Europe passes new copyright law that might change the internet forever

Image: Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images

The European Parliament has backed a copyright reform law that aims to protect content creators from unauthorized usage of their work, but also brings forth some rules that are radically different from the way internet functions now. 

The Copyright Directive, at one point known as the law that will kill memes, was passed with 348 votes for and 278 against. The Directive has undergone many revisions before arriving at its current state, but it still has several clauses which are highly controversial. 

For an overview of changes brought forth by the Copyright Directive, straight from the European Commission, go here. But the two clauses that caused the most hubbub are articles 11 and 13. 

Article 11 says that search engines and news aggregators must pay news websites for using snippets of their content. Article 13 says tech companies such as Google and Facebook are responsible for copyrighted material posted on their services without a proper license. 

Article 13 effectively transfers responsibility for posting copyrighted content from the user to the platform (you’ve likely seen something similar in action when YouTube mutes a video because it used a copyrighted song). But if platforms are to police the content, it’s possible that they’ll simply ban certain types of content altogether using so-called upload filters, ultimately stifling creativity and freedom of expression.

The Directive makes several exemptions for certain types of content. According to the European Commission, “the use of existing works for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature as well as parody are explicitly allowed” — and that last bit means memes and funny GIFs are cool to post. 

As for Article 11, the European Commission says the new rules won’t prohibit individual users from posting links to websites and newspapers. Furthermore, even platforms will be able to post links or re-use “single words or very short extracts” from other sites. 

Critics of the Copyright Directive, which include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, claim some of the wording (especially in Article 11) in it is vague and ambiguous, while the Article 13 opens doors for censorship, and that smaller businesses may be hurt by its demands. 

“Article 11 has a lot of worrying ambiguity: it has a very vague definition of “news site” and leaves the definition of “snippet” up to each EU country’s legislature,” the EFF wrote in a recent blog post. “…the new text of Article 13 still demands that the people who operate online communities somehow examine and make copyright assessments about everything, hundreds of billions of social media posts and forum posts and video uploads,” the post said.

The Copyright Directive is now subject for approval in the EU member states. Those that approve it will have to implemented in two years after the official publication.