The sad thing is, that was my second thought too.
The gist of the article seems to be the EU nations have dragged their feet regarding implementing the law. That's to be expected, and variations are to be expected too. But that hardly makes it dead in my view.
The surprising thing is that the EU is ahead in the privacy initiative not the US.
The US are not even considering it and instead they are wasting time getting nations to agreed to a even longer copyright length.
Sadly the US has been bought by corporations and nothing important for the citizens but potentially damaging for corporations will ever pass.
It's more like the United Corporation of America not the United States of America.