Dear Steemians,

We are under attack!

Source: Julia Reda

The Web without links is like a world without roads.

Without links to route everyone around the Web, the wonders of the Internet would be locked away. They power Steemit, Twitter and hundreds of social apps, they power the sites where you get news and entertainment, they power your favorite blog: they power every site you visit.

Links are what empower us to access the greatest collection of human knowledge and experiences the world has ever seen, with the click of a button.

Outdated media publishers are successfully lobbying all over the world to restrict linking on the Internet. Spain and Germany changed their laws to apply charges in order to link to news websites, making it difficult for independent news media and bloggers to do their jobs. Aggregators are struggling, small presses find their websites unlisted, and access to knowledge is restricted. Source

Old media firms are pressuring lawmakers to apply link censorship laws to the whole EU. In an open letter published in Le Monde – but, fittingly, behind a paywall – large news agencies including Germany’s DPA und France’s AFP call for the extra copyright to also extend to their products.

Killing Innovation

Prof. Höppner, a professor of commercial law and IT law, and the lawyer for German publishers in a case against Facebook and Google, was similarly forthright at a hearing at the European Parliament last week:

«This is a prohibition right. It is a right that makes sure there are not platforms coming up everywhere and anywhere that take advantage of content that has been published and make their business out of it. The first and foremost goal is to prevent these exploiting businesses – simply not have them.»
[Watch the video recording] (

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This exposes the other goal the big publishing conglomerates hope to achieve: Killing off competition in the news sector. They don’t even want to give innovative startups the chance to pay their link ransom – they want to stamp them out.

The fault line here does not run between journalism and online platforms, as lobbyists like to paint it: It’s between a few giant publishing houses and everyone else. Aggregators and social networks have created a level playing field that has allowed smaller, independent and special-interest news sources to grow. These sites reach the majority of their readership via links on social media and search engines, rather than through direct visits to their websites.

Unsurprisingly, innovative publishers and startups are up in arms, warning that the planned law, promoted as ensuring media diversity, would end up achieving the exact opposite: media concentration. Source: Julia Reda.

What can we do?

Keeping innovating and building our Steemian communities is one step. Nevertheless, today I invite you to add your voice to the public campaign launched by Open Media: Save the Link.

And by the way, I need you upvote my Post!