Hyderabad: While the European Union has rolled out its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law to protect the privacy of citizens, the future of memes faces a doubt as the copyright directive imposes censorship on the content you share online.
This includes memes, blog posts, videoes, remixing videos, comments on Facebook, or even Twitter links or a shirt you wear with a meme.
Article 13 of the Copyright Directive proposal if brought into vogue by voting in the European Parliament on June 20, will impose extensive censorship of all the content people share online.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital rights group, termed Articles 13 and 11 as “poorly thought through, poorly drafted, unworkable — and dangerous.”
According to the article, platform providers (like Facebook or Twitter) should take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rights-holders for the use of their works.
Even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales rang the alarm bells on the catastrophic copyright article and termed it “really bad”
“This copyright law is similar to the Youtube copyright system and might impact cross-border sharing of information. Everyone can claim copyright on everything including pictures, even on a code that software engineers write,” said a cyber security expert on condition of anonymity.
“While it is difficult to assess the impact on India, the restrictions will be tough. As internet brings world closer, it is becoming difficult to identify the origin or stop people from sharing meme or picture,” the expert added.
