Memes are life. This is a fact. However, not everybody understands the importance of memes as an effective method to share ideas and even change the world. These individuals are trying to shut down the glorious culture of memes. A new proposed law would completely change the internet as we know it today and stifle creativity on the world wide web, and worst of all — outlaw memes.
While all of Europe was consumed with 24-hour World Cup coverage last week, the European Union took the first step in passing sweeping new copyright legislation that would have serious implications for everyone on the internet. On Wednesday, the Legislative Committee approved Article 13 of the new EU Copyright Directive. This potential law would basically ban reusing photos or videos even if you make a GIF, meme, or rework it to create your Saved by the Bell fan-fiction.
Article 13 requires websites such as Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook to create systems to monitor all content and to identify any and all potentially copyright-infringing material. It would force all social media websites to have a system like YouTube already has they searches for copyright music. Most social media companies are pretty lax on enforcing copyright-infringement except for broadcasting live sports clips such as the NFL, MLB, and the Olympics. It would cost the companies millions of dollars to create technology that has “effective content recognition technologies” to enforce these new rules. Article 13 would subject social media companies to copyright penalties if their users violated the new laws. That would potentially kill off a great number of websites except for behemoths with deep pockets such as Google and Facebook.
