I have been thinking about this. The EU has a history of trying to regulate the internet in byzantine, clumsy ways, and the internet tends to acknowledge these attempts (e.g. with those stupid “cookie law” popups, and the even more stupid GDPR popups) without actually doing a goddamn thing differently, because, what, Luxembourg’s Data Protection Agency is going to crack down on your Taiwanese cooking blog?
OTOH, there’s the “right to be forgotten” (aka “right to Streisand effect”) regulation, which on the face of it is just as apocalyptic in its implications, but everyone seems to have agreed from the start that it only applies to Google.
My guess would be that if this copyright directive comes into effect, everyone will go into “wait and see” mode – there’s a big difference between copy-pasting a dumb popup script and redesigning your whole system – and when nothing happens, they’ll forget about it. It’s pretty obvious that if you set up an easy-to-use form for bullshit takedown requests, that’s when you will start getting bullshit takedown requests. If you don’t have the form, and EMI has to pay a lawyer to send you a letter through the mail for hosting a video where someone walks past wearing a Beatles shirt in the background, they’re not going to bother.
I can almost see that having a silver lining. Perhaps what we’ll see is that very large internet companies (like Facebook and Twitter) start getting treated as the state-level actors that they are, and having to implement courts and bureaucracy that make them about as fun and cool as a welfare office. And the cool thing will become to use email instead, because that’s below the radar and you can post whatever you like.</wistfulfantasy>
