European Parliament endorses controversial copyright law

Council Directive concerningcopyright on the Internet was approved by the European Parliament by a majority vote. 348 out of 658 members voted for the Copyright Directive. And this is despite the fact that web giants such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit were publicly indignant and protesting.

Dark day for internet freedom: The @Europarl_EN has rubber-stamped copyright reform including # Article13 and # Article11. MEPs refused to even consider. The results of the final vote: 348 in favor, 274 against #SaveYourInternet pic.twitter.com/8bHaPEEUk3

- Julia Reda (@Senficon) March 26, 2019

Controversial articles were numbered 11 and 13. They propose to introduce a fee for the use of parts of the content of someone else's text. This item has already been called "reference tax". And also filter content uploading (something similar is done on YouTube).

In the voting process it was possible to takeDirective with the exception of conflicting points. However, the reform was approved by the European Parliament as a whole. From now on, sites like Twitter or Facebook will have to restrict the text used in the links or pay publishers. Publishing platforms, on the other hand, will need to constantly monitor whether the copyright of the text published by users on the Internet does not affect anyone’s copyright.

Thus, almost all news resources are notwill be able to function without obtaining consent from the source for publication. Moreover, all content uploaded to the Web will have to be filtered, clarifying whether it does not violate copyrights. The exception will be free encyclopedias and open source platforms. They will be able to use pictures and texts from other sources.

The controversial directive should updateEU legislation in the field of copyright and align it with the realities of the digital modern world. The final word on the Copyright Directive will be issued by the EU Council on April 9.

Source: theverge.com