The European Parliament has voted to pass the new EU Copyright Directive. This is when things get messy.

Over the last few months, today's vote had been portrayed as a decisive battle over the future of the internet as we know it. Whether you believed that or not, the vote revealed what side of the debate you stood on.

Article 11 would require internet companies to pay news outlets for hosting their content on their platforms. While this has been welcomed by some news corporations, others suggested that this would force social media companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to pay news organisation in order to feature as little as two words — or a hyperlink — from their news stories. Article 11 states that publishing "insubstantial parts of a press publication" should not be subjected to the norm, but fails to give a clear definition of what "insubstantial" boils down to. Does it mean a hyperlink snippet? A sentence? A word?

Recent amendments aimed at introducing exceptions for "private and non-commercial" individual sharing of links and hyperlinks also left some critics underwhelmed — mainly because most people share links on internet platforms, which would still have to comply with the directive.

The most furious lobbying efforts focused on this article, with musicians, artists and authors coming out strongly in favour of the rule, and technology companies — such as YouTube — warning against its dangers.

On the other hand, content creators retorted that Article 13's impact was being unfairly exaggerated. "The proposals ask internet giants to follow the offline norm and pay a fair share for creative content used on their platforms," the UK's Society of Authors wrote on its blog ahead of the vote.

Today's vote is not the end of the story, though: every amendment approved today will have to undergo another round of behind-closed-doors negotiations between EU politicos and EU member states, before going again through a vote in January 2019. The meme war is far from over.