You know us, you know we're not alarmists. But the situation warrants a wake-up call, at the very least. In just a few hours, this July 5th, the full European Parliament will vote on a law that could place the continuity of many of the sites you know, use, and love at risk and that could significantly damage the open internet as we know it. Find out what it's about.
This July 5, 2018, the European Parliament will vote on whether to proceed on the “Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market”, a copyright reform that threatens the open internet and free knowledge. It's important that you know what it's about, how it could change the landscape of the web, and what you can do about it. For this reason, and so the gravity of the matter is understood, Wikipedia itself (one of the sites that would be most affected) has decided to “go on strike.” Do you want to know why?
Article 11: Limiting Access to Information
Article 11 of this directive aims to “protect press publications concerning digital uses.” How does it plan to do this? By limiting access to information! To give you an idea of the madness: if approved, to be able to link to or reference a press article as a source, you would have to ask permission from every single publisher... in each particular case!
Clearly, the biggest losers would be users, who would see our access to information limited. Free platforms like Wikipedia, for example, would be at risk. On the Spanish Wikipedia, 650,000 edits are made each month and more than 200 new articles are written every day. The barrier imposed by the “Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market” would prevent the inclusion of verifiable references and would violate one of the greatest pillars of the Internet: the ability to create hyperlinks and share content.
Article 13: The Filtering Requirement
As if that were not enough, Article 13 darkens the panorama even more. Here is a translation of an excerpt from that article: “information services that store and provide public access to large amounts of works uploaded by their users must, in cooperation with rights holders, take measures to ensure that agreements concluded with rights holders for the use of their works are respected. (...) Such measures, such as the effective use of content recognition technologies, must be appropriate and proportionate.”
What does all this mean? According to Wikipedia, “it would force all websites that allow their community to participate actively in building the internet (sharing code, images, text, sound or other creations subject to copyright) to install automatic filtering tools to compare their contributors’ contributions with copyright databases.” A terrifying picture for everything related to access to information and the free flow of knowledge. Wikipedia is at risk, and with it the rest of the Internet, and that’s why it has decided to take action. For the whole of today and until tomorrow, if you want to read any Wikipedia article, you will be redirected to this page.
For these reasons, the Spanish Wikipedia community has decided to darken all pages of the encyclopedia before and during the vote on the text, that is, until 10:00 (UTC) on July 5. We want to continue offering an open, free, collaborative and free-of-charge work with verifiable content. We call on all members of the European Parliament to vote against the current text, to open it to discussion and to consider the numerous proposals from the Wikimedia movement to protect access to knowledge; among them, the elimination of Articles 11 and 13, the extension of freedom of panorama to the entire EU and the preservation of the public domain.
As you can see, this matter has unusual gravity, which endangers the Internet as it has been functioning since its inception and the reason it was created. So, friend, it’s time to act. If you live within the European Union, make yourself heard. Save your internet, contact your MEPs. Call them, email them, leave a message on their Twitter accounts. Here you have a platform created especially for that purpose. Don’t leave it for later! Do it now. Right now. The future of the Internet could depend on it.
Thanks for reading!
