Wikipedia's Spanish, Italian, and Polish language versions was blacked out in protest against the EU copyright reforms being voted.
The laws in question include two most controversial elements:
Article 13, which makes platforms directly liable for copyright infringements by their users - pushing them towards pre-filtering all content uploads, with all the associated potential effects for free expression; and Article 11, which targets news aggregator business models by creating a neighboring right for snippets of journalistic content, also imposing ‘the link tax’ on companies including Google for linking to publishers.
Users in those countries were taken to a page protesting the changes.
In other EU countries, including the UK, Wikipedia had a banner at the top of the site urging people to oppose the reforms and defend the open internet against the controversial proposal. Clicking on "contact your MEP" takes users to a website that details the new laws and giving them details of how to contact their MEP.
Founder Jimmy Wales explained on Twitter that each individual language version decided for itself whether to shut down their respective versions of the free online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is one of the most popular and visited sites on the internet.
Jimmy Wales has been a very vocal critic of Article 13, which could allow or even require internet platforms to filter contents. And the organization has been a fierce opponent of the EU’s proposed directive on copyright in the digital single market, calling it "a serious threat to our mission."
In a letter to EU Parliament President Antonio Tajani, more than 70 internet pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf, and Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle have also expressed their concerns about Article 13.
A petition which was formed and led by critical MEPs called “Save Your Internet” has gathered more than 700,000 signatures.
On July 5th, The European Parliament has rejected a proposed update to its 2001 Copyright Directive. MEPs voted by a margin of 40 votes to stop progress in negotiations.
While the proposed update was aimed to modernize copyright legislation for the digital age, however, critics pointed out that Article 11 and Article 13 would give negative consequences in how users use the web, share and consume information.
Some citing the "death of memes," and would end the open internet.
The core concern of critics was the copyright proposal in hurting smaller publishers and consumers. For this reason, experts said that the proposal needs improvising.
"This is not about censorship of the internet, as the likes of Google and Facebook would have you believe. The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace – and currently it doesn’t," wrote leaders of publishing industries in an open letter.
