Wikipedia protested against a law on copyright

A controversial copyright reform proposal to be voted today at noon in the European Parliament, threatens the existence of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes the digital encyclopedia. In protest, they decided to block access to the content of Wikipedia they said in a statement posted on the site.

"We ask all members of the European Parliament to vote against the current text" Since 2013, creators and citizens have asked the European Union to update copyright and copyright laws. Adapt its management to the digital era, "explains the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia affiliates in the EU have submitted viable proposals, such as the extension of freedom of panorama for the whole of the EU and the protection of the public domain, to protect and help those who create content to protect their work. "

As stated Wikipedia, this proposal , if approved, "would seriously undermine the open internet we know today," "threatening online freedom and imposing new filters, barriers, and restrictions on accessing the web." [19659002] Likewise they badure that the sanction of this law would make that "actions like sharing information in social networks or accessing it via a search engine would become more complicated on the Internet" and that even "Wikipedia itself would be in danger."

"We want to continue to offer an open, free, collaborative and free work with verifiable content. We call on all members of the European Parliament to vote against the current text, to open it for discussion and to consider the many proposals of the Wikimedia movement to protect access to knowledge; among them, the elimination of Articles 11 and 13, the extension of the panorama freedom to the whole of the EU and the preservation of the public domain ", they specify in a statement published on its website.

Controversial Articles

Two incidents in particular threaten the existence of Wikipedia. The first, provided for in Article 11, aims to "protect press publications in relation to digital uses", but by limiting access to information and knowledge. Press article as a source in a nonprofit platform like Wikipedia, permission should be requested from each news editor in each particular case.

While Article 13 is a threat to online platforms such as Wikipedia. Its approval would require all websites that allow their community to actively participate in the construction of the Internet (sharing of code, images, text, sound or other creations submitted to copyright) to install automatic filtering tools to compare the contributions of its contributors to databases on copyright.

For their part, MEPs consulted on the subject made it clear that the initiative would not end up damaging the interests of the popular digital encyclopedia. "Wikipedia is an error because this proposal would only affect web pages for commercial purposes," they said.

Up to now, dozens of competent people in the field of information technology were strongly opposed to this law – among them, the creator of the World Wide Web [1945-19003] Tim Berners -Lee, and the Internet pioneer, Vinton Cerf-, 169 academics, 145 organizations for human rights, freedom of the press, scientific research and technological development; and the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that promotes, among other projects of free knowledge, this encyclopedia.