Has the EU just killed the internet as we know it?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'm not techy enough to be sure that I understand all of the ramifications.

To keep it short, the whole discussion about memes being banned sums it up quite well. If you post a meme of something that has an identifiable copyright (I dunno, something with a logo in like Nintendo or coke or something) then the site hosting it either has to buy some sort of license which gives money to the copyright holder or take it down to avoid being subject to legal action over hosting copyrighted material.

What does Article 13 say?
Article 13 says content-sharing services must license copyright-protected material from the rights holders.
If that is not possible and material is posted on the service, the company may be held liable unless it can demonstrate:
it made "best efforts" to get permission from the copyright holder
it made "best efforts" to ensure that material specified by rights holders was not made available
it acted quickly to remove any infringing material of which it was made aware

It’s not really about torrenting copyrighted material, that’s already illegal in most EU member states. It’s more about posting fair use criticism of a product (like a game or a car or something) and having a copyright claim against your content. The host (say, youtube) is unlikely to suffer the loss and almost impossible task of getting a license for content that might be deemed copyrighted. It’s easier to just take the content off, and perhaps even ban the user to stop them from uploading.

In reality it will probably end up being like this:

That’s where Article 13 comes in. It remains to be seen how the legislation will be implemented in practice, but Article 13 will probably be introduced in two ways. First, platforms will likely negotiate licenses with copyright holders. Second, they will implement content filters to stop copyrighted material they don’t have a license for from being uploaded in the first place.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/eu-artic...article-17