What is Article 13?

Article 13 is part of new legislation being introduced by the European Commission, the main focus of the act is to help musicians and filmmakers make their fair share by enforcing tight copyright rules.

This means sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit etc will need to filter any user-uploaded content with unlicensed copyright.

With Article 13 in place, it would mean that ‘memes’ or ‘funny gifs’ would be a thing of the past. Memes are often based on copyrighted material which would mean those would become banned for those in the EU.

Article 13 will give sports organisers copyright to all video and photos taken at their events, even if it’s just a picture of the crowds or protests. This means that organisers could choose not for media to be shared.

YouTube have released a video against the legislation. It explains what will happen to YouTube once this is enforced.

Although some people argue against, it’s actually a good thing. It means that musicians, filmmakers and photographers will get their fair share of money.

Article 11 is another piece of similar legislation, which bans aggregators like Google News from linking to other websites and it will disallow people from sharing news online using social media networks like Facebook and Twitter without the services paying the news providers.