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European Union’s Article 11 and 13: Fair use and internet freedom is under threat

In 10 days, the European Union will vote on two articles that will affect fair use

So in case you don’t know, fair use is the law that allow content creators like me, as well as others amongst the cartoon community to use the intellectual property of other people for education, criticism, parody, etc.

Article 13

What the European Commission* proposed is to require all internet platforms such as Google, Facebook and Youtube, to use automated systems to filter out all content for copyright infringement. The problem with automated systems is that they could not tell the difference between fair use and some bloke who reuploaded a whole episode of a show online. So for example, if I do a South Park review, which falls under fair use, Youtube’s computerised filter will still take it down because it’s algorithm could detect the clips I used, but it cannot detect that it’s under fair use.

Such automated systems might not only remove content that falls under fair use, but also parodies, remixes, and memes.

The majority of us folks in the cartoon community on Youtube rely on showing clips of cartoons in a form of a review or analysis video. Such a filtration system would render this supposedly legal practice impossible, as the filtration system couldn’t even detect that our content is under fair use. Therefore, we will have to go through Youtube’s bureaucratic system in order to get our videos approved for fair use, a task that is rarely successful.

Article 11

Another article that might be implemented will introduce a so called ‘link tax’. Content creators and news redistributors such as Facebook or Google News will have to pay a tax in to the original intellectual property holder in order to link and quote parts of journalistic content online. This significantly reduces the ability for news to spread, and to a greater extent of concern, critics cannot hold the journalistic source accountable for any flaws as they are not allowed to source or quote from them, which is an impediment on the freedom of speech and criticism.

One could argue that all these policies could protect intellectual property holders. But the facts stand that an open- source internet, that allows content sharing and redistribution, as well as reviews and critiques that fall under fair use, have vastly increased the audience of many IP’s.

So how will this policy affect you? 

This will have an effect on everyone- regardless of whether you live within our outside of the EU. For example- if Youtube implements an computerised system to weed out duplicates of intellectual property, which could include instances of fair use, it’s going to scan through all videos worldwide, affecting content creators everywhere. This is not only the case for Youtube, but for many review or media critique blogs on sites like Tumblr, and many more.

As for the link tax, you won’t be able to share a news article on Facebook, Reddit, or in any social media. Sites such as Reddit, which is based on an analysis of a particular piece of text, might die due to this article

What can I do? 

For viewers within the European Union, I encourage you to do a little more research on this topic, and then you could use this tool linked below to contact your MEP. This tool gives you a framework of a script that you could use to make your statement. You could also find your MEP using a website that is linked below. European viewers could also contact their MEP’s via email and Twitter using saveyourinternet.eu- link is in the description as well.

For viewers outside of the European Union, persuade any friends who live in Europe to call their MEP’s with the procedure above, and most importantly- spread the word. Coverage on this new article has been rather sparse, and by garnering the attention of all, you might be able to put a stop to this.

Below you could find the proposal from the European commission, which has amendments from the Council of the EU- it’s 68 pages and rather difficult to read, but you could use it as a reference.

Since the coverage of this issue is so sparse, I might have have got some of my information wrong. If you spot any informational errors please state it in the comment section below. And if I got something significantly wrong, this video will be deleted, but from what I’ve seen from the EU’s perspective, and the perspective of digital rights groups, I am convinced that this new article could be a threat to our internet freedom of speech, criticism, and culture.

Resources:

CONTACT YOUR MEP:
https://saveyourinternet.eu/ 

 FIND YOUR MEP:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en… 

 TOOL FOR YOUR PROPOSAL FOR MEP:
https://changecopyright.org/en-US/

 Proposal for articles 11&13 from European commission and Council of the EU
http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/d… 

The proposal is relevant to directive 2000/21 EC
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conte… 

This post will be removed in approximately 11 days. If there is any significant error with the information in this post please message me, thank you. 

Sources/further research: 

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