I had no idea this was still going on. I supported [OpenMedia's Save the Link campaign](https://savethelink.org/) what feels like years ago.

One thing I don't understand is how they would even enforce a link tax in the first place. Just individual publishers suing whoever they can find linking to their content? Not only does that sound like copyright trolling 2.0, it would pretty much be reverse marketing and I don't see how anyone could think that will benefit anyone.

I don't see this having much of an effect on the open source community beyond the effect it will have on the Internet as a whole, though, since it's only meant for news sites as far as I can tell, and thus would not hinder the use of open source material. As for upload filtering, I can't even begin to imagine how they propose to implement that in a way that would hurt free software in particular, but it definitely sucks for all sorts of content hosting platforms.

Remember, a proposal is a proposal and some seriously weird shit has been proposed over the years. It has found a disappointing amount of support (lobby system going strong), but there's a long process before it can become actual law. And more EU political parties seem to be resisting than pushing for this proposal, which means it'll be an uphill battle for this particular idiocy.