SCANDAL: Today, Europe Votes On A Law That Could Change The Internet -- Sold Out For A Russian Pipeline

By Aaron Kesel

European MEPs meet inside the European Parliament today to vote on a law that will forever change the World Wide Web ... and that vote was bribed for access to an oil pipeline, Tech Dirt reported.

If the numerous blatant mafioso tricks by EPP Group and other political parties involved in the copyright directive or ACTA 2, such as attempting to change the voting date, intimidating politicians by threatening them, and changing the article numbers wasn't enough, a report by a German publication has revealed that the real reason Germany caved to France in February is because the country was bribed in negotiations to get approval for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

To refresh your memory, Germany's delegation originally pushed back on the more extreme versions of Article 13, fighting for small companies by demanding that the final version of the text was clearer for a mom and pop shop business.

However, Germany then randomly caved in to France's demands and we were left with a shit deal leaving many questioning a "coincidence" in timing; because right after this, France also withdrew its objections to the Russian pipeline which is very controversial in the EU.

FAZ writes that there were rumors about Germany and France trading these two proposals, with Germany essentially selling out the World Wide Web in exchange for easier access to Russian gas. The publication now confirmed the rumor, stating they have seen documents.

Further, according to FAZ, the French delegation suggested the idea of France backing away from its opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in exchange for Germany forgetting its concerns on Article 13. Then the deal was sealed and France backed away from the pipeline and Germany sold out our Internet.

What's of particular note is that the U.S. is threatening sanctions against Germany for the Nord Stream pipeline deal. So this leak may affect U.S. relations with France and likely Germany.

https://twitter.com/YourMarkLubbers/status/1109539393499529217

Over the weekend on Saturday, March 23rd, hundreds of thousands of Europeans voiced their opinions by protesting against ACTA 2 on the streets throughout Europe. This followed a day of Internet blackouts on March 21st which many websites like Reddit, Wikipedia and others joined in to protest the directive.

The first wave of street protests in at least 20 different cities in 15 countries took place on January 19, 2019, all across Europe.

Anonymous and Pirates everywhere are calling on the general public to protest like never before and flood the streets of Europe to send a message — hands off our Internet, help Save Your Internet.

We urgently ask you to do everything in your power to support the StopACTA2 movement that is coordinated by the Polish StopACTA2 crew and the crew of Anonymous Worldwide and many others including Pirate Parties International with its co-chair Bailey Lamon and board member Raymond Johansen.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns that the proposed policies will increase censorship and surveillance throughout Europe creating a Stasi state. The digital rights organization specifically calls on people from Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Luxembourg, to speak out.

“Your national government depends on your goodwill to win the votes to continue its mandate. This is a rare moment in European lawmaking when local connections from citizens matter more than well-funded, international corporations,” EFF writes.

In December, a more than 4 million strong petition of Internet users and businesses was sent to the European Parliament calling for an end to the ACTA 2 proposals in the various Articles for “reforming digital copyright law.”

EFF notes that the petition was created because the law will inevitably lead to the creation of algorithmic copyright filters that only US Big Tech companies can afford (making the field less competitive and thus harder for working artists to negotiate better deals in) and because these filters will censor enormous quantities of legitimate material, thanks to inevitable algorithmic errors and abuse.

As Activist Post has continuously reported, Article 13 is designed to make website owners responsible for the content that users post on their websites, effectively forcing website owners to move behind an upload filter to protect themselves against huge claims by copyright owners and agencies that work on their behalfs like the MPAA and RIAA. Article 11 is an even worse concept. That has been dubbed the “link tax” article; if passed, linking to any copyrighted material is taxed upon.

Pirate Party Germany member Julia Reda notes the final horrifying shocking changes made to the bill in a blog post.

• Commercial sites and apps where users can post material must make “best efforts” to preemptively buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload – that is: all copyrighted content in the world. An impossible feat.
• In addition, all but very few sites (those both tiny and very new) will need to do everything in their power to prevent anything from ever going online that may be an unauthorised copy of a work that a rightsholder has registered with the platform. They will have no choice but to deploy upload filters, which are by their nature both expensive and error-prone.
• Should a court ever find their licensing or filtering efforts not fierce enough, sites are directly liable for infringements as if they had committed them themselves. This massive threat will lead platforms to over-comply with these rules to stay on the safe side, further worsening the impact on our freedom of speech.

Reda also expresses that for the link tax, there will be extra copyright for news sites, like the one you are reading now.

• Reproducing more than “single words or very short extracts” of news stories will require a licence. That will likely cover many of the snippets commonly shown alongside links today in order to give you an idea of what they lead to. We will have to wait and see how courts interpret what “very short” means in practice – until then, hyperlinking (with snippets) will be mired in legal uncertainty.
• No exceptions are made even for services run by individuals, small companies or non-profits, which probably includes any monetised blogs or websites.

Pirate Party Germany’s Julia Reda has also started a campaign called Pledge2019.eu against those who have voted for ACTA 2 utilizing the upcoming elections stating “if you vote for upload filters we won’t vote for you.”

https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1102489769706176513

With the news that Germany and France made a crooked deal -- our Internet's future for an oil pipeline -- it will be interesting to see how politicians vote on the copyright directive. Especially since they were told "vote for the Copyright directive or face 'bad press.'" I can assure you, we the people of the Internet, the horse heads, Nyan cats and the Anonymous collective are way worse than "bad press" and can sting way harder.

Rule 7 of the Internet Anonymous is still able to deliver. You ironically proved Rule 13 of the Internet with articles 11 and 13, "absolutely nothing is sacred."

A list will be made and if your name is on that list expect resistance to your re-election campaign for selling out our Internet to bureaucrats. Right now, you can stand for Internet freedom and transparency or end up a target of sovereign Internet citizens, and destroy your own political careers while answering angry phone calls explaining your vote. The choice, of course, is yours; the decision to oppose you is ours!

However, with news of the pipeline deal exchange, voting for this copyright directive is now akin to supporting corruption and bribery. Keep all that in mind as you go to cast your votes today, MEPs.

On social media, supporters are using the following hashtags for digital protests — #stopACTA2, #CopyrightDirective, #SaveYourInternet, #SaveTheInternet, #SaveOurInternet #Article11, #Article13, #UploadFilters, #LinkTax, #Filternet, #ACTA2 #Anonymous.

Supporters of the fight against ACTA 2 include: wolnemedia, SoMee.Social, Bitchute, Presearch, blogmedia24, Anonymous Bites Back, wykop, polskapartiapiratow, Pirate Parties International, kontestacja, Hackread.com, inspro, Stowarzyszenie Libertarianskie, Anonymous Info Army Poland, and Anon Ops Poland according to the StopActa2.org website.

You can find out more information by visiting StopACTA2.org, a website being run to support operation Stop ACTA 2. The website will be kept up to date with a full list of the existing protest locations. Are you an experienced organizer who wants to help organize in Europe for protesting against ACTA 2? Then contact [email protected] for any information, or if you want to start your own protest. As this article details, the cards are stacked against European MEPs; the more presence they see from we the people, the further they might listen instead of passing a dual draconian Orwellian law that threatens Internet freedoms, as well as smaller independent publications.

By @An0nkn0wledge

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.