Okay, there has been a lot of discussion about the new 'European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market', in particular Article 13 (nicknamed 'meme ban'), and people all over the world seem to be rather concerned for us EUropeans, so I thought I give you my opinion in this here as well...

(While I have done a good bit of 'research', I haven't read the whole thing, so I cannot guarantee that every single tiny detail is correct.)

Let's start with an old fact: Sharing copyrighted material is illegal, no matter where you live.

Second fact: It happens, popular examples are movies or full episodes of our favourite shows on You Tube (and I am not gonna lie, I do watch the new Ninjago episodes online simply because we only get them several months later here - nope, still no air date for Hunted on CNUK...) and is, to a certain extent, tolerated.

What will change: So far, the copyright owner (like LEGO) had to contact the website and ask for these things to be taken down but under the new directive, the distributing website (YT, wattpad etc) will be responsible for, well, distributing them.

Good news: Fanfiction, memes, parodies etc are NOT copyrighted material and do NOT fall under this rule, as long as we don't make any profit from them.

Btw, something I do and encourage every fanfic writer to do (no matter where you live) is putting a Disclaimer in your books, simply stating 'I do not own [fandom]', which to my knowledge automatically implies the whole 'no profit' thingy.

Because here's the problem: How will the website be able to distinguish between what's illegal and what's not... it will require very complicated algorithms to do that, and there's still no guarantee that something won't slip through and get them into trouble.

And here's the bad news: There is a chance that websites might get shut down or restricted in EU countries, or simply ban any kind of content dealing with copyrighted material in any way if there is no solution to this problem. For example, Google has threatened to shut down You Tube in the EU, should the new directive come into effect the way it is.

(I personally don't expect this to happen, it was a very clever move to raise awareness for the situation and put some pressure on the authorities, but still...)

Should we support their claim, for example by signing the petition/contacting your MEP? Well, everyone should decide this for themselves (but my answer for myself is yes).

But otherwise we'll just have to wait and see what's gonna happen, and I hope I'm not violating any copyrights 😉 if I finish by quoting one of my favourite books of all time: DON'T PANIC . That's not gonna help anyone.