#SaveOurInternet 5: Other (ie Continental) Reformations

This Christmas may be the last one that a free Internet exists within the EU, to the detriment of many people in the creative professions. When I first went into blogging and publishing fanfiction online over five years ago, I thought this day would never come. There would be a requiem and a ban on parodies, on sharing images and stories that move us for free, on filk lyrics and fanfiction, and pirate translations of works outside the public domain... The Members of Parliament turn a deaf ear to all of us in the creative and the electronic world, and thus, next year... if we all don't come together and do something against this Article 13, everything we know and love will fall apart.
Now I know how Odin must have felt with the forebodings of Ragnarök. But who am I to be then... Odin or Enjolras? Feeling powerless against the rising tide, or not? Not only is my career as a currently unemployed translator at stake; many other creative professionals will be facing the same dire consequences - if we don't do something ourselves.
Most surely, this year's Advent Calendar will be about Save Our Internet and have to do with the history of copyright and resistance to it - maybe this very introductory article will be barred because the name of Enjolras (or any other Les Mis character) would be as encouragingly mentioned as Macbeth, if we just sit there idly instead of coming together for the cause.


Other Reformations - Luther, Gustavus Vasa, and inflammable Spanish heretics
Due to the advent of the printing press, Protestants' and freethinkers' writings became as available to the public as let's say the Vulgate (the only version of the Good Book authorised by the Catholic Church, ie St. Jerome's Latinisation), poisoning the hearts and souls of a rapidly growing literate bourgeoisie. Neither the Crown nor any Church, Catholic nor Protestant, was going to have it this way. Thus, heretics and freethinkers across the Continent (not only in its Catholic southern half, but it was more virulent there) were highly inflammable. In France, Étienne Dolet among others was executed for translating sacred texts into French - of course the penalty of death made bootleg distribution channels bigger because people were starving for more things to read.
Long story short, as long as there are umbrages in the path of free intellectual property (especially if it's free as in gratis), there will always be bootleg or piracy distribution - all the way since right from the start.