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Article 13 of the EU's new copyright directive has sparked huge controversy online, with YouTube campaigning strongly against the proposal. We explain why
Big changes are coming to online copyright across the European Union. After years of debate and negotiations, politicians have passed sweeping changes following a final vote in the European Parliament.
The changes have proved controversial, with critics being opposed to two specific parts of the law: Article 11 and Article 13. They form part of the wider regulations which were passed.
The European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, to use its full name, requires the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to take more responsibility for copyrighted material being shared illegally on their platforms.
It's become known by the most controversial segment, Article 13, which critics claim will have a detrimental impact on creators online. YouTube, and YouTubers, have become the most vocal opponents of the proposal.
The Directive on Copyright and its most controversial component, Article 13, requires online platforms to filter or remove copyrighted material from their websites. It’s this article that people think could be interpreted as requiring platforms to ban memes, but more on that later.
The Directive on Copyright would make online platforms and aggregator sites liable for copyright infringements, and supposedly direct more revenue from tech giants towards artists and journalists. Currently, platforms such as YouTube aren’t responsible for copyright violations, although they must remove that content when directed to do so by the rights holders.
This is the part of the Directive on Copyright that has most people worried. This article states that “online content sharing service providers and right holders shall cooperate in good faith in order to ensure that unauthorised protected works or other subject matter are not available on their services.” You can read the full amended text of the entire Directive here.
So what does it mean? Boiled down, all this article is saying is that any websites that host large amounts of user-generated content (think YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) are responsible for taking down that content if it infringes on copyright.
But things aren’t quite that simple. No one can quite agree how these platforms are expected to identify and remove this content. An earlier version of the Directive referred to “proportionate content recognition technologies” which sounds an awful lot like it’s asking platform owners to use automated filters to scan every piece of uploaded content and stop anything that might violate copyright from being uploaded.
YouTube's current Content ID gives copyright owners the right to claim ownership of content already live on YouTube. The system then allows them to either block the video or monetise it by running advertising against it. It's an already unpopular system due to its propensity for false positives and abuse, and this would be heightened if potentially infringing videos could not be uploaded at all.
The reason why this article has been dubbed the “meme ban” is that no one is sure whether memes, which are often based on copyrighted images, will fall foul of these laws. Proponents of the legislation argue that memes are protected as parodies and so aren’t required to be removed under this directive, but others argue that filters won’t be able to distinguish between memes and other copyrighted material so they’d end up being caught in the crossfire anyway.
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Glad we are leaving the useless cult.