The EU and How It Will Affect EVERYBODY

As a storyteller,I know it might sound like I'm crying "Wolf!", but 

as a librarian the tiny aggravation in our Inboxes before on the EU 

policies were just a warm-up to a truly Internet breaking policy that 

affects the entire Internet.   

Today I received this (my own comments follow), also I put in bold 

type the part affecting everybody:  

   *This is terrible:* The EU Parliament just caved in to giant 

corporations and passed a massive overhaul of copyright law that 

threatens to ruin the Internet as we know it.    The Parliament 

approved the requirements for taxes on hyperlinks and censorship 

upload  filters for any website that publishes content. 

1 If these policies become law, websites like Reddit and Wikipedia 

could be wiped out entirely.  And it would pave the way for similar 

policies here at home.   But the good news is that the EU Council 

gets its say, and we're going to make sure these devastating policies 

are rejected.

OpenMedia is pressuring EU member states to stand up to corporate 

interests and vote  down the Link Tax and Censorship Machines for 

good. Will you donate to help our efforts?   

https://act.openmedia.org/stl-vote-sbs?src=162909  

The Link Tax would affect not just Europe, but the entire Internet 

ecosystem. Requiring websites to use automated content-filtering 

technology would cost millions of dollars and thousands of manpower 

hours, likely decimating small online businesses and startups. 

2   This legislation stems from pressure from gigantic publishers who 

would rather destroy the free and open Internet than admit their 

business models are obsolete. They want Google and other data 

aggregators to pay up when they link to original sources-but that 

means that we'd also have to pay, changing the way we share 

information with each other. 

3   And the legislation also calls for content sites to have YouTube-

style upload filters.  But most sites don't have the manpower or 

financial resources of YouTube, which paid tens  of millions of 

dollars to put its filter in place. These Censorship Machine 

requirements will put smaller sites out of business for good. 

We've seen the effect that Europe's new  privacy requirements have 

had on websites we use here at home-dozens of new terms of  service 

agreements have come through our email inboxes.  That's why it's 

essential that  the entire world become involved in the fight against 

the EU's new copyright legislation.   And as a global organization 

with campaigners around the world, OpenMedia is uniquely suited to 

take up the fight. 

************************************ 

When this came up earlier I posted on storytelling sites what I could 

find about the  EU Council.  A Canadian storyteller who is also a 

librarian, Elinor Benjamin, added "I managed to harvest all the email 

addresses from the site so I could send one message to all of them - 

freely adapted from Lois' point. Here they are if anyone wants to do 

the same. . .  

francis.zammitdimech@europarl.europa.eu
emil.radev@europarl.europa.eu
pavel.svoboda@europarl.europa.eu
sylvia-yvonne.kaufmann@europarl.europa.eu
enrico.gasbarra@europarl.europa.eu
mady.delvaux-stehres@europarl.europa.eu
tadeusz.zwiefka@europarl.europa.eu
antonio.marinhoepinto@europarl.europa.eu
jozsef.szajer@europarl.europa.eu"  

Please consider how you, too, might respond before the EU Council 

takes steps affecting all of us whether we have a website or not, 

since we all use the internet. 

LoiS(hocked and you should be, too)