An EU copyright bill could force YouTube-style filtering across the Web

(credit: Tom Redford / Flickr)

The European Parliament will vote on Wednesday on a series of copyright reform proposals that could have far-reaching implications for Internet culture. Two particular provisions have attracted the ire of digital rights groups.

The first reform, known as Article 11, aims to give news publishers a stronger hand in negotiations with Internet platforms like Google and Facebook. Supporters of this change argue that big technology companies have undermined the economic model of traditional news publishers, and so they want to force online platforms to pay licensing fees to news publishers when they aggregate their content.

The second controversial reform, known as Article 13, aims to address a longstanding grievance of big content companies: that the current "notice and takedown" regime for copyright enforcement makes it too difficult for copyright holders to police online piracy. Advocates want to shift liability rules to force technology companies to take a more active role in policing their content-a shift that could force more online providers to adopt filtering systems like YouTube's Content ID.

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