This is the most hilarious quote in the article. The only thing this will do is entrench massive players like Google and Facebook who already have these systems in place. I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone could support this law while having any understanding of how the internet works. Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use? Just look at the abuses that already happen with the existing systems and now we have to spread this across the entire web, absolutely insane.
A truly sad day for the future of a free internet in Europe.
> is intended to give publishers and papers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories
So Google should pay you when they send you more traffic? More traffic = more money. Most companies would be overjoyed if someone sends them free business. Google and countless others even provide tools like Adwords so you can monetize your site if you can't figure out how to do it yourself.
I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest.
This is a weakening of safe harbor provisions. This law makes it extremely difficult to have a platform with any kind of user generated content. As long as a company is taking reasonable measures to combat piracy, hate speech, etc, they need to be granted indemnity from the actions of rogue users.
They believe what their wealthy donors tell them to believe. It won't affect the well connected politicians in any measurable way, they'll still be wealthy. Meanwhile, independent organizations will suffer while the big players get all the sweet licensing deals. Regulations are ALWAYS about punishing the smaller firms to make the barrier to market entry prohibitively expensive.
Some do, some don't. But in some ways that's not the motivation behind these laws.
There's a growing power struggle between Silicon Valley tech companies and government. Governments are losing control and they are lashing out. We're going to see a lot more of it in the future as governments lose more and more control.
I was doing a web development gig in a southern US state back in 1998, and the manager was completely of the mindset that you had to ask permission to link somewhere. For some people who don't get it, this is their natural mindset.
For other people, the whole point is to work against free speech and fair use, in order to control the public.
Not exactly. Small and micro platforms are excluded from directive’s scope.
From legislation: In particular, small and micro enterprises as defined in Title I of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, should be expected to be subject to less burdensome obligations than larger service providers. Therefore, taking into account the state of the art and the availability of technologies and their costs, in specific cases it may not be proportionate to expect small and micro enterprises to apply preventive measures and that therefore in such cases these enterprises should only be expected to expeditiously remove specific unauthorised works and other subject matter upon notification by rightholders
As to what small is, Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC Article 2.2 states:
Within the SME category, a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million
People communicating very freely has presented many challenges to those same politicians.
Forcing liability makes a choke point, and better control.
At least China is completely overt about these things. That is not a statement of support, quite the opposite. It is a statement as to how weasely politicians are about these things. They want a lot more control, and people want a greater check on authority.
I can't help but notice strong self interest factors in play here.
They know exactly what they're voting for, and say whatever is necessary to convince everyone that they're working to protect their constituents.
At least in the US, the vast majority of our politicians have graduated from prestigious law schools and passed the notoriously difficult BAR exam. Unless politicians on the other side of the pond are somehow primarily composed of MUCH dumber people, they're probably similarly intelligent.
They know what they're voting for, and they pretend to be totally ignorant to the "scary new world" of tech so they get a free pass on voting in dumb shit laws like this.
Incorrect.
It will also speed up development of a new web which is impossible to regulate. So I rejoice. When they block entire services for days, I cry in joy. A 10 days blackout is what we need...
Who do you think has their arm up the politicians' ass and making them talk?
These are the same politicians that brought us the law that forces every website to ask EU visitors permission to store cookies with a big fat modal dialog, so I don't think you need to worry that people who any understanding of how the internet works supported this law. Imagine all the time wasted on those modal dialogs and add up the total cost in human lives. I bet none of them have any clue that the functionality to block cookies is built right into your web browser.
The funny part is that they're doing this copyright law out of jealousy of Silicon valley and they don't realise that these types of regulations and attitudes are the very reason why Silicon valley is not located in the EU, and why the next Silicon valley won't be either, and that this law will make it harder for new companies to compete with Youtube and Facebook.
They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/europe-to-push-for-one-hou...
Having one hour to remove offending content, draconian fines and no, absolutely no exceptions for small content providers would, I think, end the internet as we know it in Europe. I see no way to host any kind of content under such jurisdiction and surely all non European content providers would just block the EU rather then take on a task that even giants like facebook and google can barely manage.
As far as the one-hour-rule goes; if I get an email about taking down content at 01:00AM, then I will naturally be unable to respond for atleast another 5 hours, German courts atleast agree that for such things, it counts when you are first aware of the illegal/infringing content, even if it's weeks after (though you already have an obligation to operate a contact through which you can be quickly reached when you operate in germany atleast, IIRC this proposal will introduce that EU-wide which is good IMO).
One way to ensure your citizen don't read them "foreign propaganda websites".
For example:
...the EFF argue that the idea of what constitutes a link is not fully defined. I'm not sure what they're talking about. Recitals 31-36 set out the concepts in article 11, fairly clearly. They make it clear that what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text. They also make it clear what organisations this will affect - press organisations - with a fairly clear description of what a press organisation might constitute. (FWIW, memes are not covered, and anyone you hear talking about "banning memes" is getting their news from very poor sources.)
You can read the recitals this commenter is describing here, including the latest amendments that were voted in the Parliamentary plenary. As you'd imagine, I disagree with his interpretation.
https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se...
Firstly, these are just recitals. They're not a binding part of the Directive, they just lay out the justifications for the law.
If you do read the listed recitals, they mention links once, and don't define the term at all. When they do, the context is that "the act of hyperlinking" is not protected (ie the new ancillary right does not explicitly cover the act of hyperlinking).
This is an attempt to refute an argument that no-one is making (though the language echoes a previous fight that rightsholders are still pursuing, which is links to infringing content should be punished as strongly as hosting content itself. That's what the "communication to the public" is about, and has been ongoing, but that's another story.)
The concern over Article 11 isn't that it would criminalise linking to a news item; it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license. Such snippets of text are usually used when linking to a news article, especially when you're doing it automatically, so that's where the threat to linking to stories.
A couple of other things to note in these amendments. One of the earlier arguments as to why Article 11 isn't so bad we heard is that there are already exemptions in copyright for quotation and critical review. We argued that under EU law, these exemptions are entirely optional at the national level, and news publishers will lobby to limit the effect of them on this new IP right. If you look at the amendment for Recital 34, this is now being explicitly set up to happen: the Recital now says that member states can apply these exceptions, instead of should.
Just because the recitals aren't law, doesn't mean you can't use them to better understand the motives and justifications of the drafters.
As others have noted, the "banning memes" line is about Article 13. An amendment proposed by a Parliamentary committee to create a "fair use"-style exception for user-generated content, specifically to protect remixes and memes, was struck down in today's vote.
By contrast, an entirely new provision that gave organizers of sports events complete ownership of the IP rights to their games was voted in. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/
Basically, this directive remains an IP maximalists' dream. A bunch of new IP rights, some of which only apply online, with clear signals that they should be interpreted as broadly as possible.
The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.
In particular, the phrase "This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public." It is all over the text and amendments. What is the exact legal effect of that?
I don't think it's surprising the global economy is littered with long-standing monopoly with little competition. It's not merely economies of scale, vertical integration, and other benefits of size, but because the business environment perpetually gets harder and harder for entrepreneurs to operate in.
The growth in the size of modern state-capitalist nation-states naturally coincides with the growth in monopolistic mega corporations - at the expense of things that have made capitalism so powerful and effective (competition checking abuse of customers, rapid innovation, etc).
> Google can sit back and stop worrying
Name one company from EU who have a slight potential to be a minor threat for (YouTube / Search)
This is an abhorrent decision by people who have no idea how the internet works. Markus Meechum (aka Count Dankula) was at the hearings, and reported that MEPs voting on the issue could not, or refused to, explain why they supported the bill. You can see him discussing the result in the immediate aftermath here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISyiTcA6RIw
If you want a quick example of why this is bad take a look at fair use and YouTube. Article 13 would make YouTube liable for copyrighted content on its service.
Much of YouTube content is (perfectly legal) remixes, responses, or criticisms of other YouTube content that embeds part of the referenced video in their own video. There is more content uploaded to YouTube than can possibly all be manually reviewed. Aggressive automated content filtering to comply with Article 13 would mean that these videos would straight get filtered out.
Smaller, more independent platforms will not be able to afford to implement compliance with these new regulations, and will potentially be driven out of business.
> Much of YouTube content is (perfectly legal) remixes, responses, or criticisms of other YouTube content that embeds part of the referenced video in their own video.
As weird as it sounds, you are wrong. In a short summary:
1. Fair use is a very small exception to some very broad rights.
2. Fair use almost definitely does not apply to most youtube content : if you use content other people made (video games or music immediately come to mind) you are infringing copyright holder rights.
3. If you rely on fair use rights, then you might find yourself in trouble.
What's even worse is that right holders can pick and choose who to bust, and they don't need to be consistent about it. So even if they rarely go after small groups, they can still shut down bigger ones.
I have a childhood friend who is now a copyright lawyer and I sometimes jokingly ask him whether something is copyright infringing. Other than yes, the most frequent answer I get is "I don't know, it depends. Both sides have arguments so ultimately it's down to the judge." It's just bad law. The only difference between then and now is that now we have the technology to actually enforce it.
Same sad song as it ever was. Keep giving more control to the government and they'll keep ratcheting down the screws on you.
An economic union should be about tariffs and the free movement of goods, not an entirely unelected bureaucratic federal government. Centralizing authority only benefits the well connected political class.
That actually isn't legal in many countries and is e.g. why regional wikipedia sites don't show movie posters.
What exactly is wrong with that? Seriously.
Do we really not have anyone better as a source than the Nazi dog guy? http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha...
(Perhaps someone from Open Rights Group or EDRI?)
For example, someone defends their right to use the title or quote from an article from some other news gathering organisation. Someone will need to convince a judge that it's OK for The Sunday Times, or Der Spiegel to do that, but it's not OK for Reddit or Hacker News to do that.
And eventually, someone will need to convince a court that it's OK for Charlie Booker to broadcast a Cassetteboy video mash up on the UK's Channel 4, but it's not OK for Cassetteboy to upload that same video to youtube.
It is true that the CJEU doesn't hold case law and precedent in the same high regard as other courts, but neither does it ignore them. The ECJ and CJEU serves as a check on government in the same way the courts do in most other countries. I think it is unfortunate that the EU parliament has approved this law. But I struggle to see how it will stand up in court. That said, it will take a very brave person or organisation with deep pockets and a steel will to challenge this law.
However, if this law is upheld in court, then I think we can consider the EU a failed experiment. So abhorrent is this legislation that I, an ardent "Remaniac", would rather see the EU fail and take my chances with whatever comes next, than let the EU stifle free speech and the free flow of information and ideas in this way.
I think this is exactly what they want. They don't want to automatically tax every teenage kid making memes. They just want to create a legal minefield so whenever they decide a link is not ok they will have a law that backs them up.
In a way it's good because most fair use most likely will fly under the radar just as it does today, but on the other hand it's also scary that you never really know when you are passing the threshold and might face an army of lawyers.
It's very much like patent trolls. They strike like lightning on a sunny day if you happen to build a mildly successful product that can be remotely associated with their patent.
What an unexpected conclusion you are jumping into. I think EU is the only capable authority in the world so far who is not afraid to challenge big corporations in favour of people. (mobile charges, customer rights, Google, Intel, Telefonica, etc..)
I completely agree that there are big problems around EU when it comes to lobbyists around Brussels. In my personal opinion they should be banned from influencing EU decisions. But, just because there is an issue with the car, does not mean that we need to burn the car completely. Better option is to help fixing the car.
Newswires aren't free and come with a copyright agreement.
Sometimes, when companies climb the ladder to the top of the market, they kick the ladder down. This time, big copyright (and their political friends) kicked it down.
So... pretty much like the US (with a few exceptions like Silicon Valley or Austin, Tx)?
Is there anything stopping a search engine like Google choosing not to link to a newspaper? Surely they can’t be required to link to a newspaper AND then pay that newspaper to do so?
The trade-off if Google chose not to link to the newspaper would be a (slightly) less useful search engine, but the cost to the newspapers would surely be higher in the long term…or am I missing something?
Google's response was to give them better ways of de-indexing content. IE, a way to opt out. Take it or leave it. Naturally, few newspaper took leave it, preferring to get readers & no revenue than no readers and no revenue.
Since then, efforts have focused on turning that around. Give Google a take it or leave it option. Either shut down Google news or pay newspapers somehow. So far, Google have walked a couple of times, when such laws were passed locally.
So yes, Google could end Google news search.
(This dealt with an earlier local version of this in some European countries)
More likely? They drop anyone who doesn't give them a free or very generous rate.
If it's about scraping content and presenting it in a separate feed or otherwise outside of the source platform, I can see why they would not want that.
But I do think that the EU copyright law is significantly flawed because it's purpose is to further extend the already ridiculously over-extended draconian copyright laws that exist in the EU. I don't think the issues they (ostensibly) set out to solve are something that should be ignored though -- Google acting as a biased monopoly which implements features that impact people's ability to make money is a real problem that needs to be solved somehow.
1) I've witnessed creeping internet censorship starting just like this: first it's something as innocuous as "let's protect creators" or "let's protect children from harmful content", then 6 years later you can't criticize the government. They've just created a legal framework for massive automated censorship, and also Overton window was moved. I expect this to happen as soon as this law is backed up with the technical means.
2) People in power are uncomfortable with the current state of the internet, that is a true p2p platform for communication. Can't have that! We just got moved one step closer towards their vision of the Internet, that is nothing more than TV + storefront.
If we look at the DMCA notice[2], you'll see that the claim was made to Google that a song belonging to Real Housewives of Melbourne breakout act, Gamble Breaux, was used on the site. There is no such song on the page.
Here's a few other sites that were taken off of Google with that claim. There's a theme.
- https://www.wbs-law.de/urheberrecht/eu-abstimmung-morgen-dro...
- https://torrentfreak.com/popular-torrent-and-streaming-sites...
- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/leistungsschutzre...
[1] https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi...
The link tax is really absurd. Traditional news is now almost completely useless. Information distribution is near free in todays market and "journalist's" opinions don't add much value to the information either. A large amount of stories are almost pre-written and sent off to publications anyways. Quality curation is really the only aspect that I would consider valuable, but these establishments just spread click-bait and junk articles.
It's ludicrous to me that the same body that approved something so user-centric as GDPR could come up with legislation so incredibly hostile to small players as to effectively abolish the open internet by financial attrition.
Once this comes in, we'll collectively need to finally start work on that peer-to-peer, onion-layered, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building.
At least this is a lot more compelling in terms of a call to action. It's been a death of a thousand cuts for the last twenty years, so at least it'll help motivate us all to get a move on.
There is probably a similar pattern of ignore the small players in other new EU laws, but since it's not my industry I don't hear about them.
GDPR arguably hurts small players most. Mismanagement of a single users data could cost the farm. It greatly increased the cost for small businesses to do business in Europe.
I am not British and I don't (nor have I ever) live in the UK.
I also have a very limited knowledge of that culture and economy, garnering most of what I know from reading the LRB every few weeks.
But all else being equal I am happier in a world post-brexit because I want very much for there to be diversity in governance and nation states.
I realize it creates inefficiencies and I also realize that to what degree you can say states are "competing" with each other for citizens is quite low (since it's a fairly sticky relationship) but I want some diversity to exist.
Coming up, we're also working on IP masking (onion layering), and we already have an option to do end-to-end encryption (which prevents middlemen from being able to read your data).
If you are passionate about this stuff, there are a lot of projects moving in this direction and all Open Source, and they/us/them could really use help/contribution! Political reasons only shorten the timeline on needing this.
Not everyone! ;) MIT licensed.
I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Did you read the legislation? Which points of this legislation made you think that this is "enough to change view on Brexit" ?
EDIT: Well, downvoting this comment will not make the discussion any better. I've read most of the legislation, that's why I am asking why OP is reacting like that, wanted to clarify his objections (if any).
At the risk of sounding like a freshman libertarian.
It's not totally over yet, both the final vote and the implementation in member countries can disarm the worst parts of the directive.
I'm from EU, I had the time to look at the recent amendments about this law, in which they added precisions about the fair use of data, for non-profit and public research.
They also precised that this law and the technical implementations should not go against already in-place freedom of speech rights.
Hopefully, people will be able to easily defend themselves versus the big corporations in case of abusing take-down requests. The recent example of Twitch streamer Lirik being unrightfully suspended on a simple request from UEFA shows there will be an adjustment period for everyone involved. His case was quickly resolved and he was unsuspended in less than 24 hours after the take down request. However, he is one of the most famous streamer from the Twitch platform, he can easily use his social network to acquire visibility. For smaller and not well-known streamers, it may be more difficult to obtain justice...
My source is the Finnish tech magazine Mikrobitti [1] which gives a link to the vote results [2, p.38]. I'm sure someone will eventually post a more readable list of who voted what.
[1] https://www.mikrobitti.fi/uutiset/mb/4a70c290-cc01-4789-b0e2...
[2] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...
Currently, yes, but that is, as far as I understand it, something this directive actually makes better. Article 13(2b) requires "effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case the cooperation referred to in paragraph 2a leads to unjustified removals of their content. Any complaint filed under such mechanisms shall be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review".
Also, "Member States shall also ensure that users have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright rules".
Also , the major issue is not so much with the process of takedown itself, but with the "terror" it inspires which will lead to the end of the "meme culture" upon which internet media rely on. It's not so much about the number of take-downs , but about the number of people that will quit before even trying.
Google, Facebook and the like already employ filtering and copyright techniques and they can afford it. So, this law lifts the barrier to entry for smaller internet companies.
On the other side, it's also beneficial almost exclusively for the larger publications or copyright holders as the collected amount of license payments would end up there.
So, while I accept that the benevolent interpretation of this initiative is correct – big internet companies have an unhealthy market share and it's unfair to make money from other peoples' work – I suspect this might be another step towards more corporatism.
It's more like a "bug" in democracy as such. As long as a topic doesn't have widespread attention, it's the lobbyists who make the laws, not the citizens. I am pretty sure there are other bad laws in other very specific areas, we as techies don't have a clue about.
As I've written in another comment here, this is obviously an unavoidable "bug", but the more centralized a legislation process is, the more it is prone to exactly this "bug".
I hate the removal of substantive access to local politicians that the EU has.
Maybe this is the one single solitary positive to Brexit...
> Any action taken by platforms to check that uploads do not breach copyright rules must be designed in such a way as to avoid catching “non-infringing works”.
Utterly hilarious and scary that they think that's possible.
We already have lots of tools to block user access from the EU, time to upgrade them!
The EU fail to understand that the internet is inherently free and you can’t regulate it well (unless you’re a dictatorship in China, but you have bigger issues there).
It's basically just more bureaucracy if you're running a start-up or mid-sized company and want to do things by the book. Something to worry about, something to fear. I genuinely wonder if copyright holders will make a single cent off this.
That's not what this law purpose is. There's already copyright laws covering these cases.
Websites that distribute pirated content are already illegal.
Once those bits and bytes find their way into the digital world you might as well kiss them goodbye. When you try to control them it is like going to a public street and yelling "I am going to go get a burger from Bob's Burger" and then getting upset when a bunch of people also go to the same place and make it all crowded for you.
Simply put, nobody should own any arrangement of numbers, sorry if that fucks your lucrative monopoly up.
To argue that all parties everywhere should be forced subsidize the enforcement and policing of that contract is outrageous, economically unsound, and violates liberty.
If you find a book on the ground, or read it in a library, or learn of its contents any number of ways without entering into even an implicit contract with the copyright holder, you are not then entitled to publish the contents without limit.
And if the contract is violated and the violator taken to court and the court rules against them and they refuse to pay restitution? Without the potential of government violence brought to bear, there is no point in contracts in the first place (except in the general sense of an agreement that includes 'go against me and I won't associate with you again'). But, however, if there is no government violence to be rendered applicable in any case, that does open the opportunity for the violated to employ violence directly. However, it also puts each individual in charge of insuring themselves against appropriation of their own property by means of said violence. So, at a minimum, such a position wants to establish the collective garnishment of funding for 'police services' to protect such rights, yet this is fundamentally in favor of those who have a greater quantity of property to protect, as the owners of such will (as history shows) that they should be required to reimburse no more than any other member of the collective, and if they do, then they are entitled to greater service, leading, again, to the same asymmetrical form of society, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Your definition is some alternative Libertarian definition of what copyright could be in an alternative society.
Update: I cannot comprehend the reason for downvote without reply. You provided a false definition of Copyright and I provided a correct definition along with why your view might not be the reality.
On the other hand this legislation will completely change the internet as we know it.
Oh, and by the way, as long as you show something to EU visitors (even an error page telling them to GTFO), you need a privacy policy.
Simultaneously, I'm not campaigning in favor of the "link tax" component, here. I think it's widely agreed upon that that part of this proposal is pretty dire bunkum.
But let's not be eager to discard the baby and bathwater together. The idea of some EU copyright policy consensus is not inherently evil. If HN wants to rally about the "link tax" issue, do so. Don't jump directly to "boo, the EU is undemocratic because they didn't do what I want". That's just bizarre and we should be above that.
I'd be fine with automatic content tagging if at the same time false copyright claims by someone who does not actually hold the copyright would lead to a hefty fine and/or be considered a crime.
Right now, large corporations seem to spam the systems with automated take-down messages without any control and any incentive not to do so, to the effect that actual content producers have almost no way to defend themselves against false claims. Every youtube channel owner can sing you a song about that.
That's a problem for both the US and EU copyright system, but it's also not clear to me if and how the forthcoming EU directive would fix that problem. For all it's worth, it seems to make things worse.
Until of course the filters take his legitimate content and claim it as somebody elses
In a few years the EU could be on it's way to undo the linktax again, who knows? Meanwhile there are other EU proposals on the way that are also interesting for tech people, not only the linktax and "delete terror in 1 hour or else"... And non-tech proposals too!
I do believe that it'll be possible to work with the filters and link tax considering some edits during the initial phases did disarm the worst of the first proposal (it's still not a very nice one).
Disclaimer: I operate a platform for user generated content in the EU as well as working for a platform for user generated content, HQ'd in the EU, my views may be biased.
I actually believe the ``link tax'' is less bad than the content filtering. Because it only governs Google publishing snippets of articles. That is pretty close to Google 'stealing' the article from websites. (Similar to google's AMP cache)
I've been working with filtering and fingerprinting technology for some time, and while its "pretty good", false positives happen frequently. Its a case of continual disappointment, even from the largest tech companies with the "best" technology. I expect that widespread "filtering" will equate to widespread non-fair use related false positives.
This law is going to work like the DMCA for many providers, carpet bomb everything and worry about the cleanup later.
Like always here, death by regulation. The way governments grant monopolies to established players and kill competition.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2F...
EDIT: The final text will apparently be published here eventually: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/texts-adopted.html
Article 13 however still sounds worrying. It describes automated image recognition (i.e. an upload filter) as a possible mechanism for preventing the upload and publishing of illegal content. However I can't find any language that explicitly requires the filtering, non-commercial platforms like Wikipedia are explicitly exempt and it's fairly directly aimed at companies that make money from publishing content users upload to make them liable for the content they're hosting.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like it will mostly be trouble for companies like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and file hosters (e.g. Mega). How dangerous it is to startups exactly depends on how "appropriate and proportionate measures leading to the non-availability on those services of works or other subject matter infringing copyright or related-rights, while non-infringing works and other subject matter shall remain available" is to be interpreted in practice.
EDIT: To clarify: I'm skeptical of this and was extremely biased against this because of what the EFF and others have said about it. But the final text seems far less terrible than the first draft that everyone got up in arms over.
How can anyone think that while uploading a new set of content on a website, it would be an instant job to compare against all other legal content already uploaded?
Can't afford it? Too bad, that's the fun of this law and why it should be abolished.
On one hand I'm sad that the EU fell for that crap, on the other copyright law is so fucked up already that it kind of feels like more crap in a bucket of crap. One day this whole thing will become completely unsustainable and will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
"Won't somebody think of the creators!"
And they have pushed this kind of crap on us relentlessly for decades.
Neglecting to mention they absolute shafting these obsolete middlemen of cultural access give to the artists and creators they sign.
What? Where? How? Is the author of this article somehow confused? The article doesn't make clear in any way how the new law would threaten any tech giants' grips on anything. Tech giants are the first to jump regulatory bullets that would kill anything on a tighter budget in its way.
After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.
This is another example of the classic lobbies-driven political decision where politicians pass legislations as a favour to their friends in corporate A or corporate B.
Also, if they think this will fix the revenue problems of the majority of newspaper publishers they are certainly wrong, newspaper are not dying because people read news on Google.
This law will be introduced in Switzerland, Norway and UK. Most probably UK will have to keep it after Brexit.
https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/onlineforums.ht...
But I think this can have a significant impact on the perception of the EU on the general public
Same. This institution has given me enough. Not only in tech.
And the link tax has excemptions for plain hyperlinks and the like, which prevents most distopian uses of such a provision.
If google acts on this it will be because they know this was written with them in mind and if nothing happens stricter laws will follow. But for everyone else it will be a non-issue.
Upload filters on the other hand are a much bigger problem, mostly because copyright law is way to strict to make them reasonable.
Why shouldn't they? It's money lost otherwise.
It seems to contain a bunch of amendments that seem to make at least Article 13 a bit less draconian. In particular, 13.2b seems to require a human-reviewed and appealable complaints mechanism.
All in all, it's still very shitty.
I intend to save the list of those who voted for and set a reminder to dig it out when the next EU elections come up. I hope people with more social media presence than I do the same.
While I am not a particular fan of the dominance of Google and Facebook, I like it better how they handle the web than what we have seen from the 'creative' companies. It took years until they found a way to monetize their content properly (e.g. Spotify, Netflix) and even now after they pushed DRM down our throats, they kinda complicate things by not letting you watch the full HD version on certain platforms or restricting streaming rights on a per country basis.
"The great danger is that it will destroy the capacity for free speech on the internet and social media, which has exploded in recent years and is an invaluable alternative to the so-called mainstream media."
https://www.ukip.org/national-ukip-news-item.php?id=18
The law is about the so-called "fake news", now that we're close to the 2019 European parliament elections.
Also: Democracy (a 2015 Documentary by David Bernet)
At my understanding, there will be discussions about the amendments and another vote, like the one we had two months ago. Is it right? There is still time to act, right?
Also, is there a place to see who voted what? Elections are close and those choices could impact the vote of many. I knew Votewatch but I don't know if it still doing it, saw some excel file going around last time and wondering if they are being updated, to see who changed ideas.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/11/17845394/eu-copyright-dir...
I received one "pre-canned" email acknowledgement from UKIP, attempting to make the bill into an "EU bullying us" issue, and nothing from anyone else. One politician I tried to call had a published phone number that connected to a commercial money lending service.
And mainstream political parties wonder why people feel disenfranchised. They have become a professional political class, completely disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The result is protest (Trump, Brexit et al).
Just wait until you walk around Brussels. EU politicians don't mix with the locals. They've got separate everything. They have reserved parking spaces, separate taxes, separate restaurants, separate social security, separate supermarkets, schools and swimming schools that the locals are excluded from.
Needless to say, all are vastly superior to what the locals get.
Compared to that, I would argue you're wrong. I don't know how UK politicians live, but I very much doubt it is half as "separate class" as the EU class in Brussels. In Brussels the politicians live like the politicians in Beijing live.
You can believe GDPR is a good law and this a bad one without hypocrisy. As much as you can believe murder ought be illegal but not cannabis.
1. Access for EU residents is shut down on many sites. 2. GDPR is not taken seriously, even if 11 and 13 get repealed. 3. We once again do not have a legal body to look to as privacy thought leaders. 3. People will stop taking the EU seriously as a
The changes going on at such governmental levels should not be unexpected. These kinds of changes have been happening over many decades. Very few, if any, governments (I am not talking about politicians here) want to give the citizens of itself the freedoms that could threaten the well-being and growing control of that government.
Politicians may have agendas (obviously they do) and can in some way direct how the relevant government will operate. They have less control than they think and they are there only fo relatively short periods of time. Most of the legislation that citizens end up suffering under is dictated not by the politicians but by other control structures.
Policy changes made by the various political representatives will be warped by those who are in charge of bringing these policies into reality.
The changes being discussed here for the EU are in line with the premise that government will gain more control over its citizens and the ones who have pushed for this will find out quickly enough that there are very large unintended side-effects that will come back and haunt them.
The fundamental concept driving all this movement towards control of what citizens can and can't do is to ensure that when needed those same citizens will follow whatever directives are given. This is just repeating what has happened in the past many times.
Does that mean we lie down and just take it or is there something that we can do?
If you are going to actively do something, you must start out first realising that there are going to be consequences. You have to make up your mind as to whether or not you are willing to face those consequences.
Then you need to look at what action you can take and take without the destruction of others. Peaceful civil disobedience can be a strong motivator of change in some cases.
All I can say is I hope Europeans enjoy their new walled garden, because I sure as hell won't be complying with these rules.
If they did so they can conveniently also ignore that $5B anti-trust fine.
How is this different than making gunmakers responsible for shootings? Continuing with the analogy, the only option the gunmaker has is to essentially close up shop. Seems like an impossible law to follow. "Develop better algorithms for filtering inappropriate material or you're gonna be sorry" sounds like tyranny.
I don't see it very clear that the biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet with these new laws. They will be able to weather this and even profit just fine.
In 2018 I'm considering rejecting clients with an Eu requirement.
What actions can the average citizen take against this?
I feel like this is actually forcing the biggest tech companies to increase their grip on the internet.
On the other hand when the government wants to regulate something I'm also immediately suspicious.
Will the concept get less mockery now?
Where can I get the collection of all copyrighted content so I can build this filter?
Problem solved.
Huh? How does this follow?
This is beyond ridiculous.
How can I find who voted for it?
There is something suspect about the EU's cavalier attitude in churning out internet regulations, they generally favor old industries and incumbents.
Of course what's best for the people and the internet is a non-consideration for these politicians who work for the moneyed-class rather than the people.
The news companies ( especially the big ones like BBC, NYTimes and CNN ) already bullied google and facebook to give them exceptional preferential treatment. Now they want a link tax? We already have news companies' social media team bombarding the internet with their spam, now they will go into overdrive mode if news links are monetized. That's so ridiculous. What's to stop anyone from creating a "news" company and them spamming their own links everywhere to profit from this tax?
As for the upload filter, all that's going to do is to impede or silence critics, artists, etc using materials protected as "fair use".
People talk about china or russia all the time, but the biggest enemy of a free internet so far has been the EU since their legislation can be global while china and russia are pretty much confined to their own borders. And of course with EU behaving so erratically, this will just embolden china, russia and the rest of the world to act in bad faith as well.
