The EU parliament voted today to pass the copyright law that technologists and activists have been begging, cajoling and screaming at them to drop.

Both Article 11 (link tax) and article 13 (upload filter) passed.

Both are proof that the EU parliament fundamentally doesn’t understand how the internet works. Whether their intentions are good but seriously misguided, or they’re a gang of evil-minded cadaverous bloodsuckers in the pay of big publishing and with tiny little pieces of counterfeit semi-precious stone where their souls should be, is a question I’d love to see answered. But right now? it’s beside the point.

Because these proposals are unworkable.

The first, Article 11, actually attacks the whole foundation of the internet. How do you think the internet will look when you’re not allowed to link to anything? That’s foundational to how the internet works.

‘On December 9, 1968 Douglas Engelbart took the stage at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco to demo the oN-Line System (NLS), a project he had been working on at the Stanford Research Institute. In the days and years to come, his presentation would (quite aptly) be referred to as “The Mother of All Demoes.”

In the course of just 90 minutes, Engelbart exhibited technology that would define the computer programming world for years to come. For the first time ever, the world was introduced to the computer mouse, word processing, advanced graphic displays, collaborative editing, and video conferencing.

All at once.

Buried throughout his presentation, Engelbart would often jump from one screen to the next using dynamic links. He could type the name of a file, or click on one of these links and jump to a brand new document. For many, this was the first time they had ever seen hypertext.’

Jay Hoffman, History of the Web

Bu the new laws go far, far beyond imposing a tax on hyperlinks.

For a start, they outlawed ‘freedom of panorama,’ meaning you now can’t take photos in public that include copyrighted material — like ads in the background.

So that’s all that phone footage of police brutality, and the footage of news events that journalists increasingly rely on — and yes, it’s every work by every photographer who isn’t taking another moody shot of a tree.

But the really scary stuff — and we’re talking about people’s lives and careers already, so we’re starting at scary — is the effect on free speech.

The new law’s Article 13 has a genuinely chilling effect on what people will be able to publish and say on platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

By making these platforms responsible for any copyright violations that are posted on them, the law effectively forces them to build ‘censorship bots.’

‘The #EU just voted to impose filters on all the text, audio, photos, videos, etc you might post. If you think this will help photographers or other creators, you don’t understand filters.

First of all: pirates laugh at filters. The most sophisticated image filters in the world — those used for state censorship in China — are trivial to evade.’

In other words: the EU parliament acted like there was a choice between rampant piracy and corporate mass surveillance, and in a truly inspiring move they gave us… both.

Here’s more on what this means, and I’ll be back next week with a deeper look at what we can all do about this.