The following statement was approved by the active admin staff:
As many of you may know, the European Parliament has just approved Articles 11 and 13 of their Copyright Directive. Though this poses no required changes for our forum (thank goodness that our new server is in Texas) it does mean that the forum might need to take proactive steps in the near-future in order to allow our European members to still access our content. As of right now a lot is in flux and the directive still needs to be approved by "trilogue" (which will probably be a mere formality) in the Spring, but we admins wanted you all to know what this Directive imposes on Internet content, and what we are considering doing to prevent Europeans from losing access to our content.
The changes to European Internet law imposed by the Directive are both far-reaching and uncertain in their implementation at this time. Among other things the Directive authorizes a “link tax” where Google, Facebook, and other content providers would be required to pay a tax on links to news articles. In addition to that imposition, the upload filter section of the legislation requires that all platforms aside from “small/micro enterprises” use a content ID system to prevent any copyrighted works from being uploaded. Sites can be subjected to copyright lawsuits in the event that something makes it past the filter. Remixing, meme-making, sharing of works in the public domain, and other fair use practices would likely all fall victim to platforms that would rather play it safe, just say no to flagged content, and avoid legal battles. Additionally, as an EU lawsuit filed today against YouTube for extremist videos indicates, the EU assumes that a sensible timeframe for removing ‘problematic content’ is one hour. I repeat: one hour. Finally, websites that defy this legislation might be required to be blocked by Internet Service Providers in a resolution also passed by the EU Parliament today. And (as this forum has no intention of obeying this asinine and statist restriction on personal freedom) that means this forum might be blocked in parts of Europe after this Directive is passed.
We admins condemn in the strongest possible terms this legislation and the greed and ignorance that led this to even being considered as public policy. We think that the changes it mandates will fundamentally damage freedom of expression on the Internet and that is antithetical to the open discourse that the World Wide Web held as its greatest promise for the world. We encourage our European forum members to protest this decision using all lawful and peaceful means, and to do their part to try to kill this Directive when it is brought to the final vote in March.
In the meantime, rest assured that we admins are considering possible options to allow our European members to bypass any European website filters. We have a few options in active consideration and we will be using the winter to test these options. We will not impose any content restrictions on our European members, and we will not comply with this Directive. We are committed to keeping only the United States First Amendment and the rules of the forum as the only content restrictions on this forum.
Thank you all for your time. Feel free to ask any questions or to share your thoughts in this thread, but please keep it civil. We will answer any questions to the best of our ability.
The Gang of Five Admin Team
