Reddit Is Targeting Up to $6 5 Billion Valuation in IPO
Article 12a might stop anyone who isn’t the official organiser of a sports match from posting any videos or photos of that match. This could put a stop to viral sports GIFs and might even stop people who attended matches from posting photos to social media. But as with the articles above, all of this depends on how the directive is interpreted by member states when they make it into national law. The reason why this article has been dubbed the “meme ban” is that no one is sure whether memes, which are often based on copyrighted images, will fall foul of these laws. Proponents of the legislation argue that memes are protected as parodies and so aren’t required to be removed under this directive, but others argue that filters won’t be able to distinguish between memes and other copyrighted material so they’d end up being caught in the crossfire anyway. The Directive on Copyright and its most controversial component, Article 13, requires online platforms to filter or remove copyrighted material from their websites.
If the AI is good enough to work out the difference between a meme and thieving copyrighted material, Article 13 could work. The first, mentioned in the open letter from internet heavyweights say the move would put unfair costs on smaller internet platforms. Big American tech companies like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter will be able black bull markets review to afford automatic filtering technology. Obviously big technology companies like YouTube and Facebook already have technology like this in place. However, if the legislation passes all websites where users upload content would have to implement the same technologies. Reddit’s move is also highly anticipated after a lull in initial public offerings.
Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive states services such as YouTube could be held responsible if their users upload copyright-protected movies and music. YouTube is by far the most vocal critic of Article 13, with the firm making a big effort to promote opposition to the directive among its creators and users. A popup on the YouTube website and app directs users to a page with the title “#saveyourinternet” which includes a video from YouTube explaining the firm’s objections to the directive. In the video, Matt Koval, a content strategist at YouTube argues that – in its current form – Article 13 “threatens hundreds of thousands of creators, artists and others employed in the creative economy.” The message board site, founded in 2005, detailed its financial performance in a filing.
“If the owners cannot agree, it is impossible to expect the open platforms that host this content to make the correct rights decisions.” No one can quite agree how these platforms are expected to identify and remove this content. An earlier version of the Directive referred to “proportionate content recognition technologies” which sounds an awful lot like it’s asking platform owners to use automated filters to scan every piece of uploaded content and stop anything that might violate copyright from being uploaded.
Other notable shareholders include Tencent and Advance Magazine Publishers, the parent company of publishing giant Condé Nast. A year after tech entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman founded Reddit, Condé Nast bought the company, before spinning it out in 2011. At the top of the range, Sam Altman’s shares in the company would be worth over $400 million. Included in that group is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, even though this platform has already been explicitly excluded from the scope of Article 13. This fact is symbolic of the stand against the directive being less about the bottom line of individual companies and more about the fight for overall freedom of expression via the internet.
- The company brought in $804 million in annual revenue for 2023, representing a 20% year-over-year increase from $666.7 million, according to its latest IPO prospectus.
- This could put a stop to viral sports GIFs and might even stop people who attended matches from posting photos to social media.
- If the UK leaves the EU with a deal, and the directive becomes law, it would apply to the UK during any transition period.
- Article 12a might stop anyone who isn’t the official organiser of a sports match from posting any videos or photos of that match.
- The directive has generally been opposed by major tech companies and a vocal number of Internet users, as well as human rights advocates, but supported by media groups and conglomerates, including newspapers and publishers.
While those are the negatives, there’s every chance that internet users might not notice these changes at all. That would make it more difficult and costly to create new code from scratch. Prominent figures in the tech industry including inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have signed an open letter condemning the idea. As with most public online forums, Reddit is vulnerable to the use of disruptive or manipulative practices by its members, from sources such as troll farms, click farms and astroturfing.
Community and culture
The version of the Copyright Directive that passed today mentions “safeguards on freedom of expression” in the form of exceptions for memes and gifs as well as less stringent rules for start-up platforms. Twitch, YouTube, and other companies like Google are framing this as an attack on creators, and these companies, as the self-anointed stewards of an open internet, now seem like protectors of the people. Luckily for them, it’s also a threat to their large, professionally vocal user bases, which these companies can now marshal to their cause. I’ve seen a handful of small streamers express hope that Twitch will just pay the licensing fees because it cares so much about its community. Ultimately, it all depends how much internet platforms invest in artificial intelligence.
YouTube, and YouTubers, have become the most vocal opponents of the proposal.
YouTube would have to implement technology to recognise the content as copyrighted material and alert Beyoncé’s management. That management would then be able to order YouTube to take down or modify the video at their discretion. Currently, the onus is on the uploader to ensure the content they are sharing doesn’t breach copyright law. The final version of Article 13 says services must make “best efforts” to remove copyright-protected videos in cases where “the rights holders have provided… the relevant and necessary information”. Article 13 says content-sharing services must license copyright-protected material from the rights holders.
The platform recently announced it would begin charging other companies that want to access its content using an API (Application Programming Interface). Reddit announced the changes earlier this spring after the rise of generative artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI, which used Reddit’s rich trove of human conversations to train ChatGPT for free. Boiled down, all this article is saying is that any websites that host large amounts of user-generated content (think YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) are responsible for taking down that content if it infringes on copyright. The EU parliament voted 15 to 10 not to remove Article 13 from the proposal. Therefore, the next chance to stop the legislation from passing will be a plenary vote on 4-5 July.
Industry Products
It is the last of an early generation of social media companies to aim for a public offering. The social media company plans to target a price range of $31 to $34 per share in the first-time share sale. However, the real underlying concern for publishing giants is bound to be revenue. By tightening rules around copyrighted content, YouTube and its publishing counterparts lexatrade review will be unable to deliver the same range and quality of content to their audiences. This will ultimately force consumers to look elsewhere (to platforms that are paying copyright holders for their work). Her major stated concern is that by using filters to block copyrighted content, all copyrighted content could be blocked, even when it involves fair use.
“Some [online platforms] fear that Article 13 requires the implementation of automated ‘upload filters’. However, Article 13 makes no such requirement and in fact states that automated blocking should be avoided,” Honeyball says in a statement. “The text only requires that [platforms] either license or remove copyrighted material.” Also, collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Gitlab would have very limited options because the users would need to pay for any source or image that is copyrighted.
March’s Top VPN Discounts
These are humorous photos or video clips slightly-edited to reflect a variety of different meanings. It is one frame of a Japanese anime trade99 review series called The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird. The internet is all aflutter today over the vote on ‘Article 13’ by the EU parliament.
Video gamers who share their gameplay on video-streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube highlight the complexity of copyright online. YouTube already has its Content ID system, which can detect copyright-protected music and videos and block them. But critics say developing and implementing this type of filter would be too expensive for small companies or start-ups. German MEP Julia Reda suggested services would have to “buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload” and called it an “impossible feat”. How much of an article has to be shared before a platform has to pay the publisher?
The article intends to get news aggregator sites, such as Google News, to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms. Press publications “may obtain fair and proportionate remuneration for the digital use of their press publications by information society service providers,” the Directive states. This is the part of the Directive on Copyright that has most people worried. In short, Article 13 would force sites and online platforms to use automatic tracking technology to detect when users uploaded content to make sure they weren’t sharing copyrighted material. If automated filters are put in place, there’s a real concern that fair use of copyrighted content could be blocked. This is where the “meme ban” moniker comes in, as people are wondering if a meme would pass such automated systems.
What is the Directive on Copyright?
However, more broadly, internet users are concerned about the impact of the legislation on copied or remixed content. In addition, some argue that the proposal gives no indication about which internet platforms would need to introduce these new filters. Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1. Reddit’s bankers are seeking a valuation of at least $5 billion in its I.P.O., according to two people familiar with the matter. That is roughly half of the $10 billion valuation the company fetched in a 2021 private financing round.