The internet as we knew it in Europe is now officially over.
Well, the internet as you know it in Europe is officially over.
The EU Council voted today in a final vote and approved the EU's article 17 (previously known as article 13). Poland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden have voted against the copyright directive and have even issued a joint statement denouncing it. Belgium, Estonia and Slovenia abstained. The rest of the EU memebers voted for it, making it a majority win for the adoption of the EU internet censorship law. After it was approved by the Council of the European Union it will now be adapted as law by all EU member states.
The law will also require FB, Google, Twitter and all other social medias and websites to install systems, or "upload filters", 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...
The EU says the memes and parody/satire content will be protected, but that's of course utter bullshit, because the algorithm in the upload filters will determine what content to take down, and algorithms don't have a sense of humor.
A short satirical video explains what the EU is about to do.
Earlier in June 2018, 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, stated that the EU's "copyright" law 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”. Cryptographer and security specialist Bruce Schneier, one of the letter's signatories had this to say about it: "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. 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."
EU member states will now have a further two years to implement the directive into their own laws, and effectivly start censoring the internet in their countries. Should countries fail to put laws in place by this point, the European Union can initiate infringement against those countries, which may lead to judicial hearings within the Court of Justice of the European Union, and potentially financial penalties as determined from these cases. Essentially, the results of article 13/17 will 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".
