Memes 'will be banned' under new EU copyright law, warn campaigners

A new copyright law from the European Union would lead to the banning of memes on the internet, campaigners are warning.

The EU Copyright Directive intends to protect the intellectual property rights of people who upload their material to the internet.

However, campaigners are warning the law will require "all content uploaded to the internet to be monitored and potentially deleted if a likeness to existing copyright is protected".

The campaign against a particular provision of the directive, Article 13, warns that online platforms would be economically damaged if they were forced to comply with its expensive obligations.

The law would "destroy the internet as we know it" warn the campaigners, who add it would "allow big companies to control what we see and do online".

Essentially, the campaigners are arguing the stringent copyright protections of Article 13 would damage the sharing of parody content and memes which, while themselves being original and creative works, are often developed from other people's original content.

Memes including image macros - such as the stock photograph of a distracted boyfriend taken by photographer Antonio Guillem - are often shared without the approval of the copyright holder.


https://news.sky.com/story/memes-will-be-banned-under-new-eu-copyright-law-warn-campaigners-11398577

Article 13 would require web giants to automatically filter copyrighted material — songs, images, videos — uploaded on their platforms, unless it has been specifically licensed. Despite its divisiveness, the piece of legislation passed by 438 votes to 226 with 39 abstentions in the European Parliament.

The most furious lobbying efforts focused on this article, with musicians, artists and authors coming out strongly in favour of the rule, and technology companies — such as YouTube — warning against its dangers.

Ban the meme!!!!

But allow this to carry on its merry way

That's fucking disgusting !

Yeah...stupid EU laws.

Intellectual property rights (aka copyright in the old days) are extremely important to the creators of original material.

Why should it be assumed that their legal rights are in any way inferior to those of plagiarisers?

I hold intellectual property rights to several examples of my previous literary work, and I would be bloody furious if I saw any of them reproduced online or in any other form without at least proper attribution.

eddie wrote:Yeah...stupid EU laws.

So I take it that you are happy to abrogate the intellectual property right of Ben and yourself so far as unauthorised plagiarisation in the Europan Union of extracts, or even the entirely, of the book that you have written?

So, will this mean that all the copy and pasting of news articles this forum is based on will be illegal?

HoratioTarr wrote:So, will this mean that all the copy and pasting of news articles this forum is based on will be illegal?  

Indeed and potentially countless video clips

I think its too broad an area, where so many meme's, articles, video's have been published, that its going to be near impossible to impliment.

Thor wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:So, will this mean that all the copy and pasting of news articles this forum is based on will be illegal?  

Indeed and potentially countless video clips

I think its too broad an area, where so many meme's, articles, video's have been published, that its going to be near impossible to impliment.

Would it be wise to take the risk though? I'm not so sure.

HoratioTarr wrote:So, will this mean that all the copy and pasting of news articles this forum is based on will be illegal?  

This is why I've always asked people to post a few paragraphs and a link - because we could run afoul of copyright laws.

Don't get me wrong, banning memes is stupid and it probably will prove to be unenforceable.

But people do spend their time, money, energy and talent on creating intellectual property, and it does deserve some protection.

This is a distinctly European problem...

Some videos and articles are already blocked down here --  maybe 10--15% of the video clips, and a smaller number of images, that others have posted on here can't be seen  --  if on YouTube you often get a message something like "not availabe in your country.." or ""blocked by copyright owner".

China has been regulating their internet traffic for ages, already..

Those who think that a EU directive will "kill" YouTube and similar services are the Euro-centric twonks who believes that the sun shines out of their collective arses.

Totally ignoring the fact that the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest growing in terms of both economic growth and internet uptake and output (some of those whiners in Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels probably haven't even heard of Alibabba yet..).

yeah it will just mean regional filtering, it's already a thing, no big deal
and the ways around it are already available, just VPN to somewhere in the USA