This is the draft letter I am about to send to EU policy makers regarding Article 13 of the Copyright Directive. Here you can read why.
Please submit a PR of you have any improvements. I encourage you to modify and or use this letter for yourself.
Dear EU policy maker,
Article 13 in the EU Copyright Directive requires code-sharing platforms, among other kinds of platforms, to monitor all content that it's users upload. This will have a devastating effect on almost anyone who writes software. Either professionally, (especially) as a student or as a hobbyist.
In this letter, I will explain the impact Article 13 will have on my life as a
programming professional.
The programming landscape changes rapidly. Especially in my own field of
expertise (development for the web). Every few months new ways of working are
discovered / created. The need to keep up with this rapid changes requires
learning new things. Literally on a daily basis.
Learning how to use new pieces of software, means working with / building on top of work from others. This is such a common practice, that code-sharing platforms are an invaluable resource of every developer. By sharing code on those platforms, developers encourage other developers to; learn from their code, provide solutions to problems, let other developers find problems / bugs in existing code. All by duplicating existing code and modify it, play with it, test it.
If all code is monitored before uploading, a modified (better) piece of code can
not reach back to the original author or anyone else. Preventing anyone of
learning from it's mistakes.
If we can't learn from improvements or build upon pieces of code of others,
we loose a very valuable asset in our career, or a way of starting that career
in the first place.
Besides the points raised above, a developer submitting their code to a public code-share platform intentionally provides that code for others to build upon.
So I strongly ask you to vote against, remove or alter Article 13 of the EU
Copyright Directive.
Not because I want to play with code from others, but
because my career depends on it.
Kind regards,
Peter Goes