But technology is adapting rapidly, and Europe has already passed other regulations that impact the digital space. To this day, even with the meme ban never occurring, a quick internet search for Article 13 yields several negative responses and old content from 2019. The screenshot below shows a tweet from the user-dependent media platform of a “mockup” of what might’ve happened to YouTube if draft Article 13 passed. While those are the negatives, there’s every chance that internet users might not notice these changes at all. These are humorous photos or video clips slightly-edited to reflect a variety of different meanings. For example, take this meme which is popular at the time of writing.

The EU’s proposed European Copyright Directive is being called a war on memes. “It’s very hard to make these tools identifying content, because they can’t identify context, and so they make decisions that are likely to be bad,” says Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group, a UK digital rights campaign group. Users would risk having their content removed by overzealous bots. Although the Article 13 vote has been passed by the European Parliament, this How to buy bitcoin on cash app doesn’t mean its provisions take place straight away. One random discord server I was in just linked everyone to saveyourinternet.eu because apparently EU is trying to kill internet as we know it.

“The onus will be on, for example, the social media platforms to filter their content and ensure that copyright is not breached on their platform,” says Shriane. The EU has ratified a new law that is designed to protect copyright, but it has some serious potential consequences for online content, in particular, user-generated stuff uploaded to sites like YouTube and SoundCloud. Currently, most video game publishers let gamers share videos of their gameplay online. Nintendo had been more restrictive, but recently relaxed its rules. Video gamers who share their gameplay on video-streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube highlight the complexity of copyright online.

Who is for and against the Directive?

Google even shared sample search pages back in January which removed the bits that could potentially fall foul of the legislation. Currently, YouTube can use algorithms and other clever sauce to detect copyright content after it has been uploaded, sometimes this can be a long time after upload. And generally your content is not removed, you just can’t put advertising against it. Many in the entertainment industry support Article 13, as it will hold websites accountable if they fail to license material or take it down.

With this law, all of these things that make up internet culture today (think Pepsi man, Tide pods, etc.) will cease to exist since the copyright bots will strike. “Unfortunately, this is our primary tool for doing business so everything is on hold for us until it’s fixed,” one user wrote on X at about 1 p.m. By 10 a.m., there were about 2,000 reports from people saying they were having problems with Microsoft 365, the outage detection service said. Championed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky opened to the public in February after starting as an invitation-only space. That invite-only period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features. Additionally, a demonstration protesting draft Article 13 arranged in Cologne resulted in an X trend throughout Germany, as shown in the post below.

Kathy Berry, a professional support lawyer at Linklaters, welcomed the government’s stance on the law, claiming it will “allow the UK to agree to more tech-friendly copyright provisions in free trade deals with other countries”. However, the controversial draft of the directive was finalized on February 13, 2019. Outside the political sphere, some musicians also voiced support for the Directive, like James Blunt, who uploaded a video expressing why he advocates for Article 13. Many people interpreted it to mean that snippets and images from a news story are still subject to the link tax, including big names like Google. Draft Article 13 caused controversy because its initial phrasing implied that the responsibility for ensuring copyright compliance fell on the service and not the content creators.

1. That invite-only period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other features.
2. The concerns about Article 13 are wide-ranging, including unease about the cost of compliance for smaller companies, and out-and-out censorship of the internet.
3. For the most part this would mean filters that check content as it’s uploaded would be mandatory for platforms including Facebook, Instagram, GitHub, Reddit and Tumblr, but also many much smaller platforms.
4. Supporters of the directive include musicians Debbie Harry and Paul McCartney.
5. Users would risk having their content removed by overzealous bots.
6. For example, take this meme which is popular at the time of writing.

Did the EU Ban Memes? Explanation of Article 13

Article 12a might stop anyone who isn’t the official organiser of a sports match from posting any videos or photos of that match. This could put a stop to viral sports GIFs and might even stop people who attended matches from posting photos to social media. But as with the articles above, all of this depends on how the directive is interpreted by member states when they make it into national law. The article intends to get news aggregator sites, such as Google News, to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms.

The internet may not have as fusion markets broker review much content generated from within Europe, however, so if you’re a fan of British humor or Europe’s take on popular memes, your experience of being online may be the poorer for it. Everything you upload onto the internet will be checked for copyright beforehand, so this could mean no more making memes or edits for your favorite fan Tumblr, among many other things. It’d also prevent social platforms from showing any kind of “snippet” of news stories, making it ultimately harder to share and link to content. There are fears it could outlaw news aggregators as we know them or even prevent any sites other than giants like Google, which could afford a license, from linking to articles at all.

Will the directive definitely pass into law?

In the video, Matt Koval, a content strategist at YouTube argues that – in its current form – Article 13 “threatens hundreds of thousands of creators, artists and others employed in the creative economy.” No one can quite agree how these platforms are expected to identify and remove this content. Proponents of the Directive on Copyright argue that this means that people are listening to, watching and reading copyrighted material without the creators being properly paid for it. Currently, platforms such as YouTube aren’t responsible for copyright violations, although they must remove that content when directed to do so by the rights holders. The Directive on Copyright would make online platforms and aggregator sites liable for copyright infringements, and supposedly direct more revenue from tech giants towards artists and journalists.

The contentious nature of the legislation saw it morph through multiple iterations before the different EU institutions agreed on a version after three days of talks in France. The European Union is trying to pass a hotly debated law on copyright. The European Copyright Directive has been years in the making, and on Tuesday, March 26, the European Parliament is due to vote on the final version of it.

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The last EU-wide copyright law was put in place in 2001, when the internet was a dramatically different place to how it is today. It’s designed to update the law and make it more relevant to the internet we know and love now, as well as to anticipate A Contribution to the SCF Literature change down the line. The legislation, however, is vague — one of the criticisms of it — in terms of what actually needs to change and how it’ll be upheld.