The European Parliament has voted in favour of a controversial new copyright directive that could force tech giants to do much more to stop the spread of copyrighted material on their platforms. The European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, to give it its full name, is designed to update existing copyright laws for the internet age.
Simply put, the Directive on Copyright places more responsibility on websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to make sure that copyrighted materially isn’t being illegaly shared on their platforms. Until now, the onus has mostly been on the copyright holders – usually the companies that produce audio, video or written content – to enforce copyright protection but under the new law this responsibility will shift onto the major platforms themselves.
More:
So what does this all mean? Well for starters as a content creator targeting the audiences in the E.U. you can kiss the following goodbye:
o Reviews
o Parodies
o Covers
o Satire
o Dubs or remixes
o Memes or pictures of famous works or people
o Excerpts from copyrighted music, books or films
It also means that Creators in the EU have practically zero chance of creating content any more because most will be immediately rejected.
Full text of the Article 13 directive can be found here:
Be aware this has been voted in and that the EP is currently working on the final version before implementing.
Some more background plus info on Article 11 “Link tax”
Article 11 is where you no longer allowed to link to articles.
h/t Toledo Steel