<p>Dear everyone,</p>
<p>I’m Cyber Anakin and though I support EU’s human rights ideals all the time, I’m talking to all of you here now with the recently trending mass-printing exploit inspired by HackerGiraffe.</p>
<p>Some of you have already seen how the repressive SOPA law that does lot of collateral damage is being vetoed after you made your voices heard.</p>
<p>And now this: the EU commission has drafted the colloquially named “Article 13” legislation that will force every internet service to take down copyright reserved materials and install an automated filter to police against future infringements.</p>
<p>The proposed filter is of course by today’s standards far from perfect. It’s going to let things which shouldn’t to pass through and block those that should be allowed and it can not discern between outright infringement and fair use.</p>
<p>Worst of the worst, there is a “link tax” rule that will force you to pay fees whenever you link to their content or snippet it in elsewhere.</p>
<p>Those corrupt legislators at the EU think that we will not stand up and fight like US did during SOPA, but if they succeeded in this internet memes that you took for granted will become a rarity while startup companies will have a far harder time in surviving this because they’re not gonna be able to afford this new software. You will not be able to make your remixes, share nice book quotes on Twitter and parody with Hitler-videos too without risking the wrath of the far-from-perfect automated system.</p>
<p>If Article 13 is to pass what’s to stop repressive countries like Russia and China to create a policy that says that any content referring to Tiananmen and the latter’s involvement in Ukrainian war and MH17 must be rejected? What about the Middle East?</p>
<p>Do not think you are not affected if you’re living outside the EU. After all EU is one of the few lucrative key components in today’s internet ecosystem especially those of the free world which is like Texas’ role in regards to American school textbooks or obviously China’s ascending role in the movie market while keeping it’s totalitarian tint.</p>
<p>In fact here is a good analogy put forth by Cory Doctorow:</p>
<p>"Now, let’s take a hypothetical Twitter discussion between three users: Alice (an American), Bob (a Bulgarian) and Carol (a Canadian).</p>
<p>Alice posts a picture of a political march: thousands of protesters and counterprotesters, waving signs. As is common around the world, these signs include copyrighted images, whose use is permitted under US “fair use” rules that permit parody. Because Twitter enables users to communicate significant amounts of user-generated content, they’ll fall within the ambit of Article 13.</p>
<p>Bob lives in Bulgaria, an EU member-state whose copyright law does not permit parody. He might want to reply to Alice with a quote from the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, whose works were translated into English in the late 1970s and are still in copyright.</p>
<p>Carol, a Canadian who met Bob and Alice through their shared love of Doctor Who, decides to post a witty meme from “The Mark of the Rani,” a 1985 episode in which Colin Baker travels back to witness the Luddite protests of the 19th Century.</p>
<p>Alice, Bob and Carol are all expressing themselves through use of copyrighted cultural works, in ways that might not be lawful in the EU’s most speech-restrictive copyright jurisdictions. But because (under today’s system) the platform typically is only required to to respond to copyright complaints when a rightsholder objects to the use, everyone can see everyone else’s posts and carry on a discussion using tools and modes that have become the norm in all our modern, digital discourse.</p>
<p>But once Article 13 is in effect, Twitter faces an impossible conundrum. The Article 13 filter will be tripped by Alice’s lulzy protest signs, by Bob’s political quotes, and by Carol’s Doctor Who meme, but suppose that Twitter is only required to block Bob from seeing these infringing materials."</p>
<p>This is a real-life Ready Player One; if you let this slip through nearly whatever that you’ve enjoyed on the internet will become the memories of the past.</p>
<p>Especially for content creators you will have to live in paranoia over the risk of being clamped down by the far-from-perfect automated algorithm even if you’re fair-using or parodying other people’s content and you’ll be subjected to a heightened risk of copy-fraud by evil trolls. The internet will become a boring, gloomy place if they have their way.</p>
<p>The European Union is not going to make itself any more better than Russia or China if Article 13 becomes law.</p>
<p>You can be your own Wade Watts by petitioning European Parliament members, start a peaceful protest or black out your website if you have one. Visit saveyourinternet.eu to learn more.</p>
<p>Ask yourself are you willing to put in all your efforts to fight for an open, diverse and free internet and save it from going into the night?</p>
<p>Finally for the owners of the printers which’ve produced this, it also means that your printer is exposed on Shodan so you should’ve ramp up its security.</p>
<p>May the force be with you. <em>Cyber-shouting “#FreeAzovSeaSailors” other than all of that</em>.</p>
<p>Best Wishes,</p>
<p>Cyber Anakin</p>
<p>[Suggested background music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRRiIy85GWc]</p>