Reply To: Article 11/13 for the EU and future of the site

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

I’m pretty certain that the EU has never supported the “fair use” policy employed by content creators in the US. To date, it hasn’t stopped people in the EU from creating memes, sharing stock photos and everything else we’re told is under threat now. There are specific exclusions to EU copyright law, that allow works to be reproduced for reasons such as:

• art. 5.2(c) reproductions by public libraries, educational institutions or archives for non-commercial use
• art. 5.3(c) press reviews and news reporting;
• art. 5.3(d) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review;
• art. 5.3(f) uses of political speeches and extracts of public lectures, to the extent justified by public information;
• art. 5.3(i) incidental inclusion in another work;
• art. 5.3(j) use for the advertisement of the public exhibition or sale of art;
• art. 5.3(k) caricature, parody or pastiche;

Article 13 is basically a means to force platform publishers such as Facebook, Youtube et al to take down copyright-infringing material more quickly and to be legally responsible where such infringements occur. At present, they simply shrug and say “not us, it’s the user who uploaded it”.

I’m sure there will be plenty of inappropriate uses of Article 13 and – like Cheri Blair claiming “invasion of privacy” when the amount tax-payers were subsidising her shoe-buying habit became known – it will probably be abused by people looking to shut down dissent/argument/political discourse.

But the basic laws of copyright have always applied to internet postings – they just haven’t been applied.

I’m not saying that Article 13 isn’t badly drafted and open to abuse. Just that it’s not the “end to the internet” that Google/Youtube/Facebook insist it is.