If you've been following tech news somewhat recently, you've surely heard about Article 13- the one where the EU essentially requires all content hosts to have extremely strict copyright checking tools and have automated takedown of any potentially copyrighted works.

That got put on the backburner for a little bit, but now it's back with a vote being held in early 2019.

YouTube, being one of, if not the largest content hosts in the world, is greatly affected by this motion. In fact, they have a whole website designed to encourage their creators to talk about A13 in their videos. The page very subtly hints at massive service changes that will happen in the EU if this actually ends up passing.

The CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, has also written an op-ed for Financial times (linked to official YT blog since it's free there) about the issues facing YT if A13 passes.

I haven't heard anything from official sources, but I've heard on the rumor mill that YouTube will completely suspend creators in the EU, not allowing them to upload any content, and potentially even removing their existing content from YouTube.

What if this passes? YouTube is one of the biggest sources of free knowledge and entertainment we have today, and it's become engrained into the internet as it is today.

With all this, I simply ask, "what's next?"

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.