What is Article 13?

Article 13 of the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market, to give it its full name, is an attempt to reshape copyright law for the internet age.

This section of the directive will completely reconfigure websites’ responsibilities when it comes to enforcing copyrights. Until now, the so-called Ecommerce Directive has given online platforms broad protection from being subject to copyright penalties when they simply acted as a conduit for user uploads. It’s very similar to the laws in the U.S. that exempt YouTube from penalties as long as its making its best effort to take down infringing material when it’s reported. YouTube uses an automated content recognition system combined with an army of human beings to review the material users’ upload. It costs the company millions of dollars to do this. Critics of Article 13 say that every popular platform estimated to mean the top 20 percent that allows users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images will need one of these systems. Last week, 70 of the most influential people in the field of technology signed a letter opposing Article 13.

Pioneers like Cerf and Berners Lee were joined by experts in virtually every facet of the online world to say that the legislation would harm freedom of speech, education, expression, and small businesses while giving major platforms that already heavily monitor their service a distinct advantage. Activist, author, and special advisor for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Cory Doctorow has written extensively about the potential implications of Article 13 since it became a crisis in the last few months.

He told Gizmodo over the phone that as it’s written, the legislation will cost “hundreds of millions” of dollars in penalties for platforms that can’t handle monitoring, and he’s confident that companies like Google and Facebook will be the only ones that can survive. The big question around Article 13 is its vague requirement that websites use “appropriate” measures to prevent copyrighted material from ever appearing on their service. It suggests “effective content recognition technologies” be used several times without explaining what that means, how it would work, how claims would be filed, or anything practical. For critics like Doctorow, the natural conclusion is that big platforms will use their own system and some sort of centralized system will be required for the rest.

Because there’s no outline of how such a system would work, there are no penalties for people who falsely claim ownership over the content. In the event that someone uploads a claim over the complete works of Shakespeare which is in the public domain a platform would have to individually decide if that claim is worth taking a risk and allowing someone else to quote a sonnet by the bard. If the platform doesn’t want to take the risk, someone fighting a copyright claim would have to go to court. As we see all the time, algorithms by the richest companies in the world are terrible at doing their jobs.

This week, we saw YouTube blocking educational videos from MIT and the Blender Foundation because they were erroneously flagged by its piracy filters. In the past, we’ve seen bullshit piracy claims over white noise and birds chirping. Also, what’s possibly the most important problem with Article 13 is that it makes no exceptions for fair use, a foundation of the internet an essential caveat in the law that allows people to remix copyrighted works.

Article 13 approved

In September 2017 the European Parliament voted on – and approved – an amended version of the EU copyright law that was rejected by the same body in July of this year. The divisive legislation was put to the ultimate democratic test in Strasbourg, with 438 voting in favour of the measures, 226 voting against and 39 abstaining.