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?

Hey! I practice IP law with my brothers in Southern California. I primarily do trademark, copyright and litigation work. My brothers do patents and litigation.

I also moderate stuff on Reddit, like IAmA. Ideally, I'd like to host some AMAs here. This is kind of a test to see how it goes at an early stage.

Ask me stuff!

Proof with TruePic

Edit: This was fun. Thank you guys. I'm headed out for a bit. :)