https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3aa5b/europes-new-copyright-rules-will-be-devastating-to-the-internet-as-we-know-it

The formal death of net neutrality and the AT&T-Time Warner merger have received plenty of justified attention this week for the numerous ways they will negatively impact free speech and internet competition. But activists, startups, and businesses alike warn that a new copyright proposal out of the European Union has the potential to cause even greater damage to the internet as we know it.

The EU proposal in question is an attempt to shore up existing problems with EU copyright law. But the poorly crafted nature of the effort could have a profoundly negative impact on everything from your ability to share hot memes to the survival of new startups. For example, Article 13 of the plan declares that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will need to employ automated systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Such automated internet filters (whether policing speech, porn, or copyrighted material) not only routinely don’t work very well, they tend to result in rampant collateral damage as legitimate content gets caught in the poorly-crafted automated dragnet. From videos that happen to have copyrighted music playing in the background (you might recall the infamous Prince baby dancing fracas), to memes that happen to contain commercial images, there’s numerous reasons for website users to upload copyrighted material. But thanks to overreach by many copyright holders, nuance is a frequent casualty in the copyright debate.