The EU is preparing to finalize new legislation that will bring outdated copyright laws up to date for the internet age.
It's widely agreed that revamping copyright law is overall a good and necessary, if no overdue things that should happen.
But a lot of people are taking issue with a couple of specific clauses.
but a lot of people are taking issue with a couple of specific clauses.
What is Article 13?
Article 13 is the part of the copyright directive that controls how content is shared online.
That includes films, TV shows, music and pictures.
Now, this makes social media platforms and websites liable for anything that's uploaded to them it's in breach.
Copyright.
To combat this, it's widely thought that services will be have to implement upload photos to check content ever before it arrives online.
There are couple of reasons that people are taking issue with this.
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The first big big problem with this is that is still there are lot of the smaller services.
Are gonna really struggle to be able to afford to implement these copyright filters and build them as well.
This could leave us with fewer choices as to where we hang out and share content online.
Secondly, there is a fear that to comply with this legislation, the filters are gonna have to be quite heavy-handed.
Some are worried that hyper sensitive algorithms are going to pull down logistimit content that gets caught in the net.
Rather than encouraging creative talent to flourish on the internet, it's thought that writers, artists and musicians who upload their content to the internet could find it deleted without their consent.
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If you're worried about your GIFs and memes however, then you can breathe a sigh of relief.
At first, the legislation threatened the future of memes and GIFs as a form of internet expression, but last-minute changes that were made to Article 13 mean that they are protected afterall.
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Another part of the legislation, Article 11, is also raising eyebrows This section stipulates that big tech companies could have to pay news publishers what's being referred to as the link tax in order to show snippets of news articles, as well as messing up Google News.
This could really restrict the ability of smaller and medium sized news publishers to To thrive on the internet and it could allow fake news and disinformation to run riot in their place.
As well as affecting publishers this could also impact the ability of academics to site and share each other's work.
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Well it might seem like the copyright directive is whole bad news, that's not necessarily everyone's opinion.
Many believe that the new protections that the [UNKNOWN] provide creators will allow them to flourish and also profit from putting their work online.
How the law shakes that will ultimately come down to how it's implemented and interpreted once it passes Which is expected to do on April the ninth will have to wait and see how it all turns out.