Original here: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8sizc8/danish_mep_jens_rohde_in_facebook_post_yesterday/

I posted this on reddit a couple of months ago as I felt (and still feel) like it's rather shocking how someone so ignorant can have any kind of power over something that they clearly know nothing about. Here's what Danish MEP Jens Rohde had to say about the public response to the directive in a Facebook post of his from ~2 months ago:

Always pleasant when the web communists hack and spam my PC in parliament. 50,000 e-mails just yesterday containing largely identical messages - in difference languages though.

This time because I tomorrow vote in favor of artist copyright is valid on the internet as well as everywhere else.

This is not about mass surveillance.

This is not about limiting freedom of speech unless you steal others' content for commercial use.

This is also not about the so-called link tax in article 11. Bloggers can calmly continue working.

This is simply about active commercial platforms which must pay to use people's content for commercial purposes. All passive platforms, marketplaces, wikis, clouds, closed networks are exempt from this proposition that I've helped create and vote for tomorrow.

Creators can themselves ask that their content is monitored, or they can upload it unprotected. That's their choice.

Technology has NOT been considered in the proposal. That will come later.

And let me repeat for the hundredth time: spam as well as hacking is especially counterproductive to me, if you want to promote your cause.

By the way, I will never subscribe to the communist pirate opinion that FREE internet is the same as internet for FREE - no matter how much you attack my PC.

Are we using "eu" or "europe" for topics about Europe? I think we need to pick one or the other.

I prefer "europe".

EDIT

The people have spoken, and the vast majority is in favour of "europe" (not "eu") for topics related to continental Europe. Topics related to the European Union itself can be tagged "europe.eu" (as per @nothis' excellent suggestion.

Next week the EU parliament will vote for their new copyright directive. In general it contains some good ideas, but also some extremely bad ones, such as article 13. It will require all uploaded content to be scanned, and deleted if it might contain references to other copyrighted material.

The issue here is the word might. Due to the possible fines for companies that accidentally leave up something that contains a copyrighted work, they are incentivized to act more harsh than often necessary. It's safer for them to delete everything that looks like it might infringe copyright than risk the fine.

This could be disastrous for the Internet as we know it. And this is why many movements are speaking out against it. One such example would be the open letter to EU parliament. More information is available on https://saveyourinternet.eu/resources/, and you can find much more about it all over the Internet if you search with your favourite search engine.

What's your opinion on article 13, and have you done anything to make your voice heard?