EU votes on copyright law that could kill memes and open source software

[Aguia]

The EU’s Legal Affairs Committee voted in favour of the legislation—but it needs parliamentary approval to become law.

The European Union has passed an initial vote in favour of the Copyright Directive, a legislation experts say "threatens the internet". 

As reported by Wired, the mandate is designed to update internet copyright law but contains two controversial clauses. Ultimately, it could force prominent online platforms to censor their users' content before it's posted—which could impact everyone from meme creators to open source software designers and livestreamers. 

Despite passing a vote yesterday—held by the EU's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI)—the directive needs parliamentary approval before becoming law. 

And while much of the directive seems well-intended, Article 11 and Article 13 are considered problematic by critics. As told by The Verge, the former is a "link tax" which could force the likes of Google and Facebook to buy licenses from media companies before linking to their content. The latter, on the other hand, is an "upload filter" which would require everything uploaded online in the EU to be checked for copyright infringement prior to posting. 

To this end, the Copyright Directive primarily aims to prevent music, video and online streams from being pirated, but instead casts a net over all copyrightable material. Wired gives internet memes as an example, whereby viral sharing would become illegal under the new proposed rules.