A coalition of some of Europe’s largest film companies and sports leagues have published an open letter to the European Union officials negotiating the final stage of the new Copyright Directive; in their letter, the companies condemn “Article 13,” the rule requiring all but the smallest online platforms to censor their users’ videos, text-messages, photos and audio if they appear to match anything in a crowdsourced copyrighted works database.
The companies say that Article 13 will give more power to Google and the other Big Tech companies it was supposed to rein in, and make it harder for entertainment companies to negotiate favorable deals with the tech sector. They demand that the negotiators finalising the Directive remove their products from Article 13’s scope, unless the negotiators want to roll back the Article 13 language to its 2016 state, an essentially impossible outcome.
Support for Article 13 is evaporating. EU Member States have come out against it. Nearly 4,000,000 Europeans have signed a petition opposing it, and independent scholars and experts have objected to it from the start.
If you’re European and you agree, you can join 4,000,000 others in calling for an end to this ridiculous, dangerous exercise.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of young adult novels like HOMELAND, PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.
This article was sourced from EFF.org
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