Major Websites Protest EU Copyright Directive Ahead of Pivotal Vote
Reddit, Wikipedia, and other major platforms stage protests against the EU Copyright Directive, warning that Articles 11 and 13 threaten the open internet. A final vote on the controversial legislation is scheduled for Tuesday.
Major websites including Reddit, Wikipedia, and Twitch stage protests today against the European Union's upcoming Copyright Directive, which faces a final vote on Tuesday. The legislation includes two highly controversial provisions, Articles 11 and 13, that critics warn fundamentally threaten the open internet. Article 11 imposes a "link tax" on sites that link to external news content, while Article 13 forces nearly all platforms to implement automated content ID systems to filter copyrighted material.
Opponents argue that these well-intentioned rules yield disastrous practical consequences, disproportionately punishing smaller platforms while leaving large tech giants relatively unscathed. Automated content filtering opens the floodgates for relentless copyright trolls, and the link tax threatens to choke out independent aggregators. Internet pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf join organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and even a United Nations special rapporteur in strongly opposing the directive's potential chilling effects on free expression.
The current wave of blackouts and popup banners mirrors past digital protests that successfully defeated SOPA/PIPA and preserved net neutrality. Previous resistance to this slow-moving legislation already prompts warnings from Google that it might shut down Google News in Europe entirely. Even though Reddit is an American company, its leadership emphasizes that the law severely impacts its European users and potentially restricts the services it provides globally.