The 43 000 employees of EU institutions won't stop surprising us by their boundless creativity.
A few days ago, the European Parliament voted on a new copyright directive, including the highly disputable articles 11 and 13. The latter seems to declare a "war on memes", transfering the responsibility of dealing with copyright violations to the websites hosting the content.
Concretely speaking, these online platforms will have to use specific filtering systems, that will automatically block any material that is not copyright free. But here is the issue: memes are usually based on an image produced by someone else, and possibly involving copyright. The added value lies in the humor of the text added to the picture. According to EU officials, memes will not be totally banned from websites since they fall into the category of "parody". However, this argument does not seem so convincing, regarding the fact that the filtering algorithms won't probably make the difference between the original image and the parody, and will prevent the sharing of memes anyway.
This law could sound as a good initiative, establishing a clear framework aimed at guaranteeing the the respect of user-produced content. But let's hope it doesn't eventually create any confusing or absurd situation, such as removing a video of a football game filmed at a stadium and posted on the Internet for the sake of protection of TV companies' broadcasting rights.
Sadly enough, it seems like the disaster is already happening: recently, a pianist's performance got censored by Sony, claiming owner rights on Bach's compositions. Indeed, after posting a video where he plays the piano, James Rhodes saw his video removed from Facebook with a message saying "Your video matches 47 seconds of audio owned by Sony Music Entertainment - SME". To this, the desperate and frustrated pianist responded in a tweet.
The law, however, is far from being applicable immediately: it has to undergo a long process of implementation by national parliaments. For now, the memes revolution continues...
A few days ago, the European Parliament voted on a new copyright directive, including the highly disputable articles 11 and 13. The latter seems to declare a "war on memes", transfering the responsibility of dealing with copyright violations to the websites hosting the content.
Concretely speaking, these online platforms will have to use specific filtering systems, that will automatically block any material that is not copyright free. But here is the issue: memes are usually based on an image produced by someone else, and possibly involving copyright. The added value lies in the humor of the text added to the picture. According to EU officials, memes will not be totally banned from websites since they fall into the category of "parody". However, this argument does not seem so convincing, regarding the fact that the filtering algorithms won't probably make the difference between the original image and the parody, and will prevent the sharing of memes anyway.
This law could sound as a good initiative, establishing a clear framework aimed at guaranteeing the the respect of user-produced content. But let's hope it doesn't eventually create any confusing or absurd situation, such as removing a video of a football game filmed at a stadium and posted on the Internet for the sake of protection of TV companies' broadcasting rights.
Sadly enough, it seems like the disaster is already happening: recently, a pianist's performance got censored by Sony, claiming owner rights on Bach's compositions. Indeed, after posting a video where he plays the piano, James Rhodes saw his video removed from Facebook with a message saying "Your video matches 47 seconds of audio owned by Sony Music Entertainment - SME". To this, the desperate and frustrated pianist responded in a tweet.
Hey @SonyMusicEnt - apparently you ‘own’ 47 seconds of my performance of Bach. He died 300 years ago. And I made this recording in my living room. Stop being assholes. You own NOTHING! pic.twitter.com/t9IYWf3l70— James Rhodes (@JRhodesPianist) 4 septembre 2018
The law, however, is far from being applicable immediately: it has to undergo a long process of implementation by national parliaments. For now, the memes revolution continues...
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