Article 13, a proposed amendment to EU copyright law, has been described as both a protective measure for artists and a tool for corporate control. An EU meeting earlier this week designed to vote on the controversial article has been cancelled in the wake of widespread disagreement on its impact and to a lesser extent the impact of article 11, also known as the link tax.

The new directive would require platforms like YouTube to filter all user uploads in order to detect any copyright infringement so no more videos of huskies howling along to Adele’s Hello (yes, it’s a thing).

On a more serious note, MEP Julia Reda said both articles are “insufficiently protective of users’ rights” adding that “in the coming weeks will be more important than ever to make sure that the most dangerous elements of the new copyright proposal will be rejected”.

Mass censorship

Digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also against article 13 on the basis of the amount of power it would hand over to large tech companies and the “mass censorship” that would follow.

Online creatives, including the founders of Patreon say that instead of protecting and promoting creativity, the article “seeks to accomplish quite the opposite, shifting the balance of copyright from encouraging new works to more adamantly protecting old ones”.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/belgium-say-no-article-13-and-11