Article 13 could encourage preventive censorship.
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 5:19 am
But what about educational content uploaded to YouTube? YouTube's anti-piracy mechanisms are unable to distinguish when content is used for educational purposes. Some legitimate content would therefore be unfairly affected by Article 13.
And, again, this would not be news, YouTube has been having problems with copyright exceptions for years. But we still have to talk about the detail that makes the difference with the entry of article 13.
Strictly speaking, Article 13 requires the major platforms to “prevent copyrighted works from being made available on their services.” It does not require them to remove these copies as soon as possible, it requires them to “prevent them from being made available.” Later on, it talks about “appropriate and proportionate measures,” but again it does not specify what this means.
Let’s put ourselves in YouTube’s shoes for a moment. Would it be enough to remove illegal content as soon as possible? No, at least not if we take Article 13 literally. If we let users upload illegal content and it took us even an hour to detect and remove it, we would not have “prevented it from being available.” And the responsibility for this infringement would fall on us.
In other words, we are forced to prevent that content colombia phone data from ever being uploaded in the first place. So we would have to move from filtering content that has already been uploaded to filtering content while it is being uploaded and preemptively censoring it.
And this is where Article 13 comes into conflict with another, even more important, European regulation, that relating to freedom of expression within the European framework.
Of course, this would be the worst possible scenario, and given the many revisions that have been made to the new directive, it seems clear that this is not the European Commission's objective. But it is undeniable that Article 13 as it is worded is ambiguous, to say the least. Not to mention that it has been known for years that excessive zeal of copyright laws is counterproductive to their objectives, the promotion of creativity and culture.
In any case, this is a complicated topic that affects us and about which it is convenient to be up to date . Especially in the case of those who want to be influencers or those who, like so many young people today, want to be YouTubers or use YouTube for their digital marketing .
And, again, this would not be news, YouTube has been having problems with copyright exceptions for years. But we still have to talk about the detail that makes the difference with the entry of article 13.
Strictly speaking, Article 13 requires the major platforms to “prevent copyrighted works from being made available on their services.” It does not require them to remove these copies as soon as possible, it requires them to “prevent them from being made available.” Later on, it talks about “appropriate and proportionate measures,” but again it does not specify what this means.
Let’s put ourselves in YouTube’s shoes for a moment. Would it be enough to remove illegal content as soon as possible? No, at least not if we take Article 13 literally. If we let users upload illegal content and it took us even an hour to detect and remove it, we would not have “prevented it from being available.” And the responsibility for this infringement would fall on us.
In other words, we are forced to prevent that content colombia phone data from ever being uploaded in the first place. So we would have to move from filtering content that has already been uploaded to filtering content while it is being uploaded and preemptively censoring it.
And this is where Article 13 comes into conflict with another, even more important, European regulation, that relating to freedom of expression within the European framework.
Of course, this would be the worst possible scenario, and given the many revisions that have been made to the new directive, it seems clear that this is not the European Commission's objective. But it is undeniable that Article 13 as it is worded is ambiguous, to say the least. Not to mention that it has been known for years that excessive zeal of copyright laws is counterproductive to their objectives, the promotion of creativity and culture.
In any case, this is a complicated topic that affects us and about which it is convenient to be up to date . Especially in the case of those who want to be influencers or those who, like so many young people today, want to be YouTubers or use YouTube for their digital marketing .