The EU Can Still Be Saved From Its Internet-Wrecking Copyright Plan (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: While the European Union voted this week to pass its widely-criticized new Copyright Directive, activists and members of European Parliament say there's still a chance of keeping the EU from fully implementing the worst parts of the troubling proposal. The most controversial aspects of the plan remain twofold: Article 11, which would require EU News outlets to pay a "link tax" just to share anything more than "insubstantial" snippets of published content, and Article 13, which would require that EU member countries implement the kind of automated copyright filters that have been a chaotic mess here in the States. Other problematic measures were passed as well, including Article 12a, which prohibits sports fans from posting their own photos or videos of sporting events online, while stating that only event "organizers" have the right to do so.

That said, all hope is not lost. While some variant of Article 11 and Article 13 is likely be approved next spring, public pressure could force inclusion of additional safeguards for end users, Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda told me in an email. "While the overall bill was adopted with a comfortable majority, the outcome was more narrow for the two controversial articles (366:297 and 393:279)," Reda said. "Since the final vote will be close to the next European elections, that leaves open a small chance that massive public protest against these provisions may still convince MEPs to kill the entire bill." If passed, individual EU countries will be able to interpret the Directive as they see fit, though Reda believes they will likely steer toward stricter interpretation. "The real hope for repeal in my opinion is in the courts," author and activist Cory Doctorow said. "There's simply no way this passes EU Constitutional muster -- it's generalized filtering and mass surveillance by another name. The fact that they claim to be looking for 'infringement' doesn't change that."

Longtime Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein adds: [...] These articles now enter a period of negotiation with EU member states, and then are subject to final votes next year, probably in the spring. So now's the time for the rest of the world to show Europe some special "tough love" -- to help them understand what their Internet island universe will look like if these terrible articles are ever actually implemented.
UPDATE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a report slamming the proposal, offering a number of ways people can fight back.

Comments

Re:Let it all go through

[Seven Spirals]

I agree. When foreign corporations and content owners give the EU a giant middle finger, they will be on the hook to try and suppress the content. Good luck with that. They'll end up looking as bad or worse than China. There's also the uncomfortable fact most content worth fuck-all is in the USA (FYI, we invented the fucking Internet, World). So, if the EU decided to build a giant firewall, they'd basically just be firewalling off a bunch of content leeches. I don't remember the last time I found a useful fact on a server with a EU based TLD. The shows on Netflix produced in the EU all suck dog balls. Of course they want to tax the stuff made in the USA. That's where the good shit is at that people actually want. It's going to be interesting to watch them cut off their nose to spite their face.

Re:Let it all go through

[stealth_finger]

So let it fail. Let something fail for once, to show just how useless and corrupt this system of placing narrow minded beliefs over reality is. Let something big fail in front of everyone for all to see, so maybe the system is replaced before the failure becomes the entire planet, becomes billions dead because a few coal mining CEOs needed that second yacht. Let the idiots shoot themselves before they take everyone else with them.

Funny, that's what we thought about Trump but let's see how that one ends.