This vote is currently scheduled for Wednesday 12 September at 12h00 CEST (provisional date), and the deadline for Amendments is set to Wednesday 5 September at 13h00 CEST.
You can call Members of the European Parliament in their Strasbourg office until Wednesday 12 September 10 am CET (the vote is scheduled on that day at noon CET).
How will this impact you
Find out more from C4C, Copybuzz and Save the Link.Whether a creator or a consumer, everyone who uses the internet will be affected by this law — which is why we all need to speak out against it.
If you are a creator or independent business, the content that you upload to share with your audience might be deleted without your consent. Creators include but are not limited to artists –such as cartoonists, gamers, illustrators, photographers, documentary filmmakers, animators, musicians, DJs, and dancers,– bloggers, journalists, and technologists.
Online platforms will be required to implement complex and expensive filtering systems and will be held liable for copyright infringement, potentially incurring fines that threaten their economic viability.
Article 13 would restrict the ability of Internet users to consume content – meaning they won’t be able to find and enjoy diverse kinds of cultural expressions that they have grown accustomed to. The days of communicating through gifs and memes, listening to our favourite remixes online or sharing videos of our friends singing at karaoke might be coming to an end.
Ultimately, the internet culture that has emerged in recent years – a culture that enables connections and democratises information – will become bureaucratic and restrictive.
Blast from the recent past
A couple of years ago, European citizens were asked to Save the Internet at a time where an important vote was going to shape the future of network neutrality in the European Union. The stakes were huge as a negative outcome would have meant that big corporations would have been able to decide what content was available at what price on the Internet. But European citizens stepped up and a positive outcome was generated thanks to the millions that raised their voice.
It is now time to Save Your Internet, the one where you decide what you upload and where, who you share a meme with and when you can upload a parody.
If you do not act now, many of your daily activities on the Internet will no longer be possible, blocked by automated filters that are unable to recognize your rights under EU law.