The Leistungsschutzrecht

There’s this law they were pushing through in Germany—Leistungsschutzrecht, ancillary copyright or something. I spent way too much time reading about it, getting angrier, because it’s the kind of thing that seems small until you understand what it actually does.

Before all this, if you copied something wholesale—a whole article, a photo, whatever—you’d get nailed for copyright infringement. Fair enough. But there was this space in between where things could live. You could quote, link, reference, remix. Fair Use exists in America for a reason: it lets people build on what’s already there. It’s how culture works. It’s how the internet works.

This law went the opposite direction. It was designed to let publishers sue you for quoting them. For linking to them. For tweeting their headline. For doing the basic things everyone does online a dozen times a day without thinking about it.

Who wanted this? Axel Springer, the big German newspaper groups, all the people who already had money and lawyers. They looked at it and saw another revenue stream. They could charge for links, for quotes, for excerpts. They could weaponize copyright against the internet itself. The morality of it didn’t matter. The fact that it would make the whole system worse didn’t matter. Just the money.

I kept thinking about what it would actually mean. You share an article on Facebook with a comment—suddenly illegal. You tweet a headline. You write a blog post and quote something that inspired you. All of it would be illegal. Just everyday shit, the stuff that actually makes the internet work.

I’d try to explain it to people and watch their eyes glaze over. Easier to not pay attention, to keep scrolling. And maybe that’s the whole design—these things pass because nobody notices until the lawyers show up.