Article 13 is going into it’s final stages of voting.
If this gets through, it will allow many, many companies to abuse and misuse this article to take down as many memes, fan works, and even other independent creators on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and other websites INCLUDING Tumblr.
THE FAIR USE LAW AND SAFEHARBOR LAW WILL NO LONGER APPLY IN THE U.S OR IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
IT HAS ALREADY PASSED IN SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES.
WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO TAKE AWAY WHAT WE BUILT FOR THE INTERNET SO FAR.
So here is what you need to do to drag this article down.
1. Spread the word
I can’t stress this enough. The more attention this gets the more people we can get to take this down.
2. Make your own content
Make your own content on the matter and make sure it is clear to others that Article 13 is bad for every internet user involved.
3. If you live anywhere in Europe, contact your MEPs
Ask them if they approve of the article and why. If they do approve of it, try to convince them in a clear, reasonable, and most sensible way possible that this law is BAD.
The article itself is way to vague about what it’s conveying to its people.
Saying that as long as the use of said internet memes or content is good as long as it’s in “good faith.”
We cannot let some shoddy government tell us what we can and cannot post.
FREE SPEECH IS A HUMAN RIGHT. NOT A PRIVILEGE.
Here’s a video on Article 13 that Film Theory made on the matter. It will explain things better than I can.
Also, I’m in Europe and ngl, had no idea this was even an article up for debate let alone it being fucking passed.
Don’t panic! This was expected at this stage and it is only the beginning. If you are a European and feel passionate about this, please keep on reading and help!
So what has happened so far … the Commission has drafted up a long overdue copyright reform. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 It contains a lot of good, and some bad: mainly Article 11 and 13.
This was put forward as a whole to the European Parlament, where it was voted down on the 5th of July 2018
This meant, this will not go through the fast way, and will be subject to scrutiny and change.
The Commission made some alterations https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 and put it forward again. If Parlament would have voted it down again, it probably would have meant back to the drawing board, but most people (including me) agree that Europe does need copyright reform, so on the second vote it passed the first step:
So what happens now?
This will now go into what is called the Trilogue, where Commission, Parlament and representatives of all national governments will sit together to make alterations until everybody is happy implementing the regulation.
This means we can now influence this via our MEPs and our National Government!
In countries that are red your government is likely to support Article 13.
What to do now?
There are a lot of organisations that organise actions against article 13. Check out their websites and get in touch with your MEP or local government and let them know you are unhappy about this.
… and many many more, just google to find one in your country.
Also, as @asthesea-breezehitsmylungs pointed out, a lot of people are not aware of this going on. So make them aware! Share the memes and point them to the petitions. And don’t just complain how shit this is, get in touch with your politicians!
If you don’t know what this means, it’s basically then end of how the internet currently is in Europe. Memes? Nope. Youtubers? Bye!
You’d need a license for everything!!!!
And my fellow Americans my be all like, well, what’s the big deal for us? It’s a Europe deal.
No, because the Youtubers there that you love so much? This effects them too! I’m freaking out because Jack, the person who helps my depression go away, may no longer be able to do what he does!
Guys, we need to stop this somehow. Please.
Call your MEPs. Sign petitions. Protest (Peacefully please. Don’t get hurt).
I’m sorry for tagging you guys if you don’t want to be or already know, I just want as many people to know as possible!
I can’t tag everyone, but if you see this, please reblog it. Spread the news. Sign the petition. Call your MEPs. Do what you can to help stop this from passing in January.
Chinese fandoms are currently experiencing an actual Purge right now. Every fandom. Accounts are getting banned, all shipping wars has been put on hold. Everyone’s hiding their porn and moving them to ao3.
There’s reward money involved. A recent update to censorship law raised the maximum reward for reporting illicit online materials to 50k yuan (7000 USD), so some people are reporting porn like crazy right now, and apparently, BL fandoms have been especially targeted, where some even more tame things got maliciously misreported.
Anyway, it’s a mess. Content creators are just disappearing off the face of the internet left and right. Expect an influx of Chinese porn fics on AO3.
Well… if there’s one thing out of this mess… nothing bands warring ships/fandoms like censorship…
Hey guys, if some awesome person in China translated your fic into Chinese or created fan art, you really should spread the word! This could affect someone you know!
This is also a call out to all you fuckwits that repost art on Tumblr, twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Your negligence hurts people.
^^^
This is literally shitty and it has become worse and worse
Hopefully it will stop before long but just take care of how yiou take your stances on ao3 or what’s happening with Tumblr
A chinese homoerotic novel writer is sentenced to 10 years to prison because of “illegal publication”* and “spread of obscene materials”. After that, China government set up bounty for reporting “illegal publication”. Everyone on weibo, lofter etc. is deleting thier posts.
China is using this act as a way of controling the freedom of speech, it’s not just a matter of “no homo”. They just use the fandom content creators as an easy target and a way to scare people off from writing and publishing things the government doesn’t like.
China is living the Nineteen Eighty-Four novel. Please don’t post chinese fan works, especially not with their original chinese artists/writers right now. You could literally ruin their life.
* in China every book has to be approved by the government before
publication. Anything against the government or with “the wrong idea” will be banned. Their government didn’t pay too much attention to fan books before, but in recent years, they are tightening their grip on their people. Fandom and their activities as a whole has become a target because 1) fandom and their creative community make self-publishing a thing and China doesn’t like that the people know it’s easy to print stuffs (to spread unwanted information/ideas etc. 2) fandom and their creative community is the easiest and obvious target because of the general anti LBGT+ envirnment, general public will support the gornment for “cleansing the society from obscenity” withouth thingking about 1)
Asexual stories need to be told, so when BBC3 got in touch and told me that they wanted to cover the UK Asexuality Conference 2018 as part of a documentary on asexuality, I was excited to say the least. I would be speaking on two panels at the conference, providing some representation for Black aromantic asexual women. After coming out publicly as asexual last year, I have tried to use the platform I gained through fashion modelling to raise awareness for asexuality, so this opportunity was a perfect fit.
BBC3 were there from start to finish, filming the diverse display of asexual people I’ve ever seen. There were people from all walks of life – there were married asexuals, asexuals with children, transgender asexuals, Muslim asexuals, asexual people with disabilities, polyamorous asexuals, homoromantic asexuals, aromantic asexuals, teenage asexuals, and older asexuals. You name it, they were welcome and included.
We were filmed as we told our stories, such a powerful array of stories – some rocky, some smooth, but all equally empowering. BBC3 took a group of us aside for an in-depth group interview. The group was predominantly young and white, but it represented different types of asexuality and asexual experiences. But I soon realised that BBC weren’t interested in diverse experiences… They wanted the ‘lonely asexual’ trope.
When we sounded too positive, they were quick to put us in our place. They turned away from those of us who were happily aromantic, or happily in relationships, and drilled the singles for details about how it felt to be an unloved asexual who couldn’t find a partner. It seemed to displease them that some of us had even – god forbid – had sex and not hated every second of it. Quickly, they turned away from a guy who fit that category, rotated the camera to me, and asked, “If you had to have sex, how would that feel?”
“I wouldn’t have sex,” I answered.
“But if you had to, how would it feel?”
How would it feel if I was forced to have sex? Would a hypothetical rape make an aromantic asexual more interesting?
From then on, I sensed that BBC3 had an angle that they were sticking to, but I couldn’t have anticipated the patronising, whitewashed, exclusionary mess that they aired. They intelligently called the documentary, ‘I Don’t Want Sex,’ but what we actually got was, ‘The Undateables: Asexual Edition,’ and I was horrified.
I cringed as the cameras zoomed in on the presence of stuffed toys and action figures in one of the participant’s bedrooms, as if attempting to make her seem child-like. However, that was nothing in comparison to how I felt as an asexual guy was guided into a sex shop to test his levels of discomfort (which was obvious), or as they quizzed a girl on masturbation and vibrators in a room conveniently decorated with sexual images. I rolled my eyes as one of the participants eased an asexual guy through the art of texting a potential romantic interest, like teaching a child to read, and how an asexual girl not speaking to guys in a bar was treated as a cause for concern.
Asexuality is not synonymous with innocence and a lack of social skills, but it seemed like BBC3 didn’t want the public to know that. They also missed the detail that asking asexual people about what they do with their genitals is as inappropriate and invasive as asking as transgender woman whether she still has a penis. It’s an obvious, needless attempt to try and gauge how seriously someone should take another’s asexuality.
I was running out of hope by the time the conference was included in the last five minutes of the show, but I was curious to see what BBC3 had deemed important enough to show. Out of the hours and hours of footage they had of me, they decided to show me wiping my eyes, as if crying at the brief and uninspiring conversation about asexual clothing choices that they decided to air. Only, they knew that I had eyeliner in my eye. We had laughed about it on the day, they had supposedly paused the filming while I had been given a tissue to solve the problem. If I needed any more reason to suspect that the portrayal of asexual happiness was too much to ask for, that was it.
The closing statements of the documentary added insult to injury. “Cute asexuals do exist.” That’s the message that was taken from the conference? When we sat together for over an hour and opened up to BBC3’s cameras like it was some kind of group therapy meeting, I didn’t realise that we were being observed to see which was us were ‘cute’ enough to date. Well, the boys were, at least. It was time to add the old ‘asexual people aren’t good looking’ stereotype to the growing list featured in this documentary.
I am not just upset because BBC3 took an empowering, celebratory experience like the UK Asexuality Conference and tried to turn it into dating show. What bothers me the most about this documentary is the narrow, stereotypical portrayal of asexual people and asexuality – and just in time for Asexual Awareness Week. I know that BBC3 had the opportunity to do better, but they decided not to, even though this documentary could be the first and only time that people see real asexual people on a mainstream platform.
Asexual people aren’t just shy, white, young people who are sad because they can’t get dates. Despite BBC3’s desperate attempts to exclude us, aromantic asexual people exist, asexual people in happy relationships exist, asexual families exist, asexual minorities exist. Asexuality isn’t a new thing that only young people are doing. And asexual people are perfectly capable of living fulfilling, happy, complete lives, whether they date and have sex or not.
Article 13 is going into it’s final stages of voting.
If this gets through, it will allow many, many companies to abuse and misuse this article to take down as many memes, fan works, and even other independent creators on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and other websites INCLUDING Tumblr.
THE FAIR USE LAW AND SAFEHARBOR LAW WILL NO LONGER APPLY IN THE U.S OR IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
IT HAS ALREADY PASSED IN SEVERAL OTHER COUNTRIES.
WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO TAKE AWAY WHAT WE BUILT FOR THE INTERNET SO FAR.
So here is what you need to do to drag this article down.
1. Spread the word
I can’t stress this enough. The more attention this gets the more people we can get to take this down.
2. Make your own content
Make your own content on the matter and make sure it is clear to others that Article 13 is bad for every internet user involved.
3. If you live anywhere in Europe, contact your MEPs
Ask them if they approve of the article and why. If they do approve of it, try to convince them in a clear, reasonable, and most sensible way possible that this law is BAD.
The article itself is way to vague about what it’s conveying to its people.
Saying that as long as the use of said internet memes or content is good as long as it’s in “good faith.”
We cannot let some shoddy government tell us what we can and cannot post.
FREE SPEECH IS A HUMAN RIGHT. NOT A PRIVILEGE.
Here’s a video on Article 13 that Film Theory made on the matter. It will explain things better than I can.
Hey heads up right now (11/20) the CDC says that NO store bought romaine in the country is safe. Not a mouthful. Not whole, not chopped, not salad mixes, not from certain states… absolutely all of it should be tossed.
32 in the states have been sickened, 13 are hospitalized. 18 known cases in Canada right now, too.
While in this case it’s not worth it to risk it, take a moment to read up on the correct way to wash fresh greens.
If you have the packaging you can get a refund for it without a receipt
So from what I can gather, Tumblr has been removed from the apple store because it couldn’t fix the porn bot issue. This is supposedly one of the reasons posts that have embedded links are no longer searchable.
But now people are logging into their tumblr and finding everything gone. This is also why the nsfw tag is missing. Problem is, some of these people barely post nsfw AND none of them were porn bots.
So people are finding years of stuff on their blog deleted, fics, art, etc..
Tumblr is not giving warnings or responses so we’ve no idea how theyre purging blogs. We only know its happening. I don’t want people to panic but I do want you guys to be prepared.
As of today, November 17, 2018, any post with links, any links, even to other tumblr posts, just don’t show up anymore in tumblr’s search engine.
I just found out about it, after I posted a fic with a link to my masterlist and it got little to no notes (it shuldn’t). I was right – the moment I deleted the links, my post magically appeared in the search again. Wow.
Please spread the word to warn the others.
This affects artists who want to cross promote their work, writers who want to link to previous chapters or to a masterlist, and editors who want to link to their YouTube channels, among just a few. This new policy will kill content creators’ ability to spread their work, and for what? A poor attempt to use the algorithm to crack down on porn bots and scammers? Sad.
In the meantime, here’s what I suggest: post your work with no added links, and tell people to check the notes for your masterlist, story navigation, links to ko-fi, patreon, and other social media sites. Make sure you have all those things ready, then paste it into a reblog and have people access them that way. It’s stupid, but it’s a work around we’ll have to use until tumblr gets their act together.
Reblogging again because I need advice on creating masterpost links.
Doesn’t that also really hurt all those crowdfunding posts? Any posts to news articles, etc? This seems like it’s going to hurt way more than just content creators.
SquireofGotham 
