Approved! What you need to know about the controversial articles 11 and 13

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Following the decision of the European Parliament, the Internet as we know it could change

The debate on the regulation of copyright, took over three years to be approved and, finally, on Tuesday, March 26, the European Parliament approved articles 11 and 13 with 348 votes in favor and 274 against. The articles in question could modify the Internet we know nowadays, due to the strict rules on copyright.

Leer en español: ¡Aprobados! Lo que tiene que saber sobre los polémicos artículos 11 y 13

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Not worth the intense campaigns of Internet giants like Google, Wikipedia, YouTube or Twitch to rethink the approval and subsequent implementation of the articles. However, what are they about? We tell you more.

Article 11 (now article 15)

The first change that must be taken into account is that articles 11 and 13 were renamed as articles 15 and 17, respectively, because in the process of editing the reform, other articles were added "but without modifying the numbering", according to Xataca.

With this in mind, Article 11 is mainly harmful to news aggregators. According to Radio Chile, "Article 11 creates a or 'related right' of copyright, which would allow press editors to obtain higher remuneration for the use of their production by news aggregators, such as Google News, or on social networks".

Therefore, the use of citations or links would be a problem, especially in the journalistic part. La Vanguardia explains that "if a website, such as the Menéame aggregator, wants to show a part of the content of news, it must request permission from the media. Something that makes this practice very difficult". Faced with the above, Google said that if it were approved, it would withdraw the 'Google News' service from the European Union, just as it did when Spain tried to do something similar.

At that time, Spain tried to impose taxes on the content aggregators, which the country hoped to compensate the smaller publishers that showed up on platforms like Google News. "The firm quickly withdrew its service from the country because the costs became unfavorable, which resulted in a significant loss of traffic on news websites in Spanish", according to KitGuru.

However, inserted links can be embedded (for example, a tweet).

Article 13 (now article 17)

Probably one of the most controversial articles. With the approval of this one, the internet could change, because it forces the content platforms to monitor everything that users upload and verify if it is free of copyright or not. Within the affected platforms would be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or "GitHub, which advocates the free sharing of information and knowledge", according to Xataca.

To regulate the above, the platforms would have to be much stricter with the content that is uploaded, unlike today. On YouTube, for example, if a user uploads a song by a recognized artist and the platform detects it, the user will receive a penalty or 'strike', without the owner of the song knowing. With the approval of this article will be the platform, in this case YouTube, who will face the claims of copyright.

In this way, the creators of content, blogs in which books or films are reviewed will be the most affected, as they will not have full knowledge of which companies claim for the content with copyright.

Now, approval is only the first step of an implementation that could take at least two years. Likewise, they will have to create strategies to identify content that could violate copyright, without having to fall into censorship, which is another issue that ignites the debate.

And the memes?

One of the great myths that were created from article 13, was the possibility of sharing memes. For the relief of many, in the official communiqué of the Parliament, it is specified that "the rise to the network of protected works in order to quote, criticize, review, caricature, parody or imitate is protected, which guarantees that the memes and GIF will remain available and can be shared online".

The problem would be whether the algorithms or programs designed to recognize the copyrighted images will be able to recognize that, in effect, they are satirical images.

In this way, after being approved, it is expected that next April 9 the articles will be adopted by the Council of the European Union.

LatinAmerican Post | Laura Viviana Guevara Muñoz

Translated from "¡Aprobados! Lo que tiene que saber sobre los artículos 11 y 13"