On Friday Poland officially filed a complaint against the European Union’s copyright directive, saying that the legislation is a step backwards and that the filter requirement could lay the foundation for censorship.
Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski said that the “System may result in adopting regulations that are analogous to preventative censorship, which is forbidden not only in the Polish constitution but also in the EU treaties.”
The directive, which was approved on April 15 and comes into force on June 7, 2019, sparked a huge controversy among critics who claimed that the new rules would have a detrimental impact on creators online.
The new copyright law will hold tech firms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter responsible for material posted without copyright permission. This will mean sites will now have to be proactive, ensuring that copyrighted content, like music and copyrighted movies, isn’t making it onto the site.
EU member states will have until June 7th, 2021 to produce their own laws to implement the directive.
According to the EU, the legislation is supposed to help direct more revenue to content creators – musicians and journalists – as opposed to the platforms that host and share the content.
The most controversial clauses in the new directive are Article 11 and 13. Article 11, otherwise known as the ‘link tax,’ will allow publishers to charge platforms such as Google to display news stories. Whereas Article 13 says that platforms would be liable for content that infringes on someone’s copyright.
