Art 11 and 13, blocked in July, passed this week in the silence of the media.
As many of us at the beginning of this summer, before July votation, I called members of the EU Parlament to express my opinion on the matter, trying to “participate and influence” the vote, as my right as an EU citizen.
I discovered then that the majority of the -Italian, in my case- voting representatives started to actively research and be informed about the copyright issue MERELY DAYS before the votation. They, very candidly (and to me, infuriatingly) explained that they were struggling to find the time to study and “understand” such complex topic in the remaining time before the votation-day and, therefore, they were referring, for their decision, to other colleagues’ opinion and campaign.
SO. You have to consider that many of these people have little to none cultural education on the matter: they have other expertizes and (I hope) they are been elected in the parliament for those, so I’m sure they are the right people to be involved in the legislation about, I don’t know, the environment or agriculture, but they surely don’t know much/ don’t really care about the consequences that this copyright reform will have on the communications and information divulgation on the internet. "Sadly", all the votes have the same value: so an uninformed one has the same impact of the one cast by a representative who has taken the time to study and do their work. Many voted (and will keep voting) following the indications/ under the pressure of their own parties… which have probably their own interests in mind. Lobbyists worked hard on this.
To keep being actively involved may be the only way, in January, to try stopping the final adoption of art 11 and 13 by EU legislation.
To be clear, I do approve of a more comprehensive and unified legislation, protecting the right of the intellectual property of artistic, cultural, scientific (etc) content and data, but blindly imposing restrictions which do not consider the nature of how, in our time, those are shared and how they evolve, means to hamper growth. Right now, I speak not as an art hobbyist, but as a scientist: this normative WILL influence how "group" and "population" data can be used for study and, even if is an area quite far from my own specialization, I can grasp the consequences: if you grant access only to those that can pay for it and to the "official Academic word", you break the legs of thousands of little entrepreneurs and researchers. You slow down everyone.
This is not just a matter of if one can keep drawing Ladybug or Boku no Hero Academia fanart. It's more complex than that.
Original Journal:
Probably, you all are already aware of this, but since I'm a strong believer in the motto "
repetita iuvant", bear with me when I point out a thing that has been kept suspiciously quiet here in Italy and, as far as I know, in many other European countries:
the European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law (known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles), a move that very likely will bring an end (and a lot of ulcers) to European people participating in fandom culture.
Here a link that explains things way better than me and how to legally try influencing the next round of voting, scheduled for the early days of July:
SaveYourInternet
I'm not an expert, but if this winter attack to Net Neutrality in USA was an awful affair, this is somehow more subtle, not entirely wrong and probably less "socially relevant", but nevertheless it's something I'd really like to avoid...
