Article 13: See ya, internet 👋
Article 13, or Article 17 as it’s now formally known, is very likely to have the single, greatest impact on the internet than any other law we’ve seen passed to date.
On the surface it seems relatively simple: the responsibility for checking copyrighted content now lies with the social platforms (Facebook/YouTube/Instagram etc) instead of the individual uploading the content. The platforms will now also be the ones held liable in the case of a law suit. This seems to make sense, right? For years the major tech players have been building vast business models off the back of stolen content, so surely they should pay for that? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and the implications could be devastating to millions of creators, thousands of smaller businesses, and ultimately rock the boat on the very foundations the internet has been built on: freedom of speech.
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Let’s focus on one platform. Take YouTube, for example. YouTube have undoubtedly built the most sophisticated content ID platform in the world for scanning for copyrighted content. However, despite this sophistication, scanning for copyrighted content is an unbelievably complex technical challenge, which means there are still countless cases of YouTube getting it wrong. For example, Sebastian Tomczak uploaded a 10 hour video of white noise and was hit with five copyright infringement claims from record labels claiming it was their track. Pre-Article 13, this would’ve been Sebastian Tomczak’s problem. Post-Article 13, it’s YouTube’s. Which means if they want to avoid facing a constant stream of potential legal action against them, they’re going to have to be a lot more strict about what can and cannot be uploaded. Realistically, at this point in time only a human (in collaboration with technology) could safely vet content to ensure it is copyright free. Now factor in that 400 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we start to understand the scale of the issue on our hands.
What will happen, exactly? Only a small number of pre-vetted channels allowed to upload content in the EU? Blanket content block for all content in the EU? Now that the major media corporations (music labels, film studios, news conglomerates etc) have managed to push this through in the EU, will the rest of the world follow suit? Will legal and financial implications be so great to social media platforms that they crumble entirely? I have no idea. No one does.
The irony of it all is that whilst the powers that be — including the very individuals and organisations who pushed through Article 13 — are trying to break up the big tech giants and remove some of their power, the inverse might actually happen. Building sophisticated enough content ID systems is such an incredibly cost-prohibitive endeavour, that only the tech giants will have the resources to build them. Guess who will the be licensing out these expensive systems to the smaller platforms…
One thing is for sure: the internet is about to change, in a big way. We have a couple of years for countries within the EU to implement the changes, and — much like GDPR — no one knows exactly how strictly enforced these regulations will be, or how severe the punishments will look for mishaps. But for countries outside of the EU not paying attention: it’s like seeing your neighbours house burn down and saying “Meh, it’s next door so we don’t need to worry about it”.
