The Internet, Pending Approval

Twenty years of putting things on the internet—links, images, opinions, music, things I made, things other people made that I wanted to share—without once thinking to ask permission. That assumption is so basic it never registered as an assumption. The EU is about to change it.

Article 13 of the EU’s planned copyright reform directive would require online platforms to prevent the distribution of unlicensed works through what the legislation calls "appropriate and proportionate measures." Experts broadly agree that the only technically feasible way to meet those requirements at scale is upload filters—automated systems that scan content before it goes live and block anything matching a flagged rightsholder’s material. The EU Council agreed on a draft in May 2018. The European Parliament’s legal committee approved it in June, with CDU parliamentarian Axel Voss as the responsible rapporteur. The full Parliament voted against the reform in July after public protests, then reversed that in September after amendments that didn’t fundamentally change the filter requirement. Since then the proposal has been in trilogue negotiations, and the most recent agreement produced a version stricter than what either body had previously passed. A final vote was expected in spring 2019.

The problem isn’t that copyright is irrelevant. It’s that upload filters are blunt instruments operating on a system built on nuance—on remix, quotation, parody, commentary, the thousand small acts of cultural participation that look like infringement to an algorithm and like expression to every human who encounters them. Alexander Lehmann made a video explaining exactly what Article 13 and upload filters mean in practice, and what it would take to stop them. SaveYourInternet.eu has been running a campaign against the measure. Whether any of it lands before the vote, I have no idea. But twenty years is long enough to feel entitled to this particular freedom. Losing it quietly would be embarrassing.