Final Version of EU’s New Copyright ‘Worst Yet’, Says EFF

The Electronic FrontierFoundation, a group focused on civil liberties in the Internet Age, said recently that the EU’s final draft of its new copyright directive is worse than ever, and poses huge threats to creators and a free and open internet.

The original law, last amended all the way back in 2001, protected artists from unfair deals with entertainment companies.

It also protected scientists and researchers right to use copyrighted works as materials for further experimentation and analysis.

Both of those key areas of the EU copyright directive have been scrapped.

Even more problematic though, is that any online platform which has existed for three years or has an income of over 10 million Euros per year, must make sure that no copyrighted material is ever published by any of its users at any time.

This means that the biggest internet companies will further have to rely on powerful, multimillion-dollar content filters that search and pull down copyrighted material.

Essentially, a completely untransparent algorithm will be responsible for making sure every text, picture, sound, or video that is uploaded doesn’t infringe on copyrighted material, or what it arbitrarily deems as “copyrighted” material.

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