Article 13

                                                                Article 13

                                                              By: Samuel Miranda

The hot news at the moment seems to be filled by the European Parliaments choice to accept copyright law changes that included the controversial articles 11, and 13. According to some musicians and creators the laws are necessary in order to fairly compensate artists, but what they mean by “fairly compensated” they never elaborate on. The laws aren’t entirely in place yet due to the leaders of the EU’s member states needing to sign off on it and after that the individual countries needing to put the laws in place. In the BBC’s article on the copyright changes they state that the laws would require all internet platforms to filter content put online by users which is being called an excessive restriction of freedom of speech. How strict this filter is going to be is very lightly talked about later in the article which states that Parodies would not violate the laws. A point that caught my confusion was where they stated that “Article 11 is also controversial because it forces online platforms to pay news organisations for the use of their content.” My confusion starts where they state online platforms would be forced to pay for news which makes no sense seeing as it is news and not something you can copyright. Imagine if CNN breaks a news story and asks for payment when any other news station reports on the story, it doesn’t make sense. Although the final version clarifies that platforms wouldn’t be forced to pay for hyperlinks which was what people thought would be the case but they still don’t say what they mean by paying for use of their content.  In the article that the BBC made there is a quote from EU commissioners Andrus Ansip and Mariya Gabriel in which they state that the change is “an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union.” This is an interesting statement due to it implying that the copyright rules are far out of date when they really aren’t the only issues you can see about copyright happen when large companies strike down content that is made by users on sites like YouTube and claiming all revenue for a piece of the companies’ content being used in a 30 second parody from a 20 minute long video. (Source: Jameskii)  This is where the law stating that parodies would be fine is a good part. The article then goes on to quote Phil Sherrell who is the head of media, entertainment and sports at a company called Bird & Bird with “Rights holders will be delighted as the directive provides them with additional rights and should strengthen their ability to negotiate royalty payments from online platforms for use of their work.” The big question I have here is why do they need additional rights when the copyright system already works for them to the point of being able to ignore fair use in a parody. The laws seem to be over doing it, a lot of parliament say that it would be doing the internet a great favour, but the entire thing is a disaster waiting to happen.