Originally published at: EU Passes Anti-Meme Law | Infostormer.com
Earlier this week, the European Union passed a ridiculous new copyright law that essentially makes memes illegal. It’s the most insane thing ever. There’s no way they’ll be able to enforce this.
A new copyright law from the European Union would lead to the banning of memes on the internet, campaigners are warning.
The EU Copyright Directive intends to protect the intellectual property rights of people who upload their material to the internet.
However, campaigners are warning the law will require "all content uploaded to the internet to be monitored and potentially deleted if a likeness to existing copyright is protected".
The campaign against a particular provision of the directive, Article 13, warns that online platforms would be economically damaged if they were forced to comply with its expensive obligations.
The law would "destroy the internet as we know it" warn the campaigners, who add it would "allow big companies to control what we see and do online".
Essentially, the campaigners are arguing the stringent copyright protections of Article 13 would damage the sharing of parody content and memes which, while themselves being original and creative works, are often developed from other people's original content.
And just how in the hell are websites supposed to check every piece of content that gets uploaded for copyright violations? That’s basically what this new law mandates. No company has the resources to do this. Not even sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google have the resources to do it.
This is just blatant stupidity and the result of what happens when boomer aged people are given authority to pass laws pertaining to the Internet. It’s hard to say what the end result will be of this because of the fact that it is so insane.
