The European Union has introduced the RODO, making life difficult for everyone, and now wants to take on a new version of ACTA, which will unrecognizable change the global network as we know it.
The day of voting in the European Parliament on the Directive on copyrights and the digital single market is coming fast.
The Legal Commission of the European Parliament wants to declare war on a global network of plagiarism, hate speech in the comments and control the dissemination of published press materials.
However, activists, Internet users, organizations involved in the protection of the freedom and independence of the network, and even journalists and publishers, claim the end of the Internet as we now know it.
According to them, EU authorities want to introduce censorship into Chinese fashion. We all know what the Internet looks like in the Middle Kingdom and that the party controls everything that is published there, and people who publish illegal content quickly bid farewell to freedom.
The EU provides for the creation of special, automatic and intelligent moderation systems for press content and comments. They would assess publications in terms of compliance with law and block shortcuts of articles or links before publications on social networking sites or news sites.
In addition, people who want to put links to such publications on websites or their abbreviations will have to ask for permission from the author, and even pay a fee.
This is unthinkable for publishers who, although in the EU assumption they will be able to control the spread of their publications on the Internet and earn more on them, their real content will significantly limit their reach, because no one will want to pay for something that so far it was free.
Do you imagine paying publishers / journalists / creators for publishing a link to their materials on Facebook, Twitter or when sending them to read to your friends ?!
For many small publishers, i.e. blogs and small websites, the new law will mean the end of the business. So you can be prepared for the fact that many popular and often visited websites will disappear from the global network, and their role will be taken over by giants who will spread the truth for which someone / power will pay them.
The same will happen with memes popular in the network or comments. As they are perceived as hate speech by the EU authorities, they will disappear unintentionally after the introduction of the new law. As for the comments, the website owners will be subject to restrictions related to even more censored censorship made with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms.
In fact, website owners will simply switch to comment systems such as facebook (as we have recently), which is not available to all those who do not have a Facebook account or vulnerable to surveillance of services and companies, or simply turn off completely the possibility commenting on the publication, which will lead to censorship and lack of freedom of speech.
Organizations fighting for network freedom warn that articles 11 and 13 of the new EU rules can seriously damage online business, information and freedom of expression. Voting in the Legal Committee of the European Parliament is scheduled for 20 June.