Wikimedia Warns EU Copyright Reform Threatens the 'Vibrant Free Web' (techcrunch.com)

The Wikimedia Foundation has sounded a stark warning against a copyright reform proposal in Europe that's due to be voted on by the European Parliament next week. From a report: In the post, also emailed to TechCrunch, Maria Sefidari Huici, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, writes: "Next week, the European Parliament will decide how information online is shared in a vote that will significantly affect how we interact in our increasingly connected, digital world. We are in the last few moments of what could be our last opportunity to define what the Internet looks like in the future. The next wave of proposed rules under consideration by the European Parliament will either permit more innovation and growth, or stifle the vibrant free web that has allowed creativity, innovation, and collaboration to thrive. This is significant because copyright does not only affect books and music, it profoundly shapes how people communicate and create on the internet for years to come."

Backers of the reform proposals argue they will help European creatives be fairly recompensed for their work. But critics argue the proposals are not balanced and will chill the creative freedoms of web users to share and comment on content online.

Comments

That's a doozy

[jandrese]

It looks like the law requires every blog owner to implement an omniscient version of Youtube's much hated ContentID system to insure that nothing uploaded bears any similarity to any past work. It would basically be impossible to run a site like Slashdot under that requirement. The false positive rate would undoubtedly be incredible. Big media cartels were tired of having to do their job and want everybody else to do it for them.

If this goes through about the only solution for every comment section will be to just geoblock the EU until some gigantic content clearinghouse is created. Even then such a service would be too expensive for most message boards so only players like Facebook and Google will be able to run blogs.

Re:That's a doozy

[Anonymous Coward]

IP Owners don't like the phrase "vibrant free web." They hate it.

Parent AC makes an important point: media cartels do not WANT a free web. They want "television 2.0". The whole thing was an oversight that happened because the internet started in the military, and then academia, and stayed there for decades before it became a public phenomena. By that point the genie had partially left the bottle.

They want nothing more than to put that genie back IN the bottle. And the clueless public can be led by the nose to go right along, since they don't think about their choices very much. Make it shiny, and they'll beg for it, no matter what it is.

Unfortunately, due to other verbose AC spam in this topic, your point may languish down at score=0, so I hope someone punts you up to at least 2.