Article 11 - The Consequences of the European Union's Link Tax
On September 12th, 2018, the European Parliament voted in favor of the Directive on Copyright in the Single Digital Market, a motion meant to modernize copyright laws for the digital age to ensure that license holders and content creators would be fairly compensated when other people used their content and creations. Since the vote in September, the bill has undergone Trilogue Discussions to get formally approved and signed into law, all while facing massive controversy relating to two key components: Article 11 and Article 13.
But what exactly are Article 11 and 13 and what will their implications be? Due to the complexity of this topic, I will cover these two pieces of legislation over the course of two blog post. In this blog post, I will be explaining the content and consequences of Article 11, while I will be covering Article 13 in a later blog post.
Article 11, also known as the "Link Tax", is intended to increase the revenue of online news publishers by requiring online news aggregators, like Google and Facebook, to pay news outlets, like the New York Times or Fox News, for hosting anything more than an "insubstantial part of a press publication". Right now, when a news aggregator hosts a news article, they will oftentimes include a short preview of the article so users can decide whether or not to click on news article.
Supporters of Article 11 argue that these previews are detrimental to news websites because many people don't click the links after reading the previews, feeling that they have enough of an understanding of the article's subject matter. As a result, a link tax like Article 11 is necessary to make up for the news outlets' lost revenue.
This idea is solid on paper, but the criticisms of Article 11 come not as a result of its goal, but its vagueness. Article 11 requires news aggregators to pay outlets for anything more than an "insubstantial part of a press publication", but it never defines what "insubstantial" means. This means that the extent to which websites can use excerpts of news articles as previews are entirely up to the interpretation of the publisher - "insubstantial" can mean as much as a whole paragraph or as little as mere words, and news publishers can change its definitions on a whim - one day it can allow aggregators to have entire paragraphs for free, the next it can charge them for every other word.
Using this vagueness, news publishers could potentially cost websites hundreds of millions of dollars with nothing holding them back. While bigger websites, like Google and Facebook, will be able to have negotiating power with news outlets to minimize their costs, smaller websites, like Digg and Flipboard, won't have that same privilege, thus eliminating the even playing field that has made the internet such a cornerstone of innovation.
One of the greatest things about the internet is that even the smallest startups are able to challenge the biggest of corporations as long as they had a better product - this is what has allowed Facebook to replace MySpace and Google to end Yahoo's dominance. Because of the minimal barriers to entry, the internet has become a free market of mass innovation, since even established websites have to avoid stagnation, lest they eventually get out-competed by a new startup. But by giving big websites an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors, Article 11 has the potential to end this free market by giving an unfair advantage to big companies in a way similar to what will happen once Net Neutrality is repealed.
Sources:
https://qz.com/1387581/article-11-the-eus-copyright-law-could-give-publishers-power-over-google-and-facebook/
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-article-13-article-11-european-directive-on-copyright-explained-meme-ban
But what exactly are Article 11 and 13 and what will their implications be? Due to the complexity of this topic, I will cover these two pieces of legislation over the course of two blog post. In this blog post, I will be explaining the content and consequences of Article 11, while I will be covering Article 13 in a later blog post.
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| News aggregators, like Google News, often have excerpts from the news articles they host as previews for users |
Supporters of Article 11 argue that these previews are detrimental to news websites because many people don't click the links after reading the previews, feeling that they have enough of an understanding of the article's subject matter. As a result, a link tax like Article 11 is necessary to make up for the news outlets' lost revenue.
This idea is solid on paper, but the criticisms of Article 11 come not as a result of its goal, but its vagueness. Article 11 requires news aggregators to pay outlets for anything more than an "insubstantial part of a press publication", but it never defines what "insubstantial" means. This means that the extent to which websites can use excerpts of news articles as previews are entirely up to the interpretation of the publisher - "insubstantial" can mean as much as a whole paragraph or as little as mere words, and news publishers can change its definitions on a whim - one day it can allow aggregators to have entire paragraphs for free, the next it can charge them for every other word.
Using this vagueness, news publishers could potentially cost websites hundreds of millions of dollars with nothing holding them back. While bigger websites, like Google and Facebook, will be able to have negotiating power with news outlets to minimize their costs, smaller websites, like Digg and Flipboard, won't have that same privilege, thus eliminating the even playing field that has made the internet such a cornerstone of innovation.
One of the greatest things about the internet is that even the smallest startups are able to challenge the biggest of corporations as long as they had a better product - this is what has allowed Facebook to replace MySpace and Google to end Yahoo's dominance. Because of the minimal barriers to entry, the internet has become a free market of mass innovation, since even established websites have to avoid stagnation, lest they eventually get out-competed by a new startup. But by giving big websites an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors, Article 11 has the potential to end this free market by giving an unfair advantage to big companies in a way similar to what will happen once Net Neutrality is repealed.
Sources:
https://qz.com/1387581/article-11-the-eus-copyright-law-could-give-publishers-power-over-google-and-facebook/
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-article-13-article-11-european-directive-on-copyright-explained-meme-ban
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