewise, they rejoice, most likely, all those musicians, artists, performers and screenwriters, publishers and journalists, who will be rewarded when their work is used by sharing platforms like YouTube or Facebook and by news aggregators like Google News.

The reason why many people on the web are against the European copyright reform

However, others have been opposing the reform for months, and in particular two articles, Article 11 and Article 13, particularly controversial.

Article 11, renamed “link tax” by detractors, would represent a guarantee of “appropriate compensation” for those who create contents.

Indeed, according to the article, a license is required to have the right to use even a small fragment of an article online. Consequently, for example, even just using the full title of an article as a link text, in order to quote and refer to the article itself, will not be allowed without a license.

Article 13, instead, forces sharing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to adopt so-called “upload filters”, very stringent: in other words, tools that automatically filter what users upload to their platform, to make sure that their content doesn’t infringe the copyright directive.

The version of the European copyright directive, passed by the European Parliament on September 12, lists exceptions to this article.

Online encyclopedias are excluded from the application of Article 12, such as Wikipedia, which in July had protested against the reform by obscuring all its pages in Italy. Small and medium-sized businesses and open source sites, such as GitHub, or non-profit activities. are excluded too.

Furthermore, the Italian Federation of News Publishers (FIEG) ensured that according to the new directive “the possibility for network users to be involved actors in social networks, to produce blogs, to share opinions, photos and links will be guaranteed”.

This is already a novelty compared to the reform rejected on 5 July, but many – including human rights activists and academics – still show concern.

Researchers working at the CREATe UK research center and at the European Policy for Intellectual Property Association (EPIP), for example, have strongly stirred against the directive, underlining the huge role played by the lobby in its approval and recommending several amendments.

Who will be damaged by the new European copyright reform?

A long list of experts, including World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, wrote an open letter to Tajani.

Describing Article 13 as “a danger for the future of this global network”, experts have shown that forcing large platforms to use automatic filters, often unjust and imperfect, it is certainly not the way to distribute, fairly, the proceeds of online work.

“Article 12 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from a platform open to sharing and innovation in a tool for the automatic surveillance and control of its users”, they wrote.

They then recalled that according to the European e-Commerce directive, individual users are responsible for the legality of their content.

Instead, shifting this responsibility to online platforms, the combination of Article 11 and Article 13 represents a practically unsustainable cost, especially for start-ups who aim to become the new Facebook or YouTube, allowing, in practice, that the monopoly of the web is held even more in the hands of the great Silicon Valley companies.

Indeed, a filter that meets the requirements of Article 13 of the new reform would probably cost millions of euros: just think that YouTube’s Content ID tool, which performs, only partially, the work required to comply with the new European directive, has cost 60 million dollars.

Moreover, it’s very likely that the existence of new filters aimed at screening content on platforms such as YouTube or Facebook will tend to block many contents in a preventive way to avoid repercussions, thus limiting access to these platforms to new creative minds – like youtuber or young singers, for example.

Another open letter was signed by 57 associations and NGOs from various European Countries that deal with human rights and freedom of the web.

The signatories want to underline how the directive would lead to an excessive process of filtering and deleting online content and, at the same time, a constant monitoring of user activities.

The letter ends: “These conditions violate freedom of expression, freedom of information and privacy laws”.

On social networks – and, in particular, Twitter, where the hashtag #SaveYourInternet went crazy all over Europe after the approval of the reform on September 12th – thousands of users have also rebelled, worried about the consequences of the reform, that lot of people compare to censorship.

For sure, those that will be damaged will naturally be the big platforms like Google (and, in particular, its aggregator Google News), Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but the consequences will only fall on users of these sites.

Explaining it clearly on his Twitter profile was Patreon, a famous platform that allows online content creators to realize them and share them with their fans based on a system financed by the fans themselves.

“If you are a creator, the content you want to share online with your fans may be deleted without your consent. The term ‘creators’ refers to artists, cartoonists, gamers, illustrators, photographers, documentaries, animators, musicians, DJs, dancers, bloggers and journalists “.

“Article 13 would restrict the possibility for Internet users to consume content – in the sense that it will not be possible for them to find and enjoy the many different forms of cultural expression they are used to”, continues Patreon.

Bringing together the efforts of the various players who oppose the reform there is a site, #SaveYourInternet, which invites to contact governments and members of the European Parliament to make their voices heard as web users and to stop the directive.