EU copyright legislation complications

• Feature request
• Legislative Compliance

Currently, German legislature is pondering the implementation of the dreaded article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the EU Copyright Directive into German law. Similar implementations must be under way in all member states.

This Article demands that "platform providers" (as general as this term sounds, this means everyone from Youtube down to a privately run Tiki installation) MUST provide online upload filtering of media that could possibly be copyrighted, which translates into "ALL media" AND a "red button" with which copyright holders are enabled to immediately (!) block content they find and deem infringes their held copyrights.

As the IT magazine "c't" informes, the proposed "German copyright service providers law" describes several stages that user uploaded media MUST go through before they may go online.

Platforms shall sign contracts with copyright organizations such as GEMA (for music) etc. Licensed content may go online directly. Other content will have to undergo online filtering. Depending on filtering results, content may be blocked or the copyright owner may be directly informed of the suspected infringement.

It has been speculated previously, that only VERY large companies like Youtube (Google) will at all be (technically) able to run such filter services, looking at the sheer amount of computing power and I/O bandwidth necessary. Youtube and Co could offer filter services for smaller platforms that lack the ressources, but possibly not free of charge. This has been critized as giving Youtube and Co. huge power and wide control over the internet, given the fact that technically there is no difference between filtering for copyright infringement and filtering for unwanted political content, in other words: Once installed, such filters could easily be used for censorship of the internet. This led to mass protest by young people all over Europe. The ruling conservative party promised angry voters that the implementation of the EU directive would not implement upload filtering, but apparently they broke their promise.

According to the government, filters SHALL be set to "mildly" filter, enabling the majority of content to go online, but mechanisms must be implemented for copyright owners to protest, as well as a "red button" with an immediate (!) takedown effect.

This bug has been demonstrated on show2.tiki.org

Please demonstrate your bug on show2.tiki.org

This bug has been demonstrated on show.tikiwiki.org

Please demonstrate your bug on show.tikiwiki.org