The “copyright directive” that will be voted tomorrow in the EU parliament is so (words fail me here) to be, as they say, “not even wrong”. But if it is approved, it may have a wonderful, long overdue unintended consequence.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am the author of the proposal mentioned below. If somebody, following this post, decided to pay me to work on it, I’d obviously be quite happy. But one advantage of my proposal is that everybody could do it, even without my participation.

The list at the end of this post links to several articles that explain what this copyright directive is, and in which ways it really seems “not even wrong”. Maybe I too will write another, longer post of the same type. Right now, I only want to highlight one specific critic to this directive, and why I think its approval may end up doing REAL GOOD.

Quoting from Julia Reda’s explanation of the Copyright Directive (emphasis mine):

• “This law means that platforms will need to stop us from sharing links (with snippets) that they have not negotiated a license for.”
• “While the EU Commission wanted everyone to pay for snippets, including individuals, the Legal Affairs Committee wants to limit this to internet platforms.”
• “But of course, such platforms are what individuals use to share news articles today. Hardly anyone runs their own blog: Our profiles on commercial sites are, for better or worse, where we express ourselves.

Why this may be a good thing

If the mess that is called “copyright directive” is approved, it may be just what is needed to force us all back to the future, at last. It may trigger and accelerate the realization of something we should do anyway:

abandon “platforms”, and leave the era in which “hardly anyone runs their own blog” behind us.

How? My own proposal is what I call percloud, but it only is one of many. Here are some slides and short posts to better understand why I argue that “platforms” should be abandoned anyway, and that the percloud (whoever implements it) is a great way to do it:

• Personal Clouds to replace corporate-controlled-platforms (slides)
• We have reached “peak data governance”
• NO, It’s NOT “Time for Mark Zuckerberg to Give Up Control of Facebook”
• Converting facebook into a global coop? WHY?
• WITHOUT personal clouds you may not do anything else right

Suggested reading on the EU Copyright Directive

• What’s at stake in the July 5 #SaveYourInternet vote: The text, explained
• EU Parliament’s Legislative Affairs Committee Is Now Misleading Members Of Parliament In Effort To Fundamentally Alter The Internet