ACTA 2 (EPICA), a directive that changes the definition of copyright (for example: introducing a link snippet fee, transfer of legal responsibility to the owners of websites) has been rejected by the European Parliament.
Last days
Recently, there was loud about the so-called ACTA 2, which was supposed to introduce censorship on the internet. Of course, it didn't do it in a literal way. Parts of the directive (specifically, Article 11 and Article 13) were highly controversial - they were the beginning of limiting the freedom of speech and the inability to express an opinion.
I will not elaborate on the directive itself, because dozens of people have already described it with their comments. Therefore, in short - censorship would be caused by bots checking content, too rigorous approach to the topic of plagiarism and the fear of website owners against legal consequences (no one will risk their money for what the user publishes).
The battle was won...
Today (on July 5), a vote on the controversial directive took place. Fortunately, it was rejected - protests of people and organizations have done their job.
As we can see, there were only 318 voters against it. This is not a large number. A large part of MEPs still want to implement this directive.
...but the end of the war is still far away
Unfortunately, the rejection of copyright changes is not final. Parliament decided to wait until September to redefine some of the directive's objectives.
Will something even worse come out of it? Certainly not - since now such changes have not passed, they will not pass over in a while. However, you have to be careful, because the EP may try to change the content of the directive to make it sound different, but to do exactly the same.
But today there is nothing to worry about. Until a new version is published, internet users can celebrate their win and sleep without fear that they will wake up and will not be able to send a nice meme to a friend.
And who knows, maybe the new version will not be so bad anymore?