Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

Article 13 is the key one, mandating upload filtering. This has all sorts of side effects - suddenly you can&#x27;t make a Dropbox style file sharing site without implementing pre-emptive filtering. You can&#x27;t rely on notify-and-takedown.<p>Article 11 potentially has huge implications for social media sites; suddenly a user posting a news article link with a quote becomes a copyright liability.<p>All the worry that was focused on the GDPR should be focused on this instead, in my opinion.

Can we just agree to silo off the EU? Why should foreign companies have to comply with these policies anyway? GDPR compliance has already had a negative impact on web UX.

EU builds a good reputation after setting a good standard with GDPR, some politicians started talking about copying it which made me happy. Now I&#x27;m scared again wondering what would happen if they go through with this and politicians everywhere start copying it.

What&#x27;s with all the comments supporting censorship all of sudden? Every social media site now has hordes of &quot;people&quot; defending censorship. Is it just more european users on social media now? Or is it just government funded trolling? I just don&#x27;t get it.<p>Saudi arabia just declared online satire as a cybercrime punishable up to 5 years in prison.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.france24.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;20180904-saudi-arabia-declares-online-satire-punishable-offence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.france24.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;20180904-saudi-arabia-declares-o...</a><p>We know how much china and russia loves censorship. And of course europe has a long tradition of censorship.<p>As americans, we had long hoped that the world would join us and embrace freedom, but it looks more and more like we are forced to join them.<p>I&#x27;d rather keep our freedom and separate the internet into &quot;intranets&quot;. There is no european or saudi or chinese or russian websites or tech I need. Let the world have their backwards censorship and lets hold onto our freedom.<p>If we have to cater to everyone&#x27;s sensitivities, than that is a race to the lowest common denominator. That means we have no freedom at all.

So what can we, as citizens, do to get the watered-down, &quot;compromise&quot; version of the bill that&#x27;s still much worse than current laws, but a bit better than this travesty?

The WWW is fundamentally broken at this point, perhaps this legislation will completely destroy it and kickstart some other form of network.

The EU needs to go.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a vibrant free web. Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit. Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium. Most breaking news is first available on twitter. Even independent websites, most likely have Google analytics and Google ads.<p>From a European point of view, the current copyright situation is just a wealth transfer from European companies who have the copyrights, to American advertising companies.

Wikipedia is contributing to the slow death of what could have been, and almost was, a web of independent pages maintained by individuals and groups. I have had a recurring experience of skimming a Wikipedia article, only to get the feeling that the text is familiar - then tracking it down to the book or article that it was lifted from, without attribution. If a &quot;vibrant free web&quot; means routine copyright theft committed by a homogenizing, centralized collective established as some kind of anonymous authority, I can do without it.