European Union Parliament rejects copyright directive on Internet

On July 5, 2018, the European Parliament reviewed the copyright protection directive on the Internet and decided to reject it . 318 deputies voted “against”, with 278 deputies' votes in favor, and 31 people abstained. The bill was sent for revision before reconsideration in September 2018 ...


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The copyright directive implied a tightening of the regulation of copyright objects on the Internet, making a lot of noise and provoking a strong reaction from Internet users. The greatest concern among the opponents of the directive was the 11th article on the “link tax” and the 13th article - on the responsibility of online platforms for user-generated content.

In particular, activists feared that Article 13 would force sites to massively delete user-generated content — for example, memes based on frames from films. The legislative project even got the nickname of the anti-memo law ("anti-meme").



The European Union Directive is a legislative act that obliges EU countries to achieve a particular goal within a specified time. To comply with the directive, countries need to adapt their own legislation to the requirements of the directive.

On the eve of voting in parliament in protest against the intentions of the EU authorities to reform the rules of copyright protection on the Internet, Wikipedia suspended its versions in several European languages.


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When opening any Wikipedia pages in Italian, Spanish, Latvian, Estonian, Polish, the user was shown a banner with the message that if the directive was approved, legal information exchange on the Internet would be complicated and the existence of the encyclopedia would be threatened.

Wikipedia in English, German and French continued to work. Decisions to join the boycott were made by local editors.

You can read more about how the European legislative initiative was being prepared and why it is worse than the GDPR: “ Europe changes the legislation on copyright and related rights ” and “ Copyright protection in the EU”: the new reform can affect not only on media platforms "