On Monday 27 March 2019, the European Parliament passed the controversial EU copyright law. However, two clauses within the law, namely Article 13 and 11, are the cause of concern for millions of internet users in the EU.
What is Article 13?
Article 13 will enforce strict copyright measures over companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Google. These tech giants rely heavily on user-generated content for their platform. On the other hand Article 13 seeks to implement stringent copyright rules over the original work of any small/independent artist.
Big record labels and the film industry have been in support of Article 13 as it’ll prevent their original work from being used without their permission. Contrarily, independent artists on social media who make parody, reviews, and memes out of the content of these record labels are against Article 13.
What about Article 11?
The argument here is that any creative input to the existing content is essentially a new one and does not represent creative property theft.
Article 11 seeks to end the curation of news on the internet without the permission of the publisher. Supporters of this Article argue that Google incentivizes ‘click-bait’ articles and, thus, leaves no room for the proper old-school investigating journalism.
Essentially, Google would have to pay the news websites before it can share news on its platform.
Will Brexit and Article 13 mix?
A few changes related to the memes were also made in Article 13 earlier this year. The EU parliament claims that the memes will be ‘specifically excluded’ form the copyright law. However, tech companies don’t think that such a copyright filter is possible yet.
The EU copyright law will now be passed through the European Council. After that, the EU will have exactly two years to implement the new regulations.
Law professionals think that the Brexit won’t bar the EU copyright rules. They argue that the size of the European market is too big for the UK to simply ignore.
