Germany Wants To Limit Memes And Mashups Derived From Press Publishers' Material To 128-by-128 Pixels In Resolution, And Three Seconds In Length

from the yeah,-that-sounds-totally-reasonable dept

Last month, Mike wrote about France's awful proposals for implementing the EU Copyright Directive's upload filter (originally known as Article 13, but Article 17 in the final version). Just as France was the most vocal proponent of this dangerous development, so Germany was the main driving force behind the ancillary copyright requirement, also known as the snippet or link tax. And like France, Germany has managed to make its proposed national implementation (original in German) of what was Article 11, now Article 15, even worse than the general framework handed down by the EU. The former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda has a Twitter thread (in German) that picks out the main bad ideas. Under the German proposals, in general only "single words or very short extracts" of a press article can be quoted without a license. Specifically, free quotation is limited to:

the headline

a small-format preview image with a resolution of 128-by-128 pixels

a sequence of sounds, images or videos with a duration of up to three seconds

The proposal states that the new ancillary copyright does not apply to hyperlinks, or to "private or non-commercial use" of press publishers' materials by a single user. However, as we know from the tortured history of the Creative Commons "non-commercial" license, it is by no means clear what "non-commercial" means in practice. Press publishers are quite likely to insist that posting memes on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter -- all undoubtedly commercial in nature -- is not allowed in general under the EU Copyright Directive. We won't know until top EU courts rule on the details, which will take years. In the meantime, online services will doubtless prefer to err on the side of caution, keen to avoid the risk of heavy fines. It is likely they will configure their automated filters to block any use of press publishers' material that goes beyond the extremely restrictive limits listed above. Moreover, this will probably apply across the EU, not just in Germany, since setting up country-by-country upload filters is more expensive. Far easier to roll out the most restrictive rules across the whole region.

Before the new laws go into operation, people can submit their views to the German government at the email address

konsultation-urheberrecht@bmjv.bund.de

until 31 January 2020. Now might be a good time to remind the German lawmakers -- politely -- that supporters of the EU Copyright Directive insisted repeatedly that memes were "exempt" and "safe" under the new rules. Germany's unbalanced and extreme implementation shows that simply isn't true, and means that memes and mashups are most definitely under threat -- just as many of us warned.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: article 11, article 15, copyright, eu copyright directive, germany, linking, memes, neighboring rights, press snippets

Just As Everyone Predicted: EU Copyright Directive's Link Tax Won't Lead To Google Paying Publishers

from the duh dept

Look, not only was the following story totally predictable, but many of us directly warned the EU of what would happen if they instituted a "link" or "snippet" tax as part of the EU Copyright Directive. Of course, EU officials totally ignored all of the experts (or listened to a bunch of idiots in the publishing industry who insisted that "this time it will be different," despite multiple examples of link taxes not working) and put a link tax into law anyway.

France has been the most eager to put the EU Copyright Directive into practice, and now that it's about to establish a link tax for news aggregators, the one company such a link tax is mainly directed at (Google) has made it clear that (as it's done with previous such taxes) it's not planning to pay anyone to link to them (nor should it). Instead, Google has given webmasters (including publishers) greater control over how results linking to their pages will look -- including letting publishers detail the types of snippets it will allow.

Previously, it was only possible to allow a textual snippet or to not allow one. We're now introducing a set of methods that allow more fine-grained configuration of the preview content shown for your pages. This is done through two types of new settings: a set of robots meta tags and an HTML attribute.

Google has long allowed publishers to allow for a snippet or not, but now it's also letting publishers designate a "maximum length" of the snippet, or a maximum video or image preview.

With that in place, Google has told publishers in France that in order to respect the new Copyright Directive link tax, it is removing all snippets unless the publishers opt-in via the tools mentioned above, to voluntarily choose to add back the snippets.

When the French law comes into force, we will no longer display an overview of the content in France for European press publishers, unless the publisher has made the arrangements to indicate that it is his wish. This will be the case for search results from all Google services.

Publishers have always been able to choose whether or not they want their content to be accessible through Google's search engine or Google News. We have just put in place more granular webmaster settings that allow publishers to specify how much information they want to appear as a preview in the search results. Publishers around the world can use these new settings to choose the type of preview best suited to attract users to their site.

This is being framed by some as Google trying to "bypass" the EU Copyright Directive, but that's nonsense. This is Google complying with the EU Copyright Directive. Again, this is similar to how it's reacted in France and Germany, when similar link taxes were put in place. The problem is that the Eurocrats made a bunch of really dumb miscalculations here: first, they assumed that including snippets was more valuable to Google than it is to the publishers. It is not. Their traffic will decline without snippets, meaning many will quickly rush to opt-in to add them back. Second, they assumed that putting a tax on something wouldn't change the incentives and that Google would just carry on offering the same snippets, but just paying for them. They were wrong.

Again, we went through all of this five years ago with the German link tax, and even though Google effectively did the same thing, when asked about this, I distinctly remember some EU politicians insisting that it would be different if the whole EU all agreed to a link tax, and that Google would have to pay. What's incredible is that these same politicians will now whine and complain and lie, saying that Google is evading the tax when it's actually complying with the law as written -- and complying in the same way they complied with similar laws in the past. And, indeed, France's Culture Minister has already put out a laughable statement arguing that in complying with the law, Google is violating it:

I call for a real global negotiation between Google and the publishers: the unilateral definition of the rules of the game is contrary to both the spirit of the directive and its text. I will speak very soon with my European counterparts to remedy this situation.

How hard is this to understand? If you make something against the law (aggregating news and posting snippets without a license), don't be surprised if the companies who have been doing that stop doing that. You outlawed something, and so Google obeyed your new law and stopped doing it.

If the EU Parliament wanted a different outcome, perhaps instead of attacking those of us who warned this would happen, they should have listened to us. Apparently that's just too difficult.

Filed Under: aggregators, article 11, article 14, controls, france, link tax, metatags, news, snippet tax
Companies: google

As Expected, EU Nations Rubber Stamp EU Copyright Directive

from the and-now-the-real-fight-begins dept

As was widely expected, the EU Council (made up of representatives of the EU member states) has officially rubber stamped the EU Copyright Directive that the EU Parliament passed a few weeks back. There had been some talk of various countries, such as Sweden, Germany and the UK possibly changing their vote. Sweden, in the end, actually did do so, but to stop the Directive, it was necessary for the UK or Germany to do so as well, and they did not.

There is some irony in the UK (still a part of the EU for the moment) voting to approve this. After the EU Parliament passed the Directive, the UK's Boris Johnson (who is somewhat famously buffoonish) tweeted about how this was yet another reason for the UK to leave the EU.

If you can't read that, it says:

The EU's new copyright law is terrible for the internet. It's a classic EU law to help the rich and powerful, and we should not apply it. It is a good example of how we can take back control.

The only problem with this is that Boris' own Tory government has been strongly supporting the law all along and, of course, voted happily for it today. Boris Johnson being full of shit is perhaps not newsworthy, but it's at least worth pointing out just how silly the whole thing has become.

A few countries besides Sweden also voted against the law: Italy, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Belgium, Estonia and Slovenia abstained from voting. So, basically most of the larger countries voted for it.

And, now, the big question is how will the various countries implement the law. Technically, they have two years to do so, and this should be watched closely. France's culture minister has already said he's hopeful that France will implement the law by the summertime, so that country may be the first. That would be interesting, considering that France has also been the most committed to the absolute worst ideas around the law. France may then "set the standard" for how to implement Articles 11 and 13 in a manner that some smaller countries may mimic. Of course, if France actually follows through on the dumbest of all implementations (a decent possibility), it will also make for an interesting test case to see if companies simply decide to block services in France.

Either way, once the laws are implemented, we expect there will be legal challenges to them, and then we'll have years of court battles to fight, while the EU continues to wonder why successful internet companies don't seem to ever come from the EU...

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, content filters, copyright, eu, eu commission, eu copyright directive, link tax

Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

from the well-that's-messed-up dept

Earlier today we wrote about the terrible vote by the EU Parliament to approve the Copyright Directive including the dangerous Articles 11 and 13. As we noted in the original post, the key vote was whether to allow amendments that could have deleted those two articles. That vote failed by just five votes, 317 to 312. Unfortunately, soon after the vote was finalized, a few of the MEPs who voted against the plan for amendments -- Peter Lundgren and Kristina Winberg -- said they voted incorrectly and meant to vote for the amendments in order to get rid of Articles 11 and 13. Apparently, someone changed the vote order which threw them off:

What happened was that in the middle of a sitting meeting, it was decided to make an adjustment in the order of voting in itself. This did not appear in a clear way where the President was also somewhat confused.

Indeed, soon after that some others admitted to voting incorrectly, believing they were voting for something else.

A few hours later, the EU put out the official voting record which includes an astounding 13 MEPs who said they voted incorrectly. Ten of them said they meant to vote for amendments. Two of them said they wanted to vote against it. And one did not want to vote. As you can see in the screenshot below, everyone next to the "+" would have voted for the amendments if they had actually realized what they were voting on.

All told, that would have shifted the vote and allowed for a vote on amendments. By a slim majority, the law would have been opened up to deleting Articles 11 and 13. In other words, whoever changed the order of the vote pulled a fast one and got the EU Copyright Directive approved... despite the EU Parliament not clearly agreeing on that. If you're wondering what can be done now... the answer is not much. According to the EU:

MEPs may still issue corrections to their vote in case of mistakes, which will however not change the outcome

The vote the clicked on is the vote they got. It is frustrating beyond all belief that we ended up killing the open internet through tricking a bunch of MEPs by switching the voting order. Incredible.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, changed votes, copyright, eu, eu parliament, votes

EU Puts An End To The Open Internet: Link Taxes And Filters Approved By Just 5 Votes

from the a-sad-day-for-the-open-internet dept

Well, it was a nice run while it lasted, but the EU Parliament has just put an end to the open internet. By the incredibly thin margin of just five votes, the Parliament voted against any amendments to the proposal -- which was a necessary step to fixing or deleting Articles 11 and 13. After that, they voted to approve the EU Copyright Directive, including the terrible versions of both Article 11 and 13. This is an inauspicious day and one that the EU will almost certainly come to regret. While we now need to see how each of the member states will implement the actual laws put forth in the Directive (meaning the damage in some states may be more mitigatable than in others), on the whole the EU Copyright Directive requires laws that effectively end the open internet as an open communications medium. Sites that previously allowed content creators to freely publish content will now be forced to make impossible choices: license all content (which is literally impossible), filter all content (expensive and failure-prone), or shut down. Sites that used to send traffic to news sources may now need to reconsider, as doing so will inexplicably require payment.

At best, the EU--for all its complaints about Google and Facebook--has just locked both companies into a dominant position. They can afford this. Others cannot. And, the legacy gatekeepers in the media and entertainment business will quickly pivot to seeking to export this model elsewhere.

The MEPs who voted for this are up for election in two months, and hopefully the EU shows them the door, but in the meantime, today is a sad day for the open internet. I am sure that some will be celebrating on the false belief that this will magically "help artists." It will not. You just handed more power to giant companies, and took it away from creators. In time, one hopes, those who mocked the protesters and activists and actual experts will come to realize just how much they destroyed today.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, closed internet, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, eu parliament, filters, free speech, link tax, open internet

Huge Protests Across Europe Protest Article 13; Politician Lies And Claims They Were Paid To Be There

from the not-bots dept

As expected, people took to the streets in the EU this week to protest the EU Copyright Directive, the censorship filters of Article 13, and the snippet tax in Article 11. Most of the protests took place in Germany, where reports are that over 150,000 protesters showed up to let their elected officials know that this law is a disaster (other reports put the number closer to 200,000 protesters).

Indeed, things got so crazy, that the Berlin police announced that there were way more people than expected, and protesters needed to change their planned route to roads that could better accommodate such a large crowd.

Many of the signs included memes, or the statement "we are not bots," which appears to have confused some in the media, such as DW.com, which claimed people said: "banners included the phrase "We are not bots," a reference to robotic-like social media posts." Uh, no. The reference to "we are not bots" is in direct response to supporters of Article 13 lying and claiming that all of the arguments against Article 13 were simply coming from internet bots as a way to discount the concerns of millions of EU residents as well as those of us around the world.

Of course, what happens when the politicians who insisted it was "just bots" arguing against Article 13 have to contend with the fact that at least 150,000 real live humans showed up on their doorstep to protest? They just keep lying. German MEP Daniel Caspary, who chairs the large CDU/CSU group in the EU Parliament told a German publication a completely made up lie -- reminiscent of the kind of "fake news" propaganda that has been used elsewhere, that all of the protesters were actually paid to be there. He literally called them "bought protesters" and said that a non-profit organization offered protesters €450 to show up at the protest. And then insisted that this was all a threat to democracy (per the translation):

"Now it is obviously being attempted to prevent the adoption of copyright even with bought protesters. Up to 450 euros are offered by a so-called NGO for the demonstrators. The money seems to come, at least partially, from major American Internet corporations. When American corporations with massive use of disinformation and bought protesters try to prevent laws, our democracy is under threat. "

Think about that for a second. A major political leader is so infatuated with his false belief that real people couldn't possibly be upset about the plan to fundamentally move away from an open internet, that he insists Google must have paid the protesters €450 each to show up. That's insane, and nothing that any elected official should be saying. Journalist Emanuel Karlsten looked into the details of this and found that Caspary had taken a completely different bit of information and used it to attack the integrity of all the protesters. What had really happened was a few weeks earlier, the digital rights organization EDRi had offered to cover travel costs for a small number of activists to come talk to MEPs. It was not for the demonstrations, but for a small group of activists, who otherwise could not afford to meet the MEPs in person, to travel. Somewhere around a dozen such grants were made and it allowed this small group of folks to meet with MEPs last week, totally unrelated to the protests.

As more and more people started calling out Caspary, he refused to correct his misleading statement for an entire day, before insisting that everyone misunderstood him and he never really meant that all demonstrators got paid. However, the "statement" he links to is simply more pro-Article 13 propaganda, insisting that the protesters cannot be taken seriously because some idiot sent Axel Voss a death threat. Meanwhile, Caspary's own thread -- that he insists is clarifying his position -- then immediately says we should still criticize financial support for those seeking to lobby politicians. He says that as if the lobbyists in favor of Article 13 didn't also provide "financial support" for some musicians and creators to go lobby them as well. It is standard practice for NGOs to pay travel costs for activists to present their position before elected officials, because otherwise politicians would only hear from lobbyists, and not from the actual people. This happens on all sides of every issue -- and it's not paying them for their testimony, but for their travel expenses to get somewhere they couldn't otherwise go.

So I'm curious if Caspary will now agree to discount any lobbying he heard in favor of Article 13 from artists who received travel support to go see him too? Or does his position only cover the other side?

Meanwhile, as Communia noted, in quite a contrast, at the same time as these protests were happening across Germany and elsewhere, in France, supporters of Article 13 -- the execs from collection societies who stand to profit (literally) the most from the passage of Article 13 -- gathered to drink champagne and hold up little yellow pieces of paper in support of the law:

You really should click to open the images and to see the contrast. Thousands upon thousands of people take to the streets to protest against a law that will close off the open internet, while those who will profit from such a closed internet sip champagne at a private party and smile meekly while holding up pieces of paper in support of screwing over the public. How nice.

Either way, no matter what lies politicians tell themselves, they might want to think about so many people coming out to protest over this issue, especially given that the next EU Parliamentary elections are in just a few months. Or will they just claim that Google paid them to vote, too?

All images in this post come from Netzpolitik, which says they are free for anyone to use -- which may only be true until Article 13 is enacted into law, at which point, it would be an impossible liability risk to continue posting them on most sites.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, bots, copyright, daniel caspary, eu, eu copyright directive, filters, germany, protests

Sites Warn EU Users Of Just How Bad Article 13 Will Be

from the speak-up dept

As we mentioned, a bunch of websites started protesting yesterday in the lead up to next week's vote on Article 11 and Article 13 that will fundamentally change the nature of the internet. The main ones were various European Wikipedia editions, which completely blacked out and posted a warning message. Here's the one in Germany (with automatic browser translation -- the original, obviously, is in German):

Different sites are doing different things -- and for some it depends on whether you're visiting from the EU or not, but it's good to see so many sites coming together on this. Reddit, as explained in a blog post on its site, are telling any EU Redditor who tries to post something new that it's blocked:

Lots of others have stepped up as well. The ever popular online streaming site Twitch is warning people in a variety of ways, including creating a video about its concerns:

And has also put the message all over its social media:

Patreon, the very popular website for helping creators get paid has warned its creators that under Article 13, it may need to block their content:

Others who have spoken up include Creative Commons and the Internet Archive:

Another site that joined in -- which we'll refrain from screenshotting -- is the most popular porn site on the internet, Pornhub.

Between all of this, the question now remains: will the EU Parliament ignore all of these voices? Ignore all of the over 5 million people who signed a Petition against Article 13? Will it ignore all the companies who have said that Article 13 will put them at a disadvantage compared to Google? Will it ignore of the content creators who rely on platforms like Twitch and Patreon?

Filed Under: #saveyourinternet, article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, filters, intermediary liability
Companies: creative commons, internet archive, patreon, reddit, twitch, wikipedia

A Century Ago We Killed The Radio Commons; Don't Let The EU Do That To The Internet

from the a-history-lesson dept

As the EU gets set to vote on the EU Copyright Directive, it seemed like a good time for a little history lesson. Many people don't know this, but in the early days of radio, it was not just considered a broadcast media. It was considered an open commons for anyone to use. The airwaves were the public airwaves, and the public was free to use them:

It’s easy to forget that the broadcasting airwaves are—and once were treated as—a commons, owned by citizens, not powerful media companies.

At the dawn of the broadcasting era, the free market prevailed. The government set no rules. The 1912 Radio Act authorized the federal Commerce and Labor Department to issue radio station licenses to U.S. citizens upon request. Which it did...

Admittedly, as that article notes, this created some amount of chaos, mainly because the spectrum got too crowded, and there was widespread interference between different signals that made the whole space a mess. Over time, laws were put in place to "regulate" the wild west, but what happened was we turned what had been an open commons into a locked up space where only giant media companies could prevail. The US, at the very least, decided that the way to deal with this wild west was to treat spectrum as a property right that could be "licensed." And in doing so it set things up such that large broadcasters could collect many licenses and dominate markets.

What had been the open spaces of the public to use for a variety of creative endeavors turned into a locked down space for giant corporations.

While there are some notable differences, the attempt by the EU to pass Article 13 is truly an attempt to replay this unfortunate scenario nearly a century later. There was a good rationale for radio regulations in the past -- dealing with all of the interference that made using radio difficult -- and as one 1927 academic so succinctly put it: "highly annoying and almost destructive."

But, of course, we lost something when we went from an open radio system for the public to use to one that was locked up among just a few corporations. And the wonderful thing about the internet was that we didn't have the same limitations. There is no "interference" like there is with more limited radio spectrum. And while there are reasonable questions about companies dominating parts of the internet, others are not completely locked out as they were in radio.

Unfortunately, the entire design of the EU Copyright Directive is an attempt to do the same sort of thing to the internet: to lock it down. The EU Copyright Directive -- in particular Articles 11 and 13 -- are designed to make the internet a bland corporate broadcast medium dominated by a few giant companies. This dismisses the roots of the internet as a commons-based communications medium that anyone can use.

The very structure of Article 13 makes this clear. The demand that everything must be "licensed" on internet platforms makes no sense. Do you "license" content in order to communicate with your friends? Do you license a song to sing? Do you license it when you quote from a book? Licensing is not necessary for communication -- it is only necessary for "broadcast." This is the core problem that the legacy gatekeepers have with the internet. It's a communications medium, and they come from the broadcast era. Their entire structure is built off of licensing to broadcasters. And rather than recognize that everything has changed, their only play is to try to shove the internet into a similar broadcast structure.

We killed off the open commons of radio nearly a hundred years ago. Hopefully the EU chooses not to do the same to the internet this year.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, broadcast, commons, communications, copyright, creativity, eu, eu copyright directive, eu parliament, gatekeepers, radio

EU Internet Companies Warn EU Parliament Not To Vote For Articles 11 & 13; Say They'll Hand The Internet To Google

from the don't-do-it dept

Just as so many sites are protesting today, and people plan to be protesting this weekend, 130 EU-based internet companies have signed a powerful letter to the EU Parliament explaining why it must reject Articles 11 and 13. It goes through many of the same explanations many of us have made over the past few months, but also (importantly) highlights that passing this legislation will basically hand the internet to Google, one of only a very tiny number of companies who can actually deal with the consequences and requirements of such heavy-handed, poorly drafted laws:

The companies signing this letter to the European Parliament are urging you to vote against Articles 11 and 13 of the proposed copyright directive. The text of the trilogue agreement would harm the European economy and seriously undermine the ability of European businesses to compete with big Internet giants like Google.

We support the goal of the legislation to protect the rights of creators and publishers, but the proposed measures are inadequate to reap these benefits and also fail to strike a fair balance between creators and all other parts of society. The success of our business enterprises will be seriously jeopardized by these heavy-handed EU regulations.

The letter -- written and signed by people who have helped build key components of the internet, explain just how Article 13 will undermine the internet ecosystem, and Article 11 will ruin a bunch of important businesses:

Especially Article 13 is dangerously experimenting with the core foundation of the Internet’s ecosystem. Making companies directly liable for the content of their users forces these businesses to make billions of legal decisions about the legality of content. Most companies are neither equipped nor capable of implementing the automatic content filtering mechanisms this requires, which are expensive and prone to error.

Article 11 is creating a completely new intellectual property right for press publishers. The experience with similar laws in Germany and Spain raises serious doubts about the expected benefits, while the negative impact would be very real. An additional layer of exclusive rights would make it harder to clear the necessary legal hurdles to start new projects. It will make entrepreneurs more hesitant to just launch new projects. Europe would lose any chance to play a significant role on the world stage. Startups that build services based on aggregated online information would go out of business, and every company that publishes press summaries of their appearance in the media would be in violation of this law.

And then it highlights (again, because some of us have been pointing this out), that for all the talk of how Articles 11 and 13 were needed to push back on the big American internet companies, all they will really do is lock them in, and harm all of the EU internet companies who signed the letter:

Although the purpose of these regulations is to limit the powers of big US Internet companies like Google or Facebook, the proposed legislation would end up having the opposite effect. Article 13 requires filtering of massive amounts of data, requiring technology only the Internet giants have the resources to build. European companies will be thus forced to hand over their data to them, jeopardizing the independence of the European tech industry as well as the privacy of our users. European companies like ours will be hindered in their ability to compete or will have to abandon certain markets completely.

Given all of these issues it is noteworthy that the final trilogue agreement lacks meaningful safeguards for small and medium enterprises. The broad scope of this law would most likely lead to less new companies being founded in Europe and existing companies moving their headquarters out of Europe. For all those reasons we urge every pro-Startup politician to vote against Article 11 and Article 13.

One hopes that the EU Parliament will actually listen -- though I can't wait to hear Axel Voss and friends explain how this letter from Google's competitors who are warning about how the bill will entrench Google and limit competition is really "Google shilling."

It remains truly disappointing to me how few Article 13 supporters have actually been willing to engage on the specific concerns and criticisms of the bill. No matter what anyone says -- even those who explain how it will lock Google into a dominant position are dismissed as promoting Google's message. The lack of intellectual honesty displayed by supporters of Article 13 is truly a shame.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, europe
Companies: google

Tell The EU Not To Wreck The Internet

from the last-chance dept

As we noted earlier this week, a bunch of sites are taking part in an internet blackout today and urging their visitors, especially those in the EU to contact their MEPs, asking them to sign the pledge not to vote for Article 13. As the page notes, Article 13 is bad for the public, bad for creators and bad for innovation.

Because this is being pushed (misleadingly) as being good for creators, I wanted to go into a bit more depth as to why that's wrong and why this will be bad for most creators. Over the past two decades, contrary to what some lobbyists will tell you, the internet has been an incredible boon to creativity and creators. The internet has made it easier to create, to promote, to distribute, to build a fan base, and to monetize your works than ever before in history. The idea that the internet has somehow harmed creators is a laughable myth. What the internet did do was change the model by which creators could make money. Historically, outside of the absolute fringes, it required you to get "accepted" into the club by a giant gatekeeper -- a giant gatekeeper most creators couldn't even get in front of, let alone sign a deal with. And, since that was the only path to success, those gatekeepers signed creators to insanely bad deals. They would own your copyright, not you. They would be in charge of what you created. They would be in charge of the relationship with fans. They would control how the content was distributed. You might have some input, but it was theirs now.

And, yes, they might give you an "advance," but it was structured as a loan. You would need to use that advance to pay for everything having to do with the creation of your work -- and then the gatekeeper would bill against that "advance" for any revenue that came in. The amount of money you actually made would be tiny -- and the likelihood of ever actually "recouping" the advance was so slim, that record labels were known to not even keep records because they knew they'd never have to give you another dime.

Compare that to the world today, with the internet. In the modern world, any content creator can just go online. They can create using tools available online. They can upload their content for free at a ton of different sites. They can reach a worldwide audience. They can promote. They can build a fanbase. They can make money from a bunch of different platforms. And they retain their copyright. They retain control. They don't have some giant company telling them what to do or keeping every penny that comes in.

But Article 13 changes how things work. Supporters insist that it will magically make the big internet companies start paying artists more. But that's a myth. The entire structure of Article 13 is designed on purpose to be bad for the internet. The entire setup is to try to pressure internet companies into purchasing licenses, and it does that by basically saying, "if you don't buy a license for every piece of content, you will face crippling and impossible lawsuits."

But that's an impossibility. How do you license every piece of content that anyone might post on your service? There is no way. Supporters of the bill insist that collection societies will step into the void -- but need I remind you of the myriad stories of how nearly every collection society falls prey to corruption, which frequently involves artists simply not getting paid at all?

Even if collection societies do fill the void, how will lesser known artists actually get paid? As we've seen, the answer is they won't. Collection societies collect all the money, and since they can't track what belongs to less well known creators, they just give the money to the successful ones.

And even if they could figure all of that out, most creators would still get screwed. The only way this system works is if there are just a few giant organizations on each side of the negotiations. The giant content creator gatekeepers and the big internet platforms. There is no room for smaller, more innovative internet platforms. There is no place for more targeted, niche communities to spring up, where artists can build closer relationships with their fans. Bandcamp is one of the best tools out there right now for musicians -- and has provided millions of dollars to musicians. How does it survive in a post-Article 13 world? I'm not sure it can. How does that help musicians? I have no idea. Patreon has become an amazing source for crowdfunding for musicians. How does it handle Article 13? Does Patreon really need to license all content? Again, how does it help artists to shut down Patreon?

And even if you still think that it's fine to just have some giant licensing orgs on one side and a few giant internet platforms on the other, if the cost for the internet platforms goes up drastically, how many "free" services will they still offer? Do you remember the bad old days before you had YouTube/Vimeo where you could upload videos for free? You had to do something like set up a "RealNetwork" server -- which cost a ton and didn't work most of the time. And you had to pay for a ridiculous amount of bandwidth to host and stream your own video. YouTube, Vimeo and others made that all totally free. But if they now have to give a massive chunk of money to license-holders, why will they keep providing such services for free?

The end result is that a few gatekeepers regain their position as gatekeepers. A few internet giants get locked into their position without much fear of competition. And artists and creators get totally screwed.

This is not the internet we should want. Tell the EU to reject Article 13.

Filed Under: #saveyourinternet, article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, eu parliament, filters, intermediary liability, licenses