Europe’s efforts to curb the internet giants only make them stronger | Kenan Malik

New legislation on copyright will hurt small users and boost tech titans’ influence

While all eyes were on Westminster , and on the inability of MPs to pass even a poop, the European parliament got on with its job and passed some new legislation. Soon, most of us might be wishing that it hadn’t.

The directive on copyright in the digital single market is a bland name for a dreadful piece of law likely to reshape our use of the internet. “The transformation of the internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users,” was how Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, and 70 other technology pioneers described it in a letter to the president of the European parliament last year. And they’re right.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2CInfsA