In recent days the hashtag #SaveYourInternet and the various YouTube videos with the slogan Save Your Internet or Salva Tu Internet flood most of the computers, mobiles and tablets of people residing in Europe. Although it may seem like the advertising campaign of some brand, the truth is that it affects the main Internet users to a greater or lesser extent. But how exactly does it affect us? Is it as serious as it seems? On this occasion we will answer these two questions and their relation to the much criticized Article 13 of the European Parliament .
What is Save Your Internet EU and Article 13 of the Copyright
Save Your Internet (Salva Tu Internet in Spanish) refers to one of the most important campaigns by different media in recent years. Its reason for being is due to Article 13 proposed by the European Parliament during 2016, which we already talked about some time ago, and the last application will be debated in 2019 in Brussels (Belgium) for all European countries.
Said proposal is related to all audiovisual content that is uploaded to the Internet either through YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, SoundCloud or any of the platforms that allow sharing any type of musical, typographic or videographic content. What does Article 13 say exactly? In a very summarized way, that no content published on the network can contain pieces with copyrights or Copyright .
This includes citations to already registered texts, copyrighted audio tracks or videos or images with private content. Put into practice, it means that we will not be able to upload images, videos, texts, music or any type of element that has copyright. Neither GIFs nor memes!
How Article 13 affects the Internet
The aforementioned Article 13 not only affects all content uploaded in the future, but also the current one. The current bases make mention that all the material that has been shared to date with Copyright must be erased by both users and the different platforms . The penalties that could be imposed in this case would apply exclusively to the platforms that allow the publication of the material in question.
As if this were not enough, from pages such as YouTube or those mentioned above , a series of filters must be created to prevent users from sharing copyrighted material . It will also stop indexing from the main Internet search engines such as Google or Bing, at least in countries belonging to the European Union. In this regard, it is not surprising that VPN-based applications will proliferate in the coming months to establish our location in other countries where the law does not apply.
What can I do to prevent Article 13 from being applied?
The good news is that, as members of the European Union, we can take steps to prevent the rules of Article 13 from being applied .
One of the measures we can take is to share content with the hashtag #SaveYourInternet through pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or Vimeo. Likewise, from the SaveYourInternet.eu page they recommend putting pressure on the main MEPs in Spain.
The website in question shows a complete list of all MEPs, Spanish and from the rest of the countries, whom we can contact through the different channels shown on the main page. Either through a tweet, by phone or by email, any of the options are equally valid to prevent Article 13 from being approved in the European Parliament during 2019 .