EU passes new controversial copyright laws

[Tsutarja]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/the-eu-votes-on-a-confusing-new-copyright-law-tuesday/

This is pretty damning for user-created content that appears on the internet. I'm not going to dive much into the political aspect of this, but these laws are essentially vague to the point where many content-hosting companies may now have to impose filters on their uploaders to the point in which content deemed unoriginal to the slightest extent could be removed. This includes memes to sites like Reddit and imgur, videos to YouTube, and even potentially streams on Twitch.

You may also recall that these measures were going around as the EU looking to ban memes. And that's pretty much it. Take a screenshot from a TV show, caption it with meme-like text, and boom it could be deemed as copyright violation.

EDIT: After chatting with someone on Discord about the law, it's more or less catered to content hosts, so my earlier interpretation was off. Pretty much for sites like YouTube to host content to the audience (EU), they would have to either be more "vigilant" in what is uploaded (like unlawful song covers that could be deemed copyright), thus the filters to prevent that sort of stuff from going live on the website just to be within the bounds of the law.

 

[Megan]

Yay for living in one of the affected countries, I guess?

This is pretty damning for user-created content that appears on the internet. I'm not going to dive much into the political aspect of this, but these laws are essentially vague to the point where many content-hosting companies may now have to impose filters on their uploaders to the point in which content deemed unoriginal to the slightest extent could be removed. This includes memes to sites like Reddit and imgur, videos to YouTube, and even potentially streams on Twitch.

While it is meant to put pressure on the big platforms, this thing is just vage enough to also include all the smaller ones, like forums and such. Obviously, people not from the EU are still allowed to continue their ways, that is if they don't mind losing out on their European viewership, who would get filtered out.

As it is a copyright law it serves as a precedence for other similar laws, meaning that the floodgates are now open.

I do admit that I'm curious as to how things will develop from here. Partially because I want to see the world burn, but also because I want to know how content creators from all around the world will react. Are we going to see some sort of rebellion, a new wave of "piracy", will they resign and leave the net in the hands of big companies or is something completely different going to happen?

Only time will tell and if I know one thing then that people tend to get creative if you put restrictions on them.