Article 13 rejected by MEPs: What you need to know about the law that could have killed internet culture

The European Parliament has voted to reject a new copyright directive, which includes the particularly controversial Article 13. The proposed law was rejected by 318 votes to 278, with 31 abstentions. The EU’s copyright reforms will now need to be debated in September, giving policymakers more room to hone the legal framework around copyrighted content in the internet age.

Continue reading

Article 13: MEPs Respond (well 2 did anyway)

Message from Margot Parker, MEP

Thank you for your email.

Article 13 of the Copyright Directive is a major concern as it will impose privatised censorship of all types of content and it is incompatible with fundamental rights and the E-commerce Directive. Continue reading

EU ARMY ON WAY?

According to a new foreign policy document from the Brussels-based institution to be handed to EU leaders next week, a “credible European defence” is also essential to preserve good relations with the US. Continue reading

Erdoğan, Salman and the Coming ‘Sunni’ War for Oil

We’re about to be plunged into a new oil war in the Middle East, this one with a possible nuclear dimension. Wars for control of oil have been instigated for more than a century since the dawn of the petroleum era around the time of the First World War. This war for control of oil, however, promises to be of a scale that will change world politics in a spectacular and highly destructive manner. It is on one level, a Saudi war to redraw the national borders of the infamous Anglo-French Sykes-Picot carve-up of the bankrupt Ottoman Turkish Empire of 1916. This new war has as its foolish goal bringing the oil fields and pipeline routes of Iraq and Syria, and perhaps more of the region, under direct Saudi control, with Qatar and Erdogan’s Turkey as Riyadh’s partners in crime. Unfortunately, as in all wars, there will be no winners. Continue reading