EU approves Orwellian 'meme ban' law that will result in internet censorship.
Article 13, the EU's Orwellian law that will censor and limit the Internet's freedom of speech and expression in the name of “copyright material” has been approved by the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs.
The law would require FB. Goggle Twitter and all other websites to install sysytem that will censor, delete and remove any material which is deemed to have “copyright issues”, this of course refers to internet memes, but also videos gifs etc... etc... Earlier in June, an open letter signed by 70 of the biggest names of the internet, including the creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, and the Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, argued that article 13 would take “an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users”. "Article 13 effectively deputizes social media and other Internet companies as copyright police, forcing them to implement a highly invasive surveillance infrastructure across their entire service offerings," says cryptographer and security specialist Bruce Schneier, one of the letter's signatories. "Aside from the harm from the provisions of Article 13, this infrastructure can be easily repurposed by government and corporations – and further entrenches ubiquitous surveillance into the fabric of the Internet." Introducing the legislative drive in 2016, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he wanted "journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work". The European Commission says that the copyright protections would apply to that work "whether it is made in studios or living rooms, whether it is disseminated offline or online, whether it is published via a copying machine or commercially hyperlinked on the web." Though the new rule has been approved by the EU's JURI commission, they will not go into effect until they are passed by the European Parliament, which is expected to pass it. The proposed law will still have to be agreed with representatives from the EU’s 28 governments before becoming law, but the today's vote reduces the chances of serious changes. The most shocking thing about this is the overwhelming silence coming from the main stream media regarding this Orwellian authoritarian measures the EU seeks to impose on the internet. Literally the only place this attack on democracy, freedom of speech and expression by the EU is even being discussed is online, with MSM ignoring and hiding this issue from their viewers. The results of article 13 could change the web forever by opening a backdoor for large corporations, governments and politcal bodies like the EU to start censoring online material that they don't like or approve by using the justification that they're "breaking copyright laws".
