The European Parliament yesterday voted in favour of changing laws in the Copyright Directive.

In a post on the organisation's website, the political body says these changes will mean tech companies have to pay artists and journalists for their work. In addition.

This is good news for music artists, as well as the media, as they will receive compensation for their work. But the new measures have come under fire.

In particular, Articles 11 and 13 of the new bill have generated controversy. The former is being dubbed a "link tax", which mean that companies will be unable to link to stories and features if the link text features at least a single word from the headline itself.

Article 13, meanwhile, makes platforms such as Facebook and Google responsible for protecting IP. If copyrighted material is used on their services, they need to remove this. There are already fears that this will kill meme culture.

This isn't law yet, however. The European Parliament needs to discuss these tweaks with the Council of the Europe Union and the European Commission before they are set in stone. 

Already activists have sent a letter to the EU Parliament concerning these legislation changes, among them the father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee.

"The European Commission’s proposal for Article 13 of the proposed Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive was well-intended," the letter said.

"As creators ourselves, we share the concern that there should be a fair distribution of revenues from the online use of copyright works, that benefits creators, publishers, and platforms alike. But Article 13 is not the right way to achieve this. By requiring Internet platforms to perform automatic filtering all of the content that their users upload, Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users."