On Tuesday, March 26 2019 Members of EU Parliament endorsed an overhaul two decades old copyright laws. This law includes Mandatory copyright filters to automatically remove copyrighted links and content. In the past only the actual distribution of copyrighted content such as pirated software and media was penalised. This would tax even the aggregate sites like Google that link to content.
The idea of the law is for newspapers and creative artists to be able to receive direct payment from Big Techs’ enormous profit margins. For example Google will have to pay the source when it displays news snippets on its search engine. It was heavily criticized for being anti freedom and a link tax.
The Effect
Many sites ask users to agree to new permissions which conform to European Parliament laws. Sometimes users will be unable to visit a news websites from a different country.
There were many attempted dissident victories acknowledged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
