Can we stay on topic please?

No? All right then, just a quick note regarding the EU, and centralized decisionmaking in certain areas in general: It's not that the EU is a bad thing, far from it. Without the EU, environmental standards, food safety, workers' rights, consumer protection, public services, individual rights and freedoms, privacy regulations, citizen input and participation at the national level, corporate control, large scale tax evasion, corruption, in some places even the justice system, overall situation of the less wealthy countries, and in a number of ways of the wealthy ones as well, all of these, and I'm sure I missed plenty, would be way worse. Often, due to the need to obtain majority approval from groups with very different and often conflicting interests, the EU's decisions lack courage and vision, they end up being very watered down, a mere shadow of what they'd need to be, and that's what needs fixing, but even so in most cases the end result is a far lesser evil than what they'd be without the EU, or something similar to it.

In this particular case, the EU caused a huge problem, but that's due to wrong decisions made by the people currently leading it and making decisions there, so demand to change the people (as long as you know who you'd rather change them with), add principles that must be adhered to, checks and balances, but not the dismantling of the whole thing. That's like, I don't know, demanding to ban trains and take out train tracks because a drunk conductor messed with the controls and derailed a train into a crowd. It's a major tragedy, but not the fault of trains or train tracks, which are very good things that need to be improved and promoted a whole lot more, over other means of transportation.

Really, now? Europe is great. European folks are awesome. "Union", on the other hand, is the worst thing that happened to both. Even only for mercillessly crushing the autonomy of a member and blackmailing, as well as imposing on it, is more than enough reason, to invoke... "Scepticism". And think of, consider, "alternative" choices. Eurofarce will soon fail, the 4th Reich is going to fall, EUSSR and EUCCP have expired. European Elections draw near... European people take notes, watch things unfolding... They are so going to take right decisions, this time... Righter decisions, than those of the past.

*shudders*

I am looking forward to the legal critters being replaced by ones that grew up with the internet. A fair bit of the chicanery and illiteracy comes from the politicos not grasping what they are dealing with, or simply not valuing what the internet brings to everyone.

Not happening. The people in charge simply don't care about "everyone". Never have, never will. To make it to the top, you have to be a reckless sociopath. This has been true in any system. It's sad, but it seems to be deeply rooted in human nature.

Will this affect GOG.com? I suspect uploading pictures will have to stop completely for starters.

This bullsh17 will affect EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE in the EU. Yes, if a user uploads an image in these forums, someone could sue GOG over it. GOG has the choice of "deal with it" or get out of the EU.

As for the link tax, yes, again, everyone is going to cause GOG to pay a tax for putting links. If GOG deals with it paying it itself or transfer that to game's prices it's unknown... or again, get out of the EU.

Steam is also going to be affected. Facebook. Damn, even services like Whatsapp and freaking Skype. There's a sh17storm going to hit these countries because of it. And the economy will be hit as well (specially if business decide to leave).

The EU just shot itself in the foot with a damn tank. Let's hope it does not spread over the rest of the world... I personally expect this to be withdrawn, but I'm not that optimistic :(

under current legislation thats already possible if gog does not comply on notice of a DMCA (or even just a legally compliant demand / complaint in those territories that do not use DMCA takedowns) by the copyright holder or their legal reprasentative.

And that's a huge difference. Rightsholders had to protect their assets and do the leg work if they wanted to, and find things to be taken down; now platforms will need to be the copyright police and prevent such uploads from taking place at all, if anything shows up they're at fault by default.

i didnt say otherwise. my post was replying directly to jonridan's assumption that gog could not be legally charged under current legislature. if they understood otherwise prior to posting, then their post was poorly made.

This is terrible. I feel the world has gone mad. I'm in America but with the way things are going here it wouldn't surprize me if they soon follow.

I live in the EU and own 3 websites.

When this goes into effect, I will be moving back to Asia and blocking all EU traffic to my sites. It is going to kill the EU's Internet-based economy, simply because idiots in the European Parliament don't understand how the Internet works.

Why are all people thinking of pictures and videos first? Text can also be copyrighted... And text is not excluded at all.
GOG (and any other platform) would have to make sure that NOBODY posts copyrighted text where GOG doesn't have a license agreement with the copyright's owner. It's insane I know...

Basically, when this becomes national laws around the EU, every single public forum can shut down.

You are all bots (unless you don't complain).

Actually text is the focus of article 11 (15 in the final version).