It’s time EU laws caught up with technology

https://changecopyright.org/

by doener • 10 years ago

109 47 10 years ago

changecopyright.org

cornstalks• 10 years ago

Am I the only one who finds reading text surrounding an animated GIF impossible?

reitanqild• 10 years ago

I think they should add Norway tobthe dropdown. While technically not a part of EU it is affected by EU laws anyway.

philipov• 10 years ago

There's no text. I can highlight it, but it's not even the same color as the background. It looks like every letter has been replaced with a space. Is that copyright protection?

throwanem3• 10 years ago

No, that's a web font failing to load.

brassic• 10 years ago

It isn't. The body element has its opacity set to zero so you can't see anything. I guess there's some Javascript or CSS or something intended to animate it, but if that fails to load you get an empty screen.

leereeves• 10 years ago

It's time our laws caught up with our technology.

Politicians usually update our laws to catch up to technology by banning, restricting, or regulating it.

We'd have to change the power structure to get new laws that "create room to tinker, create, share, and learn on the internet."

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

There's nothing to revert. How many times in history the people had the power to choice their own future by voting and by campaigning?

The problem is not the politicians, they're just an easy scapegoat.

You can influence the society by voting with your money. Money is power and every time you give money to someone you give them power. Choosing who you work for, what products you buy (not only with money but also with your privacy) has enormous impact.

ratsmack• 10 years ago

In addition, we have the power to remove the entrenched politicians that collude with the corporations that are constantly attacking freedoms. But sadly most people will just vote on name recognition or party line and not actually look at the voting record of the incumbent or do any research on the challenger, so the status quo is hard to overcome.

Practicality• 10 years ago

"Choosing who you work for" is underutilized, I think. Most don't realize that organizations fall apart instantly when they don't have any employees.

csydas2• 10 years ago

I don't think that's necessarily true. The current Copyright laws are extremely over-reaching and also incredibly one sided, as user generated content or personal IP is often used by companies without the actual copyright owner's permission. Basically Copyright currently is a one-way street and it's wildly inconsistent and frequently misused.

This doesn't really need a government to "create room to tinker, create, share, and learn on the internet", it just needs the government(s) to fairly apply the law and punish businesses who rampantly abuse it. With US DMCA claims, all are made under the penalty of perjury that the claims are valid and true - how many stories do you know of that are about companies being punished for an overreach of copyright claims or for false claims? The answer is likely none because despite there being debate over the copyright misuse in courts, there are just too many damn instances of copyright misuse to even start with.

It's a considerable imbalance in US law because it's truly a case of where a wealthy few are able to protect their rights and use the law as a cudgel to get their way, and often their claims have no basis or are not covered by the copyright law as the companies want to interpret it. However, individuals do not have the resources to adequately challenge these claims, and the fraudulent DMCA claims have effects beyond the takedown.

sandworm1012• 10 years ago

Of course copyright laws are one-sided. That's like calling the law against murder one-sided for being too against murderers. Most all laws are one-sided. The other side is found not in the law, but in rights and privileges protected by things like constitutions and charters.

Take "fair use" in copyright. The language in the copyright law is a bit of a fiction. Fair use is just a loose description of an underlying constitutional right, freedom of speech. The language used in copyright law doesn't trump the constitution. So while it is one-sided, that side is balanced by the constitution, which is also rather one-sided.

A copyright law that attempted to be two-sided would have to define constitutional rights, something that can/should not be done in a law. Its a fools errand. Instead, you write a one-sided law, with some loose nods to constitutional rights, then leave it to the courts to ensure that you haven't trampled too much. If you haven't, then the law stands. If you've gone too far, the law is quashed and you have to start again. That's our system.

ryanlol• 10 years ago

With US DMCA claims, all are made under the penalty of perjury that the claims are valid and true

No, the claim made under penalty of perjury is one of being authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder. An entirely different issue.

Jarwain• 10 years ago

Isn't the big issue the fact that individuals typically don't have the resources to find copyright infringement and thus issue their own DMCA requests? At least, not on the same scale as companies.

Silhouette• 10 years ago

Politicians usually update our laws to catch up to technology by banning, restricting, or regulating it.

That's not entirely fair. For example, here in the UK, the government did try to reform copyright to some extent by introducing a private copying exception in 2014. This was several years later than it should have been and followed multiple extensive official reviews of IP laws, but at least they got there.

The exception was reasonably clear and quite tightly defined. Roughly speaking, it legalised actions like format shifting, making backup copies, and storing content on cloud services, provided they were for the personal, non-commercial use of someone who already had a legitimate permanent copy of that work. By modern political standards it was remarkable for following the original spirit of copyright so clearly: an individual would be free to enjoy a work they had lawfully obtained, including taking advantage of modern technologies, but the basic principle of copyright that the individual could not duplicate the work to share it with others was also maintained.

That law was overturned less than a year later following a judicial review, based on technicalities of EU law particularly around compensation for rightsholders.

There are a lot of things wrong with this situation, but in any case it is now abundantly clear that the EU authorities are heavily pro-big-copyright and have no qualms about using their influence to block progressive reforms or anything else that might be a threat to big rightsholders. They have repeatedly interfered both with member states' national governments, as in this case among others, but also on the world stage with organisations like the WIPO, from promoting longer copyright terms (again, contrary to overwhelming public opinion in evidence given to the official reviews) to blocking plans to ease restrictions on libraries so they can perform their public function.

So yes, unfortunately some politicians seem to have completely lost the plot here, but not all of them. Of course, in the particular case I mentioned, the power structure is about to change between the UK and EU authorities, so hopefully whatever deal gets worked out over Brexit will at least escape that particular unwanted interference.

rayiner• 10 years ago

We'd have to change the power structure to get new laws that "create room to tinker, create, share, and learn on the internet."

What boggles my mind is that such views are cloaked in the garb of "freedom" but are essentially confiscatory and anti-freedom. They want to take away the freedom of people who create things to share those things on terms of their own choosing.

Copyright doesn't need to catch up with technology. The whole point of copyright is to keep people from getting ripped off. The fact that technological advances make it easier to rip people off doesn't create justification for changing the laws.

tptacek• 10 years ago

Yes. This is a problem everywhere in the law. Technology makes it easier to do all sorts of bad things, from theft through mass sexual assault (see this week's news). As a society, we seem to have a hard time staying clear-eyed about what's happening in crimes intermediated by technology.

adrianratnapala• 10 years ago

While I favour the sentiment, I won't sign the petition. One reason is that I am only a visitor to the EU.

But if I was a European, I would still be troubled by the vagueness of the thing. I'm all for putting rhetorical pressure in general directions; but if I am to put my signature on it and send it to a legislator, I want to see some concrete reform proposals.

Instead I see a wish-list of outcomes.

kbart• 10 years ago

Agreed. While to goal is noble, the description sounds like something written by 10th grader. I mean, com'on, are memes and GIFs are really among the most important things?

Symmetry• 10 years ago

If you're aim is to convince enough people for political action you really need to dumb down your discussion to a 10th grade level.

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-save-the-freedo...

The above petition had an effect on European MEPs.

MollyR• 10 years ago

Yet we still have strong pushes from the government on the radical TPP and TTIP. I fear they want to update the law to catch up with technology but not in pro-consumer or pro-citizen way.

guard-of-terra3• 10 years ago

Let's have a talk about copyright, at least, in our societies, instead of having laws and persecutions just pushed on us from the top, in batches?

I don't see any democracy in observing how this system works, only sense of entitlement of the minority.

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

You can do something. Support organizations like Mozilla, EFF and FSF. Donate to them and stop using companies like google (which pushed for DRM on the web), facebook, etc. That make money selling your privacy and use that money to influence standards and laws.

guard-of-terra3• 10 years ago

I don't want to do just "something". It's too little, too late. I want to have what's mine, all of it.

Getting my voice heard out loud, my interests acknowledged.

99182912• 10 years ago

Looks like http://hooli.com/ :

"We're more than the sum of our collective accolades."

"We're bigger than our innovations."

sofaofthedamned• 10 years ago

I can't understand why law isn't drafted under a version control system like GIT. It would stop some of the umderhand earmarks and such like

DarkLinkXXXX• 10 years ago

Sorry if that was just an off-hand remark, but how would a GIT workflow account for judicial review?

adamnemecek2• 10 years ago

Laws need to be written in some automatically checked formalism and have some sort of checker.

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

Writing laws is much much much harder than writing code (corner cases, ambiguity, corruption, etc.).

Did you ever write a "big" program completely bug-free? I think we should first start by writing correct programs (e.g. invest more in Coq, linters, etc.) then "pass" our wisdom to law writers.

adamnemecek2• 10 years ago

I was talking about something like coq.

contravariant• 10 years ago

That'll just make them consistent, not necessarily right.

Laws should definitely be more declarative though. There seems to be a push towards a more imperative style of law making which results in very inflexible legislation.

jrockway• 10 years ago

There is not enough information on the site to get me motivated to take any action. It sounds like the EU doesn't have fair use or the freedom of panorama? But is anyone is prison for photographing the Eiffel Tower or making a meme?

According to Wikipedia, it looks like it's not the entire EU that's missing a freedom of panorama, but just a few countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama

There are countries where the government mandates what clothes you wear and whatnot, so perhaps their society does not particularly value personal freedom. Thus it doesn't make much sense to me for a US company to intervene here.

Meanwhile, the law seems to be ignored and the cost of an international lawsuit over a picture of a building is prohibitive to nearly everyone, so I'm not too worried.

barkbro• 10 years ago

Did you know making a meme technically isn't allowed in many parts of the EU?

Does Mozilla also think that a meme is an image macro or am I misunderstanding here?

WorldMaker• 10 years ago

«It's time laws caught up with technology»

For a brief second I saw the sci-fi view of that headline and am now disappointed this isn't about someone's "time laws".

Dowwie• 10 years ago

Is the United States not listed in the dropdown for this petition?

ldjb• 10 years ago

It's not. The page seems to be mostly about the EU, so the list only has EU countries. There is an "Other" option at the bottom of the list, though.

mike128• 10 years ago

The prime example of what you can expect when EU politicians take on technology is the Cookie Law...

summarite• 10 years ago

EU copyright reform is coming. The Commission (=administration/ministry) proposal is scheduled for 21st of September. It will propose more harmonisation (currently the EU sets just a basic framework, countries choose what/what not to implement in detail, but the terrible is of course that the more ambitious it tries to be the less likely it will go through. The more national systems will be unpredictably affected, the more likely you'll get a few vetos. So the proposal will significantly update, improve and bring more clarity across borders, but necessarily makes compromises and has to leave enough freedom to not ruin existing working systems.

At that point the ball is handed over to the European parliament (~750 members elected from the 28 EU member states) and the council, i.e. the heads of state .

That means 1-2 years of negotiations and finally political bargaining between the member states.

The big issue is that copyright is only partially harmonised, so after that procedure EU member states have to transpose the EU law into national law.

Along all these stages vested interests will be lobbying. Politicians will cut deals. The EU (at least the eurocrats) will try their best to get an ambitious result, but we all know that it's in the end about politics. Political parties and leaders will make the final call.

There is no abstract EU making decisions about Europe. There are national governments, national parliaments and nationally elected politicians negotiating and cutting deals.

If you want a good copyright framework stop sending incredibly vague petitions. Go and pick up the phone and call an MEP. Go and join a party and make an effort to get into the committee that sets the party line. Go and visit your local politicians' open hours and tell them that you expect them to make their party listen - and offer to provide support.

Then you'll make change happen.

Stop slacktivism. Start informing yourself (by reading the stuff on 21st September) and then take an honest look to try where you can act.

It’s time EU laws caught up with technology

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