Patreon Stands With Our EU Creators! #DeleteArt13 #SaveYourInternet
Creators,
The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee adopted the dreadful Article 13 (CA 14) proposal by Rapporteur MEP Axel Voss, during its vote on their Report on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. If that sentence went straight over your head like it does for most — worry not. Stick with me for a few minutes, because I’m only being somewhat hyperbolic when I say the future of internet creators is at stake!
The proposed reform will affect your ability to create, share and access content on platforms like Patreon. Specifically, Article 13 requires effective technological measures to proactively filter all user-uploaded content. Effective technological measures sound a lot like automated filters, which would be a disaster. The idea of mandatory upload filters, or censorship machines as they’re more colloquially known, has not been well received. The technology is a massively flawed, likely illegal, ineffective, self censorship inducing measure that is incompatible with other EU directives and may destroy the internet as we know it, not to mention problems of content, access and fundamental rights.
Human rights groups and digital rights organizations have advocated for the removal of Article 13 from the proposal entirely. Patreon has joined other startups and online services in raising serious concerns to Members of European Parliament about the provision. So far, our collective concerns have fallen on deaf ears.
The stated aim of the reform is to update copyright rules ‘for the digital age’. Proponents of the reform argue that revenues generated from copyright-protected content are being unfairly distributed in the value chain of online publishing, a concept being framed as the ‘value gap’. Unfair competition in the market exists when certain companies, such as YouTube, have no burden of negotiating licenses for use of protected content, while others (think Netflix, Spotify and iTunes) do. Value gap advocates seem to have no problem with directly comparing apples to oranges, or more accurately, Apples to YouTubes.
Patreon too sees a value gap. The one we recognize is between the value generated from creative content and what actually finds its way to the creator (as opposed to paying for some lobbyist middleman’s shoes). This proposed update to copyright law once again takes into consideration every entity that profits from creative content, by ad or by licensing fee, without truly listening to the concerns of actual creators.
We’re listening to our creators on this issue and following their lead. Supporting creators like NeoUnrealist, who’s concerned about upholding well established exceptions to copyright, or Computing Forever’s question of how small to medium news sites will exist under this regime. Irate Bear worries about the reliance on ill-equipped algorithms to determine which memes or what types of fanart are acceptable. The CorbettReport is justifiably skeptical of this type of legislation ever working for creators, after witnessing similar battles with legislation here in the US (e.g. SOPA, PIPA). Black Pigeon does well to point out why this legislation matters to those creators outside the EU.
Patreon takes the concerns of these and all its creators very seriously and stands with each and every one of them in opposing the censorship of mandatory upload filters. The proposed copyright reform is bad for creators. We hope that you join us in this fight.
Join our European creators in standing against these restrictive filters. Together we can save our internet.
