News Courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com:
The European Parliament has backed a highly restrictive copyright directive intended to benefit traditional European news publishers and copyright holders at the potential expense of user-generated content and U.S. internet companies, including Google. An earlier version of the directive was rejected in July.
The new rules must be approved by member states before they can go into effect. Designed to harmonize disparate copyright law across the EU, the new directive contains two especially controversial provisions:
- Article 11 would require permission and licensing fees when snippets of content are presented
- Article 13 would require platforms like Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others to monitor potential copyright infringement much more aggressively or face liability. These sites would thus be compelled to scan content for violations before being uploaded.
Ryan’s Take 
Wow.. This is insanity. Many online businesses are still adjusting to being compliant with GDPR. Now the EU drops this on everyone. According to article 11, this very post could be liable for damages as it contains a snippet. So any website that sources information from another (in the EU) could potentially have legal consequences. This goes against the very basics of journalism. I remember in grammar school we were taught to cite our sources, give credit to the author, and place direct information in quotes. Where is the harm in that?
Many major news publications quote from others all the time. How are they supposed to attribute anything if this violates this new directive? What about embedding twitter posts from others? Apparently, you can use a hyperlink with “individual words” to make reference. In my opinion, that simply doesn’t cut it.
Google could be in some serious hot water with their news feed. All the news feed does is take headline snippets that link directly to the source. I can’t understand why the EU would want to protect the offended party while punishing others. After all, getting traffic to your website is a good thing, right?
Residing in the U.S., I’m not so concerned with any legal ramifications myself. I doubt the EU could enforce any such offenses without jurisdiction. Of course, I would comply with any takedown request no matter how I felt about it. However, I really sympathize with those of you overseas who could be impacted greatly. This whole thing just seems wrong.
