The EU's Link Tax Will Kill Open Access and Creative Commons News

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All this month, the European Union's "trilogue" is meeting behind closed doors to hammer out the final wording of the new Copyright Directive, a once-noncontroversial regulation that became a hotly contested matter when, at the last minute, a set of extremist copyright proposals were added and voted through.

One of these proposals is Article 11, the "link tax," which requires a negotiated, paid license for links that contain "excerpts" of news stories. The Directive is extremely vague on what defines a "link" or a "news story" and implies that an "excerpt" consists of more than one single word from a news-story (many URLs contain more than a single word from the headline).

One of the Directive's "recitals" is Recital 32:

"(32) The organisational and financial contribution of publishers in producing press publications needs to be recognised and further encouraged to ensure the sustainability of the publishing industry and thereby to guarantee the availability of reliable information. It is therefore necessary for Member States to provide at Union level legal protection for press publications in the Union for digital uses. Such protection should be effectively guaranteed through the introduction, in Union law, of rights related to copyright for the reproduction and making available to the public of press publications in respect of digital uses in order to obtain fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses. Private uses should be excluded from this reference. In addition, the listing in a search engine should not be considered as fair and proportionate remuneration."

Recital 32 suggests that (1) anyone who wants to link to the news has to have a separate, commercial license; and (2) news companies can't waive this right, even through Creative Commons licenses and other tools for granting blanket permission.

So i've been reading about this as more news comes out and this latest update just seems to be more bad news.

This is fairly troubling for sites like ATS where the content is made up primarily from members linking to news articles.

Under article 11 European news agencies will be required to charge for reposting of links to articles or snippets of articles, whether or not they want to give it away for free.

This in the end will be harmful to small news publishers who's content won't be found or shareable and it's going to stifle access to information.

As much as this is the European Union. This will affect the internet all over the world in much the same way America's DMCA does.

I got three words. New. World. Order.

Jeezus, if I am reading this correctly, sites like ATS will vanish as it relies on news articles for discussion. And peeps want to remain in the EU huh. SMH!

a reply to: lakenheath24

EU laws do not bind US news sites, nor other just inside EU. EU is evil it is the New World Order.

originally posted by: dollukka
a reply to: lakenheath24

EU laws do not bind US news sites, nor other just inside EU. EU is evil it is the New World Order.

How many European news sources get quoted or posted on ATS?

How many DMCA claims get made against non-us citizens

EU laws might not bind us news sites. But EU laws will bind EU news sites and anyone that links to them. Whether they can legally make someone outside the EU pay for a commercial license may or may not be the case, doesn't mean they're not going to be legally obligated to try.

a reply to: dug88

Wise man links to US site where there might be a link to original site.. i think.
There will be ways around it.

Nah, Google just needs to not scrape the media in EU for a month or two and geo-block YouTube the same. The people and media will be in a lynching mood by then. We might even see the guillotine put back in use.

Well, better get some stock in a VPN company. That or join the dark web!

Again, I was told that Net Neutrality was a good thing...