'Wikipedia Italy goes dark to protest EU copyright reform'
'The Local' (Italy) - July 3, 2018
Italian Wikipedia was blacked out on Tuesday in protest at a new EU copyright directive that the online encyclopedia says will restrict internet freedom.
Attempting to access any page on the Italian-language Wikipedia directed users to a statement on the EU's Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, a package of proposed reforms that would extend the rights of publishers to claim copyright fees on even short extracts of material reproduced online – for instance, snippets of news articles that appear under search results.
It would also oblige online platforms to scan all content that users try to upload – to YouTube, for example – and automatically block anything that risks infringing copyright.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has joined freedom-of-internet activists in opposing the directive, which is to be put to a vote in the EU Parliament this week.
"If the proposal were approved, it could become impossible to share a newspaper article on social networks or find it via a search engine," Wikipedia Italy's statement said.
"Wikipedia itself could be forced to shut down."
The Italian Wikipedia community has decided to black out its content in protest, the statement said. The blackout applies to all Wikipedia pages in Italian, whether accessed from Italy or abroad.
con't....
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Translated letter from Italian Wikipedia
Dear reader,
On 5 July 2018, the European Parliament in plenary will decide whether to speed up the approval of the Copyright Directive. This directive, if promulgated, will significantly restrict the freedom of the Internet.
Instead of updating copyright laws in Europe to promote everyone's participation in the information society, it threatens online freedom and creates obstacles to network access by imposing new barriers, filters and restrictions. If the proposal were approved, it may be impossible to share a newspaper article on social networks or find it on a search engine. Wikipedia itself would risk shutting down.
The proposal has already met the firm disapproval of more than 70 computer scientists, including the creator of the Web Tim Berners-Lee (here), 169 academics (here), 145 organisations working in the fields of human rights, freedom of the press, scientific research and Computer industry (here) and the Wikimedia Foundation (here).
For these reasons, the Italian community of Wikipedia has decided to obscure all the pages of the encyclopedia. We want to be able to continue to offer a free, open, collaborative and verifiable content encyclopedia. We therefore call on all Members of the European Parliament to reject the current text of the directive and to reopen the debate by examining the many proposals of the Wikimedia associations, starting with the abolition of articles. 11 and 13, and the extension of the freedom of view to the whole EU and the protection of the public domain.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SaveYourInternet
The Italian Wikipedia community
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Apparently Google is opposing this, which is something to monitor. Generally the UK, or at times Canada or Europe at large, has served as the elites' testing ground for the more long-range related goals for the slightly more independent-thinking Americans on their various "totolitarian tip toe" movements. As usual, I expect the elite-financed "fake left" to stand down on this issue. Rather than relying on the UN, the globalists perhaps believe that it's better to hold their UN construct as a decoy while they start eating away from a more local angle.
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