Have you heard about Article 11 and Article 13, the Link Tax and the Upload Filters? Well, these are soon going to become law unless the final vote vetoes them. Even then, the EU has a replacement in the form of a plan B... or we can call it Plan E if we count in other internet censorship attempts.

Anyway, I just discovered this less than 15 minutes ago, and upon reading what it was about, I felt like my eyes were jumping out of my sockets from the shock.

What is this new attempt to censor the internet? It's the Terrorist Content Regulation, which one person called ''Article 13 on steroids''. To keep it short, anything that is labeled ''Terrorist'', which is a term kept vague by the proposal, has to be taken down within 1 hour. Just imagine making a piece of artwork or a message to speak out and then being punished with fines because you had to go to sleep. That's what can with the Terrorist Content Regulation. This can even extend to those who oppose a type of rule. If there is someone who wants to fight huge problems in the future, he/she can be labeled ''terrorist'' and be censored to oblivion.

It will be voted on 5 days to a week from now, and if you live in the EU, you should call your MEPs and warn them about this. Here is a link to a page that explains more about it: https://www.laquadrature.net/en/terreg/

To be fair, this sounds like something a few social rights assessments could solve if someone like a member of, say, "single moms against work discrimination" got labeled as a terrorist for bad mouthing the system. You could heavily broaden plenty of words (the internet likes doing this) to mean dozens of things that they weren't intended to label, but something like "terrorist"? I feel like that's pushing it. Little Timmy's mom is a terrorist. Really. Take it several notches further and trivialize some more serious matters, you would have the marches, so I wouldn't think that this would be used as irresponsibly as copyright dictatorship.

Sounds like a lot of hoopla. I disagree with Mecha Leo, somewhat. Any good intentioned thing that creates room for abuse will certainly be abused. Will it create a copyright dictatorship? Probably not. Will it ruin some innocent people's lives? I'm sure it will at some point. Some sites are being throttled now, after the death of net neutrality in the US. But then again, a few of them already were in the first place.

Deciding if or how often this article is abused, pertains to one specific question. Is it good for business?

They think this is gonna stop piracy but all it's gonna do is make it profitable. What was once available as a free download on a torrent site will now be sold underground as physical copies. Stock up on discs, European brethren; there's business to be conducted.

Disasterously sob-worthy news: The terrorist content regulation has been approved yesterday. That was on top of article 11 and article 13, now called article 15 and article 17.

I think it's about time that we say goodbye to the internet... and more than 75% of all companies we know. Nobody is allowed to quote pop culture anymore, nothing is allowed to violate any copyright laws, upload filters will now be put into place, small independent news folds for the propaganda machines...

And I think I'm starting to forget how to smile, too.