LookingAtNothing.com is my little small site in a rather esoteric corner of the web to highlight my activities in science. It’s run by me, I pay for hosting and the domain name by myself, and configure and maintain most of it too. It is not supported by ads or donations, and I always need to find extra time besides my working hours to make fresh content for it. I do this because, every now and then, someone sends me a small message saying they were helped by it.
However, now there’s a new copyright directive being developed in the European Parliament (some information here, more here). If this is accepted, it will probably mean the end of this weblog. The current draft contains sweeping provisions (a link tax and upload filters in particular) which are impossible for me to implement, check and prove, could cost me significant chunks of money, and will make running LookingAtNothing.com untenable. The protections for sites like mine are tenuous to nonexistent, and cannot be relied upon until lengthy court battles may eventually prove their merit.
So, if you have the chance, go out on the streets this week-end (info on a demo in your area here), and help make a stand against this proposal. It is not the first time these things have been proposed, and it will not be the last. But with similar action as before, it may be stopped again.
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