According to the new copyright law of the European Union all internet companies which have the possibility for users to upload content, have to check the content for violations of copyrights. First it is a good thing for the copyrights holder, but a bad for the free sharing community of the internet, which built it up. The real reason for the European Union is to protect and monetize the copyrights as they should, meaning bringing the copyright in the digital age across Europe.

It won’t work, because for this purpose you cannot say to companies what to do and not, because nobody can control all the data life. If you really want to put the copyright into the digital age, governments or supra-governmental entities like the EU have to create, implement and provide that service. The new copyright law from the EU is only half taught through, because the government or supra-governmental entity has to control the internet regarding copyright. It is not possible for each (internet) company to implement an upload or copyright filter and engine that is checking wether something is under copyright or nor. For that purpose you need as well a really good database with all necessary information regarding copyrights in order that content can be correctly identified. A big problem is that the copyright content can come from a lot of different companies worldwide. This database would never be complete, because there is no central copyright database for this purpose on a worldwide basis.

If the EU would want to do it right, they could, but it would cost a lot of money, because setting up a worldwide copyright database with the right information inside for an engine capable of detecting instantly all copyright related data and block automatically all the transmission of these would be a really huge task, especially considering the routing of the internet in the EU. They just roll-over costs to big and medium size internet companies, but finally where will be the control or do we will have in future a human police for copyright in place in each member country of the EU? This as well would cost a lot. The other way round would be that big companies where copyright related material is transmitted to users, that they pay a copyright tax for this purpose.

Many hosters are already in countries outside of the EU, where the new copyright law is not applicable, but their website can still be accessed and copyright content will still be possible to be viewed within the EU. If you set-up a law you always have to implement the correct enforcement and that should start with the technical aspect of an independent identification of copyright content and its automatic blocking inside the EU. No other solution will be sufficient in the long term.