EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved

by daninet • 8 years ago

1737 998 8 years ago

duprat• 8 years ago

So we now got our own SOPA to deal with. Important note: the bill now goes to trilogue before it's ready to face a plenary vote. Though I'm not holding my breath.

hackandtrip• 8 years ago

I'm European but as many don't have a clear idea of how this will work.

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.

daninet• 8 years ago

Any amendments approved on Wednesday will be subject to further negotiations between politicians and member states in a closed-door process known as “trilogues.” Whatever emerges from those debates will be subject to a final vote by the EU Parliament in January. After that, it will still be up to individual member states to interpret the directive and turn it into law.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/11/17845394/eu-copyright-dir...

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

A couple of YouTubers from the UK went to EU Parliament to make the case against Article 13. Unfortunately, their pleas mostly fell on deaf ears. They discuss the (undemocratic) process here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHwaA3fMPgc

whostolemyhat• 8 years ago

The youtuber who's claim to fame is making a video where he shouts 'Gas the Jews' repeatedly? I wonder why he wasn't listened to.

yostrovs• 8 years ago

I'm getting the impression that many Europeans don't seem to have a grasp on how their laws are passed. Is my impression correct? I'm baffled by the commission, Parliament, individual states, and how they interact to make laws. Is this topic teachable to 3rd graders in Europe?

sirwitti• 8 years ago

One could say the same thing about americans and it would probably just as true/false.

Me personally I'm not into that kind of generalisation.

baxtr2• 8 years ago

Yes, that is unfortunately the case. Exactly this is creating a feeling amongst many of us that something is fundamentally wrong with the EU as governing and legislative body. Of course, you could reverse that and say: People have to inform themselves properly. But that's just the situation were in right now.

faag36• 8 years ago

I believe most Europeans don't know much or anything about the EU, because our states retain a lot of power, so we already have enough to deal with.

erk__2• 8 years ago

It is taught in schools all over the EU, but the EU is a "new" thing.

Konryan• 8 years ago

Here are more details on the process following this vote from the EDRi: https://edri.org/press-release-eu-parliament-flip-flops-back...

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

UKIP and the Green Party joined forces to prevent Article 13 from getting rammed through without a public discussion. It was a good first step, but here we are, 2 months hence, and it was passed with virtually no amendments to the original text.

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.

buboard6• 8 years ago

I think they know how the internet works, but they want to change it

loa-in-backup• 8 years ago

I think it's going to work like jaywalking - it's illegal, but I've done it, and it's fine as long as it doesn't cause a bigger issue, and as long as enforcer isn't overzealous. It's true though, that it's a weapon waiting to be used for political reasons, and the perspective of that happening is no good for anybody.

Retr0spectrum• 8 years ago

The likes of YouTube will be affected the least. They already have aggressive copyright enforcement measures in place, and they can afford to do that.

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.

kakarot2• 8 years ago

Yes, the Googles and Facebooks of the future will be affected the most.

This is consolidation of power, finally locking down the Free Internet just as we've done with every other industry. Stripping the power to change from the small.

And what are we doing about it?

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

YouTube, the company, will be fine. They'll just ban any content that triggers their enforcement systems. I'm worried about YouTube, the platform, and the bastion of free exchange of information and ideas that is has been until now. A response-type video or movie review will almost certainly be false-flagged by a system like this.

Of course, I agree with you that independent platforms are going to have a rough time. They either have to manually review all content themselves, not allow any user-uploaded content, or pay a company to do this for them.

jonathanstrange5• 8 years ago

What about distributed systems without central control? Will the new laws force them to introduce filtering into the software (which could e.g. be open source and forkable by anyone)? Or does this only apply to systems with a centralized repository?

I'm curious how this is supposed to work.

lossolo7• 8 years ago

This is wrong. Small and micro platforms are excluded from directive’s scope.

Source 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.

lorenzobr5• 8 years ago

Yeah, it seems to me UKIP has good track record of things "getting rammed through without a public discussion" by now, like the 350 million for the NHS with Brexit.

gaius3• 8 years ago

Interestingly, Farage wasn’t actually a part of that, BoJo wouldn’t let him join the official Leave campaign. So you can blame UKIP for lots of things, but not the bus.

Shaddox• 8 years ago

I may be naive in saying this, but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind. The real problem lies in the laws it relies on, namely the extremely stringent copyright laws and the weird fair use.

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.

simias3• 8 years ago

That's an interesting point. It's true that the issue wouldn't be quite as terrible if IP laws were more reasonable to begin with. We shouldn't have to wait for literal centuries before a work becomes public domain for instance.

zaroth2• 8 years ago

Fair use (in the US) is actually designed to provide for the ability to comment on, or criticize another work. You can’t do that effectively without showing the subject matter you are discussing.

There are absolutely well defined “fair use” exceptions which a stringent filter will block.

Other than yes, the most frequent answer I get is "I don't know, it depends.

This is the only answer a lawyer will basically ever give you.

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

I don't believe this is true. Every legitimate YouTube fair use case that I've seen go to court has gone in favor of the fair user.

The biggest name one so far is the H3H3 trial.[1] One that looks to be settled soon is Akilah Hughes suing Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), where all that Benjamin does is edit together two of Hughes videos with the only original addition being a new title. This is almost certainly going to go in favor of Sargon, yet YouTube's algorithms turned up to the nth degree would almost certainly have blocked it.[2]

If you go outside of YouTube, fair use law in the United States is very broad. Just look at what Richard Prince does with others' art. [3]

edit: added links

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41037631/youtube-stars...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LMgGBDZbJY

3. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/18/instagram...

_pmf_• 8 years ago

Fair use has a much narrower definition in the EU, in addition to varying from country to country.

logifail4• 8 years ago

If rights-holders and/or YouTube had to pay a monetary penalty every time they screwed up (by taking down content that was fair use), perhaps it might level the playing field?

Scarblac4• 8 years ago

Are you basing this on law in the EU? Because as far as I know, "fair use" is purely a US thing that doesn't even exist in the EU -- although specific countries may have laws that do somewhat similar things.

briandear5• 8 years ago

Why force the platform to enforce? Shouldn’t the copyright owner be required to protect their own rights rather than having others do it for them?

gutnor• 8 years ago

The real problem lies in the laws it relies on, namely the extremely stringent copyright laws and the weird fair use.

Real problem is the negative incentive to be correct.

The rule penalise you harshly if you serve copyrighted content, but there is nothing if you decide to not serve non-copyrighted content and there is so much content on the internet, that "market pressure" simply isn't going to work. If you are a small publisher of free content, there is a huge risk for content platform to serve your content and no reward if they do.

And that's the best case scenario, where all actors have good intentions. But in the real world we know that large copyright holder are very often bulk claiming bulk content. There is no penalty, so that would be crazy for them no to do it.

The laws is also talking about terrorist content and the need to remove it within 1 hour or risk up to 4% turnover fine ! There is not going to be any manual check done within 1 hour, and anyway the risk is so great you may as well have a blanket no-question ask removal policy.

I fail to see the "good intentions in mind" you mention. MEP are some of the most successful politicians, they would be Olympic level is it was a sport. Their field of expertise is the people and public relation. I can believe they are naive with technology (like encryption or monitoring actual capabilities) but I can't accept they are candid about businesses or individual motivations. Any negative consequence of this law is there on purpose.

phkahler2• 8 years ago

> 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.

Have you read the YouTube terms for original content uploaded by individuals? I'm not so sure doing remixes isn't allowed. If you don't want people doing that to your stuff, keep it off YouTube. I could be wrong, it's been many years since I read their ToS.

morsma• 8 years ago

"but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind"

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

dangerface• 8 years ago

I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind

I disagree, no other utility is blamed for the actions of its users, if I use an electric drill to hurt some one I am at fault not my electricity provider, but if I do something illegal on the internet like piracy its some how my internet providers fault?

I also don't like making excuses for policy makers who "don't understand the internet", its not the 90s, ignorance is no longer an excuse, these people know what the internet is, and they know exactly what they are doing.

PurpleBoxDragon2• 8 years ago

I may be naive in saying this, but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind.

I disagree. This law was made with the intention of being selectively enforced. This is never a good intention.

LoSboccacc• 8 years ago

I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind

the first time around? _maybe_

after the enormous backslash and numerous expert opinion pieces decrying the exact problems of the proposal? _hardly_

int_19h9• 8 years ago

I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind.

"He looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best. The next one was: I Thought You’d Like It. Eric was standing on: For the Sake of the Children. “Weird, isn’t it?” he said. “Why do it like this?” “I think they’re meant to be good intentions,” said Rincewind. This was a road to Hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists. And, while they are of course irredeemably evil, they are not always bad. And so Rincewind stepped off We Are Equal Opportunity Employers and through a wall, which healed up behind him, and into the world."

servs• 8 years ago

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.

That actually isn't legal in many countries and is e.g. why regional wikipedia sites don't show movie posters.

MoBattah• 8 years ago

This is just plain stupidity.

Sometimes I feel like the whole world is ruined by ignorant people in power. As for the Internet, it is exclusively being ruined by ignorant actors in positions of state power. All the while, armies of good people make the Internet better every day.

mcintyre19943• 8 years ago

If those were the only interested parties against it in the UK then that doesn't bode well for us getting rid of it in a few years, even if we don't negotiate away our right to. Shame.

pjc507• 8 years ago

Markus Meechum (aka Count Dankula)

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?)

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

He was the first one to report the decision on Twitter, and was literally livestreaming in that link I provided before the news was reported anywhere. I'm sorry that he's not on your approved list of people to report on this event.

briandear5• 8 years ago

Nazi Dog Guy is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the EU/Britain. He got in trouble for offending people. That is ridiculous that there are laws against offending people.

phkahler2• 8 years ago

> 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.

What exactly is wrong with that? Seriously.

briandear5• 8 years ago

You're making the paper producer liable for what someone writes on it.

hannasanarion• 8 years ago

Read the next sentence. "even legal uses of copyrighted content"

In practice, this constitutes the abolition of the "fair use" doctrine on the internet.

virmundi• 8 years ago

This can have a chilling affect on content creation, and thus the dissemination of ideas. YouTube will have to create a filter that covers their liability. They might be able to automate, but it depends on the jurisdiction. For example, the US has fair use laws. A person may copy a segment of a copyrighted work to comment on it. There are territories in the EU where they can't. How does YouTube filter this?

If the new product was produced in the US and references material from the EU, should YouTube allow the content to go public? According this and GDPR, the EU has the ability to cross territorial boundaries. So YouTube now has to ban such a work in the US even though our legal system allows it.

Essentially, YouTube will have to create a new process where by all content must go past the censors, who are probably people and not machines. Otherwise YouTube will quickly die due to death by a thousand fines. So much for a free and open exchange of ideas.

pitaj• 8 years ago

Beyond the chilling effect others have mentioned, it also adds a huge barrier to entry for any Youtube competitor

AriaMinaei• 8 years ago

The 'against' camp is badly misunderstood. We're taken for pirates. And not the good kind! Example of a tweet chat with Howard Goodall: https://twitter.com/ariaminaei/status/1039856894893010945

tynpeddler• 8 years ago

So if ISP's are required to install monitoring software, what does that mean for HTTPS, or other end-to-end encryption schemes, that prevent the ISP from doing packet inspection?

GuB-42• 8 years ago

Probably nothing.

This is just a guess but I don't think ISPs are expected to do any form of DPI. The most likely question they will have to answer is "who is this IP address assigned to?" and possibly "who communicated with that IP?". Neither require any form of packet inspection that goes beyond what is needed to perform routing.

linuxftw7• 8 years ago

This is an abhorrent decision by people who have no idea how the internet works.

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.

Joeri2• 8 years ago

An economic union should be about tariffs and the free movement of goods, not an entirely unelected bureaucratic federal government.

The vote that occurred today was by the EU parliament, which is entirely elected. The directive was prepared inside the JURI committee, which also exists entirely out of elected representatives.

Also, you can't have a single digital market without a single copyright regime. The economic union implies the single market which implies a single copyright directive. I agree that the contents of that directive is lamentable, but the need for one is clear, even for those opposing this particular directive, provided you buy into the notion that single markets should exist at all.

sixstringtheory• 8 years ago

I agree with your sentiments, but couldn’t one argue that this is in fact an issue regarding goods/services/trade/economy? It’s not clear to me what would set this apart, just looking for more clarification.

sieabah6• 8 years ago

Keep giving more control to the government and they'll keep ratcheting down the screws on you.

It's amazing that people never see this issue. Everyone needs to stop making bigger and bigger governments.

skookumchuck• 8 years ago

Most people seem to think we are just one more law away from creating Utopia.

zaarn24• 8 years ago

The legislation approved today still faces a final vote in the European Parliament in January (where it’s possible, though very unlikely, it will be rejected). After that, individual EU member states will still get to choose how to put the directive in law. In other words, each country will be able to interpret the directive as they see fit.

It's not totally over yet, both the final vote and the implementation in member countries can disarm the worst parts of the directive.

ElBarto3• 8 years ago

Individual countries cannot "interpret the directive as they see fit". Transposition has to match the directive, otherwise the whole excercise would be pointless.

omnimus• 8 years ago

Not true. Many of the directives differ in countries (even major ones - for example countries in EU that don't use Euro). EU wants people to believe it is USA but it is not. The directives are not enforceable directly but if you want to be good EU country (which has its benefits) then you need to behave :)

BlackFly• 8 years ago

They can interpret anything sufficiently vague as they see fit. For example Article 10 of Directive 2004/38/EC states that a government shall only require "a document attesting to the existence of a family relationship", which most people would consider to be a marriage certificate, it also states the residence permit will be granted within 6 months of presentation of the documens. Article 25 limits the cost of the issuance of the residence permit.

Unlike many EU countries, the Netherlands requires that the marriage certificate is "legalised" and charges for the process. They will not even accept the documentation before you go through this extra legal procedure thereby increasing the total time to over 6 months. Under some interpretation of article 10 and 25, this would be illegal, they have a different interpretation.

You can find various compliance studies for directive 2004/38/EC and other directives as well. It is just a fact in Europe that the transposition into local law leads to inconsistent application of the law. Applying for the same visa (from the European perspective) in the Netherlands and in Germany can be two wildly different experiences.

dev_north_east• 8 years ago

You see where this at national level, I have some access and ability to plead against it. But instead we've three MEPs serving a constituency of near 800,000 and they're never around.

I hate the removal of substantive access to local politicians that the EU has.

fabricexpert3• 8 years ago

How is this a local issue though? It affects 500m people directly so should be debated at that level.

mscasts3• 8 years ago

This is so sad but kind of expected. EU is run by politicians and the public has very little to no insight.

After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.

kzrdude2• 8 years ago

the European Parliament (here the body making a decision) is the EU institution that supposedly does not have the "democratic deficit", they are elected by the citizens. So in what way is this different from what we expect in democracies?

bnastic• 8 years ago

Ask Brits who their MEPs are, see if they know (or have even heard of MEPs... modulo Farage for his infamy)

sebst10• 8 years ago

Two points:

1) You could argue whether the EU Parliament has democracy deficits or not. I assume it has (based on the legislation process itself with involvement of the Committee, but also based upon unequally weighted votes of citizens from different countries).

2) However, the most important point is that this law is considered as a "techie niche" by the vast majority of citizens. Also, EU topics as such suffer from a very narrow attention in the general public. Having said this, it is far easier for lobbyists to place such an initiative "under the radar" than it would be to lobby in 28 countries. In techie speak, a centralized entity like the EU is more or less a single point of failure for the unavoidable "bugs" of a democracy.

contravariant2• 8 years ago

Well, first of all I have yet to hear about this vote from any of my local news sources. If I didn't browse hackernews I likely wouldn't know about it.

Secondly I don't recall voting for any MEPs, as far as I can tell it's similarly not reported on. Besides given the lack of news about what any of the parties are up to it's hard to say anything about who you should even vote for.

Thirdly just because somewhere at the end a vaguely democratically elected group of people get to make a decision about it that doesn't somehow absolve the rest of the process from being undemocratic and seemingly driven by corporate interests. The biggest problem being that the decisions on what should be voted on and how seem to be mostly taken by an unelected group of people, who will evidently (given the way Selmayr was promoted) vote for anything if it gets them better pay and pensions.

raverbashing8• 8 years ago

Of course, individual countries can still pass draconian legislation

But I think this can have a significant impact on the perception of the EU on the general public

akerro2• 8 years ago

After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.

This law will be introduced in Switzerland, Norway and UK. Most probably UK will have to keep it after Brexit.

graphenus• 8 years ago

Why would Switzerland and Norway introduce this law?

lorenzobr5• 8 years ago

Do you really believe this is something politicians came up with in the first place?

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.

beaconstudios10• 8 years ago

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.

It's still the politicians passing the law. The fact that back-handers might be involved only makes them potentially even more corrupt.

puzzle• 8 years ago

It's worse: this is driven by Doepfner and co. They don't even hide.

mscasts3• 8 years ago

Well, yes. Politicians created the system where it was possible for this to go through without any support from citizens, because they have simply no idea what is going on inside the EU.

TL;DR, politicians created the EU, it currently sucks even if they pass some very good laws sometimes. Now it's time for some very bad laws, the issue is that these laws is so bad the good laws seems very small in comparison.

pornel• 8 years ago

If you follow Julia Reda's blog (she's MEP), you can get tons of insight into this issue in the EU parliament:

https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-showdown/

bobcostas55• 8 years ago

Rightholders are liable for unjustified takedowns

That's potentially interesting, what does it mean in practice though? How would they be liable? If there was a monetary penalty attached, the record companies would be bankrupt in a day based on the false positives of the youtube content ID algorithm.

pjc507• 8 years ago

This is somewhat true, but are national legislatures really any better? There's nothing quite like Brexit to convince me that my local legislature is completely refusing to listen to me (or anyone with any sense) at all on even the most basic issues.

zaroth2• 8 years ago

National legislatures are better to the extent that the populace exerts direct electoral control over their representatives.

If the election of Trump or Ocasio-Cortez taught us anything, it should be that appealing to voters can get you into office, even with powerful entrenched interests running against you.

Elected politicians are 100% beholden to their voters, now more than ever.

things• 8 years ago

If you think being outside the EU will stop politicians voting for these types of laws, here's a nice UK example for you that "make administrators and moderators of certain online forums responsible for content published on those forums"

https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/onlineforums.ht...

Jdam2• 8 years ago

After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.

Same. This institution has given me enough. Not only in tech.

AllegedAlec6• 8 years ago

So how long will it take people to find a way around this? I mean, I cannot imagine that, for example, the Chans will take this kindly.

yasp2• 8 years ago

Most immediate way around this: block European traffic and/or don't do business in Europe.

sparkling2• 8 years ago

implying chans give a damn about silly yuropoor laws either way

AllegedAlec6• 8 years ago

The users certainly don't, but I think that Hiroshimoot will be rather miffed if he starts getting shit from the EU for not complying with these insane rules.

raverbashing8• 8 years ago

I cannot imagine that, for example, the Chans will take this kindly.

That will be funny

AllegedAlec6• 8 years ago

Just imagine how easy it's going to be to screw over other websites, just by making an account, uploading material that could in some way be construed as violating copyright but passes the filter because it cannot be perfect, and then reporting the site to one of the bodies responsible for upholding this directive.

Hell, just by doing that you could probably end any potential upholding of this system really fast.

Agathos• 8 years ago

Priscilla?

AllegedAlec6• 8 years ago

4chan and the other lesser *chans.

sparkling2• 8 years ago

[ ] Remain [X] Leave

da_murvel• 8 years ago

Anyone in the EU who wants to create a new Internet?

yasp2• 8 years ago

I wish the EU would, so that it stops damaging things for the rest of the planet. Eventually the costs of complying with the EU's decrees will get high enough where it will make more sense for companies to block European traffic than comply.

Keyframe• 8 years ago

It's already happening. chicagotribune.com leads to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/chicagotribune.com/ for example. Not sure what to think about that.

iamnothere2• 8 years ago

There are some projects going on to do just that. Another (now dead) comment mentioned Zeronet, which is a good start. There's also IPFS, and some other lesser known ones. I think there were some based on Ethereum and other crypto as well.

The problem with all of these projects is content. Because there is low usage and a technical barrier to entry, nobody is bothering to put up interesting content that would attract users. (Except for some, ahem, "fringe" interests.) It's a chicken-and-egg problem. I keep hoping that one of these regulations will rekindle interest in distributed hosting, but it hasn't happened yet.

If some advocates would be willing to convince (and possibly help) some major OSS-related resources to establish a beachhead, it might help draw in some of that crowd at least. Adoption there would probably improve the systems, gradually bringing in people from the outside like with the original Internet.

philpem• 8 years ago

Can't say I didn't expect this, or the politicians' "I can't and don't have to tell you why I voted like that" attitude. (see ericdykstra's comment).

Maybe this is the one single solitary positive to Brexit...

beaconstudios10• 8 years ago

the EU's capability to be authoritarian (and from what I gather, propensity to use this authority) was one of the reasons I voted to leave. The central dictation of "how it shall be", reality be damned, reminds me of the Soviet Union. Obviously not to the same extent and severity, but the EU is making the same mistakes in thinking that broad-brush central planning of a huge geographic region isn't a fundamentally flawed concept.

dane-pgp5• 8 years ago

If you voted for Britain to leave the EU because of the EU's "capability to be authoritarian", then perhaps you should have already voted (with your feet) to leave Britain because of its much worse capability to be authoritarian.

For example, it was Britain that introduced the Snoopers' Charter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

without any encouragement from the EU, and indeed that Act has since been found incompatible with European law.

Out of interest, can you name another example where the EU was authoritarian (acting in a way that the British government wouldn't have)?

dalbasal4• 8 years ago

How can I see who voted what?

pwned110• 8 years ago

Does it really matter? The EU is a supra-national, oligarchic institution that merely has the appearance of democratic mechanisms.

scoom• 8 years ago

If GDPR didn't make you block the EU, this will.

Asooka• 8 years ago

It's a bit ironic, since the very first thing I see when I visit the link is a giant banner to consent to being tracked, or visit each and every third-party advertiser's opt-out site from the giant list of advertisers present on Vox's platform. Said list carries the explicit note "We provide the table below as a courtesy, but we are not obligated to maintain or update it. We are not responsible for third-party sites and their privacy practices as it relates to opt-outs from tracking activities."

pluma6• 8 years ago

I have no idea how you think those two are even remotely related or in the same category.

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.

pwned110• 8 years ago

Bureaucracy, compliance cost, uncertainty of enforcement... The category doesn't need to be the same, just the pile upon pile of anti-(small)business regulation.

antidesitter2• 8 years ago

I have no idea how you think those two are even remotely related or in the same category.

They’re both controversial EU-wide regulations, for one.

fabricexpert3• 8 years ago

GDPR is TOTALLY different. If you can't run a business under GDPR legislation then what you're doing is almost certainly unethical or at worst mismanaged and irresponsible with customer data.

On the other hand this legislation will completely change the internet as we know it.

tartrate• 8 years ago

For some companies, making the IT-related changes to accommodate for GDPR was simply too expensive.

hmd_imputer3• 8 years ago

maybe - but the philosophy behind it is similar. The EU lawmakers just cannot stand to the existence of unregulated area. Everything gotta be under their control. Unfortunately, once you support pro-strict regulations, then there is no going back. One day, I believe, the internet as we know today won't exist in the EU.

docdeek• 8 years ago

"Article 11 is intended to give publishers and newspapers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories…”

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?

tehbeard2• 8 years ago

Google probably has the cash lying around to make its own news empire if needed.

More likely? They drop anyone who doesn't give them a free or very generous rate.

erk__2• 8 years ago

That would then be misuse of a monopoly.

dexen2• 8 years ago

This already is in progress on Youtube (an Alphabet company). There is significant push to onboard the well known cable news brands on Youtube, on preferential conditions as compared to the regular, individual youtubers.

lanevorockz• 8 years ago

It is an intended block on convincing people through facts. In all reality, the EU is ruled by old bureaucrats and they see internet like a commodity that needs to be controlled and regulated. Make a joke on the internet? Think twice your IP will be your liability.

elaus• 8 years ago

Germany was a pioneer with its "Leistungsschutzrecht" and German publishers indeed wanted to force Google to show their news snippets (and therefore pay for them). Their reasoning was that Google as a monopoly position and therefore they have to show news from all publishers equally.

undreren• 8 years ago

How would this work in practice? I could easily set up a news company. Would they have to link to my articles as much as other news articles?

raverbashing8• 8 years ago

Of all those items I'm happy Art 11 is the one most likely to blow up on the face of those pushing for it

cyphar10• 8 years ago

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly, and so I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown. The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feature that arguably impacts revenue. I think there is also a valid argument for this as well.

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.

mygo2• 8 years ago

The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views

Are you talking about AMP?

mrunkel• 8 years ago

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly

This is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists....

The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views..

This is just false. Google shows at most an excerpt (that is defined by the publisher) or a headline (on news.google.com). Unless you're talking about AMP, but that's a decision made by the publisher too.

beaconstudios10• 8 years ago

the real problem is that newspapers have no idea how to monetise themselves in the age of the internet, with its near-free content duplication.

dghf• 8 years ago

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly

Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing actually stopping them from using those alternatives, other than the fact that they're not as good.

pliny• 8 years ago

The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feature that arguably impacts revenue

Think about how grossly afflicted with clickbait the news ecosystem is today, and then imagine how much worse it could get if Google were legally prevented from even attaching a blurb to the links that it shows users.

wongarsu3• 8 years ago

I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown

I agree that regulation might be useful here, and impartial search results are a good goal. But linking fees go against that. If newspaper A wants a fee from google for showing its links but newspaper B doesn't, it would be unfair to the entire market to force google to include both A and B equally. If A and B agree to charge google the same fee, that sounds a lot like a cartel doing price fixing, which is already illegal. The government could set a fixed price google has to pay, but at that point we have given up on finding a free market solution, so that's a last resort that isn't nessesary yet.

It's fine that people can demand money for links, but I don't see any scenario where this would happen in reality.

Nasrudith4• 8 years ago

How do you judge impartial objectively? You can't even handle fake news without it being a cudgel for censors denying reality. Pure stats won't work and as seen with the moderation problem with Facebook not advocating their partisan view sets off their persecution complex.

Also by previewing they prevent load as well and boost relevance. That favors real data instead of SEO page caching garbage that tries to get matched to every common keyword. You do not have a right to a business model, much less it being unchanged by time.

dalbasal4• 8 years ago

About 10 years ago, newspapers got together to try and get Google to give them some money, for the content Google was indexing to populate their news search results.

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.

village-idiot• 8 years ago

I think the newspapers forgot that Google doesn’t need them.

dawnerd2• 8 years ago

I’m under the assumption you have to setup your site and apply for Google News before they start indexing your articles. Of the Big publications opt out it just leaves space for smaller outlets to grow.

pjc507• 8 years ago

Google should resolve this by conspicuously refusing to link to newspapers. There should be a banner saying "results from certain news sites are not available in your country", like the existing chillingeffects one.

(This dealt with an earlier local version of this in some European countries)

gaius3• 8 years ago

Google’s end goal is that the only way to monetise content is by one of their ads. That’s not a world good for either democracy or journalism or any artistic work.

anotherevan• 8 years ago

Didn't Spain news media ram through some kind of link-tax laws to try and extricate money out of Google, and that's why we don't hear any news out of Spain any more?

ericdykstra8• 8 years ago

Yes, Spain has been shut out of Google News since December, 2014. It's a good example of regulation that can actually go so far that even the biggest companies will stop doing business in your country.

the_gipsy• 8 years ago

Google News for Spain certainly closed in response to that law. I guess that Google News for other countries then also doesn’t link to spanish newspapers, since those could still somehow sue google as a company that operates in Spain.

ams61102• 8 years ago

Is the license fee really for a simple link? I'd think the other publishers would love for sites like Google to be linking content and driving traffic to their platforms.

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.

blihp• 8 years ago

I was wondering the same thing then read in the article that links with 'single word' descriptions are ok. So my guess is that it's aimed a "linkers" who quote a significant fraction of an article (I.e. eliminating the reason to click on the link)

kvgr3• 8 years ago

Time for VPN outside EU...

konart• 8 years ago

This will be hilarious: Russians buying EU VPN while EU citizens buying Russian (well, not necessarily ofc). Both to bypass each states stupidity...

ihatethem• 8 years ago

I don't understand why any of this was necessary in the first place, the only reason I can think of is this being on the wishlist of a powerful lobbying bloc.

There is something suspect about the EU's cavalier attitude in churning out internet regulations, they generally favor old industries and incumbents.

cyphar10• 8 years ago

Google being a monopoly that applies biases to the results it shows (in a way that has no public accountability) is a significant problem -- as well as the fact they implement features which effectively take away revenue from websites by showing their content without giving them page views. That is (ostensibly) the justification for these kinds of laws. I think that they are flawed because they focus on further copyright extensions that I find draconian, but the problem itself I think is pretty obviously a real problem.

candiodari8• 8 years ago

Yep, Google is causing harm by filtering what people see, and dammit, the EU commission wanted to do that harm themselves.

Sarcastic joke perhaps, but very true.

arendtio5• 8 years ago

Newspapers are dying and try to find a way to make money from their content. They find that the big user distributor Google doesn't give them their fair share and therefore try to make him pay. They get supported by other content producers and now we all are facing another absurd law.

I am a big fan of the GDPR, because it protects the rights of the users. But this time they are building a law to ease the fight of large corporations, affecting everone else in the process... not cool.

unexpectedcharm• 8 years ago

I think the upload filters are meant to serve a peeking hole for EU governments to listen to what people share on the internet, as this bypasses the encryption. This will enable governments to stop content harmful to the regime from being shared and also track individuals who are working against the government. This all happened before in all socialist regimes. I remember it well, when I was phoning someone there were censors actively listening to the conversations. This is being transplanted on the internet. It is ironic how people fought this through the 80s only to have it reinstated.

mrep2• 8 years ago

The one case where I can see it being useful is when 1 news site has some exclusive content that they post, and then every other news site copies the story by linking to the original and paraphrasing the whole thing. I see this happen a lot and I can totally see how it disincentives creating original content when every other news story just copies the story and users only read the first article they see about it.

kzrdude2• 8 years ago

I overheard some discussion of the "upload filter" on the radio. It was very simplified, all about big rights-holders that have to ensure they get paid, and nothing about the power of consumers or even journalists or those acting like that (review/commentary).

nialv7• 8 years ago

This is pretty dumb.

jaimex24• 8 years ago

Is there any reason now why Google shouldn't shutdown all their EU web services and remove its divisions like it did in China?

If they did so they can conveniently also ignore that $5B anti-trust fine.

efdee2• 8 years ago

And drop out of the EU market? That sounds insane.

jaimex24• 8 years ago

I could be wrong but wouldn't the global versions still be accessible and capable of selling ads?

TotempaaltJ• 8 years ago

A lot of money. More than they'd lose by complying, probably.

jaimex24• 8 years ago

Wouldn't they still get cash from advertisers? The sites are still accessible from the EU, it just means local businesses who want to advertise need to pay the US division?

MagnumOpus• 8 years ago

Google benefits from this and almost certainly secretly lobbied for it.

This is great for the FAANG providers who already have automated content control tools and massive help centres to act on anything 24/7. It is a death-knell to any upstart startup who would challenge Youtube or Facebook however.

nautilus12• 8 years ago

Do you think that after GDPR and the fact that everyone actually took it seriously the EU is trying to see if they can keep pulling the same string and making the world dance?

M2Ys4U• 8 years ago

No, this is just lobbying by the copyright industry playing the "look how poor Bono is, he deserves more" card.

ionised5• 8 years ago

Yeah it's this.

Just another in a long list of efforts by the copyright cartels to restrict access to information and culture.

buboard6• 8 years ago

If this directive is voted, it will be interesting to watch the aftermath. Copyright is a legacy concept that is incompatible with digital media. This will make the absurdity of owning an idea and profiting from it virtually forever (at least as a ratio of human life) stand out. I hope it leads to a changes in the mindset/laws regarding IP.

cft• 8 years ago

I think it will change only when the world order changes, which may be soon. Many Western countries operate on untenable platforms in the long term that are designed to preserve existing order in the short term (uncontrolled creation of Fiat money, uncontrolled welfare programs). This just adds to the list and hastens the change.

whyleyc• 8 years ago

I emailed my 10 UK MEP "representatives" about this law, explaining why it was bad news and encouraging them to vote against it.

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).

candiodari8• 8 years ago

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.

chatmasta2• 8 years ago

Is there anything good about this law? Is there any logical, coherent argument for what benefit it might provide to anyone?

mocae• 8 years ago

Well, look at Voss cheering there. I'm sure his bank account will benefit. Same goes for the right owners who will sue people. I mean, they need to get along in the 21st century and if you are to lazy or old, suing people is the only way left.

simias3• 8 years ago

I think the most "noble" angle you could have is that it's supposed to protect artists and help them benefit from their work instead of having it "stolen" by third parties. Of course in practice it seems like it will do nothing of the sort but if you only look at it on the surface to a casuals observer it might look like it would actually do some good.

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.

ionised5• 8 years ago

The same tired bullshit that publishers trot out every time they push copyright enforcement responsibilities onto companies, governments and the tax payer:

"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.

amelius3• 8 years ago

I'm worried not so much about the outcome of this decision (which indeed is bad), but more about the whole decision-making process and how often we'll see such uninformed decisionmaking in the future.

sebst10• 8 years ago

I'd rather not call it "uninformed". We pay good amounts of money to parliamentarians, including their personal assistants.

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".

amelius3• 8 years ago

this is obviously an unavoidable "bug"

Why unavoidable? For example, if a sufficient number of qualified people complain about any law, isn't it possible to hold MEPs accountable by openly questioning them about their reasoning? I'm sure there are journalists who can make good use of any suspicious argumentation.

aldoushuxley0014• 8 years ago

I believe the word you were looking for is: "Corruption".

hef198983• 8 years ago

Unfortunately this bug, which is in my opinion most of the time caused by the people and not the system democracy itself, can be exploited by both lobbyists and populists.

interfixus3• 8 years ago

Danish MEP Jens Rohde has called opponents of the law "internet communists who do not want creators to be paid for their work".

What's that again you'd rather not call "uninformed"?

raxxorrax2• 8 years ago

You aren't? This lae was handcrafted by big publishers. And it is obvious to see. Very obvious...

JamesSRoth• 8 years ago

Any thoughts on how that relates to Axel Voss and his friends? We know about Ajit Pai's dodgy dealings, but is Voss in someone's pocket? He seems too young to be this dumb about tech.

scotty79• 8 years ago

So now it's time, if you have news agregator or img/video upload site, to close it to Europe and if not, just ignore the new laws and see what happens next.

Grumbledour• 8 years ago

As terrible as this is, I am actually even more shocked by this proposal:

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.

arendtio5• 8 years ago

Sounds like the web without user content... Web 1.0? So much for free speech.

rmrfrmrf• 8 years ago

glances at Facebook timeline well... maybe that won't be so bad afterall.

sircastor• 8 years ago

Wasn't Web 1.0 only user content?

zaarn24• 8 years ago

From what I read on this specific proposal, it's not entirely draconian and has some benefits to the user, since the process also implements transparency requirements and complaint mechanisms.

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).

dmix5• 8 years ago

German courts at least agree that for such things

This implies that you are going to have to go to court because you got an email at 1am and didn't reply right away...in order to fight off potentially serious fines. Whether it's accurate or not it's still very expensive to prove it's inaccuracy (in time alone, not including financially and stress).

This has very serious consequences for small and even medium businesses.

smsm426• 8 years ago

Wow, this gets crazier and crazier. So either any content provider should be able to determine within one hour whether every comment is "terrorist" or not (with guidelines as clear as "information which is used to incite and glorify the commission of terrorist offences") and remove it, or, more likely, they'd auto-remove every comment that anybody marked as "terrorist" and let people complain about it later. Coupled with law enforcement interface (which would probably mean notifying the law enforcement about somebody posting "terrorist content" - that's only make sense?) this paints a very scary picture for the future of online free speech in EU.

Someguywhatever• 8 years ago

Obviously that's impossible and it'll be easier to just not have comments, which is exactly what websites will do, and exactly what the EU wants. The EU is sick and tired of people sharing their opinions and pointing out how stupid and draconian and bereaucratic the EU can be, so they did this to shut it all down under the guise of protecting copyright or somesuch.

matheusmoreira• 8 years ago

They will never stop asking for more power to police the use of their imaginary property. They'd push for mandatory deletion of copies inside people's brains if that was possible.

IanSanders• 8 years ago

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.

One way to ensure your citizen don't read them "foreign propaganda websites".

isthatart12• 8 years ago

As a EU researcher, reader and author, I ask: does this reform affect my use of arXiv or say figshare? Until now I don't have a clear answer.

kgwgk6• 8 years ago

What kind of effect do you think that these laws could have on your use of arXiv?

isthatart12• 8 years ago

Example: article in arXiv gets later published in a journal. Will the arXiv article version be still available for anybody? Only for non-EU people? Will be removed from arXiv? None of these?

isthatart12• 8 years ago

Two more examples examples for arXiv and one for Figshare. (1) Article in journal has a flaw. For some reason the journal is slow or unhelpful concerning a correct version, so the author posts on arXiv a revised and perhaps much bigger version. Filters (will these be on arXiv?) detect a copyright infringement. (2) I translate an Euler article and post it on arXiv (with all attributions). Or an English translation of an obscure German or Russian article by a great mathematician. (3) I post on Figshare (and GitHub?) the meat of a published article (like data, procedures, results of experiments, programs) in order to make the research Open Science. I explain the context but maybe I don't pass the automated filter which detects a copyright infringement. For all examples, same questions as before.

buboard6• 8 years ago

apparently, arxiv will have to implement a filter that stops you from posting figures or excerpts from elsevier's journals for example ?

isthatart12• 8 years ago

Right, will arXiv implement such filters? Same question for other green or gold OA platforms. We all know about Elsevier, but if I put my paranoid hat then for gold OA this is even more perverse, will they try to kill green OA (not that I believe in this failed classification which separates between green "repositories" for archiving and gold publication platforms). Anyway arXiv is a monument which has to be protected from this madness.

cge3• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, the actual text isn't available yet, and now I can't seem to find the list of amendments I was reading earlier, but if I recall correctly, in both the original and proposed amendments, scholarly publications were considered not to be press publications and were not covered at all by the press publication protections.

The EU Parliament press release is also claiming that a number of non-commercial and "small" platforms will be excluded.

isthatart12• 8 years ago

Thank you. Anybody who has any influence in the discussion, please help to make this clear. It is important for the researchers, I think. In this particular case arXiv is by no means "small" (has 1.4 million articles) but is non-commercial, What about Figshare which may classify as commercial? Other platforms?

pluma6• 8 years ago

IANAL but the way I read it, scientific, research and teaching resources are (to a degree) exempt.

baxtr2• 8 years ago

The whole thing really makes me furious beyond words. I shouldn't be that aggravated, but unfortunately I am. I feel like this is really the opposite of progressive and will leave the EU even further behind the US and China. Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new.

davemp2• 8 years ago

Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new.

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.

paganel• 8 years ago

This decision is one of the many reasons why Europe will never reach the likes of Silicon Valley, no matter how much money will they sink down the "technology" hole (not that the US doesn't have its fair share of dumb legislators, because it has). This continent is a mess in terms of IT, with a few exceptions (London, Berlin, Dublin, some spots in Eastern Europe).

yummybear2• 8 years ago

Why wouldn't Silicon Valley be affected by this? Most companies have european customers.

vorpalhex• 8 years ago

"If you are in the EU, you are not allowed to use this website." Pretty much the same solution for kids under 13 years of age (which is to say, they of course still do use these sites, they simply lie about it which shifts the burden...)

aikah2• 8 years ago

Status code 451. And frankly I understand the foreign start ups that end up just doing this.

theandrewbailey• 8 years ago

Exactly. I thought that the EU wanted a thriving tech sector, but it doesn't have any social media platforms with the reach that American ones do. And after this mess of legislation, the barriers to entry into the market will get far more expensive. Nothing will ever be able to clear it.

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.

mechazawa• 8 years ago

but it doesn't have any social media platforms with the reach that American ones do. A lot of people I know don't bother having more then one social media account. I don't know what you mean

rimliu• 8 years ago

I am not even sure why I would want to reach the likes of the Silicon Valley.

jonathanstrange5• 8 years ago

This continent is a mess in terms of IT, with a few exceptions (London, Berlin, Dublin, some spots in Eastern Europe).

So... pretty much like the US (with a few exceptions like Silicon Valley or Austin, Tx)?

bepotts3• 8 years ago

I honestly don't understand why people keep comparing the culture of American cities and states to European ones. America is one giant country - the EU isn't. The cultural differences between Detroit and, say, San Francisco is miniscule compared to differences between London and Berlin.

Not every city in America is San Francisco, Seattle, or Austin, but neither one state nor one city is as technologically dysfunctional as their European counterparts.

chrisper• 8 years ago

You left out Lausanne and Zurich...

bendavis381• 8 years ago

It's worth noting that this is not a law in the commonly understood sense. It's an EU directive, which requires member states to achieve a required outcome, but leaves the legal implementation up to the individual state. It'll be interesting to see how the member states interpret the language and what legal framework will be used to enforce it.

kvgr3• 8 years ago

And also how giant fuckup will be, once every country will implement it differently. 27 different versions and levels of upload filter. How will you display content upload by someone in Italy to someone in Germany if Germany has stricter filtering policies? Will you need to recategorize it for display in different countries?

nothis3• 8 years ago

Member states can be even stupider. I get scared thinking of what a "reasonable interpretation" by some right-wing local government with poor understanding of digital markets would look like.

graeme• 8 years ago

Will this affect the global internet, or will big sites simply make a reduced "european version" where some filtered content isn't shown in the EU but is shown in North America?

dr_teh• 8 years ago

The European version will be the same thing when I try to go on a non-gdpr US site, a big banner that tells me to *$#^ off.

candiodari8• 8 years ago

The EU was furious when the large internet firms chose to have a reduced EU version and informed their customers the EU had forced them to remove stuff.

So they will do their very best to make it affect the global internet.

Given that all major powers want that, it'll happen. Maybe not right now, but it's coming. It would have happened a long time ago if it wasn't for the stroke of luck that these companies are in the US and the US government is protecting them (for now succesfully).

kvgr3• 8 years ago

And the publishers are in nice conflict of interest with this piece. I saw one online medium that I follow(It is relatively balanced), to publish only one article saying that we shall support this law. For 5 million country pretty sad. But not really surprising.

liftbigweights• 8 years ago

This shows you the power of old money vs new money ( tech companies ). I laugh when people say tech companies are powerful when you see even small newspapers bully them into submission.

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.

heavenlyhash• 8 years ago

So since the majority of the voices here on HN seem to be pretty negative towards this, I think it's worth noting there are some creative voices who are in favor of some copyright law. For example, here's one fellow on the twitter machine who's a composer and seems pleased: https://twitter.com/Howard_Goodall/status/103983376226213478...

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.

raverbashing8• 8 years ago

I don't buy it that they understand exactly what it entail, they just think "nobody will pirate my work so good, right?"

Until of course the filters take his legitimate content and claim it as somebody elses

interhero4• 8 years ago

Those "artists" believe that if their music disappears from pirate sites, they'll start to make money. They don't take into account the fact that likely nobody is downloading their stuff.

zaarn24• 8 years ago

I generally agree, living in a democracy means that sometimes you have things happen you don't agree with because a majority either doesn't agree with you or doesn't care enough to bother.

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.

pbhjpbhj6• 8 years ago

because a majority either doesn't agree with you or doesn't care enough to bother. //

That's why we've not moved on from representative democracy. The problem is the representatives are supposed to represent the people - and the people think they do (or try) - but in practice the representatives often don't.

In the UK we very rarely get chance to influence decisions, instead we get to choose the people who will decide, and they almost? always lie about how they will make decisions and what will influence them.

PR would make it better, but reduce the power of those who need to decide to give us PR.

DINKDINK5• 8 years ago

An upload filter is censorship by another name. Have you written a text critical of the government and haven't copyrighted it? Congratulations, the state now has and issued a "copyright filter" on your manifesto.

jonathanstrange5• 8 years ago

The crucial issue that I miss both in this directive and the current practice is that companies are encouraged to use automatic filters while actual copyright holder have almost no way of appealing against false copyright claims.

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.

arnvald2• 8 years ago

This is a good point. False copyright claims should be penalized, enforcing companies to improve the accuracy of their claims.

AnssiH6• 8 years ago

For all it's worth, it seems to make things worse.

Actually, adopted amendment 160 reads:

Members States shall ensure that online content sharing service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place 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. Right holders shall reasonably justify their decisions to avoid arbitrary dismissal of complaints. Moreover, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, Directive 200/58/EC and the General Data Protection Regulation, the cooperation shall not lead to any identification of individual users nor the processing of their personal data. 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.

List of amendments (adopted and non-adopted): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/report-details.html...

Vote result of each amendment: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...

Edit: PDF of all amendments adopted today (includes the full amended text of articles 11 and 13): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...

rocqua4• 8 years ago

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.

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)

psidium• 8 years ago

Oh yeah good luck trying to stop library genesis/scihub/PirateBay with that. Meanwhile everyone else doing business legally will have to suffer while the perpetrators go free.

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).

remify2• 8 years ago

Oh yeah good luck trying to stop library genesis/scihub/PirateBay with that. Meanwhile everyone else doing business legally will have to suffer while the perpetrators go free.

That's not what this law purpose is. There's already copyright laws covering these cases.

aikah2• 8 years ago

They are targeting Google and likes. And also making sure that Google and likes have no serious competition due to the financial burden these laws impose on new comers.

Websites that distribute pirated content are already illegal.

nothis3• 8 years ago

This is the real bummer, IMO. It's not even like they're reaching the sites that truly, genuinely don't give a fuck about copyright. The big sites have long implemented all of this, anyway.

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.

josteink• 8 years ago

I genuinely wonder if copyright holders will make a single cent off this.

What’s to wonder about? Of course they won’t.

At best nothing will change. At worst people start removing links and contents driving them traffic in fear of link-taxes and fines. Not to mention large-scale exclusion/filtering for EU users and content platforms.

They are almost certainly guaranteed loss.

ams61102• 8 years ago

I'm rather conflicted about this. Whenever big companies say a new regulation is going to be "disastrous" or use other similar hyperbole I'm immediately suspicious.

On the other hand when the government wants to regulate something I'm also immediately suspicious.

montenegrohugo• 8 years ago

Sad. The public gave their opinion two months. It appears they haven't listened.

What actions can the average citizen take against this?

cddotdotslash• 8 years ago

Prepare to see another onslaught of "how to block your site in the EU" posts like there were right after GDPR.

hmd_imputer3• 8 years ago

rightfully so, don't you think?

arendtio5• 8 years ago

They say that the campaign against the directive has been funded by US tech giants eager to retain their control over the web’s platforms.

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.

davemp2• 8 years ago

Many companies are so out of it they don't even let you stream content to browsers running on Linux distros. Even Amazon owned Audible just fixed that issue a few months ago.

lazyman75• 8 years ago

I very much prefer DRM over having everything I do on the internet to be monitored.

brainwad5• 8 years ago

What exactly do you mean by 'monitored'? Of course sites you visit on the internet know you visited them, just like shops you visit IRL know you visited them. But it's not anyone is actually monitoring you or any other user personally. The worst that happens is some algorithms change your ads.

arendtio5• 8 years ago

Well, I find it hard to compare those two. I mean, yes, if DRM works I have no issues with it either, but sadly it causes a lot of issues where none should be (e.g. Hardware DVD Players not being able to play certain DVDs, Spotify Web player having issues because it doesn't overcome its own protection, not being allowed to view 'your content' on your favorite device, not being able to save 'your music' to your old mp3 player) and one of the biggest issues is that you aren't allowed to do anything against it.

Tracking is a completely different beast. They take what they can get, but you can fight back. My biggest concern is that they (Google,Facebook) gain so much influence that they can change the political opinions via Ads. So yes, tracking and advertising can be a lot more harmful, but at least you can kinda opt-out (e.g. use curl to browser the internet ;-).

imhoguy• 8 years ago

Time to download some rare gems from YT.

sebst10• 8 years ago

This is a decision that will end up benefitting the big players on both sides, i.e. regulatory capture.

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.

TulliusCicero• 8 years ago

Regulatory capture implies Google and Facebook were in favor of this and made it happen, which I doubt is true.

sebst10• 8 years ago

They are in favor of this. Maybe it's worse for them than in the current legal situation. But when the law comes into effect they are better off than any of their smaller competitors.

brainwad5• 8 years ago

They are probably against the link tax, but in favour of the content filtering.

HunOL• 8 years ago

I have the feeling that EU is intentionally doing it. Sooner or later only big tech will be able to comply with all regulations.

sebst10• 8 years ago

I sometimes have the same feeling,but I'm not sure it's true.

From an economical point of view it makes no sense to put legislation in place that will strengthen the market position of mostly US, non-EU companies.

Another reasoning could be to "prepare" a censorship infrastructure, but I can't find any hard evidences to this.

pwned110• 8 years ago

Although the EU looks like a democracy, it is not.

antpls2• 8 years ago

For the anecdote, Nils Torvalds, the father of Linus, is one of the many authors of this text law.

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...

interhero4• 8 years ago

What does it mean to a forum websites, where people post news, memes or just share their knowledge about stuff?

buboard6• 8 years ago

Do you have a link to the text of the directive? i found this text from 2016: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

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.

antpls2• 8 years ago

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your link is the latest version. It says 2016 because the procedure started in 2016, the linked document itself has been updated with the following amendments : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/report-details.html...

On a side note, there are a lot of information on several EU websites about procedure, steps, people, etc, for example :

- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil-mobile/fiche-procedure/20... (mobile version, I'm on my phone)

- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2F...

Also, with a timeline : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=CELEX:52...

AnssiH6• 8 years ago

Here is a PDF of the amendments adopted today: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...

The most controversial articles 11 and 13 are included in their entirety.

sdfsdfsdff• 8 years ago

"Hopefully"? How?

dancek• 8 years ago

Note that Nils Torvalds voted against the directive today.

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...

azernik• 8 years ago

A good source for votes is votewatch.eu (free account registration required) - their site is a bit slow, but it does let you slice and dice the vote totals in all kinds of interesting ways.

For the specific breakdown of the Digital Single Market vote, see http://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-copyright-in-the-digital-si...

AnssiH6• 8 years ago

For smaller and not well-known streamers, it may be more difficult to obtain justice...

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".

sbradford26• 8 years ago

"Exactly how the legislation will be interpreted will be up to individual nations, but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet."

I feel like this is actually forcing the biggest tech companies to increase their grip on the internet.

candiodari8• 8 years ago

You say that as if that's an accident. You see, the politicians at the EU aren't just malevolent, they're also incompetent and lazy. You see that's why they're doing this: force everyone's opinions into a few companies, and foreign ones that Europeans won't care about at that.

Next step is to sue those companies into submission. To give them the emails of everyone on their platforms. Their location. To make them pay for everything. To ...

But if they had to do that against 10000 companies, they wouldn't be able to. So they're enforcing Google's monopoly on Europe, to then force them to abuse it on their behalf (and of course blame them for it all the way).

the6threplicant• 8 years ago

A comment from someone who has actually read the article: https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_w...

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.)

oihoaihsfoiahsf5• 8 years ago

I read the articles as well, and this commenter is right that, on their face, they don't seem like they would apply to a site like Google News. That said, everyone, including Google, seems to think they do. And as far as I am aware, nobody at the EC has said anything to the contrary, even though it would be easy to do so. So it seems most likely to me that the naive reading of the text is incorrect, and that both this reddit commenter and myself are missing something.

tumetab12• 8 years ago

Both are missing the point of how this kind of "law" works.

The wording is less relevant than the application of it. You can argue that something is outside of scope, according to the wording, and be correct while at the same time I can argue that the same is covered on how is expected to be applied.

Given my understanding of the copyright lobbying-state officials work in the EU, Google News will be covered. Why? Because news organizations having being crying for long and have strong political connections.

bcheung4• 8 years ago

The problem is it is highly subjective.

"Parliament’s text also strengthens the negotiating rights of authors and performers, by enabling them to “claim” additional remuneration from the party exploiting their rights when the remuneration originally agreed is “disproportionately” low compared to the benefits derived."

"The text adds that these benefits should include “indirect revenues”. It would also empower authors and performers to revoke or terminate the exclusivity of an exploitation licence for their work if the party holding the exploitation rights is deemed not to be exercising this right."

pbackx• 8 years ago

To understand article 11, I think you should look at the reason it was created: Journalists (and newspapers) are looking for a way to get paid for their articles beyond luring people to their sites with clickbait titles and tons of ads.

They want their own "article version" of Spotify, where they get a set amount for every article read. Obviously that's difficult to implement given the current way of the Internet (= Facebook sharing) and this is their attempt at getting their dream.

Is this a good idea? You could say it may improve news reporting if it was well implemented. Or it could be completely abused. Anyway, looking at it like this, explains some of the legalese in article 11.

sputr4• 8 years ago

The commenter you are quoting has not realized there are two problematic articles (11. and 13.) and that the "memes" story is for article 13 not 11.

The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.

IdiocyInAction• 8 years ago

Why whould Google not just delist problematic sites like they did in Germany, as they tried to implement something similar there AFAIK?

dvfjsdhgfv• 8 years ago

The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.

Honestly, it doesn't seem a bad thing to me. But lat's see how Google plays it out.

Tharkun2• 8 years ago

Next thing you'll have to pay publishers because you read their RSS feed in a self hosted aggregator.

krn2• 8 years ago

The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers.

The latest version of Google News has already solved this: it only shows the title and the image, not a single sentence from the article itself, – which was the main concern in Spain and Germany when the relevant laws were introduced.

Facebook and Twitter shouldn't face any issues as well, because they only display the value of the og:description meta tag, set by the publishers themselves.

dannyobrien• 8 years ago

(Disclosure -- I work on this for EFF)

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.

PunchTornado• 8 years ago

Thanks for this one. Reading about it for a while now and all I see is banning links and meme and link tax and other unreal things.

bjelkeman-again2• 8 years ago

it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license.

This seems a great place to use automated translation technology, but into the same language. Link to the news article, but rewrite it using a similar meaning, with different words.

(I am an EU citizen and I think this is major overreach by the legislator who thinks they are saving the newspapers, but have no clue as to what effect they will have on the current system, but it still will not save the papers.)

cge3• 8 years ago

Article 11 point 2(a) also mentions hyperlinking, at least in the version linked from the EU press release (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...).

majewsky6• 8 years ago

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.

There was a story in a similar direction a few years back: A state court in Hamburg decided that when you set a link to some other website, you have to check whether that website contains any illegal content.

The fine journalists at Heise wanted to link to the verdict, and because they are law-abiding citizens, they inquired with the court if they can guarantee that all content on the court website was legal. The request was denied.

JAlexoid10• 8 years ago

I work on this for EFF Firstly, these are just recitals. They're not a binding part of the Directive, they just lay out the justifications for the law.

Have you ever been in a courtroom in EU? Explanations for the laws are guides to judges to rule on the laws. Judges cannot go against the explanation and apply just the technical bit, their decisions will be overturned 100%.

Sure... This directive is hardly perfect, but it's also only the first step in the process.

When it comes to can vs should, you should know that both are optional. And copyright groups do try to limit the multiple exemptions from copyright every single day.

belorn2• 8 years ago

The article itself reference the acts of linking and hyperlinking without any words about "significant portions of the text". I would like to see some support to the claim that "what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text".

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?

Aeolun2• 8 years ago

I assume it means linking on your intranet is not prohibited.

akerro2• 8 years ago

Not really, every meme will be a subject to legal actions like Grumpy Cat Limited https://www.catster.com/the-scoop/grumpy-cat-legal-settlemen...

zavi3• 8 years ago

News are mostly clickbait cancer anyways, if this is the final nail in their coffin (if Google/Reddit/Facebook stops serving news) so be it. Tech Giants will do just fine under this, just how Chinese tech giants are able to do their own censorship.

fbn79• 8 years ago

The copyright laws are totally wrong. If you produce an opera and don't want it to be reproduced or used in other works, don't share it. Keep it for yourself, don't show it to anyone. If an author spontainously share an opera making it public available (for free or selling it is not important) must accept the fact that the opera can be used and elaborated by anyone. If I see something I must have all the right to try to reproduce it, rielaborate it, use it to create something new, resell it, givit it free to other. If author don't want this, must keep it for himself. Sharing something (free or by fee) and asking to not reshare, re-elaborate, copy ecc. is an act of intellectual violence. Author thinks that is this violionce is necessary to grant him the right return for the work he have done. But this is totally false. The copyright law is useful only to aliment of an ecosystem of leeches that prolifer around the artist limiting his and his audience liberty and freedom. "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. (Mark Twain)"

raxxorrax2• 8 years ago

This corrupt old farts. The brexit people were right ...

interhero4• 8 years ago

If this gets through in January, the UK would have to implement it too...

amyjess• 8 years ago

"Have to" is an awfully loaded phrase. If they don't, who's going to enforce it?

"Enforce this, or we'll kick you out."

"Well, we are leaving anyway, so uh, fuckity-bye."

black_puppydog• 8 years ago

So no comments containing "decentralization" yet. These days, I'm really not sure any longer if decentralizing all the web to the point where this kind of legislation becomes completetly futile is harder or easier than fixing the politics... :|

sparkzilla5• 8 years ago

I just commented above. One solution to this kind of legislative overreach is decentralized apps that have no official jurisdiction.

nothis3• 8 years ago

Holy fuck no...

TomMarius3• 8 years ago

Hijacking the top comment: Can someone explain me why EU was considered knowledgable about the internet in case of GDPR, but isn't now? Have they lost their knowledge in the meantime?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC• 8 years ago

The GDPR has nothing to do with the internet specifically.

TomMarius3• 8 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean. GDPR has everything to do with Internet, the Internet has been the whole reason it was created. Without the internet, the previous laws were OK. During the discussions (on state-level politics as well) only the internet was mentioned that frequently along with internet companies such as Facebook and Google, except for the note that it of course affects everything else.

Even if GDPR was merely touching the internet, it is touching the internet, which is my point - people said things like "the people in EU know what they're doing", why isn't it true now?

thepratt• 8 years ago

I wouldn't say the EU had knowledge to begin with. While GDPR was a step in the right direction, how poorly, and vaguely it was written created problems. GDPR isn't a concrete thing, but a high-level set of guidelines with no clear direction on what falls into each camp. This is why leading up to GDPR there were n consultancies, and articles vocalising "Our interpretation of GDPR".

tomatotomato37• 8 years ago

I think they just shifted into the general direction of regulating the internet more and are listening to anyone who's complaining loudly and then just copypasting their ideas into legislation, instead of coming up with the specifics themselves. It just so happens that they heard the privacy guys first over the copyright guys first.

groestl7• 8 years ago

GDPR was a legislative accident: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Philipp_Albrecht

Also: Democracy (a 2015 Documentary by David Bernet)

dang4• 8 years ago

Please don't hijack the top comment.

zmmmmm• 8 years ago

This is such a great outcome for Google, they could not have gotten such a good outcome if they had bribed the legislators directly. They've essentially enshrined the infrastructure Google has already as a legal requirement for the bare minimum threshold to host a web site now. Google can sit back and stop worrying about there ever being competition from Europe now.

kowdermeister2• 8 years ago

+1, they already comply, but if I were to launch something with UGC, I should probably host it in Afghanistan and back it by a company registered on the Moon.

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)

jasonkostempski• 8 years ago

Does it matter if that company is from EU? Even a new engine centralized in the US won't be able to operate in the EU without substantial cost. That's a pretty big market/data source to miss out on.

bepotts3• 8 years ago

US tech giants haven't worried about competition coming from Europe for awhile now. They worry about competition coming from either within the country or China.

dmix5• 8 years ago

What about foreign companies operating in europe...wouldn't they have to comply? Or does this only apply to companies with headquarters in Europe?

adventured5• 8 years ago

The two biggest problems US tech giants have, are fines-as-taxation from the EU and France increasingly pushing for the idea of a restricted competition zone for the EU (a poor attempt at how China incubated its own tech giants by walling everything off). Germany is dramatically more globalist economically (an export giant), so most of the EU's regressive insular ideas will come from France in their style of protectionism.

A distant third problem are US regulators, which are slowly moving forward with targeting the tech giants (which now has both sides of the political machine looking at them, for different reasons). The giants no doubt feel like they can massage that situation better, as it's their home turf. They're invasive aliens as far as the EU is concerned.

dmix5• 8 years ago

It's funny how many laws meant to punish the mega-corps, as they get designed with mega-corps entirely in mind, end up hurting small/medium businesses (and future mega-crops) and further solidifying the mega-corps position in the market.

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).

drak0n1c• 8 years ago

Accidental regulatory capture seems to be more common than nefarious intentional corruption when it comes to policy reinforcing monopolies. History is littered with examples of well-intentioned policies backfiring.

The rat pelt bounty in French Vietnam led to rat breeding. The US luxury tax led to the wealthy saving more money and mass layoffs in the luxury industry. Bank regulations in the wake of the financial crisis gave big banks a competitive advantage over small banks.

These aren't apples to apples examples, but they show how regulatory action often has unintended consequences due to the complexity of the real world.

pluma6• 8 years ago

As far as I can tell, this is the actual text that was voted on (A8-0245/2018):

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

pluma6• 8 years ago

As I understand it, Article 11 (the "link tax") is actually fairly tame. It only requires reimbursement for "use" and explicitly permits linking and citations. The term "use" is a bit ambiguous but it seems to be more directed at scraping and republishing rather than mere link aggregation. It's not a link tax.

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.

hartator• 8 years ago

I am currently visiting the EU, couple of sites are blocking access within the EU, I guess it’s gonna get worse.

Zenst• 8 years ago

Sadly, I suspect you are right. It's as if the EU wants a firewall and wants to make every other country pay for it, even if that was not the intention, that will be the end result.

wongarsu3• 8 years ago

I don't think the link tax will have any real implications. Any individual party that starts charging for links will simply not be liked to. It would only work if an entire industry/sector would start charging for links to them, but then we are talking about collusion and price-fixing which is already illegal. It's hard to start demanding money for something that was free and costs you nothing.

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.

interhero4• 8 years ago

How do you find who is charging and who is not? Why not the other way around - if you post a link, you give exposure - that's worth something no?

jonathanstrange5• 8 years ago

Every sufficiently large publishing company on earth will demand a link tax, where "sufficiently large" means they can afford one or two lawyers.

Why shouldn't they? It's money lost otherwise.

wongarsu3• 8 years ago

Why shouldn't they?

Say BBC decides they don't need the money and doesn't charge for links, but every other major outlet does. Now everyone will just link to BBC when they want to link an article on the topic, and Google News would essentially be BBC and a bunch of small independent outlets. Shortly thereafter the market share of all major news outlets that aren't BBC plumets as less and less people visit their online presences.

sjwright• 8 years ago

It's money lost otherwise.

It's a choice between more money or less money, but the opposite way around to what you're implying—because nobody will pay for the privilege of gifting traffic to someone else.

If you're a web publisher and you're not making more money as your traffic increases, you're doing it wrong. And if you can only make money by taxing all potential inbound sources of traffic, you'll quickly find yourself with no traffic—and no money.

qaq• 8 years ago

Hmm at this velocity even more sites will start blocking EU users.

DINKDINK5• 8 years ago

Copyright is a contract between two groups where a copyright holder dictates the terms under which their material may be used or duplicated. If the receiving party to that material violates those terms (say they've received a movie screener for an unreleased film and leaked it), they are in violation of that contract and should pay the fees dictated in their contract.

To argue that all parties everywhere should be forced subsidize the enforcement and policing of that contract is outrageous, economically unsound, and violates liberty.

petermcneeley• 8 years ago

This is not the definition of Copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

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.

Y_Y• 8 years ago

I like your idea, but it's hardly the case currently.

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.

DINKDINK5• 8 years ago

I like your idea

It's the only peaceful way to govern copyright.

but it's hardly the case currently.

You should advocate it to be the case or else you will suffer more and more socialized enforcement of a contract in which you are not a party.

apocalypstyx3• 8 years ago

To argue that all parties everywhere should be forced subsidize the enforcement and policing of that contract is outrageous, economically unsound, and violates liberty.

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.

DINKDINK5• 8 years ago

There's no need for violence and no need for taxation in such a system. The two parties willingly choose a court to fall back on if their contract needs arbitration.

if the contract is violated and the violator taken to court and the court rules against them and they refuse to pay restitution?

If you're entering into a contract with someone and you're worried they won't pay restitution, mandate terms in the contract that require up-front collateral for a performance penalty. Problem solved.

Each person in the stage of production has the appropriate incentives to collect payment and protect their property. The reason why copyright law has been perverted is because there are distribution companies who'd rather not pony up performance capital and want to socialize the cost of enforcement onto the state.

enitihas• 8 years ago

The only thing GDPR and this new law have in common is that both of them will make it very difficult for new internet companies to challenge incumbents (not that it was very easy currently). But if every video distributing company is going to need something like contentID, good luck to them.

belorn2• 8 years ago

A bit less discussed aspect of the law is the recent addition that makes recording sport events illegal. While the intention looks clearly intended to be about large sport stadiums with explicit deals, the scope is not limited to those situations and simply cover any "sport event". It will be interesting to see what happens if they try to enforce it for marathons and bike races on public roads.

IdontRememberIt2• 8 years ago

Great, we are turning into the Banking industry: stupid regulation to make big actors bigger and make it almost impossible for newcomers with great ideas. These regulation always started with good intentions, but turned out to just add cost for... no value added to the final customer. I can imagine their will be many opportunities for "middleman" services to support these regulations. The days of many free services are numbered.

jtr_47• 8 years ago

As an American, I can gladly say fuck the EU. Their laws do not and never shall be imposed on me or the work I do ever. I'm glad not to do business within the EU.

Jdam2• 8 years ago

As a European, I wish I could just say the same :/

hmd_imputer3• 8 years ago

yet another stupid decision by the EU lawmakers who are obsessed with regulating anything they see as a grey area.

mbrumlow• 8 years ago

Both copyrights and patents are stupid in a digital age. If you don't want people to make copies of bits and bytes (large numbers) you found to be interesting or even arranged to be interesting don't upload them to the internet.

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.

curtisblaine• 8 years ago

This law is to prevent any non-mainstream news outlet to share content. From the UKIP site:

"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.

mpartel• 8 years ago

Well this sucks a lot, but if I'm reading this right, they at least amended it to be _slightly_ less awful: https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se...

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.

mcintyre19943• 8 years ago

From http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR...

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.

dcbadacd• 8 years ago

If you read it more carefully, it says "designed to avoid catching" not "must not catch".

mjburgess2• 8 years ago

The conditions under-which something is fair-use are not features of the content. So there is nothing a system can do.

tumetab12• 8 years ago

They don't think whether it's possible or not. They are outsourcing any outrage of this system to whoever needs to implement it.

bad_user2• 8 years ago

Oh shit.

How can I find who voted for it?

redm• 8 years ago

I find it interesting that the conversation is mainly about fair use and not about false positives.

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.

nailer• 8 years ago

Quick reminder of a common misconception: contrary to what you may believe, MEPs do not propose laws. The EU Commission (that you don't vote for) propose laws.

fourthark• 8 years ago

the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet.

Huh? How does this follow?

pedro1976• 8 years ago

What a sad development. The two major implications of this law I see are - (even more) privatization of the jurisdiction and - inverted presumption of innocence

visika• 8 years ago

DecEntRalyZE EvritHyNg™

kodablah• 8 years ago

It is an unpopular opinion, but they were given the mandate by all those cheering the internet restrictions in the GDPR. Whether you still like that law or not is unrelated to the mandate given. You should have drawn your battle lines there instead of being so dismissive of those warning about government intervention.

mjburgess2• 8 years ago

The majority dissent here isn't that the EU do not have the right to regulate the internet in some way, it is that they are not doing it well.

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.

trumpeta• 8 years ago

How do I write all my MEPs that they fucked up badly this time?

tomjen3• 8 years ago

Is there a complete list of those who voted in favour?

elorant• 8 years ago

Here's what I don't understand. How is Google/Facebook supposed to know which are news sites and which aren't? Apart from the known ones there are hundreds of thousands smaller ones which can start looking for royalties. How do you tell which is which?

h91wka4• 8 years ago

This is wrong on more levels than it seems from the first glance:

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.

Tharkun2• 8 years ago

TV, storefront and voting. The latter can then be abused to pretend the public agrees.

DoctorOetker• 8 years ago

I totally agree with both of you.

"If you are using the internet to actually learn, you are using it wrong, that is why internet must be reduced to TV + storefront."

Regarding voting too: just compare the number of bits per ballot (log2() of valid number of ways of filling in the ballot) with the number of bits of compressed text of all changes in law during a term. It's not a vote or voice, the information flows in the opposite direction. It just projects the law on our supposed desire. demokratia or demophimia (muzzling/gagging of the people)?

JoeSmithson2• 8 years ago

Where have you witnessed creeping internet censorship starting like this? (Not disputing, I'd just be interested to study it)

lossolo7• 8 years ago

I don't really understand why this comment is downvoted? OP wrote he is not disputing but want to study it. What's wrong with that? I am curious also and would like to know.

sampo3• 8 years ago

In Finland, 2006 the parliament made a law that that Finnish police will keep a block list of foreign web addresses containing child porn, and Finnish internet providers should block access to these.

In 2007, a website appeared, that criticises the law, and claimed that using a web crawler, they had found that actually over 95% of the blocked addresses contain only legal porn. Also legal gay porn was quite overrepresented in the block list. Occasionally also for example www.w3.org was on the block list. And a memorial website for a dead princess of Thailand, which caused a minor diplomatic crisis, since defaming the royal family is a severe offence in Thailand.

And then in 2008, the Finnish police also added the aforementioned criticizing website to the block list, although the law clearly said that it applies to blocking foreign, not domestic, websites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info

h91wka4• 8 years ago

Russia. The first bill was passed around 2012. There is one key difference, though. As Russian government generally lacks influence on Western tech companies, they chose to target ISPs, while the EU law in question goes after hosting providers.

It is significant because while network-level filtering is potentially more destructive, the agency in charge of enforcement of the russian law (Roskomnadzor) stumbled upon cryptography (who could have thought!). Their IP-level filters don't work for TLS, so the only option they are left with is all-or-nothing block by IP. This kind of censorship lacks subtlety, therefore big companies have some room for negotiation (small ones get banned without any questions asked).

The EU law doesn't even bother with networks, it threatens companies directly. And the EU market is large, so tech giants won't just shrug, they'll probably choose to comply.

darpa_escapee• 8 years ago

This is just how Western societies are sold China-style censorship and surveillance.

ithkuil2• 8 years ago

Honest question: why can't China sell it's own surveillance in the same way?

ionised5• 8 years ago

No, western societies get spied on by their own governments because terrorists hate our freedom, or some other such nonsense.

fucking_tragedy2• 8 years ago

Case in point: abuse of the DMCA ironically took down this[1] article titled "EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line".

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://savethelink.org/me

- 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...

[2] https://lumendatabase.org/notices/16954705

sieabah6• 8 years ago

Thank christ I don't live in Europe.

mirimir• 8 years ago

OK, so just don't host anywhere that EU enforcement can get to you. It sounds like a great opportunity for folks with requisite skills :)

cbuq• 8 years ago

Let's say I want to create a YouTube clone under these new laws, obviously I will need one of these upload filters.

Where can I get the collection of all copyrighted content so I can build this filter?

vhiremath4• 8 years ago

Perhaps the most disastrous side effects of articles 11 and 13:

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

samgranieri• 8 years ago

Can these laws be suspended or judicially reviewed if someone or government entity in the EU sues? I'm an American and unfamiliar with the lawmaking process in the EU.

headmelted4• 8 years ago

So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit.

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.

Milner08• 8 years ago

I believe the EU would be the lesser of two evils here. If we leave it up to the UK Government and Mrs May we will have it far worse. She has tried several times to ban WhatsApp and encryption in general. I wouldn't put anything like this past her.

TazeTSchnitzel• 8 years ago

The UK is currently (it's law!) going to impose mandatory online age verification for “adult content”, including IIRC the ability to block non-compliant foreign sites (will they block twitter, tumblr?)

JoeSmithson2• 8 years ago

She has tried several times to ban WhatsApp

What? Did you swallow some fake news or did I miss something massive?

---

Downvoters, this is not Reddit. The top Google results for "UK WhatsApp Ban" are all related to this - https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/9521... - which is EU rules causing age requirement to jump from 13 to 16.

Is this what you are referring to?

antibes2• 8 years ago

I don't know the EU/EuroParl equivalents, but the UK still has a robust Judicial Review system.

I would strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of independent judiciary, both capable of standing up to misguided legislation, as well as willing and enabled to do so, with the sense of purpose, clarity and finality, which [at least apparently, or perceptively] absent features are longstanding argument behind EU cecessionism.

pwned110• 8 years ago

You have the ability to vote Teresa May out of office and change UK laws through your member of parliament. The European Commission, the European Council, and the Council of the European Union are entirely undemocratic, and the European Parliament is democratic only in name. There's no serious argument that the EU is in any way responsive to voters.

headmelted4• 8 years ago

In fairness I did say almost.

On a side note I do wonder if Amber Rudd passed along the necessary hashtags to Theresa May before taking the fall and hanging up her clipboard.

It's dire all over if the best we can say is we've got the least of all evils. Sadly, that appears to be the case, even with this disastrous legislation.

donatj• 8 years ago

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

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.

Vektorweg• 8 years ago

Only increased potential cost. It is absolutely unlikely that the EU will fine huge sums for small transgressions, or even fine at all.

DanBC6• 8 years ago

Mismanagement of a single users data could cost the farm.

No it couldn't. This is a distortion that has been repeatedly debunked.

Here's a company who had a legal obligation to register with the UK ICO, and they didn't. They were handling medical data. Far from "losing the farm" they didn't even get fined. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-26/u-k-healt...

woolvalley• 8 years ago

Snort, the GDPR is fairly hostile to small players by pretending they don't exist when they wrote the law. It's like signing a contract with employee hostile clauses that the employer pinky swears they will never use.

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.

zavi3• 8 years ago

Both GDPR and this were intended to hurt American tech giants. However the people pushing this have very little understanding of how internet works so it would certainly have the opposite effect. The grim reality is that deregulation is the only sure way to help homegrown startups compete against the incumbents but you cannot push for deregulation without losing your entire political base in Europe.

DanBC6• 8 years ago

GDPR [...] were intended to hurt American tech giants.

GDPR builds on previous EU privacy regulation, some of which has existed long before the US tech giants.

Here's the Council of Europe's Convention number 108, introduced in 1981. https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventio...

Hesse, Germany,introduced data protection law in 1970. Sweden introduced national law in 1973. Germany in 1977 and France in 1978.

The OECD introduced guidelines in 1980.

The Council of Europe had Convention No 108 in 1981.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tyfYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg...

marknadal3• 8 years ago

Already got you covered! The Internet Archive ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17685682 ) & notabug.io (a P2P Reddit alternative, pushing terabytes traffic) have already moved to using our decentralized tools ( https://github.com/amark/gun ).

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.

Ruthalas• 8 years ago

Is there a particularly good way to follow the progress of these projects?

yspeak• 8 years ago

How does decentralization, p2p and encryption change anything? They won't protect you or prevent enforcement. If there are issues they will just tighten the law and increase enforcement mechaniams.

narrator2• 8 years ago

GDPR is extremely hostile to discovery in lawsuits. In this sense it does not help the little guy. It's almost tailor made for coverups and protecting the guilty in civil litigation.

pwned110• 8 years ago

I'm wondering if you can elaborate. I haven't heard this argument before.

lossolo7• 8 years ago

So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit.

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).

rrix2• 8 years ago

I believe the comment could be summed up as "maybe the UK should leave the EU after all" because of how overreaching the legislation looks to be.

rsync• 8 years ago

"So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit."

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.

kareldonk369• 8 years ago

we'll collectively need to finally start work on that peer-to-peer, onion-layered, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building.

Not everyone! ;) MIT licensed.

https://github.com/kareldonk/QuantumGate

jpttsn• 8 years ago

A regulator that can give you everything you dream of, can also take away everything you value.

At the risk of sounding like a freshman libertarian.

mindcrime3• 8 years ago

At the risk of sounding like a freshman libertarian.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

EastSmith• 8 years ago

This is obviously bad. I am hoping that more decentralization / p2p tech is born out of it.

nickpp• 8 years ago

And this, together with the idiotic cookie and GDPR laws ensure the future Internet startups will have no home and no audience in Europe.

Like always here, death by regulation. The way governments grant monopolies to established players and kill competition.

madspindel• 8 years ago

Maybe it's a good thing? The real world of atoms is heavy regulated. I prefer flying german cars instead of 140 characters.

exabrial2• 8 years ago

Business's who depend on the livelihood of free speech: Google, Facebook, Apple, Cloudflare, Netflix, Salesforce, et all need to get together and say "No, or we'll stop doing business in the EU".

This is beyond ridiculous.

JumpCrisscross5• 8 years ago

Business's who depend on the livelihood of free speech: Google, Facebook

Given this legislation virtually guarantees their hegemony over European content distribution, I don't expect too much complaining.

exabrial2• 8 years ago

That's a good point. I guess I rescind my comment.

zavi3• 8 years ago

This is fantastic for Google in Europe - they aren't making money from hobbyist publishing remixes and can easily filter it out with the infrastructure and training data they already have. They make money off Despacito and the likes with whom they already have a revshare in place.

newswhere• 8 years ago

I'm not surprised that people that believed GDPR was good legislation would approve this law. The EU is simply not that important, internet businesses should simply not do business there.

jimmaswell• 8 years ago

How long until the EU ruins the internet so much that the rest of the world just cuts off completely from it, and the EU is left with their own little hyper-legislated enclave net?

linuxftw7• 8 years ago

Everyone in this thread is asking the wrong question. It's not whether or not some rule the EU approves is good or bad, it's whether or not the EU is legitimate and has or should have the authority to dictate these types of things.

chrshawkes• 8 years ago

I'm curious what all this means for a company like Reddit where links are shared and typically titles are copied 1 for 1 from the news website.

mauliknshah• 8 years ago

Does anyone have any resources saying what all impacts this legislation would bring and how it would change current online applications?

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?

sieabahlpark• 8 years ago

You just have to build a copyright system before you can display it publicly.

Can't afford it? Too bad, that's the fun of this law and why it should be abolished.

mindcrime3• 8 years ago

Youtube, Facebook, etc., should simply pull out of Europe and block all European users. I don't think it would take very long for this to sort itself out...

fermienrico• 8 years ago

Comments like this are extremely naive given the fact that Google/Facebook cannot do anything at whim without Board/Investors backlash. Stock price would crash, future projections would collapse and it would create a havoc for bailing out of a major market. It happens, but rarely (Google China exit).

mindcrime3• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's still the case that Zuck can effectively do whatever he wants with FB due to his stock ownership position. But that isn't really the point... nobody said anything about anybody doing anything "on a whim". And if these companies were to get serious about playing the long-game, instead of fixating on short-term fluctuations in their stock price, I believe it is the case that what I propose is actually in their best interest.

vidann• 8 years ago

America please save us

auganov• 8 years ago

This sort of stuff is exactly what many GDPR opponents were warning about. Once the floodgate of aggressive regulating is open you don't get to pick the ones you like. At the end of the day there are going to be very few winners.

nkkollaw• 8 years ago

Can someone do an ELI5? There is so much confusion and speculation that I can't figure out what the hell is going on.

0x5f3759df-i• 8 years ago

However, those backing these provisions say the arguments above are the result of scaremongering by big US tech companies, eager to keep control of the web’s biggest platforms.

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.

sieabah6• 8 years ago

It's simple, the EU wants it's own internet like China. No more filthy US internet with talk about free speech and fair use.

lovich3• 8 years ago

I see part of your argument, but the internet in the US is by no means full of free speech and fair use. The government has their hands on every major service provider and ISP and has used their power to compel companies to give information or censor data.

What's happening here is the EU is seeing every other major power lock down their internet, so why would they leave theirs open which would also allow foreign meddling?

Additionally the tech megacorps are trying to claim that they are open platforms and so shouldn't be responsible for user posted data while censoring and removing user posted data when it suits their economic means.

I'm a proponent of free speech, but the internet stopped being a bastion of free speech year ago. It's crazy to think that the EU was going to sit their and let companies do what they please, when those same companies we're already preventing users/EU citizens from doing so

mverwijs• 8 years ago

I'd upvote you, but my Verizon Ultra G5 Package does not allow for upvoting.

linuxftw7• 8 years ago

Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use?

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.

untog• 8 years ago

Does the EU have a problem with wealthy donors? I've heard this criticism levelled against US politicians and it's justified, but in this case I think it might just be sheer ignorance on the part of the EU legislators.

cge3• 8 years ago

Note that Article 2 point 4(b) appears to entirely excludes from Article 13 rules organizations that are "small" or "micro," which, unless I am mistaken, means organizations that have less than 50 employees and €10m turnover or balance sheet value.

zipwitch• 8 years ago

That is certainly how they are often used in the America and the West today, but always seems a gross exaggeration. For example, regulations against child labor.

bcheung4• 8 years ago

It's also a form of control.

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

jules• 8 years ago

I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone could support this law while having any understanding of how the internet works.

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.

isostatic2• 8 years ago

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

No it doesn't. For example

https://news.ycombinator.com/

Does not have any such dialog

anigbrowl9• 8 years ago

Imagine all the time wasted on those modal dialogs and add up the total cost in human lives.

GMAFB, nobody is dying because they're being asked to consent or refuse cookie tracking. If you are worried about that then why haven't I see you complaining about the modal dialogs and umpteen other other impositions inflicted upon users by marketing departments?

08-153• 8 years ago

Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use?

They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.

wolfgke2• 8 years ago

They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.

The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use".

Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (freie Meinungsäußerung). "Freie Meinungsäußerung", for example, does not include defamation criticism or libel. So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians, because this concept is simply not ingrained in German culture.

To all the US free speech advocates: why is posting a copyrighted file in the internet not considered free speech and thus copyright law is to be abolished?

gefh• 8 years ago

Please elaborate?

abraham_lincoln• 8 years ago

So maybe Google and Facebook were lobbying the EU politicians?

bcheung4• 8 years ago

The stronger they push ridiculous laws like this the more it will force perfectly legitimate business to go underground. We will end up with all the problems of prohibition all over again.

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.

imbur• 8 years ago

Why should Google be able to profit off of others content without compensating them? Compulsory licenses are standard in the music industry, and in theory the same could work well for journalism. But the devil is in the details.

mrhappyunhappy• 8 years ago

Fuck it, block Europe entirely. See how quickly the politicians there crawl back on their knees when they cant use Facebook to see their grandkids pictures.

6ue7nNMEEbHcM• 8 years ago

I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest.

Exactly this. I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe (I don't remember name of the page now). This happened after GPDR came into effect. I can totally relate with companies who don't want to deal with legal mess related with GPDR and other nonsense from EU an prefer to just show the user error 451 page. I'm pretty sure VPN providers and huge companies like Google will benefit from this legislation.

bryanrasmussen2• 8 years ago

what kind of perfectly legitimate business going underground do you foresee? I mean with prohibition the thing that went underground was addictive. I guess the argument has been made that facebook is addictive but I don't see them going underground - and frankly I don't see the next facebook competitor going 'underground' either (I just don't foresee one springing up)

bryanrasmussen2• 8 years ago

I foresee a change to the adwords/google analytics contract foregoing link tax etc. for your content to be used by google.

cynoclast• 8 years ago

I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone could support this law while having any understanding of how the internet works.

Who do you think has their arm up the politicians' ass and making them talk?

anigbrowl9• 8 years ago

Maybe it's time technologists stopped assuming they're the cleverest persons in the room and rectified their ignorance of law and economics before assuming they're in the right about everything. I'm not a fan of onerous copyright legislation but simply asserting that 'information wants to be free' is stating an opinion, not some scientific law. Hackers and developers are just as subject to the Dunning-Kreuger effect as anyone else.

wokwokwok• 8 years ago

My my, its certainly easy to tell people off isn't it?

...but perhaps if instead you offered a compelling argument to the counter?

The EFF has laid out a lot of reasons this is problematic, and they are very familiar with the situation.

godshatter• 8 years ago

When someone cites the Dunning-Krueger effect, I always wonder if they are a professional psychologist.

bcheung4• 8 years ago

Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use?

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.

ddingus• 8 years ago

Maybe they do understand.

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.

stcredzero• 8 years ago

Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use?

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.

HIPisTheAnswer• 8 years ago

The only thing this will do is entrench massive players like Google and Facebook

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...

godzillabrennus• 8 years ago

Pied Piper.

adamhepner• 8 years ago

or a tiny js file that anyone can add to header, that upon document loaded replaces ALL images, videos, text in quotes and anchors with black stripes with red "451 unavailable for legal reasons" spans. Upon clicking this should open in a new tab a website with information on what is this about and what can be done about it.

hexane3603• 8 years ago

This idea is called accelerationism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

lossolo7• 8 years ago

The only thing this will do is entrench massive players like Google and Facebook who already have these systems in place.

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

janoc• 8 years ago

And how is an SME with 10 million annual turnover (that's not profit, that's revenue before all the expenses are taken out) ever going to build a competing platform to e.g. Google or Facebook?

All this does is to put a token nod in place that we don't want to kill the SMEs outright but once they grow enough to be "dangerous", they better start paying or else. And if they can't, tough luck ...

sharemywin• 8 years ago

Does the link tax only apply to the interenet? what about scientific papers? are you required to pay when you reference other material?

consp• 8 years ago

In the summary of the original draft I read it was exempt. Haven't read the amended version but I suspect it still is in there somewhere.

kulahan• 8 years ago

I'm so tired of the narrative that these highly-educated people vote on matters that they have no understanding of.

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.

messit• 8 years ago

This feels just as stupid as the war on drugs. Another step back, especially for the poor as usual.

jimnotgym• 8 years ago

The headline is rather misleading. The EU parliament has approved it, the EU as a whole has not. The parliament is one step on the legislative process. National governments carry much more weight. Time to lobby your local politicians.

kriscius• 8 years ago

https://imgur.com/a/TOLHJKw

reaperducer• 8 years ago

So now all the content aggregators can link exclusively to non-EU web sites, further spreading a non-European point of view globally.

Problem solved.

ericb• 8 years ago

I've seen many posts on HN questioning whether there is any value in a permissionless uncensorable internet of the type some cryptocurrency platforms are building toward.

Will the concept get less mockery now?

oldandtired• 8 years ago

Let's take a look at some background here. Freedoms are in the eye of the beholder and what is considered a "right" by one can be and often is quite different to what is considered a "right" by another.

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.

anonytrary2• 8 years ago

snr• 8 years ago

Am I wrong in seeing merit in the argument for blocking people/entities from re-posting copyrighted content and simultaneously holding the platforms accountable? Of course, they should exempt businesses valued below a fair figure like $50M so as to not bother startups with compliance expenses.

anonytrary2• 8 years ago

Article 13 requires certain platforms like YouTube and Facebook stop users sharing unlicensed copyrighted material.

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.

kermittd• 8 years ago

Whoa. Sounds like a paradoy of what foolish bureaucrats would do.

tomelders3• 8 years ago

As bonkers as this may seem, I suspect it will fall flat on it's face the second it's put before a court.

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.

gnusci• 8 years ago

My 5c here. Maybe they just don't have much to do, so they need to justify their salaries, and they need to have some presence in the WWW to let us know that they are out there.

tomelders3• 8 years ago

Hmmm. I'm not so sure. The EU parliament is usually pretty savvy on civil rights and freedom issues like this. I'm genuinely surprised that this law passed.

However, it's hard to fathom the EU parliament sometimes because it's such a broad and diverse bunch of people and interests forced into such a small political space.

If someone asked me to play devils advocate for this decision, I'd probably appeal to people's fear of foreign disinformation campaigns and the impact they're having on western democracies. I could probably cobble together a semi-compelling argument about how Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, have inadvertently handed the enemies of the west the most powerful propaganda tool in all of human history, and those enemies are using it to great effect. Or how marketing companies have convinced millions of parents worldwide to not vaccinate their children through the internet. Or how organisations like Monsanto astroturf the web and misquote or misrepresent scientific reports or news articles to make it seem like Greenpeace promote and advocate using DDT.

I'd then go on to argue that information can and must be free to share, but nefarious misinformation should not be free from punishment nor protected by law. And so, the age of anonymous and unaccountable publishing platforms must come to an end. If they don't want to be held accountable for the content they publish, then that's fine. But that just means we restrict the type of content they're allowed to publish. After all, we have advertising standards that the press and broadcasters adhere to. We have rules around when and how "traditional" media can report on politics. So the Youtubes, Twitters, Reddits, and Facebooks of the world can either fall in line with those rules, or carry on as they are but simply refrain from anything that could be perceived as advertising or political reporting... which is pretty much everything except dick picks I think.

Now, I'm pretending to defend this law. Don't assume I believe any of what I just said. I actually think this law abhorrent. And while I do have concerns about the unrestrained power and influence of the web, I don't think this law is the answer to my concerns. But if I put my mind to selling this law to people who don't know as much about the web as I do, I think this kind of argument would be effective. On some people at least. And MEP's aren't technical people. They're political people. And I think it would be pretty easy to scare them into backing this law whilst appealing to their sense of justice, fairness, and honesty.

Too• 8 years ago

And eventually, someone will need to convince a court

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.

whizzkid• 8 years ago

However, if this law is upheld in court, then I think we can consider the EU a failed experiment

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.

tomelders3• 8 years ago

Any country that legislates against free speech ans freedom of expression with such a brutal and blunt law such as this should be considered a failed experiment.

JAlexoid10• 8 years ago

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.

Newswires aren't free and come with a copyright agreement.

DanBC6• 8 years ago

Just checking, but have you read article 11?

brod• 8 years ago

In 2016 I stopped accepting freelance work with an internet explorer or edge requirement.

In 2018 I'm considering rejecting clients with an Eu requirement.

dbg31415• 8 years ago

* Honest Government Ad | Article 13 (Internet Censorship Bill) - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ZkydX0FPw

eruci• 8 years ago

Yet, another thing that's wrong with Europe these days.

aldoushuxley0014• 8 years ago

What a catastrophe. Can't wait until the EU is disbanded and that dysfunctional union is laid to rest in the history books for good.

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.

em3rgent0rdr• 8 years ago

"Exactly how the legislation will be interpreted will be up to individual nations, but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet."

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.

asdasdqweqwe• 8 years ago

asd

mar77i2• 8 years ago

but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet.

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.

Dowwie• 8 years ago

I cant imagine a proposal such as this one being approved without a study to back it. I really am curious what that study presented.

kerrsclyde2• 8 years ago

Does this mean self-hosting content on our own web sites will become a more realistic option for content creators? No upload filter to tackle?

ultim8k• 8 years ago

Laws are there to be ignored. The only laws that apply implicitly are the laws of physics. As engineers we owe to trust only physics and science.

EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

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