German OpenStreetMap protest against “Article 13” EU copyright reform making their map unusable

European’ Union’s copyright preform bill, is currently up for a vote in the European Parliament on September 12. It’s Article 13 has been on the receiving end of backlash with many organizations protesting against it. Last week it was Youtube’s CBO speaking out and this week German OpenStreetMap has made their map unusable, to protest against EU copyright reform.

[box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]According to Article 13, there is an “obligation on information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with right holders and to prevent the availability on their services of content identified by rightholders in cooperation with the service providers”.[/box]

The Article 13 is a new revamped version that EU has come out with as the older version of the copyright reform bill was rejected by the Parliament back in July. The older version also received heavy criticism from different policy experts and digital rights group on grounds of violating the fundamental rights of the internet users. This legislation has the possibility of changing the balance of power between producers of music, news and film and the dominant websites that host their work.

On one side, people say that if passed, this law would mean the end of free Internet. Platforms will have to algorithmically pre-filter all user uploads and block fair use content, cool satire, funny memes etc. On the other side, supporters of the law say that their hard work is being compromised because they are not being fairly compensated for their work.

These people are creators who depend upon being paid for the sharable content they create, such as musicians, authors, filmmakers and so on.

Although people have supported OpenStreetmap’s decision. A hacker news user pointed out, “Good for them. The Internet as we know it is being attacked from multiple angles right now, with the EU filtering proposals, AU/5Eyes anti-encryption proposals, etc.” A person also called it as, “Oh no, more evil political hacking!”

You can read about more such opinions on Hacker news. You can also find some of the most common questions around the proposed Directive on the EU website.