As soon as you finish your homework, you check your social media. After that’s done, you log onto YouTube—as usual—and surprisingly find your homepage completely blank, devoid of any video thumbnails and channels. Similarly, what if you try to post something on Instagram, only to have it blocked and not on your page due to some sort of “copyright violations”?

This is what life would be like under Europe’s horrendous law known as “Article 13”—which, quite honestly, is like the Thanos of the Internet. But what is it, anyway?

Article 13 is the thirteenth part of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (also known as the “Copyright Directive”), a law proposed by the European Union. The Directive, as a whole, will regulate copyrighted content posted online, mainly in the EU—specifically, France, Germany, and several other European countries. However, it’s Articles 11 and 13 that have been quite controversial these days, with the latter really igniting not just protests, but also major headlines—specifically, in not just Europe, but also AMERICA, as well.

The thing is, why is the law such a big deal? Well, look no further into one of MatPat’s videos. Uploaded on his channel Film Theory in late 2018, the famous YouTuber covered the legislature in a video appropriately entitled “All Your Memes Are DEAD!” In that video, he explains that fair use “...allows for use of copyrighted content without the original copyright holder’s permission,” thus allowing YouTubers, teachers, and the like to insert copyrighted images (such as the Pepsi logo, for example) for commentary, news reports, research, educational use, criticism/review, and so on.

However, what if someone uploaded a live stream of, say, Family Guy episodes onto YouTube? That’s where safe harbor comes in; to quote MatPat, “...YouTube isn’t responsible for committing that copyright violation. They’re only responsible for removing it. That is the principle of safe harbor—YouTube here is just an intermediary. It’s not at fault for someone misusing the system and uploading illegal stuff, as long as it gets taken down and, as such, they’re shielded from copyright liability.” In other words, if copyrighted content is illegally uploaded onto a certain platform, the platform that the content is on should have the uploader take responsibility, not the platform itself.

Fair use and safe harbor seem safe—well, in America, at least. Europe, on the other hand, has a completely different approach regarding copyright law.

Europe replaces fair use with permitted use, which means that you can’t use any copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder(s). Besides, such content can only be freely used for parody, quotation, private copying, and classroom use. Article 13, however, threatens to make these laws even stricter. Under Article 13, “Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with right[s]holders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with right[s]holders for the use of their works or other subject-matter[s]...” In other words, content-sharing platforms—like YouTube, Discord, and pretty much every social media site—are required to check whether if something being uploaded contains copyrighted content or not; if so, the content won’t be uploaded onto the platform. This allows the film and music industries, as well as a multitude of large companies, to be the only ones capable of using copyrighted content; after all, the EU’s GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, apply the same laws for all Internet users in the EU.

Despite the harm that Article 13 can potentially cause, it can benefit companies. As stated by Carlos Fernandes, “The EU’s plan to rein in Facebook and Google will do exactly the opposite”, “...the EU’s proposed copyright law...serves to strengthen the already powerful [companies]”. This can be a great benefit for major corporations—mainly those in the film and music industries, such as Warner Bros. or RCA Records—because they can use their content freely. Basically, if you’re the CEO of Lionsgate, for example, you can upload your content freely however you want. This allows you to utilize scenes from your films creatively, such as in videos. Besides, the text in the law itself has improved a bit; according to YouTube’s anti-Article 13 campaign, #SaveYourInternet, “Platforms making a good effort to help rights holders identify and protect works should not face liability for every piece of content a user uploads, especially when neither the rightsholder nor the platform specifically knows who actually owns that content. The final text [of Article 13]  includes language that recognizes that principle.”

However, Article 13 still has its downsides. As stated by YouTube, “...the directive fails to clearly outline requirements for how rights holders should cooperate to identify their content. Instead, it introduces vague, untested requirements that could be imposed on well-meaning platforms, content creators and rights holders. This will likely result in online services over-blocking content to limit legal risk.” Besides, in a YouTube video from the YouTube Creators channel, a YouTube representative stated, “On February 13th European lawmakers agreed on the final text of the EU Copyright Directive, which includes Article 13. The text will go back to the European Parliament for a final vote in the week of March 25th. We’ve had several lawyers and policy experts examine the text. … The final text leaves a lot of ambiguity [uncertainty] on what happens to content before YouTube receives notice from rightsholders. ... Specifically, the text is unclear on three things. First the role of rightsholders in providing the necessary level of detail to identify their content. Second, it’s unclear what kind of content platforms of YouTube need to have licenses for. Images? Paintings? Photos? What else? Given that it’s unclear, there’s no way of being one-hundred-percent sure of whether all the rights are covered at the moment of upload. And lastly, it’s unclear if there are any new legal responsibilities for creators.” In other words, the current version of Article 13 has language that is quite vague enough to have platforms like YouTube end up blocking their content; after all, certain licenses for certain types of content aren’t specified.

Now, Article 13 has been approved by the EU Parliament, and things will only get worse; as stated by MEP (Member of the European Parliament) Julia Reda, “Nobody in the government wants to take responsibility for upload filters—not even Chancellor Merkel [of Germany]—but the government will vote for them anyway...Germany seems to have accepted upload filters…” This can cause one of Europe’s most developed and popular countries—and eventually various other European nations—to surrender to a dangerously petrifying censorship machine. Fortunately, as stated by Zoe Kleinman of BBC, “The European Parliament said that memes would be ‘specifically excluded’ from the directive, although it was unclear how tech firms would be able to enforce that rule with a blanket filter.” Besides, as stated by David Meyer of Fortune, the Copyright Directive—which includes Article 13—”...will now have to be implemented in the laws of each EU member state by 2021”.

Time is running out before Article 13 takes effect in all EU member countries, so spread the message online—and, for the love of God and the entire online community (regardless of which platform(s) you use), #SaveYourInternet.