Wikipedia, EFF, others protest new copyright laws
The Polish, Spanish, and Italian pages of Wikipedia closed down on Wednesday, 4th July, in protest of the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs’ vote in favor of copyright articles 13 and 11. Article 13 requires online platforms to filter content for copyright violations, and Article 11, sometimes called a ‘link tax’ could allow publishers to charge a fee if the link to that content appears on their site. A statement from Academics Against Publishers’ Right warns that the proposal ‘would likely impede the free flow of information that is of vital importance to democracy’. Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote, The EU’s Copyright Proposal is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even (Especially!) Wikipedia, in an analysis that warns ‘While the directive fixes some longstanding problems with EU rules, it creates much, much larger ones: problems so big that they threaten to wreck the Internet itself’.