How Article13 is like the Inquisition: John Milton Against the EU CopyrightDirective

Censorship before or censorship after? The EU Copyright Directive rekindles the oldest fight in the history of free speech debates, first waged by John Milton in 1644. Then, like now, policy-makers were considering a radical change in censorship law, a switch from censoring material after it was published to requiring a censor's permission to publish in the first place.

Fundamentally, policing of speech can happen at one of two points: before content disseminates, or after. Policing content after it disseminates involves human agents seeing and reporting content and taking action or requesting action. This can happen on a huge scale or a tiny one: Facebooks content flagging system, obscenity law in much of the EU and USA, parents who object to books assigned in schools, and Chinas 50 Cent Army of two million internet censors, all these act to silence content after it disseminates.

Policing content before it disseminates involves sending it through a screening process before it is allowed to reach readers. Screening can be electronic, like the filters Article 13 would require, or like Tumblrs infamously dysfunctional adult content filters, or like the automated components of the Great Firewall of China, or it can be done by humans. Human screening is how the Inquisition functioned during the print revolution: all books began effectively pre-banned, and you had to take a book to an official censor for review and approval. Only after making requested changes and securing approval could the book reach its audienceanything without a censors note of permission on the title page was preemptively illegal, and author, printer, bookseller, and reader were subject to prosecution. Read the rest