Non-profit use vs free speech

The EU is trying to pass a copyright law that will severely damage free speech. Users on internet sites will be allowed to upload content that uses copyrighted material provided they don’t make significant revenue by doing so. This is effectively a ban on free speech.

First, if you are not allowed to make money by commenting on stuff online, then such commentary can’t be your main or only source of income. So you can’t devote much time to commentary and can’t keep up with events or culture or whatever unless you can make lots of money without much work. So this law is an obstacle to most people making commentary in any serious way.

Second, you can’t tell in advance whether a particular item of commentary will make you money. As a result, platforms will have to ban all commentary that uses quotes or clips to be safe.

This problem illustrates the principle that economic and political freedom are linked to one another. If you’re not free to make a profit, you’re not free to survive without begging the state for your life. This law will kill independent political and cultural commentary in the EU. I think that is the intended result of this law. The EU wants no more objections to their plans from the little people, who’ll just have to put with a boot stamping on their face forever in silence.