IT'S BACK (Article 13) (update 12 sept) (Patreon)

Bad news... The law passed and will most likely go into effect in January. I'm getting in contact with Patreon to see if they have any advice, but this ridiculous law seems to be a reality now.

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Tl;dr: They've come to take your Orange Buttcheeks away again. If you're in the EU, click here to write your representative to oppose article 13.

Whoohoo! Everyone's favorite topic, internet censorship! So last august we talked about article 13 of the EUCD, a law which would force companies to take down copyrighted materiaal from their websites.

The idea is this:

"John has got a blog, but he has taken an image from Google without asking and is now forced to take it down because the original photographer didn't give him permission." <- Not an entirely unreasonable stance to take. However...

Youtube, Tumblr, Patreon and a lot of other major companies cannot police their entire medium, so they'll have to start using bots instead. What's the difference between copyright infringement and parody? A bot can't tell and will filter out anything that even closely resembled copyrighted material.

Now a small minority of you might say:

"But I don't think this is a bad thing!"

Fine, so let's see what the negative repercussions of this might be. Bots taking down copyrighted material can also be used to restricted other material. Like having the wrong political opinion. Support party X? Better not talk about it, because all your comments, videos, podcasts, etc. will be taken down before ever reaching the public.

What about the future? Giving up your freedom now means giving up a little bit more in a year or 2, and then a bit more 2 years after that.

Luckily, there is something you can do. If you live in the EU you can contact your representative in parlement and ask them to oppose the bill, just like we did back in august. it's easily done via this website:

https://saveyourinternet.eu/

Just e-mail or call your representative and ask them to oppose the bill. Be polite about it and be serious. Talking about 'Taking away the memes' isn't going to sway their opinion.

It's a duty to ourselves and our neighbors that this act is stopped, right here right now. Thank you for reading.