What Is “Article 13” and why it could RUIN the internet.

So, a LOT of creators these past 2 weeks have been concerned over a new proposed copyright law called “Article 13”, saying this bill could “Ruin The Internet”. Now, to understand this you need to know the meaning of this law. When content on YouTube contains copyrighted material it can go down 1 of 2 paths. Path one is that the video gets a copyright claim, which isn’t harmful to your channel but you either won’t earn revenue from the video or the video will be muted for that section. Path two is that the video gets a copyright strike. This is a warning on your channel that removes your video and gives your channel a strike. If you get 3 strikes within 3 months, your channel is terminated. Not so bad, right? If you use copyrighted material you should be held accountable. However, Article 13 plans to change that. It entails that instead of the user being held accountable, the company is held accountable. This doesn’t sound so bad now but that would mean that YouTube would have to manually review videos for copyrighted material and remove them completely. However, there is a MAJOR flaw in that theory. Statistically, over 400+ hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. There is no algorithm possible that could review that much content in that little time. YouTube have said that if the deal goes ahead, they may have to ban a LOT of content in the EU. This presents a MASSIVE problem in the way creators could create content and earn a living from YouTube, and that’s just an example. Creators could earn 50% less revenue OUTSIDE of the EU, let alone that it would RUIN or END HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of European Content Creators careers. To exaggerate the severity of this event taking place, that would mean that innocent people would be out of jobs and unable to pay for mortgages or food. It’s not even as simple as “moving to Twitch” either, as this bill would affect every Social Media platform on the internet. Just say I make a video that contained a 3 second clip of copyrighted music. My video would be banned inside the EU and I wouldn’t make any revenue from that video at all. Videos would only be in 2 categories as well: Educational and Non-Profit. This would mean Gaming videos, Music Covers, Movie Reviews and everything in between would be susceptible to this rule, as they would contain a logo, or licenced music. This could completely ruin the way we use the internet for entertainment and you COULD help change it. This law has already been recognised and is receiving a major debate in Early 2019. Please, if you want to make a difference, click this link ( https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet ) and sign up to send this enquiry to Parliament. All help would me majorly appreciated. As always, thanks for reading. We will discuss this issue in a future podcast so stay tuned on iTunes, Spotify and every other major podcast platform. #savetheinternet