As a storyteller,I know it might sound like I'm crying "Wolf!", but as a librarian the tiny aggravation in our Inboxes before on the EU policies were just a warm-up to a truly Internet breaking policy that affects the entire Internet. Today I received this (my own comments follow), also I put in bold type the part affecting everybody: *This is terrible:* The EU Parliament just caved in to giant corporations and passed a massive overhaul of copyright law that threatens to ruin the Internet as we know it. The Parliament approved the requirements for taxes on hyperlinks and censorship upload filters for any website that publishes content. 1 If these policies become law, websites like Reddit and Wikipedia could be wiped out entirely. And it would pave the way for similar policies here at home. But the good news is that the EU Council gets its say, and we're going to make sure these devastating policies are rejected. OpenMedia is pressuring EU member states to stand up to corporate interests and vote down the Link Tax and Censorship Machines for good. Will you donate to help our efforts? https://act.openmedia.org/stl-vote-sbs?src=162909 ] The Link Tax would affect not just Europe, but the entire Internet ecosystem. Requiring websites to use automated content-filtering technology would cost millions of dollars and thousands of manpower hours, likely decimating small online businesses and startups. 2 This legislation stems from pressure from gigantic publishers who would rather destroy the free and open Internet than admit their business models are obsolete. They want Google and other data aggregators to pay up when they link to original sources-but that means that we'd also have to pay, changing the way we share information with each other. 3 And the legislation also calls for content sites to have YouTube-style upload filters. But most sites don't have the manpower or financial resources of YouTube, which paid tens of millions of dollars to put its filter in place. These Censorship Machine requirements will put smaller sites out of business for good. We've seen the effect that Europe's new privacy requirements have had on websites we use here at home-dozens of new terms of service agreements have come through our email inboxes. That's why it's essential that the entire world become involved in the fight against the EU's new copyright legislation. And as a global organization with campaigners around the world, OpenMedia is uniquely suited to take up the fight. ************************************ When this came up earlier I posted on storytelling sites what I could find about the EU Council. Canadian storyteller who is also a librarian, Elinor Benjamin, added "I managed to harvest all the email addresses from the site so I could send one message to all of them - freely adapted from Lois' point. Here they are if anyone wants to do the same. . . francis.zammitdimech@europarl.europa.eu emil.radev@europarl.europa.eu pavel.svoboda@europarl.europa.eu sylvia-yvonne.kaufmann@europarl.europa.eu enrico.gasbarra@europarl.europa.eu mady.delvaux-stehres@europarl.europa.eu tadeusz.zwiefka@europarl.europa.eu antonio.marinhoepinto@europarl.europa.eu jozsef.szajer@europarl.europa.eu" Please consider how you, too, might respond before the EU Council takes steps affecting all of us whether we have a website or not, since we all use the internet. LoiS(hocked & you should be, too) Lois Sprengnether Keel http://www.LoiS-sez.com and blog at http://www.StorytellingResearchLois.com Storyteller in MI Arts & Humanities Directory and in Historical Society of Michigan Directory http://hsmichigan.org/resources/storytellers-speakers-performers/storytel ler-lois-sprengnether-keel/ State Liaison for National Storytelling Network Webmaster for http://michiganstorytelling.org/