Article 13 Passes: The Internet Is Fucked

I think that title really says it all.

Yesterday it was announced and confirmed that the European Parliament had voted in favour of Article 13 (now listed as Article 17) and the equally bad Article 11. Each of these involved internet regulation, and the idea of governments getting involved with that is usually enough to put fear into the hearts of most people. In this case, it's with good reason. You end up with a lot of old - horribly out of touch - farts who cannot figure out how to set the time on a VCR let alone the inner workings of the internet deciding upon its future. Sadly that is the best of two outcomes, as the others are a lot of old farts who desire to protect corporations and are livid that everything isn't EXACTLY under their control.

In layman's terms, this article will amplify every bot problem Youtube suffers and try to apply it to the entire internet, wherever possible. You will end up with programmed systems hunting and searching for anything which might possible breach copyright of someone, and instantly flagging it or taking it down. This can apply to anything on any website which is following European law, meaning that this is going to make life a living hell for thousands of people trying to use the internet for creativity, social gatherings or using it to make ends meet financially.

The one thing which needs to be made clear is that both Youtube and Facebook, for all the money they have made, have never been able to make this sort of thing work. Every time it has been attempted it always goes horribly wrong, and attempts to continue optimizing it have just made the entire system worse. 

Just try speaking to anyone making a living on Youtube now, and listen to them rant about the sheer multitude of issues that copyright bots create for them. They can have their work taken down by companies which are defunct, do not exist, have no online presence, or even are listed as episodes of individual series rather than full corporations. This is without getting into some of the greater problems behind it.

If you want a few examples of such things, then consider how this is going to impact people in just a few possible situations:

Let us say that you wished to upload holiday photographs on Facebook. If a bot thinks that this MIGHT resemble a picture protected by copyright, it will remove it and prevent it from being shown until it has gone through every possible related image possible.

If you are living off of drawing fan-art or drawing commissions for others, your entire gallery will likely be shut down overnight as certain designs too closely resemble existing ideas.


If you write a review a book and happen to use quotes, the bot will likely flag and remove your review for using that information. Sometimes it might target it if you use a name of a character, or if it even thinks that it somewhat closely resembles work that MIGHT be pirated.

And that's before we get into how it might be abused. Yes, that's it working as intended. Then start considering how this even applies to further photographs, just basic home photography, if you try to fight this:

Let's say you took a photo of your dog, cat, parrot;, just your pet in general.

A bot then flags it. 

Can you prove that the photograph is yours? Can you prove that you took it? Can you cite this in a copyright database which does not yet exist, but Europe expects to suddenly emerge overnight to comply with this?

Can you then register it before someone else registers it for themselves?

This is the sort of disaster that we will be facing under this.

Keep in mind that this is applying to any service which allows files to be shared, and it's broadly defined as exactly that. This means that not only Youtube will be affected by this, but Wikipedia will, Discord will, DeviantArt will, Google documents will. Did you Tweet something? Congratulations, that applies to this as well.

And before you celebrate that you do not live in Europe and are beyond its laws, any website which needs to operate within Europe will have to comply with this law. So, look at any system which has someone from the UK, France, Germany or the like on it. Congratulations, they are going to be utterly fucked by this entire process. That fan website you like? It's going to be torn to bits, because it might be promoting and celebrating those big corporate creations, but the bots won't care, and they will simply go into a frenzy over the whole thing. Even those they are already stating will be overlooked like memes will be targeted over this, because it's yet one more false promise that they are making to placate the masses, and nothing more.

If you're already deciding that  VPN will get around this, it won't. The problem lies in not where you are accessing it from, but the website itself, and if it can be viewed from Europe. It doesn't matter where you are signing in from, it will just matter if it needs to comply with EU law.

Keep in mind, this is so broad and sweeping, that this entire blog might be gone in the next few years. I might be protected by law as my work is criticism and a source of both parody and creativity, but a bot doesn't know that. They are never programmed to recognise this, nor can they do so. This entire website might be gone because - even if I remove every image - the very titles of the articles I have reviewed or quotes from books might see this entire blog deleted for copyright conflicts.

If you are wondering just why the blog has been so quiet over the past few months (besides the reasons previously cited) it's because campaigning against this and Brexit has taken up so much time. The old generations keep finding whole new ways to fuck over those ready to replace them, and this is just the latest example of that.

There's a very good video by Jim Sterling which outlines further details on this and I would suggest viewing it if you have a moment. Furthermore, you can find a more detailed and better-informed account than this on here.

All I will finish by saying is this: We have two years before this is fully implemented, and I suggest you spend that time wisely. We can, and I certainly will, try to oppose this in any way that I can, but once thse corrupt bastards set their mind to something it will not change. So celebrate and use this time as best you can, because the internet as we know it will end here.

If you have not been voting, then I suggest that you do so. Do not vote for something, but vote in opposition of others. If you are apathetic of each side, pick the one which you think is worse and then vote in favour of their opposition. Choosing the lesser of two evils is never a good choice to make, but at this point, sheer spite and the ability to cause problems is all that democracy can offer us.