The European Parliament has just rejected the proposed amendments to EU copyright law which had been criticised by various tech personalities. The two main amendments which drew criticism were Article 13 and Article 11. Article 13 could have led to memes and remixes being made illegal and platforms would have had to deploy upload filters, Article 11 proposed a link tax which would make big companies like Google and Facebook pay publishers for linking to the content but critics said this could have led to governments hindering freedom of speech.
Posting on Twitter, Julia Reda, an MEP for the German Pirate Party, and critic of the amendments, confirmed that protests were successful and that the EU Parliament had rejected the current versions of the amendments. She said that lawmakers will be able to make adjustments and another vote will be held between September 10 - 13.
The amendments have attracted a lot of famous critics including Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, the creator of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Mitchell Baker the co-founder of the Mozilla Project, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, security expert Bruce Schneier, and net neutrality expert Tim Wu. Proponents of the law include the musicians Paul McCartney, James Blunt, and Plácido Domingo.
Let us know what you think of this outcome in the comments. Are you happy the amendments failed to pass or do you think creators need stronger protections?
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