Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/03/20/four-wikipedias-to-black-out-over-eu-copyright-directive/

by okket • 7 years ago

277 196 7 years ago

The EU started as a union to promote freedom of movement, peace and trade inside Europe. Since then, it has grown to be an oversized bureaucracy that restricts the freedoms of European citizens. Everyone who criticize it is immediately labelled as a right winger.

jimmy15• 7 years ago

I am not sure why you are being down-voted. I know people have a distaste for political insights in general here, but it seems apt to have comments like these on an article about protesting a governing body. Why is German Wikipedia having to have a blackout? They are unhappy with the EU restricting their freedoms.

p1necone• 7 years ago

I downvoted it because the comment has no substance besides "EU bad". It adds nothing of value to the discussion.

Explain why the EU is an "oversized bureaucracy".

ionised5• 7 years ago

He is being downvoted because his comment was factually incorrect. That's not why the EU was started.

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj• 7 years ago

Regarding being labelled a right winger: not necessarily the case. The most left-wing political party in Sweden are against the EU, the Euro, and have a long term goal for Sweden to exit the EU. They "criticize EU for prioritizing the European single market's interest over the environment, public health, worker and consumer interests" [0]

[0]https://www.vansterpartiet.se/politik/eu/

Carpetsmoker• 7 years ago

Everyone who criticize it is immediately labelled as a right winger.

Guess the Dutch Socialist Party and hard Green Party (PvdD) are right-wing now

reaperducer• 7 years ago

The EU started as a union to promote freedom of movement, peace and trade inside Europe

I thought the EU started as a means to regulate industrial production, then later evolved into what you describe.

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

snazz• 7 years ago

I cannot scroll the white-on-black text at all in MobileSafari. Although I “should” be using the mobile site, this edge case should still be accounted for.

est313• 7 years ago

The big websites participating in the blackout like Wikipedia or some porn sites do have vast access to eyeballs across europe, and would be affected directly and adversely by the new rules. As the lobbying fight has already been mostly won by the local publisher industry, they use their access to those eyeballs to fuel democratic protests of the rule.

I hope they win and that Article 11 and 13 will be removed.

I think this is an important moment in the birth of EU democracy, because it feels to me that one of the first times, there is a big public discussion about an issue and the people at the center aren't national politicians like Merkel or Macron but EU MEPs, namely Voss vs Reda. The EU has rightfully been criticized of not being democratic enough, and this discussion feels like it's very much democratic.

sveme• 7 years ago

I agree. It actually demonstrates nicely that there is a European community, that isn't organizing itself via the media, but through social media like reddit and twitter (and partially facebook). r/europe, for example, is a surprisingly influential entity with lots of AMAs with proponents and opponents of Article 13. And many less interesting meme chains as well...

TomMarius8• 7 years ago

I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The whole thing feels terribly wrong - 10 million people, the 100% majority of this rather big geographical location that is even separated by mountains on all sides, are just overruled, while they don't even understand the language these politicians are talking in...? Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? Democracy doesn't just mean that there is some voting, it means that the people rule. In my country, our people no longer rule, now the Germans and the French rule our country (because we have less than 2% of votes in the EU parliament) and there is absolutely nothing democratic about that, the polar opposite actually. We're no longer a country, we've been reduced to a lowly region, and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign and have a say in our matters. It feels sickening. I truly hope this law passes and it significantly reduces everyone's high opinion of the EU so we can finally talk about fixing this.

The funny/sad thing is that my people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today. The Soviets at least accepted bribes.

BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative. And we had no idea this is what we're joining back in 2004, and no one asked us when it changed - in fact, significant pressure that I deem absolutely unethical was made on our politicians to not let our people decide in a referendum.

hnra• 7 years ago

Obviously a political and economic union will impose laws on its member states. Your country, holding 2% of the votes, being able to overrule the entire union wouldn't be very democratic either.

It sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of the union but be able to refuse the laws it imposes. If the EU decides on a law, that the majority of the union agrees on but your country doesn't, then your country has the option to leave the union.

Your country might not agree with these laws, other countries might not agree with laws regarding the environment, or human rights, etc. But the union as a whole agrees on them and if you want to benefit from the union then you have to follow.

barrkel• 7 years ago

I don't think the Art 13 legislation will last in its current form. But whatever form it does take, if your country was "independent", I wouldn't be surprised if it signed up to harmonize anyway as part of a trade deal.

Your real enemy is globalization and modern conveniences of globally cheap goods, and globally high quality goods being available for you to purchase and manufacture and export. The alternatives are somewhere on a sliding scale between Norway / Switzerland to North Korea. The closer you are geographically to Europe, the more you'd need to be like North Korea to maintain the kind of independence you think you want, because the game theoretics of inter-nation competition demand that competitors follow international rules.

craigsmansion2• 7 years ago

Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now?

You didn't actually have that up until now either.

now the Germans and the French rule our country

Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point.

and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign

I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here.

BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative.

Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.

honzzz4• 7 years ago

Coincidentally, I am also from a 10 million country surrounded by mountains... and I feel the need to say a few words.

What sovereignty are you talking about? The one we had before WW2, right before we were occupied by Germans? Or after WW2, that brief moment before we were controlled and later even occupied by Russians? That sovereignty is an illusion, especially in today's interconnected world. We can either be small and be controlled by the big ones or be a small part of a big one. Is EU perfect? Certainly not. We can talk about reforms. But despite all shortcomings, I would still say that being part of the EU is the best era of our history.

And saying that people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today... that contradicts my experience and this is the sentiment I would like to express in the strongest possible terms.

And I would not be so sure about what "most people here would rather..." - if I might share my position on this: I voted yes to join the EU in order to get roughly what I got and I would not change my vote.

Just my $0.02 - article 13 is not about what Germans and French want, it is about what powerful lobbies want - being outside of EU would not save us from something like that despite what majority of the country wants - the fact is that we were not overruled; check the stances of our representatives (https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz) - unless there is some other mountains-surrounded country I do not know about, most of our MEPs voted for the article 13.

est313• 7 years ago

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

In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k.

If you add up the seats of the 6 countries with roughly 10 million people, you get 126. If you add up the seats of Germany and France, you get 175. So the small countries are definitely not irrelevant. Can a single country decide on a matter on their own? No. But with 28 (soon 27) states, requiring consent of every single country would render the EU unable to take actions on issues.

dorgo• 7 years ago

Just wrote some emails to politicians and demanded that they stop messing with Wikipedia and enable it again. I could do it myself (content is still there, just a css issue), but I'm too lazy.

IdiocyInAction2• 7 years ago

As an EU citizen, I hope large portions of the internet will just block us. A couple of days without YouTube, Wikipedia and other services would create sufficient outrage to put pressure on the EU for introducing these idiotic laws.

I mean, GDPR is bad enough for start ups, but Article 13?

jaifraic3• 7 years ago

GDPR is just fine, if you've got your shit together and has some actual benefits for users, like being able to request all my saved data and its deletion. And of course disallowing websites handing my data to every possible ad network without my consent.

confounded2• 7 years ago

Article 13 is terrible not because it’s terrible for start-ups, it’s terrible because it’s terrible for people.

I’m pretty close to the rough-end of GDPR in my current job, but it represents real benefits for millions of people. If you asked them what’s a reasonable way to treat their data, I believe the GDPR is close-ish to what a lot of Europeans would want. Or, at least a shift in the right direction.

Article 13 on the other hand is what you get if you ask rights-holders groups what they want, and poses a direct threat to freedom of expression for millions of Europeans.

orangecat• 7 years ago

If you asked them what’s a reasonable way to treat their data, I believe the GDPR is close-ish to what a lot of Europeans would want.

I'm pretty sure that if you asked people whether they would prefer to pay for Facebook and Google with cash or by sharing data for ad targeting, most would choose the latter. The GDPR specifically forbids that option.

Article 13 on the other hand is what you get if you ask rights-holders groups what they want, and poses a direct threat to freedom of expression for millions of Europeans.

And it demonstrates the impossibility of having a powerful bureaucracy that does only the things that you want.

LoSboccacc5• 7 years ago

Article 13 is terrible not because it’s terrible for start-ups, it’s terrible because it’s terrible for people.

the two aren't mutually exclusive and Europe is right now in a deep growth slump also caused by middle class not moving into entrepreneurship due all the red tape and inefficiencies around having to deal with the particularities of every European state, with the EU aggregating without unifying a mess of regional particularities (i.e. vatmoss)

we desperately need the EU to cater both to the individual and the small business interests working out the kinks of the common market.

kpcyrd• 7 years ago

GDPR regulates companies processing personal identifiable information, if your startup can't comply with that it shouldn't exist for the same reasons that a food startup that can't comply with food safety regulations shouldn't exist.

Article 13 is straight up impossible to implement.

LoSboccacc5• 7 years ago

if your startup can't comply with that

most startups can and will. but it basically adds up the requirement of lawyering up to every startup that wants to operate here de facto annihilating the possibility for single man operations to bootstrap an idea cashless.

eikxyz• 7 years ago

GDPR was never intended to be "good for startups". Just like pro-climate policies are never intended to be good for the economy.

GDPR was intended to be good for peoples privacy. Pro-climate policies are meant to be good for the climate.

Somethings gotta give. People are generally more important than startups. Climate is generally more important than economy. Because without people, there are no startups. And without climate, there is no economy, people, or startups.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

You're contradicting yourself.

pro-climate policies are never intended to be good for the economy
without climate, there is no economy, people, or startups

koonsolo8• 7 years ago

So who is benefiting from this article 13? The copyright holders.

Not the people, not the startups, not the EU companies.

There are things to be said about GDPR and climate, but not so much about article 13. It's just retarded and insane. These people have totally no clue.

"Artificial intelligence can recognize faces today, filter out preferences and even park independently. It should be easy to distinguish between original and parody." - Says the Germany's equivalent to the RIAA

https://twitter.com/gema_news/status/1098263167636041729

sisu20193• 7 years ago

this is the standard of current debate: "people are more important than ...". Well done! Well done! I guess that does give carte blanch to any and all regulations that can be said to be "for the people", so all of them. Wow, nobody though about this before, really good. You are a master philospher, Sir! Pay no mind though to the people who had arranged themselves in mutually beneficial relations that these regulations hinder or destroy because they are not real people. Only those persons who need their PII "protected" (not from the state of course) are really real anyway.

Idiots like this fool are also running the EU, my god was the internet a great place before his ilk got here.

golem14• 7 years ago

my 2 cents: A few days of outrage will do absolutely nothing to stop or change the law. AFAICT, many the EU bureaucrats and politicians fervently believe that they are doing the right thing here, even if it's clearly bonkers.

It's like Brexit that way.

Also: as said elsewhere, article 13 is probably all good news for YouTube, so I doubt that they do anything deeply confrontational. Plus, even if they did, they would just be portrayed as evil lobbying/scheming bastards arm twisting the EU into giving them what they want.

koonsolo8• 7 years ago

as said elsewhere, article 13 is probably all good news for YouTube

This part is not clear to me. On one hand they are big enough to prevent copyrighted material being published. They could also offer filtering services to smaller parties.

But on the other hand, YouTube is still full of copyrighted material. You can find basically any videoclip, cd-rip, or anything else on there. There are even entire movie rips on there, that regularly get deleted. Do they currently pay some big license owner a fee for this? I don't think so (but I'm not sure).

So if this article 13 passes, YouTube will have to remove all of this material. Not only that, but they have to prevent such material being published in the first place. Or somehow make sure that a certain videoclip/cd-rip is payed off to the proper license owner.

I'm not sure if it's even possible for YouTube to make such a filter, without having either a lot of false negatives or positives.

clarry• 7 years ago

my 2 cents: A few days of outrage will do absolutely nothing to stop or change the law.

Yep, it's going to be just another "oh lol there's a protest" and a week later nobody remembers it.

I'd be happy if wikimedia just completely blocked all of Europe for a 2-3 weeks.

IdiocyInAction2• 7 years ago

Well, there's an EU election soon, blocking for a couple of weeks before that would probably suffice to change a few minds.

gerdesj• 7 years ago

GDPR and Article 13 (in The Directive on Copyright) are totally different and unrelated things.

I happen to be a small business owner in the EU and I have many customers who are the same. We all have registered with the ICO (UK) for something like £60 pa and filled in a short questionnaire. We have read the clear guidance on what records to keep and what to not keep - it's not rocket science. That is GDPR for most small businesses. Now, if your business is predicated on building profiles on people or pestering them on the phone or flogging ads etc then I can't help you there - it may be a pain.

Now Article 13: It is designed to try and make the likes of YouTube responsible for not carrying copyrighted works by putting the onus back on them. I believe they hide behind carrier status. I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations.

In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?

dleslie• 7 years ago

In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?

Yes. Let's end the cycle of pretending that we can prevent information from being free.

onli• 7 years ago

I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations.

That's exactly the problem. Stuff of that is protected, and with good reason. But upload filter that would be mandated by article 13 can't detect that fair use. By enforcing them for all platforms like Youtube all of this will vanish from the european internet.

raverbashing3• 7 years ago

I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations.

Yes, you just need to find a way of convincing filters your parody is a parody (or other types of fair use) and not C.I. Oh wait there's no way

StreamBright3• 7 years ago

In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?

Well this is a double edge sword. EU still produces something like 20% of the global GDP and if a company can ignore such a market than let it be. There will be many alternative projects spawn to fill the market need (if there is a real one, not talking about surveillance capitalism products here). Is this that bad for the EU? I don't think so.

kondajaffa• 7 years ago

Yes

krageon8• 7 years ago

Laws are for people, not companies. Thinking about startups before discussing it's impact on your fellow people is frankly a very worrying trend.

cyborgx7• 7 years ago

GDPR is good, Article 13 is bad.

The constant conflating of the two by private data protection oponents is really wearing thin.

DanBC2• 7 years ago

Have you read the content of article 13?

sacado23• 7 years ago

As a user, GDPR is great for me.

As a user, article 13 is bad for me.

pas• 7 years ago

As a user, article 13 is bad for me.

Why?

xxs3• 7 years ago

There is nothing hard about implementing GDPR, esp. for startups that start from ground zero.

The copyright directive is a whole different beast. Those two don't belong together.

I am saying that after implementing GDPR for a large organization with millions of customers and multiple departments.

ionised5• 7 years ago

GDPR was never meant to help business. It was intended to protect individuals from business.

Honestly, if your business can't survive without adhering to basic data protection principles then the world is better of without your company.

StreamBright3• 7 years ago

> GDPR is bad enough for start ups

What?? I have maned to full GDPR compliant product in several startups. What am I doing wrong?

pluma• 7 years ago

"Username checks out" as they say on the alien website.

hansflying• 7 years ago

This law was strongly pushed by the "Axel Springer" company. This company is so evil that there are even browser extensions to just block their websites (see Axel Springer Blocker in chrome extension store)

xiphias22• 7 years ago

The interesting part was while not the whole EU does the protest? It would send a clearer message.

aequitas3• 7 years ago

AFAIK my country's EU representatives are against, so Wikipedia in the Netherlands might not see a need as rallying citizens doesn't change a thing without a clear call to action.

xiphias22• 7 years ago

Aha, I see, that makes sense, still 4 countries are not that many

austincheney2• 7 years ago

tldr; Subcommunities have the flexibility to take independent action regarding policy position.

No so interesting. I was hoping to get a deeper dive into why they disagree with the upcoming law.

cf498• 7 years ago

Why they disagree with censorship? Its a great firewall with the enforcement being pushed to every last person running a website. Its a totalitarian grasp for the control of the internet as a whole. The protection fee for publishing houses is just an added bonus for a few corrupt institutions on their deathbed.

austincheney2• 7 years ago

Is enforcing copyright censorship? I am not being antagonistic as I have actually no idea what is in this new law.

knight17• 7 years ago

It is interesting to me that only four of them are protesting—German, Czech, Danish, and Slovak—by blacking out their sites on 21 March 2019 in opposition to the proposed EU Copyright Directive.

Why is it that other EU Wikipedia language editions like French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish not joining in the protests? Did they come up with a different conclusion on the potential impact of the new copyright directive? Can people who know about the politics of other EU language Wikipedia comment whether they had discussed of joining this black out?

bArray2• 7 years ago

I support their point of view and agree with their protest, but one reason against this could be the potential politicizing and weaponisation of Wikipedia. Do you want one of the largest collectives of human information to take sides (in any debate) and selectively remove its service?

I think I would prefer a banner or a landing page more as it doesn't introduce any barrier to the information they provide.

tdb7893• 7 years ago

I assume Wikipedia is protesting because it directly affects them. I don't see how it's problematic to advocate for themselves sometimes.

duozerk• 7 years ago

Do you want one of the largest collectives of human information to take sides (in any debate) and selectively remove its service

When that debate is about access to that information, definitely, yes.

Geimfari• 7 years ago

As each Wikipedia project is independant, there's not really any cross-wiki communication and the guidelines can vary quite a bit.

But I would not have supported this, I just don't believe these kind of a stunts are effective, just annoying to users. Everybody already has copyright-directive-warning-fatigue. If you must you can put up a banner.

silvester232• 7 years ago

Everybody already has copyright-directive-warning-fatigue.

If that is you experience, I think you might be living in a bit of a bubble (as we all do, arguably). Anecdotally, I know quite a few people who seem to be pretty unaware of the whole discussion.

bArray2• 7 years ago

"Fixing" the page (return to normal):

1. In the style sheet, remove:

    color: #111 !important;
    background: #111 !important;
    border: 1px #111 solid !important;

2. In the HTML, remove:

    background:#000;color:#000

That's all I could find on a few page visits.

mqus• 7 years ago

alternatively: use reader mode on firefox. this may not enable everything but is at least you can read it...

(I'm somewhat conflicted on using and/or helping circumventing wikipedias efforts)

MrGilbert• 7 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't remove the content completely, using 302-redirects. I'm using uBlock origin, and the whole website looks like a mess. It doesn't even show the "call-to-action" banner, which is required for Average Joe to understand why Wikipedia looks the way it looks.

They could have done better.

neeeee• 7 years ago

Or just use a script as a bookmark: javascript:(function(){ document.getElementById("centralNotice").outerHTML = ""; document.getElementsByClassName("mw-parser-output")[0].className = "";})();

MR4D4• 7 years ago

I think this is great, but I think it would be funnier to just replace all the words with Klingon. That way, things would look like they work, but upon closer inspection, not actually work. The effect would be frustration, and could be made worse if done for a random amount of time.

MR4D4• 7 years ago

Whoever voted me down on this should understand the regulation and why my response was stated as it was. ( for reference, a good critique of the law is here [0]. )

My main issue is that the offenders are basically no longer really in trouble, but the networks (google, FB, reddit, et al) now are. (yes, that's a simplification, but bear with me).

This is akin to punishing the telephone company whenever someone makes a call on their network as part of a crime.

So, at first glance, everything is normal, until it isn't. Hence my comment about replacing the text on a page with Klingon instead - it looks fine, right up until it doesn't. This mirrors the effect of the law - something looks fine, right up until it's determined to be illegal, and then you are f'ed.

So if you disagree with me, then fine, but at least understand why my comment is there - it is supposed to be insidious, because the law is insidious.

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/final-version-eus-copy...

titanix2• 7 years ago

It's good big well known brands like Wikipedia are doing something but seeing the language list (German, Czech, Slovak, Danish) only German is in the top 3 of languages spoken in EU (except English, which will not count in near future anyway). There is missing Swedish and French, and given how French are into protesting, it's sad they didn't join this initiative.

Arkanosis• 7 years ago

“French are into protesting”{{refnec}}

black-tea• 7 years ago

It must have been ten years ago now that I first listened to Richard Stallman's talk called "Copyright vs Community". It's a really enlightening talk and makes it clear how much worse copyright has become over the years. It makes me incredibly sad to see it now regressing even further.

We're already at a point where copyright severely restricts our ability to share our own culture. A couple of years ago we lost what was, by far, the greatest music collection ever put together. Meticulously maintained by people who love music, but destroyed by people who love money. It pains me that people can't even put up YouTube videos with certain music in the background. People can't record their actual lives because parts of their life are owned by other people.

testuser21314• 7 years ago

Making content providers liable about the content they publish seems to me essential to have an healthy internet: I don't understand all the problem about censorship; Am I missing something?

honzzz4• 7 years ago

Consider the difference "making content providers liable for the content they publish" vs "making platforms liable for the content others publish".

testuser21314• 7 years ago

Yes, but currently content providers are making money (not in case of wikipedia, I know) over content that could be against the law (it could be hate speech, harassment, copyright infringement or whatever). For example how are online content providers any difference from traditional newspapers, where the director is accountable for all content published in the newspaper?

koonsolo8• 7 years ago

You are missing the "user content" part.

If I anonymously upload copyrighted material to YouTube, I can sue YouTube. Same with Reddit, Facebook, Steam, Kongregate, Pinterest, Imgur, Instagram, ... .

I'm building a platform where anyone can make a game and share it. If someone names his game "Zelda" or "Tetris", I can get sued. If my competitor uploads his own material to my site, they can sue me.

Theses platforms should have "automated filters that detect copyrighted material, and make a distinction between original and parody". If you know of such system, please tell me.

Staying in Europe with a user content platform makes no sense.

testuser21314• 7 years ago

If the user is anonymous, so as copyright holder, or target of harassment or whatever I can't know who is the creator of the content, it makes perfectly sense for me that you, as host of the content are liable of the content itself. I don't see anything strange about it.

rurban• 7 years ago

Theses platforms should have "automated filters that detect copyrighted material, and make a distinction between original and parody". If you know of such system, please tell me.

That's the whole point in this useless proposed jurisdiction. Such automated filters cannot exist and will never exist. We don't have strong AI which is trained to detect copyright violations, and there never will be one. Such a system would first to know what a protectable work is (in all possible formats). Then it would have to detect violations (in all possible formats). And then it needs to be available to all internet platforms which allows user content, such as e. g. Wikipedia, hackernews or reddit. This is even impossible to implement for Facebook or Google. So why changing a perfectly fine copyright law to something not implementable?

Everybody needs to geoblock EU clients, even every little block with a comments section.

josteink• 7 years ago

Why only four? We need all of Wikipedia to black out. For everyone.

If you want to raise awareness, why do a half-assed job?

koonsolo8• 7 years ago

Here are part of the lyrics of "Enter Sandman" of Metallica:

Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to Never—, Neverland Now I lay me down to sleep Pray the Lord my soul to keep If I die before I wake Pray the Lord my soul to take

YCombinator is now in violation of article 13. Some filter should have prevented me from posting this.

That is what article 13 is about.

xxs3• 7 years ago

Imagine you have translated it to another language of the EU member states (not the one official for the UK [still], Ireland or Malta) Yep, the article 13 is beyond dumb.

avar3• 7 years ago

Article 13 is bad enough without needing to make up absurd interpretations of it. EU law is enforced on the basis of proportionality, and the wording of the proposed directive already covers that.

There's never going to be some legal obligation to remove something like the quote you just posted.

Furthermore, since it's a directive each member state will need to implement it in a way that's compatible with both the directive and its own laws. The countries in the EU all have some sort of concept that's analogous to "fair use", even if that's not what they call it.

koonsolo8• 7 years ago

I could copy an entire blog post here, taking credit myself, instead of referring to it with a link. Would that be "fair use" too, and in which countries?

If that would happen, and the blog owner would sue, to which extend would the proportionality relate to real money? $50, $500, $50000?

belorn• 7 years ago

That might be true from the law perspective, but a major objection to copyright filters is that they go beyond the requirements of copyright law and ignores fair use. Youtube filter being a prime example.

If you include the above quoted snippet of the song in a youtube video, the probability that it will receive a copyright claim is close to 100%. Fair use is a legal defense that a person can use in court, but the purpose of copyright filters and thus the purpose of Article 13 is to resolve the issue in favor of the author before it end up in court. Article 13 in practice eliminates fair use.

Article 13 do not require copyright filters to consider fair use. If it did we would likely see a very nuanced discussion since it would force youtube to change their system in order to be compliant, but alas thats not the case.

If HN implemented a copyright filter we should expect from experience that such filter would not consider fair use, nor would it enforce copyright on the basis of proportionality. We could claim that this result is not the fault of article 13, but that is a naive perspective.

MR4D4• 7 years ago

Ok, I have to be missing something here....

According to your statement:

    Furthermore, since it's a directive each member state will need to implement it in a way that's compatible with both the directive and its own laws. The countries in the EU all have some sort of concept that's analogous to "fair use", even if that's not what they call it.

(which I'll take at face value as true), we have not just one directive, but 28 separate interpretations and enforcements of it because of the number of countries and their respective fair use language?

That's actually even worse!

NIL8• 7 years ago

Well said.

porsager3• 7 years ago

For anyone in Denmark, here are contact details for the MEPs:

- Margrete Auken - +4561625450 - margrete.auken@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/MargreteAuken

- Bendt Bendtsen - bb@bendt.dk - https://twitter.com/BendtEU

- Ole Christensen - +4522200830 - ole.christensen@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/oleeu

- Jørn Dohrmann - +4561623349 - jorn.dohrmann@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/mepdohrmann

- Rina Ronja Kari - +4526701816 - rina@folkebevaegelsen.dk - https://twitter.com/rinakari

- Rikke-Louise Karlsson - rikke-louise.karlsson@europarl.europa.eu

- Jeppe Kofod - +3222837463 - Jeppe.Kofod@ep.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/jeppekofod

- Morten Løkkegaard - +4521608001 - morten.lokkegaard@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/loekkegaard_mep

- Morten Messerschmidt - +4561624232 - Morten.Messerschmidt@ft.dk - https://twitter.com/MrMesserschmidt

- Morten Helveg Petersen - mortenhelveg.petersen@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/mortenhelveg

- Jens Rohde - jens.rohde@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/rohde_jens

- Christel Schaldemose - +4540768626 - christel.schaldemose@ep.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/schaldemosemep

- Anders Primdahl Vistisen - +4553860080 - anders.vistisen@europarl.europa.eu - https://twitter.com/AndersVistisen

testuser21314• 7 years ago

I was not able to find these phone numbers online, where did you get them from?

porsager3• 7 years ago

They were all found on their parties website.

bemmu• 7 years ago

What specifically should one ask them to vote against? I'm sure they have a lot on their plate, so what's a good way to make it easy for them to understand which vote this is about?

porsager3• 7 years ago

The new EU copyright directive. Specifically article 11 (link tax) and article 13 (upload filter).

This site explains it well i think: https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/

jhabdas• 7 years ago

Re Article 11 foundation states for-profit information aggregators will be restricted to snippets. This is good for liberating information as it will help increase the breadth of useful search results for original content.

Re Article 13 and placing increased pressure against the DCMA, you'll probably stop seeing so many 1080p movies on YouTube (hence NewPipe) when you search for "x264 YIFY". That sucks.

Sujan• 7 years ago

Shame that the CTA of e.g. the German Wikipedia is so weak: "Kontaktieren sie ihre Abgeordneten " (translted: contact your representative) which links to https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/de/home.

Besides the site being super slow right now, I couldn't even figure out how to actually find _my_ representative. Is my representative the one of the city where I live? How can I search by city? Is this even by city? Doesn't seem so. So now I have a list of 96 random people. Which ones can actually influence this? Or which one actually need their opinion changed?

I also wouldn't really know how to contact them - just send an email and write that I hate that the make so bad politics that Wikipedia had to shut down their site in protest?

Politics is hard :/

lostmyoldone• 7 years ago

Julia Reda usually posts the good links, so go to her site and have a look around!

horriblePun• 7 years ago

Surprised not to see the Catalonian Wikipedia on that list.

Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

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