Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Empty cover pages in largest Polish newspapers

Rzeczpospolita (Republic), Puls Biznesu (Business Pulse), and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (Law Daily) - the largest newspapers in Poland appeared today with empty front pages. All thanks to the upcoming vote in the European Parliament regarding EU's copyright regime, "Article 11."

Article 11 would introduce additional rights related to press publishers in the digital use of their publications. Publishers would therefore have the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit "reproduction of the work" and the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit any publication of works - in this particular case, press materials. This is the most important directive for some who opt for the so-called ACTA 2. But the opponents of the directive emphasize that the implementation of this law - supposedly striking such services as Google News - would kill essentially a freedom of expression on the Internet such as discussion, citation and comments on specific news and texts.

The empty pages have a significant meaning in Poland. This how in the 1980's some of the newspapers were reacting to overbearing censorship, by simply not publishing anything. Apparently above mentioned newspapers support Article 11.