There has been a lot of discussion regarding these regulations. Technology companies and activist organizations like EFF are particularly concerned (BoingBoing says "Europe just voted to wreck the internet, spying on everything and censoring vast swathes of our communications"). The provisions could require that companies pay money to sites for linking to them, and they could require that social networks filter content to prevent copyright breaches and other undesirable content. There's still another vote to go, though the sense it that it is likely to pass. More from EFF. Creative Commons calls it a major setback. Bryan Alexander calls it a dumb stick.
But maybe it's not so bad. Bill Rosenblatt, who has a long history of being reasonable in these matters, describes the bill as a "watered down" version of the original proposal, and expects more amendments before the final vote. And Ben Werdmuller draws what I think is the correct lesson from this: it's time to embrace decentralization. " While the internet economy has been dominated by services that leverage network effects to date, this directive is one way that monolithic networks have changed from an asset into a liability. Because the cumulative value in a network is owned by a single party, that party becomes subject to enormous rules and regulations over time."
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