Article 11 & 13 Threatening Internet Censorship
If you’re European, in a couple of weeks you will be denied any and all access to fandom contents on Tumblr and everywhere else on the internet. Here’s why.
On June, 20th the JURI of European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law. These articles are also known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles.
Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the fandom culture. Which means you won’t be able to upload any type of fandom works like fan arts, fan fictions, gif sets from your favourite films and series, edits, because it’s all copyrighted material. And you won’t also be able to share, enjoy or download other’s contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted.
But not everything’s lost yet. There’s another round of voting scheduled for the early days of July.
What you can do now to save our internet, is to share these informations with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 11 and 13.
Here you can find more news and all the details to contact your MEP:
Also, sign and share this petition:
We have just a couple of weeks to stop this complete madness [not only until July 5th of this being posted], don’t let them dictate the way we enjoy our internet.
Hashtag #SaveYourInternet now!
Comments
Also can't forget they're banning memes (absolutely ridiculous). Everyone turn the EU flag into a meme so that they ban their own flag! Never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm glad to live in the United States right now.
#SaveTheInternetInEurope
Live Streaming will also be effected. Pretty screwed up. I didn't even know about this until last night.
That is really upsetting
Does the UK count? Cos they’re leaving the EU at some point so just wondering if all of Europe will be affected.
The UK could since we haven't official left. And I believe it's those part of the European Union.
I did a bit of research on that topic, as I actually feared I might be directly affected, but it turns out, there's some minor silver lining at least, even if this entire Article 13 is still right proper horseshit, if I may say so. First of all, I'm not a law expert, so I have to take my source at face value, but if anyone wants to dispute my statement here, feel free to enlighten me. Basically, I came across a guy on Reddit who neatly summarized how this damn article might affect fan work, as you mentioned in the main post. I'll link the source below if anyone wants to check up on this, but here's the main points:
The good news is, fanfiction is most likely not affected and I can only assume the same applies to fan art as well. It very much depends where it is hosted though. The main goal of that article is to protect content creators against copyright infringement and it is really unclear if derivative work, such as fan fiction or fan art, counts as copyright infringement in the same way as, for example, pirating a movie would or if it even counts as any sort of copyright infringement at all. Chances are that such fan work won't be affected as long as it is non-profit and transformative (means no one's making money out of it and it is sufficiently changed from the original and not simply a word-by-word retelling). Article 13 is mainly targeted at so-called "online content sharing service providers", who are most importantly defined as sites who actually make profit out of the material they provide and promote. Since most fan work is decidedly non-profit, it should not mean that writing fanfiction or drawing fan art or probably even making a cover version of a song is going to be illegal all of a sudden. As someone who is writing fanfiction, this means for me that I don't have to be afraid Telltale is all of a sudden going to delete my work because of this article, as they aren't making any profit by me publishing it in the forums. The same applies to everyone sharing fan art over here and, if I understand correctly, it also implies that no, memes are not banned per se as long as absolutely no one is making profit out of creating or sharing them. The problem is, in some cases there are people somewhere making profit out of this.
Those who are mostly affected by this article are sites who actually make a profit out of the work they host, organize and share. I am not entirely certain how it will affect them, but I fear there will be major problems for sites such as Youtube and Twitch, or even stuff such as Tumblr and Fanfiction.net, as they expose you to ads while you browse. By extension, those who use Patreon to finance their derivative work, be it fan fiction, fan art or potentially even Cosplay, would potentially get into trouble. If Article 13 passes, there could be massive repercussions for these sites and everyone should be rightfully concerned about it. While the practice of creating derivative works is not going to be outlawed, there could be major restrictions to sharing it, by virtue of the most popular sharing sites all making money out of this. So, in short, not everything will be automatically illegal if the article passes, so long as it remains strictly non-profit in its entirety, but the upload filters that the popular sharing sites likely have to install are something that can be considered highly problematic. So, while not every concern some might have is necessary and not everything will be automatically banned in the EU, the negative reaction towards the articles 11 and 13 is certainly appropriate. There is also the chance that those of you not living in the EU won't experience the same difficulties as we will, as it could potentially happen that the affected sites simply decide not to offer their services in the EU anymore instead of installing the upload filters, essentially meaning that we here might potentially no longer be able to access Youtube and the like through conventional means but you outside the EU won't have this problem. A lot about how the article is going to be implemented is still unclear and that is at its core the worst thing, because it allows for interpretations ranging from it being ineffective and ultimately inconsequential to it basically being the end of the internet as we know it. The truth is probably lying somewhere inbetween, but as long as we don't know the actual way of how the EU member states plan to include the articles, it is certainly in order to remain concerned.
Here is my source, if anyone wishes to check up on the claims made there, just read the long post made by the user Ktrenal, albeit they mostly touch on the topic of fanfiction, some of their points can certainly help to explain the effects of Article 13 as a whole: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/8qxbv7/worried_to_death_about_article_13_and_what_it/
You know shit is real when Liquid shows up in a non-fanfiction thread.
Seriously though, I'm glad to see that it doesn't seem to affect the fanfictions. And all in all, I agree with article 13 being a real piece of horseshit. It really upsets me, to be frank.
Just when I thought Europe was better than North America...
http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-parliament-rejects-sweeping-internet-copyright-reforms-2018-7
The EU was going to suck anyway and America(yeah baby we rock)doesn't do what the EU does.
VICTORY!!!!
This whole debacle with the internet is just another one of many reasons why I hate the EU and love America.
You do know they're gonna start making us pay for "fast lanes" right?
Imma analyze some blood to celebrate!
Absolutely ridiculous. I don't see how this has anything to do with 'copyright protection'. I'm glad it got repealed, let's hope some sherlock won't decide to defend it or bring it up again. What a terrible idea.