Well if you haven’t heard yet, the EU passed article 13. What’s that’s mean? Well it means the internet just got a whole lot more censored...hard! We’re talking censorship of all the things you do daily. Meme sharing, gif sharing, screen shots, your personal photos are even vulnerable to copyright should there be any landmarks in the background. It’s insanity!

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”This vote sets dangerous precedents for the open Internet as we know it. It opens the doors to censorship under the disguise of “copyright”; it kicks off the implementation of infrastructures of surveillance that automatically and arbitrarily take down “unapproved” content without due process, and it sets the stage for an Internet where only those who can run expensive “copyright-checking” algorithms can prosper – a move that is sure to hinder innovation by thwarting the openness that made the Internet what it is today." - Openmedia.org

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”The effects of the law may be felt well beyond Europe's borders, given the global nature of the internet and the need for tech companies to come up with policies that can be broadly applied. That's what happened after the EU enacted the privacy-focused General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, in May 2018.”

"In a stunning rejection of the will [of] five million online petitioners, and over 100,000 protestors this weekend, the European Parliament has abandoned common-sense and the advice of academics, technologists, and UN human rights experts, and approved the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive in its entirety," said rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a blog post.“

”Article 13 dictates that anyone sharing copyrighted content must get permission from rights owners -- or at least have made the best possible effort to get permission -- before doing so. This doesn't just mean full songs, movies, TV shows and images. It also means gifs, memes and screenshots.”

”In order to enforce this, internet platforms will be forced to use upload filters to evaluate anything they put online. Even the wealthiest online services such as Facebook and YouTube, which have spent years developing this technology, haven't been able to prove pre-moderation of content is a foolproof method for preventing content from surfacing online that shouldn't be there.”

”Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, EU Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip pointed out that nothing in the text of the legislation stipulates the use of upload filters. But it's hard to imagine a way in which tech platforms and social networks could otherwise realistically comply with the rules.“

”The concern is that the legislation will lead to a far more locked-down and less creative version of the internet as we know it today. It may also stymie competition between internet platforms, as only the biggest and wealthiest may be able to afford to comply with the legislation.” - source

Thanks for stopping by. Get the word out because it seems that only a few people are actually talking about this.