Responding to the European Parliament’s vote in favour of the Copyright Directive – with amended versions of Article 11 (the “link tax”) and Article 13 (“upload filters”) – the PRCA has criticised the move and called on MEPs to reject these Articles at the final vote in spring.
Francis Ingham MPRCA, Director General, PRCA, said: “As the PR and communications industry knows, the link tax and upload filters threaten the core principle of access to information.
“The supposedly-good intentions simply do not add up: this represents an odd and misguided attempt to regulate the internet in a way that is as detrimental to practitioners as it is to the public.
“While the intention is to support organisations which produce news, ultimately this will hamstring aggregating websites and applications and drastically reduce the public’s ability to engage properly with news and content. This comes, ironically, at a time when we need the public to engage with the news more than ever.
“The European Parliament vote was close, just as it was in July. While today is a major set-back, not all hope is lost: there is still a chance to save the internet as we know it at the final vote in spring.”
