Meme Wars 2018: The European Union Opens Fire
TheDailyBell.com
June 20, 2018
If there is one thing freedom lovers are good at, it is making memes. As the meme wars rage on, it becomes ever more apparent that collectivists are sorely outgunned.
The left can’t meme. So lovers of government do what they always do when they don’t get their way: try to get a law passed.
If article 13 of new EU copyright protections passes, it could mean the death of memes and even GIFs.
The rule would more strictly protect copyrighted material. So if a still shot of a movie scene was depicted in memes, that would be copyright infringement.
Even a copyrighted poster in the background of an uploaded video could violate the rule as it currently reads.
GIFs that depict movie scene would also be at risk, and so would parodies.
The proposed regulation will force websites to filter out text, audio, photos and video shared by users against an ever-expanding database of copyrighted works.
Beyond memes, the law could — for example — impact still or moving images that contain copyrighted music or posters in the background.
The regulation is the EU’s stab at restructuring copyright law for the internet age in an effort to protect digital rights holders like record labels, photo agencies and film studios.
This also means holding websites accountable for what users post. The responsibility would on the website to filter out any copyrighted material.
So Facebook, for instance, will have to hire an army of people or implement expensive software solutions. Big deal, they can afford it.
But smaller websites cannot afford an army of lawyers and AI filtering mechanisms. This basically ensures that the big players that currently exist will face no competition from small new upstarts.
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