Yesterday, the European Parliament passed a widely reviled scheme to line the pockets of big business while throwing the door wide open to Stalinist internet censorship. Most of the new Copyright Directive’s critics single out Articles 11 and 13 as the most onerous provisions.
Article 11 is a tax designed to fleece users by making anyone who links to a news source pay the publisher what amounts to a license fee. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. the EU reassured its constituents that they can post single words from news articles for free. Kidding aside, this is a brazen attempt to prop up dying fake news outlets.
Article 13 has been termed an “upload filter” intended to crack down on the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material online. That broad definition could include everything from “Never Gonna Give You Up” loops to Pepe memes. The potential consequences of this disaster in the making aren’t hard to foresee. A single copyright troll with a stack of false infringement claims could paralyze the web.
The new Directive imposes such a huge content-policing burden that only megacorps like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have the means to comply with the law. That’s almost certainly by design. What we have here is the most egregious example yet of government serving as leg breakers for their corporate overlords. We also get the twofer of Boomer politicians meddling in matters they don’t understand.
What are the possible outcomes? A likely reaction is that sites will simply issue a wholesale ban of European users. EU subjects will be walled off from the rest of the world behind a digital curtain, force-fed a steady diet of fake news and unable to trade memes.
The rest of the planet can’t rest easy just yet. Remember how every mailing list you subscribe to sent you a policy update in the wake of that other meddlesome EU regulation? If Articles 11 and 13 stand, other polities could issue their own copyright directives. Or Big Tech could decide they want all competition hobbled everywhere and voluntarily implement EU style upload filters on all their platforms. That’s a game over scenario.
Whatever happens next, understand that the EU has just cranked up the heat under the free speech frog. The water isn’t boiling just yet, but controlling the flow of information is the ultimate end of legislation like this.
The web’s own court jester Mister Metokur offers a humorous and scathingly honest take on the Copyright Directive debacle. I recommend watching it a few chunks at a time.
The net is closing around us, my friends. Enjoy a free and open web while you can. And be sure to read my hit mecha thriller Combat Frame XSeed!
That is one cursed image. And I thought American boomers were bad.
And like every European authoritarian overreach, the usual morons will be screaming for it here too.
It's the Necronomicon inked with Monster Energy on soy paper.
We saved them from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, this is how they repay our spilt blood. Trump.should just renege the outstanding bill on not only NATO but our rebuilding of Europe after the war. Bankrupt them all.
Knowing the GE, he just might.
How about we bar the doors of the Euro building and burn it down along with every traitorous globalist MEP inside it?
I do not advocate violence.
Accidents happen.
Forgive my misspeaking. Accidents indeed happen my friend
Accidents, like God smiting the 2nd Tower of Babel for the same reason he smote the first?
I'm not joking about the 2nd tower, by the way. The EU parliament building was deliberately modeled after the Bruegel Tower of Babel painting.
Accidents exactly like that.
Build-a-Mech?
I think I need to ask for an early spending of Christmas money.
And a mech will be built.
Thank you. You're going to be so proud of your big, beautiful mech!
Send me an email.
You were right.
I am so proud of my big, beautiful mech!
We're going to get the mechs we deserve. It's going to be only Neue Deutschland first!
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Brian,
The European law is equivalent of the Nobel Peace prize for Hillary and the Democratic party . Ominously the Eucrats have done the following
1) they're deliberately wrecking the European economy so they can hold Trump responsible
2) they given the Democrats a blueprint of what to copy should they win Congress; or better yet when they regain power and emboldening them to go much much further (supermax prision and outright murder)
3) the copyright protections will be used to hound from life all independent content creators under the excuse of objectionable content, extreme right ideas and unfair competition.
4) it's not coincidental that EU Parlament passes the law on the same day as the Google gate video. It's a shot across the bow to protect our freedom.
The current Nike ad is more apropos than we realize.
xavier
This month is gonna be super tight money wise so Ill have to wait a while. Been posting about this book to my favorite forums though. Its the good stuff.
That's fine. The campaign's running till October 8. Thanks!
PS: SPAM THE EU WITH MORE MEME MAGIC! 😛
Definitely. And Jim pointed out an even more dastardly way to hoist them on their own petard: file copyright registrations for EVERYTHING. Or just skip straight to spamming them with bogus claims.