IT expert and author Petteri Järvinen said he's worried about the consequences of the European Union’s new copyright directive.
Last week, the European Parliament voted to approve new rules, which are aimed at more fairly compensating artists while safeguarding free speech.
Two articles in particular have caused an outcry among critics of the directive. One of them is Article 11, the so-called link tax, which forces online platforms to pay news organisations for the use of their content.
"This means that in future platforms like Facebook would have to pay Yle, for example, if a user includes a link to an Yle news item showing a text excerpt or a photo," Järvinen said on Yle’s Aamu-TV programme on Monday.
So far, platforms have not been obligated to pay for content created by others. From now on, however, EU would look at links from the perspective of copyright. According to Järvinen, huge sums of money and compensation are involved.
“This could result in Facebook ceasing to share news. Or the amount of fake news might increase, because fake news sites do not need compensation," he suggested.
"A crazy idea"
Another sticking point is Article 12a, which prescribes that only the organiser of a sports event would have the right to publish, reproduce or record the event. As a consequence, spectators could not share photos or videos without paying compensation, Järvinen says.
"Article 12a is incomprehensible. Supposedly it was added to the directive at the last minute and nobody knows what it exactly what it means."
"It's a crazy idea that the organiser of a sports event should be protected by copyright," Järvinen added.
Before the directive goes into effect, leaders of EU member states would still need to approve the rule changes and individual countries would have to draft local laws to comply with the new rules.