As of July 4th 2018, the Internet as we know it might be dead for good.
The European Parliament is passing a new Copyright Directive. Article 13 #CensorshipMachine will impose widespread censorship of all the content we share online. Art, fanfiction, parodies, remixes, mashups, memes, etc.. Anything that you do not hold the rights over will be taken down.
Article 13 would force all online platforms to police and prevent the uploading of copyrighted content, or make people seek the correct licenses to post that content. Internet platforms hosting large amounts of user-uploaded content must monitor user behaviour and filter their contributions to identify and prevent copyright infringement.
Such filters will be mandatory for platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and Instagram, but also much smaller websites.
Last Tuesday (19th June 2018) a group of more than 70 people who have played important roles in building the internet and developing it (Tim Berners-Lee, Vincent Cerf,
Jimmy Wales, Mitchell Baker…) into what it is today addressed an open letter to the members of the European Parliament:
“As creators ourselves, we share the concern that there should be a fair distribution of revenues from the online use of copyright works, that benefits creators, publishers, and platforms alike.
But Article 13 is not the right way to achieve this. By requiring Internet platforms to perform automatic filtering all of the content that their users upload, Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users. […] The damage that this may do to the free and open Internet as we know it is hard to predict, but in our opinions could be substantial.”
Since ancient times, the Rio Tinto Mines in Huelva Province, Spain, have been excavated for copper, silver, gold, and other minerals. They are named for the nearby Rio Tinto River, which — as a result of centuries of mining — is extremely acidic and has a distinct red-orange color. After being closed for more than a decade, the mines reopened in 2015 an remain operational today.
If you’re European, in a couple of weeks you will be denied any and all access to fandom contents on Tumblr and everywhere else on the internet. Here’s why.
On June, 20th the JURI of European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law. These articles are also known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles.
Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the fandom culture. Which means you won’t be able to upload any type of fandom works like fan arts, fan fictions, gif sets from your favourite films and series, edits, because it’s all copyrighted material. And you won’t also be able to share, enjoy or download other’s contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted.
But not everything’s lost yet. There’s another round of voting scheduled for the early days of July.
What you can do now to save our internet, is to share these informations with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 11 and 13.
Here you can find more news and all the details to contact your MEP:
@sweetss80@me-fish good grief. Look, are we sure this is entirely true? How can anyone possibly protest to fanart? Gifsets, just possibly, under copyright, images, maybe, but how could they police edits? If you have seen my manips you would agree that no bot could identify the sources. I would want to make sure of the sources on this before accepting they could be so unreasonable about copyright or so dim as to think they could police it all.
I heard some right-wing website was spreading fake or exaggerated stories about something like this…lets check the sources first before assuming this is true.
not from Europe but this is some fucked up bullshit!!
If this is being voted for good, I won’t be able to maintain this blog properly, and there’s a possibility that fan artists, editors, even fanfic writers won’t be able to participate as much in this community anymore.
Please sign the petition, spread this post, help any way you can.