ARTICLE 13 is a copyright law that has been approved by members of the European Parliament.
This is set to be welcomed by many musicians who claim the reforms are needed to fairly compensate artists.
Article 13 would make big online platforms like YouTube and Facebook responsible for scanning content for anything copyrighted and ensuring the holders are paid a fair fee.
The law has divided many, with musicians including Paul McCartney saying that the reforms are necessary to fairly compensate artists.
Critics such as Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales have argued that the impact will fall most on ordinary users of the internet.
Tech giants such as Google and Facebook may also be forced to pay media outlets for using their content.
The Directive on Copyright states “online content sharing service providers and right holders shall cooperate in good faith in order to ensure that unauthorised protected works or other subject matter are not available on their services.”
It basically means sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which host a lot of user-generated content, are responsible to delete copyrighted content.
Therefore people have claimed memes, which are often copyrighted pictures, will be banned as a result of the EU directive.
But legal experts argued memes will not be banned because they are parodies and as a result the directive will not apply.
Others have said copyright filters may flag memes and inadvertently remove them.
On Wednesday, September 12, the Copyright Directive was passed.
The directive was supported by 438 members, while 226 voted against and 39 abstained, after MEPs opted to revise the law in an earlier vote in July.
It will now go to each EU member state for final approval, and includes measures to make the likes of Twitter, Google and Facebook take responsibility for the copyright status of material posted by users.
A final vote on the directive took place on March 26 and it was passed by 348 votes to 264 following a debate in the EU Parliament.
Each EU country has two years to pass the relevant legislation for Article 13.
Online platforms will have to use technology to detect when users uplaod copyrighted material.
This could see the death of the the meme, which see photos or videos edited to humorous effect.
Julia Reda, a prominent German MEP against the law changes, tweeted her reaction to the vote, describing it as “catastrophic”.
Conservative MEPs who backed the measures celebrated the move for “at last catching up with the digital age”.
Sajjad Karim, Conservative legal affairs spokesman, said: “This legislation is now better balanced, answering many of the concerns of journalists, publishers and musicians whose work was being shared freely online without stifling innovation or fundamentally changing the nature of the internet.”
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