The following is a satirical article and is not actual news. The piece reflects the opinions of the author and not the Weddington Witness as an organization.

Dear content-minded voter,

Article 13 was passed to a 56% majority in the EU (European Union) on March 26, 2019, ushering in a new era of copyright law that will forever affect how internet culture proliferates itself. Yet, something felt like it was missing, as though Article 13 wasn’t going far enough. What European copyright needed was something more powerful, where the big media companies would be able to overcome the internet platforms of the people with even more ease. What The EU needs is what I now propose as Article 13, PLATINUM EDITION.  This new and most definitely improved Article 13 would remain the same but with a few minor changes.

First, Instead of creators and media companies settling disputes independently, creators have no way to appeal to use their media at all. This allows the media company to save the possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars it would lose by creating a department to deal with those people. Thus the process is streamlined, allowing the multi-billion dollar media company to win the dispute even if the content contains only .0001 seconds of copyrighted content.

Next, Instead of leaving the media company and individual creator to settle the dispute on their own, a new task force to be known as CENSOR or Comparably Excellent and Not Secret pOlice acRonym. This task force will:

• Locate any violators of Article 13 within the EU.
• Remove perpetrators by any means necessary.

Not only does this solve the problem of offenders being able to repeat their violations in an unlawful manner, but also discourages future offenders from ever falling out of line.

Third, in memory of Josef Stalin, any repeat offenders will be sent to special reconditioning seminars that will keep them from violating the laws of the state again.

Everyone in the EU knows that copyright has been a serious issue and us here in parliament believe that this is the only way to effectively eliminate the problem. Sure, we could make the law much more detailed in scope to specify various lengths of media and whether or not still images qualify as plagiarizing, but we think it would be better to keep the creators of these blasphemous forms of content from being able to sustain themselves and force them into having real jobs.

We do wholeheartedly believe again that Article 13 did not go just far enough. We hope for your support with the new Article Thirteen PLATINUM EDITION, and would also like to remind you that if you don’t support retribution will be swift and extremely painful

Sincerly,

The 56% of the EU parliament that wasn’t removed after Article Thirteen was passed.