In the past year the European Union has passed some of the most stringent laws in history to protect copyright online. While many musicians and publishers have applauded the EU Parliament’s efforts to protect original content, others say the new laws will fundamentally change the way the internet works, and not for the better. What exactly is in the bill, and why is it to controversial? The article, “Article 13: What Just Happened to the EU “Meme Ban” and Why Are People So Angry,” from The Independent helps to break it down for us.
While the law provides a lot of new protections for copyrighted material, two articles in the law have proven particularly contentious. Article 13, which has been dubbed the “meme ban,” shifts the blame of stolen content from the person posting it to the platform it is being hosted on. Videos, pictures, and yes, memes, will all be included in the new regulations. This means that if someone posts a video to YouTube that contains copyrighted content, YouTube now faces the repercussions of the copyright violation, prompting the company to publicly state that this might mean no new content being upload from the European Union (Griffin, 2019).
Supporters of the law contend that this will protect creators, but those opposed feel that it is unachievable for tech companies to filter out all possible infringements. Fair Use law allows for copyrighted material to be used as long as it is done in a “transformative” way (U.S. Copyright Office, 2019), but there is no way for social media companies to monitor each and every post being uploaded and determine if it falls into this category. This could mean that any post containing unoriginal material could be banned, ultimately leading to the stifling of creative new takes on old content. Often this is how memes are employed, giving the law its nickname. Under Fair Use, material is also allowed to be reproduced if it is used for educational purposes, criticism, commentary, or parody (U.S. Copyright Office, 2019). The enactment of this new law could result in less information being readily available to the public, at least on social media sites, which (like it or not) is how many people get their news.
Article 11, the second controversial aspect of the bill, “requires search engines, social media platforms and aggregation websites to share revenue with publishers if their content is displayed (Kottasová, 2019).” When you search for something on a website like Google you get a small preview of the content from the original site. This would disallow that practice, unless the search engine paid the creator a fee, which is unlikely to be the result of the law. Google has said that they would no longer include a preview with their search results, which will make it harder for internet users to easily find news stories and other information they are looking for online.
This proposal is concerning to me. Those short previews often allow users to quickly and easily figure out if the site being linked to contains current and reputable content that is relevant to what the user is looking for. Doing away with those samples will make those factors more difficult and time consuming to determine, ultimately leading to frustration for the searcher and a higher potential for misinformation.
As an information professional I am a strong advocate for copyright law, but I am also an advocate for fair and easy access to information and creative content online. These news laws seem like they may hinder both of those things, while only providing limited new protections for copyright holders. While EU lawmakers seem to have the best intentions to safeguard unique works, most of the reproduced creative content seen on social media sites is either protected by Fair Use because it is transformative, or it has no effect on market (i.e. the copyright violator isn’t using the material to make a profit.) The same could be said of the contentious extracts being abolished by Article 11. Google’s bottom line isn’t being boosted by including those snippets. If anything, I am more likely to click on a link from a search engine if I can read a sentence or two from the preview and know that it is relevant to my topic and seems well written. I would think that the practice of including a preview would only help to increase traffic to (and the profitability of) the very websites this law is trying to protect.
Ultimately, we still do not know how this law will affect the internet as we know it. While it was passed by the European Union in March of 2019, lawmakers gave themselves two years to try to implement it. This may prove difficult, as CNN’s article, “Europe’s controversial new copyright law is as clear as mud,” has said that the law is very vague, which may lead to an overreaction by tech companies, who will err on the side of caution to avoid penalties (Kottasová, 2019). My job as a librarian will be to stay apprised of the new policies, regardless of my personal opinions on them, and help to educate users in my facility about how to protect themselves from copyright infringement.
References
Griffin, A. (2019, March 26). Article 13: What just happened to the EU “meme ban” and why are people so angry? The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/article-13-vote-eu-meme-ban-copyright-law-rule-explained-a8841016.html
Kottasová, I. K. (2019, March 27). Europe’s controversial new copyright law is as clear as mud. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/26/tech/eu-copyright-law-explained/index.html
U.S. Copyright Office. (2019). More information on fair use. Copyright.Gov. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html
