AO3 needs help from European writers!!
https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10637
OTW Legal and our allies have been active in fighting on fan-unfriendly legal proposals in the EU. Since these proposals were introduced in 2016, OTW Legal has submitted comments opposing them and has joined in calls for action against them. We’ve managed to hold them off so far and encourage some revisions, but a key vote will be happening in the European Parliament’s JURI committee on 20/21 June that could have a significant impact on the Internet and fan sites. In particular, two provisions of the current proposal would be bad for fans. Article 11 would impose a “link tax” that would make it more expensive for many websites to operate, and Article 13 would impose mandatory content-filtering requirements on websites that host user-generated content. These provisions have been hotly debated and revised a bit since the last time we reported on them. (For more on recent revisions and debates, see these discussions by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Hogan Lovells Firm) But despite revisions, they’re still bad deals for fans. Importantly, they don’t preserve the “safe harbors” that websites rely on to operate, and they don’t include user-generated content exceptions.
Without safeguards for user-generated content, Article 13 would require your favourite websites to implement systems that monitor user-generated content and automatically remove any content that could potentially infringe upon copyright, giving publishing giants the power to block your online expression. Sites like YouTube, Tumblr, GitHub, Soundcloud, etc., could be required to block the upload of content based on whether it has been “identified” by big corporations, rather than based on its legality. The law is still being debated, and it is difficult to predict how it would impact the OTW’s projects, including the Archive of Our Own, if it is passed. Regardless of how this vote comes out, the OTW will work as hard as we can to keep the Internet fan-friendly. But we need your help. The most effective thing you can do right now is contact your Member of European Parliament. You can use one of these tools to e-mail your MEP or call your MEP to tell them that having user-generated content on the internet is important to you.
Here’s what you can tell them: Without safe harbors for user-generated content, Article 13 of the Copyright Directive would stifle free expression on the Internet. We don’t want mandatory filtering. Algorithms don’t understand limitations and exceptions to copyright like parody, public interest exceptions, fair use, or fair dealing, and we don’t want our non-infringing videos, website posts and art blocked because of a biased algorithm created by big corporations. We want the law to protect user-generated works, not harm them.
OTW Legal will keep fighting for fan-friendly laws!
Please signal boost if you can’t help directly!
If any of my followers are in Europe, please help protect the AO3 (and other fannish archives as well)!
@lavvyan based on a past post I think of you as the in-house expert. Does it check out?
I wanna know the answer to the above.
This is actually the very issue I posted about. It’s hella important because while Article 11 is mostly about money-grabbing from Google, Article 13 in particular leaves next to no room for content that is based on existing, copyrighted media. Any big content provider would have to install automatic filters, and those are likely to err on the side of caution. Which means that anything that smacks even faintly of copyright violation would never see the light of day, fair use or not.
If you click the link to the AO3 post, you can scroll down to find their links to the tools you can use to contact your representatives in the European Parliament. You won’t even have to come up with a text of your own, though I recommend translating the provided text into your native language to be taken more seriously. It might also help if you put in an e-mail address that’s visibly from your own country, like web.de or whatever, instead of the generic gmail.com.
I say again, this is important. There’s so much ridiculous information going around on Tumblr, the worst of it being that right-wing pro-Russian nonsense, and the whole issue is slipping under the radar. If you’re an EU citizen, please, please contact your MEPs.
Don’t put this on your to-do list or your check-out-later list. The vote is in ten days. E-mail them now or live with the consequences. I’m not even joking; media coverage has been non-existant and if Tumblr, AO3, YouTube and everything else does end up impacted negatively when you could have said something, I’m going to blame you for not doing anything. The e-mail text is provided. You put in your country and it automatically selects all your MEPs. As spoons go, this is a small one.
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