A petition against the link tax and the censorship machine (AKA article 11 and article 13) has reached 625,000 signatures.
Last week, we brought you news of an online petition that demands that European lawmakers vote down the infamous proposed copyright laws in Europe. At the time of our report, that petition reached a half a million signatures, signifying a major milestone.
Since our report, that petition has ballooned to a massive 625,000 signatures. As of this writing, we see the petition has reached an impressive 628,915 signatures. That number continues to grow seemingly by the minute as more and more people realize that there are things they can do to stop these proposed copyright laws.
If anything, it shows that European’s are not happy with these laws and are willing to act to stop them. Across the Eurozone, more and more people are learning about the proposal and are not happy with what they see.
Article 11, often dubbed the “link tax”, would force publishers to pay a tax for what ultimately amounts to citing their sources. Should someone post something with a link, that said platform would need to pay a license fee for the privilege of linking to that article or content. As word spread of this particular article, people in Europe hit the streets to protest the legislation.
Meanwhile, article 13 is often dubbed the censorship machine or the upload filter. As we reported earlier, the proposed law would compel platforms that accept user generated content to install “upload filters”. Those filters would search for evidence of copyrighted material. If there is copyrighted material in that content, then it simply will not get posted. The problem, as critics point out, is that such filters will not recognize legal exceptions such as education, criticism, or parody. As such, all use of copyrighted material, legal or otherwise, would effectively become banned on European services.
A vote on these proposals is expected later this week. Earlier, it passed the European legal affairs committee (JURI). This in spite of the fact that the proposed laws were being almost universally rejected by European’s at the time. The fear is that because it passed that committee, it is gaining momentum amongst lawmakers and could become law soon. As such, it may become increasingly difficult to stop unless there is considerable push back from citizens. Clearly, we are seeing that groundswell rising and continue to gather momentum.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
I think article 13 is a load of rubbish it would take away the jobs of content creators around europe and there are hundreds of thousands of them also i feel like this restricts the movement of the younger generation restricting them more than they already are example:if a child under the age of 16 (in scotland) wanted to drop out of school they would get into bother with social services and police.
I am signing this petition because it will most likely spread to other countries and not only hurt Europe. it is poorly written and can be abused easily by large corporations and the music industry. It will take away many of my favorite creators like Game Theory, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Pewdiepie. There will only be large corporations like Warner Bros and T-Series. I want a free internet.
This stupid article 13 thing could be very dangerous to my YouTube channel and will put so many people out of a job. We must join together and save our internet!
Do we have names of the politicans behind article 13 and 11. It would be very good to know them that way we could make sure when we vote that we dont send this people to powerfull positions ever again.
That would be something I later reported on. Hope this vote breakdown helps.
We as internet users must fight for our individual rights that we feel we ha ve
this act is not that great at all. we all have
our accouns and fanpages, why would we
be fake. i have a friend that her acc got
destroyed. we as internet users must fight for our
indivity.i hope that this vote will help a lot. i dont want
to all that work i did on my acc get destroyed for a
second. we need to stop this