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- Tecnoacquisti.com
- Regulations and Privacy
Let's start right away with the most painful point of this new European Copyright regulation, namely what changes for users? In practice, nothing; there will be no form of censorship, and they will be able to continue sharing SNIPPETS, MEMES, and GIFs. So let's calm down; there may only be a few issues due to the automatic algorithms that big data companies like Google and Facebook will have to integrate to automatically recognize copyright violations, which could make mistakes. But even here, nothing new; this already happens with the copyright act in the USA, which, in my opinion, is significantly fairer and more correct compared to this new directive pushed by struggling publishers. The US law also protects us microscopic authors. All non-profit platforms, including Wikipedia, are excluded from the Copyright directive, so it should not have effects on these entities.
Copyright Directive and Web Giants
The web giants, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., will have to activate preventive filters and become responsible in case of violations; this is the real novelty. Although journalists are heavily focused on the lucrative aspect of sharing profits, meaning that the big companies should share revenues with publishers, hoping to make a profit from services like Google News, they will be disappointed, as happened in Spain. The service will either shut down or give visibility to Copyleft content and small publications and blogs. This is because the real problem of European publishing is that it does not produce quality content; in fact, often especially regarding politics and economics, it focuses on opinions and propaganda.
The content filter only concerns large established entities; small entities are excluded, so you will not need to implement it on your e-commerce in PrestaShop or on your corporate site in Joomla, let alone at the hosting level. Startups with less than 3 years of existence and with a turnover of less than 10,000,000 euros and monthly traffic of less than 5,000,000 unique visitors are exempt.
What changes for Creatives?
In my opinion, nothing. This law, unlike the American copyright act, does not protect the small players, but only the publishers who will be able to find what they consider more advantageous agreements with Google and Facebook. However, in practice, they are, in my view, self-excluding from the web, perhaps hoping for our return to print, which would be like going back to the river or the neighborhood fountain to wash clothes instead of using a washing machine. Behind the promise that journalists will receive part of the compensation, obviously few of them have noticed what happened in Spain in 2014 (where Google shut down the service) with Google News and in Germany, for a similar attempt to ask Big G for money for something that it actually charges other entities for (placement and visibility).
Copyright for Memes and Gifs
An important aspect of the directive concerns Memes and Gifs. The regulation specifies and requires member states to protect the freedoms to upload and share works for the purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature, or parody. In practice, we should be able to continue creating and sharing newspaper clippings, memes, and everything as before, and perhaps even more than before, as the directive now provides the right to do so.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
In conclusion, publishers have lobbied to pass a directive that will, in practice, accelerate their disappearance. The press in the last decade has always followed the web, losing quality and editorial control. It is often a victim of fake news that it reports without verification. Newspaper sales have declined, not because of Google News, but because we users find better options elsewhere. The same applies to mainstream TV, which succumbs to Netflix and similar services. The press is a victim of itself, not of new technologies; today it is merely a megaphone for propaganda, lacking professionalism and no longer verifying sources.
Author: Loris Modena
SENIOR DEVELOPER
Per Ind Loris Modena, owner of Arte e Informatica, started working in the IT sector in 1989 as a system administrator responsible for the maintenance and installation of computer systems. He began programming for the web in 1997, focusing on CGI programming in PERL and later transitioning to programming in PHP and JavaScript. During this time, he became familiar with the Open Source world and the management of Linux servers.