A new European copyright directive recently passed on Tuesday (March 26, 2019) despite strong opposition led by Google. The directive is best known for two provisions it contains: Articles 11 and 13.

• Article 11 is referred to as the “link tax”, which gives publishers the right to ask for paid licenses when online platforms (e.g. Google News) share their content.
• Article 13 is referred to as the “upload filter”, which requires websites hosting user-generated content (e.g. YouTube) to take active measures to prevent unauthorized copyrighted material from being uploaded. Failure to do so carries the penalty of being held liable for their users’ infringement.

These controversial measures of the new copyright directive aim to level the playing field in the contemporary web: internet giants such as Facebook and Google make significant amounts of money from providing access to content made by others, while content creators themselves get less and less.

The full text of the EU Directive can be found here (Articles 11 and 13 published as Articles 15 and 17, respectively, in the final version)