05.03.2019 - 22:15 [ Techdirt ]

Article 13 Supporters Find Smoking Gun That Isn‘t: Majority Of Tweets Criticizing Copyright Directive Are Not Coming From DC

Volker Rieck runs a German anti-piracy operation, and over the last year or so has been an increasingly vocal — if somewhat unhinged — supporter of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive. I won‘t link, but a few quick Google searches will find some examples of Rieck trying to build out conspiracy theories of big giant American internet companies secretly running the entirety of the anti-Article 13 push in Europe. You could say that some of them dip into red yarn on a corkboard territory. Of course, as we‘ve discussed before, the idea that any attacks on Article 13 are all really because of Google has been a key part of the pro-Article 13 lobbying strategy from the beginning. Of course, as we‘ve highlighted, if you look at the actual lobbying, it‘s been almost entirely from legacy copyright organizations, with very little coming from the internet industry.