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The European Commission is preparing an attack on the hyperlink

421 points by jsnathan 11y ago

mariusz79 11y ago
I no longer care.. fuck it. Let them break the internet. We will not be the only one to face the consequences. I for one, started hoarding data, scraping good websites for valuable information while I still can.
- mbrock 11y ago
  We should also be preparing the infrastructure for a global network that's asynchronous, anonymous, and encrypted. It doesn't seem all that unlikely that the whole notion of a real-time internet is going to collapse or become infeasible for anything but entertainment approved by the corporations and states. And of course that has already happened to some extent. We should maintain a relatively slow grassroots samizdat network. Even the remotest regions should be able to receive dispatches through couriers, and in regions where packet-switched internet is somewhat operational we can distribute the samizdat at net speeds. I suppose I'm thinking of an "interplanetary" network. A network fit for the Firefly universe, if you will.
  - jumperjake 11y ago
    There already are efforts to address this with projects like the IPFS. However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open internet.
    - cJ0th 11y ago
      > However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open internet. I am not sure what you mean by mass adoption. Sure, there has to be a critical mass for it to work. But I don't think that everyone and their dog should use it. Part of what made "the good old days" of the web so awesome was that you needed to put in some hours to actually use it. Thanks to this, it wasn't that interesting for people who didn't want to contribute (somewhat) meaningfully.
      - doctorshady 11y ago
        It doesn't necessarily apply to IPFS, but the increasing amount of "mobile only" users significantly limits what sort of input people can provide.
        undefined0 11y ago
        You should tell Kimble that message, he's currently determined to launch MegaNet using mobiles to store data when they're idle in a p2p network.
        doctorshady 11y ago
        Right, and it's not a bad use of mobile devices, but my point is users can't introduce anywhere near as much input. If everyone were to go in that direction, written word - not to mention programming would take a huge blow.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      Somewhat agreed. However, there is enough repression to provide incentive for semi-shady people to work on these things. Unfortunately piracy seems to be the biggest incentive for secret communications, and while that is indeed productive, it incentivizes high-bandwidth torrents for large files, which is not exactly in line with the most crucial needs (although of course there are important uses for distribution of videos and photos). An interplanetary low-bandwidth Usenet might be the most crucial necessity for the upcoming dystopian future. So I suggest we start encouraging the spread of subversive poetry and politically uncomfortable discussions, to incentivize such a grassroots network.
      - hellbanner 11y ago
        You're best off figuring out other avenues to do this - HN is preaching to the choir.
        nitrogen 11y ago
        You need a choir to make a chorus.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - undefined0 11y ago
      Am I the only one who prefers the current internet over IPFS? IPFS exposes my IP to anyone who wants to know about the websites I'm visiting. As seen with BitTorrent, that power gets abused significantly. I would prefer a IPFS+Usenet solution, separating the nodes from the clients. What would be even better is if I could choose to connect exclusively to [any country here] nodes, and then I can feel comfortable knowing my traffic is remaining within borders that I can trust with privacy laws.
      - jumperjake 11y ago
        I believe that the underlying transport mechanism is not part of IPFS; You can use IPFS over Tor to insure privacy. Also, you can run nodes on other systems. This is effectively what `https://ipfs.io` https://ipfs.io` is.
blazespin 11y ago
lol. it wouldn't break the internet. it would just break european websites. I applaud Julia's euro-centric ego though. I agree though, let them do it. Someone has to show everyone what nonsense this is. Cautionary tales serve a purpose.
philip142au 11y ago
It really doesn't matter, I will make my own internet.
- hippo8 11y ago
  With blackjack and hookers.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - clusterfoo 11y ago
    So... the Internet.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Unapolgetically meta, but has anyone else noticed the rise of what I'll call "Reddit style" comments on HN recently? Subjectively, I've noticed more and more joke comment threads that a year ago, were never seen here.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Yes. It's not just new accounts either.
      - hellbanner 11y ago
        You think that discussion naturally tends towards "let's not take this seriously and I like being funny", so it's destined overtime?
        DanBC 11y ago
        I don't know. I just suddenly started seeing a bunch of pun threads. A year or so ago they would have been downvoted and had people making polite posts about how that kind of thing isn't welcome here. But these didn't seem to have downvotes. I have no idea if they got flags or not. Maybe I just started noticing something that's been here a long time? It'd be interesting to see if mods noticed anything.
joeyspn 11y ago
IPFS, anyone? https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/
- jumperjake 11y ago
  I completely support the IPFS (especially with them keeping content hosting explicitly out of scope). The problem I faced when trying to leverage IPFS for a project is that the reference implementation is very difficult to use in languages other than Go, and to completely embed in applications (as in staticly linking to sqlite).
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    I guess it just needs time for maturing: more languages and better UX. If IPFS finally piggybacks on the Ethereum ecosystem it will accelerate considerably this...
  - ashark 11y ago
    Yeah, I like Go, but the reference implementation should have been a C library (or similar). There are splinter projects trying to implement it for other languages, but they're either already dead or moving at a snail's pace. I love the idea, but that decision leaves me with little confidence that it'll catch on.
- cJ0th 11y ago
  Couldn't EU telcos just block this protocol and declare it a special service (thanks to the new net-neutrality ruling) ?
  - M2Ys4U 11y ago
    No. That's not what "specialised service" means.
chris_wot 11y ago
I would have thought that those in European nations would have learned from their mistakes by now. Spain did this, initially only some companies demanded money and so Google just removed them from the index. Then the companies realised it was a disaster. Then the Spanish government made it mandatory for everyone to pay the media companies, regardless - and they weren't allowed to do it directly either. They had to pay the state, who then paid the publisher. Nobody was allowed to opt-out. So Google News pulled out entirely. It was an unmitigated disaster... for the publishers: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains-google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-publishers/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-s... To quote that article: Whatever loss of traffic occurs due to readers who may read a news aggregator and then choose not to read an entire story, is more than made up for by the "market expansion" effect, the study found. In other words, given access to a news aggregator like Google, people read much more news. The NERA analysis found a 6 percent overall drop in traffic from the Spanish Google News closure and a 14 percent drop for smaller publications. Those numbers are slightly smaller than a GigaOm analysis from last year, which found traffic drop-offs of 10 to 15 percent.
- joeyspn 11y ago
  The spanish gov bluff lasted a couple of weeks... (until the big media groups realised how bad the profit-loss was) http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/15/that-was-fast-spain-already-in-full-retreat-over-google-tax/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/15/that-was-...
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Actually, I believe it's still in effect. Edit: yup, it is: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study-spains-google-tax-news-shows-how-much-damage-it-has-done.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study...
    - joeyspn 11y ago
      The joke is that they tried to retreat... Yes, this is the same gov that taxes the sun... (and probably soon will try to rent cubic meters of air so the spaniards can breathe)
DominikR 11y ago
This is one of the reasons why the IT industry in the EU is so weak when compared to the US. As a citizen of an EU state I can't help but feel that we are here governed by complete morons.
- jstalin 11y ago
  More regulation begets more regulation. You can't expect bureaucrats who have been given authority over something to sit back and decide when they're done regulating.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I wouldn't totally blame the bureaucrats here, either. They're sort of like sysadmins: people only pay attention to them when something bad is happening, and that attention is rarely positive. Whereas when things are going well, nobody says, "Thank goodness for the bureaucrats that keep things running smoothly." Their incentives are mostly toward over-regulating. If they over-regulate, they mainly harm invisible potential improvements. Whereas if they under-regulate, the big, obvious failures mean they get in a lot of hot water.
    - tobltobs 11y ago
      VAT MOSS did not only harm invisible potential improvements. It makes thousands of small business economically unviable. Same will be true for the new Oettinger law.
      - charlesdm 11y ago
        To be honest, VAT MOSS was introduced because large (American) companies were gaming the system by routing sales through Luxembourg to avoid significant amounts of VAT. It is nothing more than a counter tax avoidance measure.
        tobltobs 11y ago
        That does not make this stupid law any better. They could have forced Luxembourg to adapt there laws to a more common standard. They could have made an exemption for small amounts.
walterbell 11y ago
Has any organization formally estimated the worldwide, annual economic value generated by the open internet? When copyright (intended to promote the generation of creative works) is abused for control, the loser is the legitimacy of copyright. Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically for control, instead of hiding behind and squandering the legitimate role of copyright.
- tomp 11y ago
  > Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically for control You mean, DRM, rootkits, hardware TPMs, etc? Personally, I prefer copyright, at least it can be easily ignored.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    The problem is that "technological protection" mechanisms are being bound to copyright, the violation of which is being bound to criminal law in TPP/TTIP/RCEP. DRM would have an uphill battle if it could not hitch a ride on the legitimacy of copyright. They need to be separated. One protects transient and ever-changing business models, one protects human creativity in a virtuous circle inspired by past creativity.
    - M2Ys4U 11y ago
      Bypassing DRM has been criminal for decades now, as a result of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and TRIPS.
bitL 11y ago
So we need to go through the legalese in detail and make new definitions of slightly modified original concepts so that the law can't be applied to them anymore - like what the pharma industry does with rebranding old medicine by changing the formula slightly. Ideally, that should also be polymorphic in nature, i.e. the definition/implementation could be changed easily algorithmically. Unless there is some radical change to the law making it algorithmic, it would always be trailing a few years behind. As an EU citizen, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer stupidity of our politicians in the past 2-3 years...
- eximius 11y ago
  Ha! Try being a US citizen! In true 'American style', we are the best at stupid politicians
  - Retra 11y ago
    It's really not a competition.
- fpp 11y ago
  I believe it is more incompetence, lack of technology understanding and / or complete ignorance. You can't explain otherwise how a person like Oettinger can be put in charge of such an important part of the economy. I'm still waiting when they suggest that airline pilots can be replaced with bus drivers to stop them going on strike / industrial action - it's called an Airbus so there shouldn't be much difference, after all it has bus in the name.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    When I worked in air transport we called passenger planes "pressurised buses"
  - merb 11y ago
    He is a shame for his country. Never heard a man speaking english so badly when thats his job. And he never said anything good. He was one of the worst minister of the state i'm living in. Clearly only one guy after him was worse. He is totally stupid and he and his successor managed it that people started to vote other parties on state votes, after over 50 years the CDU dropped out of the state cabinet. And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country. The problem is even if they do completely bad things these politics never needed to fear about any judges against them.
sokoloff 11y ago
> judges established that the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new public, a few questions were left open bis this ruling, however: For example when exactly content can be seen as accessible by the public and how e.g. links surpassing paywalls are to be treated. Links surpassing paywalls are a non-issue, IMO. Those coming-from-Google paywall bypasses are put in place by the content copyright holders specifically for the purpose of making that possible. If they didn't want their paywall bypassed, they wouldn't have built (or would turn off) their paywall bypass for search engines.
- x5n1 11y ago
  The end points are 100% under control of the content owner. They are free to decide who to let in and who not to let in. Why should there be any onus on the linker to do anything whatsoever and not exercise their full rights to use hyperlinks any way that they want to?
bpodgursky 11y ago
Maybe before establishing all these EU bureaucracies they should have focused on establishing a strong bill of rights. The first amendment at least in the US would almost certainly prevent nonsense like this. The EU commissions overall feel like they are flailing around making up the rules they go. At least when courts in the US disagree, it is about adherence to precedent and the constitution, not appeasing whatever group is lobbying them at the time.
- pjc50 11y ago
  * (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. (2) The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.* (At first glance it has more caveats, but in practice they're all present in US 1st amendment caselaw as well)
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    It is not true that these are remotely equivalent. US case-law says, you have freedom of speech unless it specifically calls for violence or threatens very, very, direct harm ie calling "fire" in a theater (and yes, even copyrighted material can be quoted or satirized as necessary to make a political statement). "For the prevention of disorder of crime, for the protection of health and morals for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" -- those are wide, gaping holes which make this statement absolutely useless.
    - jbuzbee 11y ago
pestaa 11y ago
Am I the only one who finds these regulations increasingly funny? I want to see how they would react to URL shortening services, base64-encoded outgoing redirects, links injections only on click events; you know, the gray tactics the whole internet already uses! Please explain this one thing to me: why don't politicians work with field experts? Not just IT, but any domain, really.
- rsync 11y ago
  I wrote about this 13 years ago during the Les Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp. court case(s): http://www.kozubik.com/published/decisions.txt http://www.kozubik.com/published/decisions.txt I went the other way, though - my thought experiment was, what if you came up with a standard way to "say" a URL in plain english. As in, just a wordy, colloquial way to describe the content that is in a URL. Obviously this would fall under free speech and nobody would consider barring such speech ... So I think now, as I did then, that if you really want to demonstrate the ridiculous nature of these proposals, you need a browser plug-in that allows you to describe URLs in plain english and then demonstrate that to the court (or whomever).
  - jahewson 11y ago
    But most copyrighted works are already in plain English and aren't excluded from copyright because of "free speach", so that argument doesn't add up. You're trying to argue that anything that can be written in plain English can't be subjected to copyright.
    - relkor 11y ago
      I don't think that is what rsync is talking about at all. I read it to mean that instead of using a specific hyperlink, that you could use a collection of English words that would allow some hypothetical computer system to locate the same resource. Reading rsync's linked article, >> Consider also that it would be trivial for a programmer of a web browser to alter the behavior of the browser such that a normal text link that points to a file determined to be a picture would result in the actual picture being displayed - exactly as it would have been if an inline link were being used. Further, it would also be trivial to rewrite the browser to display the picture in question given an english sentence on the web page that described the address of the picture, thus prompting this (as yet) imaginary web browser to, once again, display the picture. >> The important point is that the behavior of any given web browser as relates to the use of links (inline or otherwise) is in fact completely arbitrary. Therefore the prohibition of one kind of linking over another not only demonstrates a failure to grasp how the underlying technology works (and could be made to work) but also represents a legal precedent that would require constant maintenance and revision to remain relevant.
ohthehugemanate 11y ago
I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology. Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question. It's not possible to win in that situation. You're asking someone whose paradigm of video was formed by the advent of color TV, to understand the cultural and technological consequences of popcorn time. It's like the tech problems of WWI: generals who only knew cavalry rushes continued ordering i calvary rushes, even against machine gun fire and even against staggering numbers of dead. So I think I give up now. Technological issues may as well ignore the legal framework, because the legal framework ignores the technological issues. If we stop fighting, the rules will get so ridiculous as to he openly impossible to satisfy, offering industries the choice to either ignore them, or go out of business. In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. So fuck em. Legislators can figure it out when it hits their tax receipts.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  "It only strangles big industry" Actually it helps the big industry as the small business owner are struggling. For example the VAT MOSS rule. Amazon, Google or Apple will not have any problem to fulfill this law. A small company selling software to EU customer will not be able to handle the bureaucratic effort.
  - oh_sigh 11y ago
    Will cheap services pop up which help small companies fulfill MOSS requirements while not being an onerous burden?
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      Not in EU; don't know anything. What stops people from simply contracting or incorporating in another country like, say, Panama or something, and billing from there? Then VAT would be out of scope wouldn't it?
jjuhl 11y ago
This is so broken. I'm giving up. The political system is broken beyond repair.
Kristine1975 11y ago
There's a lot of "considering" and "seems" in the article, and skimming the leaked document I didn't find anything definite either. So I'm not particulary worried.
mcs_ 11y ago
when was internet free? i always have paid to use it. i understand free software but internet is here cause an infrastructure was created and deployed (means paid). my lan is free (cause i paid for that). i don't get the point. someone wants to control a wan. is that a news?
andor 11y ago
"the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new public" That's not really the most straight forward reasoning? I'd say linking is not COPYright infringement because nothing is ever copied.
dclowd9901 11y ago
Since democracy seems incapable of progressing with changes in the world, would it ever be possible to have a bureaucratic technocracy? Something where technocrats write up and implement legislation rather than people who have no understanding?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Technocracy seems to be as much of a myth as meritocracy. How do you decide who is actually an expert in their field? And they are still completely undemocratic.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Um, it's not democracy that's at fault. Legislative structures first goal is to protect capital. In practice this leads to lobbyists influencing legal decisions. In the fantasy technocracy - unless it was totalitarian communism - there would be instruments to sound the markets for need for legislation and big capital would have as much say so there as here now.
tetheno 11y ago
"And it's clear: When, like that, the number of subscribers dramatically declines, young people no longer subscribe to newspapers as my generation did, when the number of papers sold at newsstands declines, when the classified ads for the labour market, for used cars and for apartments decline because it all becomes an online service then newspapers are in existential danger. One can either accept that, or act now – in five years it would be too late." I say, let them die. Most newspapers are a joke. I don't subscribe to them because it's actually a way to become misinformed about any specific topic. Or at least that's what I see in their take of any topic I know profoundly. There are alternatives. Reader-supported news like LWN seem to be working. I get most of my content from topic specific websites, blogs, and mail lists. About the classified ads. Why is that a problem at all? "Maybe Google will only accept an European provision, accept European instruments because then, if needed, via the competition law and the European Commissioner for Competition measures, penalties and legal action in case of breach of European rules are possible" Transcription -> Steal.
mtgx 11y ago
Take Ottinger out of the Commission, and this idea will die. He was the one pushing for such a tax in Germany, too. He has strong ties with GEMA there.
5ersi 11y ago
Will this also way the other way around ? I.e. will newspapers also need to pay if they link to external source?
dreamdu5t 11y ago
Hyperlinks are not a problem. Government is a problem. The EA and it's legislators are a problem.
sacado2 11y ago
A hyperlink is the same as a reference in a book. That means referencing a precise portion of a book (for instance, ISBN + page number, or just title + publisher + chapter number) would become a copyright violation too. I'm not sure the EC is conscious of that, because it would have huge consequences. The cost of academic research papers, for instance, with their pages full of references, would become dramatically high to produce, or even impossible (what if I don't want you to talk about my works ?)
ryanmarsh 11y ago
I'd like to know how many of the people complaining here about their legislators have called, written, or visited* (yes you can do that) said legislators to help educate them. *In the U.S.
chejazi 11y ago
Silly for digital media to try and leech off of the more successful tech cos. In general, digital media is scrambling with various monetization strategies. But they're thinking about the problem wrong. They obsess over how to monetize people already on their site. Instead, they should start asking how they can monetize people coming to their site. I think the proposition linked by OP is a very premature recognition of that. The proposed solution is way out in left field, but there are saner approaches, such as the use of interstitial advertising. Of course, now adblockers become relevant to the discussion, and I won't go down that rabbit hole (here, at least.) Disclosure: I operate a link shortener [1] that pays people based on their traffic using interstitial advertising. [1] https://credhot.com https://credhot.com
alkonaut 11y ago
I don't understand. Help me. Why do you even PUT content at a linkable url online if you don't want anyone linking to it? If I wanted to control exactly who views my content and where they come from I can just check headers for internal linking or generate unique single-use URLs for each visitor. What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?
- kalleboo 11y ago
  > What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover? Newspapers want Google to give them money
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    Or else what? Or they will stop being indexed by Google? Why would they want that? It makes no sense!
    - DanBC 11y ago
      It doesn't make any sense. Google should sometimes just give people what they claim they want. "Be careful what you wish for". Unions often have "work to rule" - you do what you're paid to do and no more, and it's an effective method of industrial action. If a newspaper site doesn't want Google to index them Google should just drop them. Maybe provide help about setting up robots.txt. Does Google have a blog post about why they index pages behind a paywall, and why they're happy to not index pages behind paywalls? (I understand it as "we want to index stuff that people can get to. If they can't get to it we don't want to index it") Or maybe Google should just give ads and paywalled content the same shaded background?
endymi0n 11y ago
And another strike by the same EU Digital Economy commissioner (!) that "had no sympathy for Jennifer Lawrence when she happens to post her private pictures online". I'm pretty hopeless, especially because there's no way on gods green earth to get rid of this guy. EU is so high above country level politics (yet defines >80% of laws in the end), it's hard to even get people to the voting booth. And even if they do, it's completely parliamentary, no chance to influence anything. It doesn't help that completely incompetent politicians in the country parties get dilbertized one level up so they "can't hurt anymore". This pirate politician is about the only one there decently transparent and accountable.
Radle 11y ago
Any fellow Europeans here, who remember the good old time, when we used to make jokes about American Politics being so stupid? I feel sad, very sad.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mikerichards 11y ago
When you have a culture of statism this is what you get. You elect governments that want to and do micromanage your lives. Don't blame it on the politicians. You guys elected these people. They're just following the ideology of their politics.
- alexro 11y ago
  Don't you think that the whole 'democracy' model is flawed from the top to the bottom? If there were no good candidates offered to the public, how would the public choose a good one? And if a good one would somehow emerge, it is trivial to 'catch him' with a pack of heroin or being related to 'enemies', isn't it?
Joeri 11y ago
Time to play devil's advocate and do a thought experiment. What if we created a site containing every word and every conjugation in a way that could be linked to. This work is clearly not a copyright violation. What if we then wrote a "compression" program that took any text file and converted it to a file containing only links to this site. Few would argue that is not a copyright violation. Yet the resulting file contains nothing of the original, it is just a link. If linking to a whole text with a single link is not a copyright violation, at what point between that and our "compressed" file does it cross the line, and why? Or, put another way, if links had been copyright violations from the start, would we think that it was a sensible and logical characteristic of copyright?
- waxjar 11y ago
  That experiment has been done before! https://github.com/philipl/pifs https://github.com/philipl/pifs
  - sonthonax 11y ago
    What is the legal implication of distributing a range of Pii that can be translated into copyrighted material?
- spc476 11y ago
  Because governments and large corporations want colored (or coloured) bits. (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)
rubiquity 11y ago
I think it's a great idea because those media companies will get crippled when everyone stops linking to them. What a great way to put a serious dent in an annoying industry.
waxjar 11y ago
When I lock my front door and leave a spare key under the doormat, my insurance company is not obliged by law to pay for any damages if the spare key is used by thieves to enter my house. I could have easily prevented the situation. Content publishers should properly lock their front doors, too, and not have spare keys lying around all over the place.
ikeboy 11y ago
Remember all these sites that ban hyperlinking to them in their ToS: https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+from+any+other+website+without+our+initial+and+ongoing+consent https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+fro...
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Let it pass. Let these nimwits embarrass themselves.
fried_chicken 11y ago
Just let them pass the legislation. Any media company actually trying to enforce their "rights" will promptly die.
henrikschroder 11y ago
If you are a EU citizen, vote pirate in the EU elections. We got Christian Engström last term, and we have Julia Reda this term. They're doing a ton of good. We need more.
kalleboo 11y ago
Why are tech companies so bad at lobbying? If a small, dying industry like publishing is strong enough to push through stuff like this, why can't cash-flush tech companies combat it?
scotty79 11y ago
Internet already has this. If you want to be paid by google for linking to your site you just need to put NOINDEX in proper place in the page header. Though it's really up to google if they choose to list you and pay you or not list you.
Amarandei 11y ago
What exactly makes a text a hyperlink? Does it have to be only the usual <a href="#">text</a> ? What if I do this: <div link="#">text</div> And then I use JavaScript to redirect, is it still considered a hyperlink? Have I just found a loop hole? :)

421 points by jsnathan 11y ago

I no longer care.. fuck it. Let them break the internet. We will not be the only one to face the consequences. I for one, started hoarding data, scraping good websites for valuable information while I still can.

mbrock 11y ago
We should also be preparing the infrastructure for a global network that's asynchronous, anonymous, and encrypted. It doesn't seem all that unlikely that the whole notion of a real-time internet is going to collapse or become infeasible for anything but entertainment approved by the corporations and states. And of course that has already happened to some extent. We should maintain a relatively slow grassroots samizdat network. Even the remotest regions should be able to receive dispatches through couriers, and in regions where packet-switched internet is somewhat operational we can distribute the samizdat at net speeds. I suppose I'm thinking of an "interplanetary" network. A network fit for the Firefly universe, if you will.
- jumperjake 11y ago
  There already are efforts to address this with projects like the IPFS. However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open internet.
  - cJ0th 11y ago
    > However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open internet. I am not sure what you mean by mass adoption. Sure, there has to be a critical mass for it to work. But I don't think that everyone and their dog should use it. Part of what made "the good old days" of the web so awesome was that you needed to put in some hours to actually use it. Thanks to this, it wasn't that interesting for people who didn't want to contribute (somewhat) meaningfully.
    - doctorshady 11y ago
      It doesn't necessarily apply to IPFS, but the increasing amount of "mobile only" users significantly limits what sort of input people can provide.
      - undefined0 11y ago
        You should tell Kimble that message, he's currently determined to launch MegaNet using mobiles to store data when they're idle in a p2p network.
        doctorshady 11y ago
        Right, and it's not a bad use of mobile devices, but my point is users can't introduce anywhere near as much input. If everyone were to go in that direction, written word - not to mention programming would take a huge blow.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Somewhat agreed. However, there is enough repression to provide incentive for semi-shady people to work on these things. Unfortunately piracy seems to be the biggest incentive for secret communications, and while that is indeed productive, it incentivizes high-bandwidth torrents for large files, which is not exactly in line with the most crucial needs (although of course there are important uses for distribution of videos and photos). An interplanetary low-bandwidth Usenet might be the most crucial necessity for the upcoming dystopian future. So I suggest we start encouraging the spread of subversive poetry and politically uncomfortable discussions, to incentivize such a grassroots network.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      You're best off figuring out other avenues to do this - HN is preaching to the choir.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        You need a choir to make a chorus.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - undefined0 11y ago
    Am I the only one who prefers the current internet over IPFS? IPFS exposes my IP to anyone who wants to know about the websites I'm visiting. As seen with BitTorrent, that power gets abused significantly. I would prefer a IPFS+Usenet solution, separating the nodes from the clients. What would be even better is if I could choose to connect exclusively to [any country here] nodes, and then I can feel comfortable knowing my traffic is remaining within borders that I can trust with privacy laws.
    - jumperjake 11y ago
      I believe that the underlying transport mechanism is not part of IPFS; You can use IPFS over Tor to insure privacy. Also, you can run nodes on other systems. This is effectively what `https://ipfs.io` https://ipfs.io` is.

blazespin 11y ago

lol. it wouldn't break the internet. it would just break european websites. I applaud Julia's euro-centric ego though. I agree though, let them do it. Someone has to show everyone what nonsense this is. Cautionary tales serve a purpose.

philip142au 11y ago

It really doesn't matter, I will make my own internet.

hippo8 11y ago
With blackjack and hookers.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- clusterfoo 11y ago
  So... the Internet.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Unapolgetically meta, but has anyone else noticed the rise of what I'll call "Reddit style" comments on HN recently? Subjectively, I've noticed more and more joke comment threads that a year ago, were never seen here.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Yes. It's not just new accounts either.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      You think that discussion naturally tends towards "let's not take this seriously and I like being funny", so it's destined overtime?
      - DanBC 11y ago
        I don't know. I just suddenly started seeing a bunch of pun threads. A year or so ago they would have been downvoted and had people making polite posts about how that kind of thing isn't welcome here. But these didn't seem to have downvotes. I have no idea if they got flags or not. Maybe I just started noticing something that's been here a long time? It'd be interesting to see if mods noticed anything.

joeyspn 11y ago

IPFS, anyone? https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/

jumperjake 11y ago
I completely support the IPFS (especially with them keeping content hosting explicitly out of scope). The problem I faced when trying to leverage IPFS for a project is that the reference implementation is very difficult to use in languages other than Go, and to completely embed in applications (as in staticly linking to sqlite).
- joeyspn 11y ago
  I guess it just needs time for maturing: more languages and better UX. If IPFS finally piggybacks on the Ethereum ecosystem it will accelerate considerably this...
- ashark 11y ago
  Yeah, I like Go, but the reference implementation should have been a C library (or similar). There are splinter projects trying to implement it for other languages, but they're either already dead or moving at a snail's pace. I love the idea, but that decision leaves me with little confidence that it'll catch on.
cJ0th 11y ago
Couldn't EU telcos just block this protocol and declare it a special service (thanks to the new net-neutrality ruling) ?
- M2Ys4U 11y ago
  No. That's not what "specialised service" means.

chris_wot 11y ago

I would have thought that those in European nations would have learned from their mistakes by now. Spain did this, initially only some companies demanded money and so Google just removed them from the index. Then the companies realised it was a disaster. Then the Spanish government made it mandatory for everyone to pay the media companies, regardless - and they weren't allowed to do it directly either. They had to pay the state, who then paid the publisher. Nobody was allowed to opt-out. So Google News pulled out entirely. It was an unmitigated disaster... for the publishers: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains-google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-publishers/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-s... To quote that article: Whatever loss of traffic occurs due to readers who may read a news aggregator and then choose not to read an entire story, is more than made up for by the "market expansion" effect, the study found. In other words, given access to a news aggregator like Google, people read much more news. The NERA analysis found a 6 percent overall drop in traffic from the Spanish Google News closure and a 14 percent drop for smaller publications. Those numbers are slightly smaller than a GigaOm analysis from last year, which found traffic drop-offs of 10 to 15 percent.

joeyspn 11y ago
The spanish gov bluff lasted a couple of weeks... (until the big media groups realised how bad the profit-loss was) http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/15/that-was-fast-spain-already-in-full-retreat-over-google-tax/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/15/that-was-...
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Actually, I believe it's still in effect. Edit: yup, it is: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study-spains-google-tax-news-shows-how-much-damage-it-has-done.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150725/14510131761/study...
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    The joke is that they tried to retreat... Yes, this is the same gov that taxes the sun... (and probably soon will try to rent cubic meters of air so the spaniards can breathe)

DominikR 11y ago

This is one of the reasons why the IT industry in the EU is so weak when compared to the US. As a citizen of an EU state I can't help but feel that we are here governed by complete morons.

jstalin 11y ago
More regulation begets more regulation. You can't expect bureaucrats who have been given authority over something to sit back and decide when they're done regulating.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I wouldn't totally blame the bureaucrats here, either. They're sort of like sysadmins: people only pay attention to them when something bad is happening, and that attention is rarely positive. Whereas when things are going well, nobody says, "Thank goodness for the bureaucrats that keep things running smoothly." Their incentives are mostly toward over-regulating. If they over-regulate, they mainly harm invisible potential improvements. Whereas if they under-regulate, the big, obvious failures mean they get in a lot of hot water.
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    VAT MOSS did not only harm invisible potential improvements. It makes thousands of small business economically unviable. Same will be true for the new Oettinger law.
    - charlesdm 11y ago
      To be honest, VAT MOSS was introduced because large (American) companies were gaming the system by routing sales through Luxembourg to avoid significant amounts of VAT. It is nothing more than a counter tax avoidance measure.
      - tobltobs 11y ago
        That does not make this stupid law any better. They could have forced Luxembourg to adapt there laws to a more common standard. They could have made an exemption for small amounts.

walterbell 11y ago

Has any organization formally estimated the worldwide, annual economic value generated by the open internet? When copyright (intended to promote the generation of creative works) is abused for control, the loser is the legitimacy of copyright. Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically for control, instead of hiding behind and squandering the legitimate role of copyright.

tomp 11y ago
> Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically for control You mean, DRM, rootkits, hardware TPMs, etc? Personally, I prefer copyright, at least it can be easily ignored.
- walterbell 11y ago
  The problem is that "technological protection" mechanisms are being bound to copyright, the violation of which is being bound to criminal law in TPP/TTIP/RCEP. DRM would have an uphill battle if it could not hitch a ride on the legitimacy of copyright. They need to be separated. One protects transient and ever-changing business models, one protects human creativity in a virtuous circle inspired by past creativity.
  - M2Ys4U 11y ago
    Bypassing DRM has been criminal for decades now, as a result of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and TRIPS.

bitL 11y ago

So we need to go through the legalese in detail and make new definitions of slightly modified original concepts so that the law can't be applied to them anymore - like what the pharma industry does with rebranding old medicine by changing the formula slightly. Ideally, that should also be polymorphic in nature, i.e. the definition/implementation could be changed easily algorithmically. Unless there is some radical change to the law making it algorithmic, it would always be trailing a few years behind. As an EU citizen, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer stupidity of our politicians in the past 2-3 years...

eximius 11y ago
Ha! Try being a US citizen! In true 'American style', we are the best at stupid politicians
- Retra 11y ago
  It's really not a competition.
fpp 11y ago
I believe it is more incompetence, lack of technology understanding and / or complete ignorance. You can't explain otherwise how a person like Oettinger can be put in charge of such an important part of the economy. I'm still waiting when they suggest that airline pilots can be replaced with bus drivers to stop them going on strike / industrial action - it's called an Airbus so there shouldn't be much difference, after all it has bus in the name.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  When I worked in air transport we called passenger planes "pressurised buses"
- merb 11y ago
  He is a shame for his country. Never heard a man speaking english so badly when thats his job. And he never said anything good. He was one of the worst minister of the state i'm living in. Clearly only one guy after him was worse. He is totally stupid and he and his successor managed it that people started to vote other parties on state votes, after over 50 years the CDU dropped out of the state cabinet. And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country. The problem is even if they do completely bad things these politics never needed to fear about any judges against them.

sokoloff 11y ago

> judges established that the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new public, a few questions were left open bis this ruling, however: For example when exactly content can be seen as accessible by the public and how e.g. links surpassing paywalls are to be treated. Links surpassing paywalls are a non-issue, IMO. Those coming-from-Google paywall bypasses are put in place by the content copyright holders specifically for the purpose of making that possible. If they didn't want their paywall bypassed, they wouldn't have built (or would turn off) their paywall bypass for search engines.

x5n1 11y ago
The end points are 100% under control of the content owner. They are free to decide who to let in and who not to let in. Why should there be any onus on the linker to do anything whatsoever and not exercise their full rights to use hyperlinks any way that they want to?

bpodgursky 11y ago

Maybe before establishing all these EU bureaucracies they should have focused on establishing a strong bill of rights. The first amendment at least in the US would almost certainly prevent nonsense like this. The EU commissions overall feel like they are flailing around making up the rules they go. At least when courts in the US disagree, it is about adherence to precedent and the constitution, not appeasing whatever group is lobbying them at the time.

pjc50 11y ago
* (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. (2) The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.* (At first glance it has more caveats, but in practice they're all present in US 1st amendment caselaw as well)
- bpodgursky 11y ago
  It is not true that these are remotely equivalent. US case-law says, you have freedom of speech unless it specifically calls for violence or threatens very, very, direct harm ie calling "fire" in a theater (and yes, even copyrighted material can be quoted or satirized as necessary to make a political statement). "For the prevention of disorder of crime, for the protection of health and morals for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" -- those are wide, gaping holes which make this statement absolutely useless.
  - jbuzbee 11y ago

pestaa 11y ago

Am I the only one who finds these regulations increasingly funny? I want to see how they would react to URL shortening services, base64-encoded outgoing redirects, links injections only on click events; you know, the gray tactics the whole internet already uses! Please explain this one thing to me: why don't politicians work with field experts? Not just IT, but any domain, really.

rsync 11y ago
I wrote about this 13 years ago during the Les Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corp. court case(s): http://www.kozubik.com/published/decisions.txt http://www.kozubik.com/published/decisions.txt I went the other way, though - my thought experiment was, what if you came up with a standard way to "say" a URL in plain english. As in, just a wordy, colloquial way to describe the content that is in a URL. Obviously this would fall under free speech and nobody would consider barring such speech ... So I think now, as I did then, that if you really want to demonstrate the ridiculous nature of these proposals, you need a browser plug-in that allows you to describe URLs in plain english and then demonstrate that to the court (or whomever).
- jahewson 11y ago
  But most copyrighted works are already in plain English and aren't excluded from copyright because of "free speach", so that argument doesn't add up. You're trying to argue that anything that can be written in plain English can't be subjected to copyright.
  - relkor 11y ago
    I don't think that is what rsync is talking about at all. I read it to mean that instead of using a specific hyperlink, that you could use a collection of English words that would allow some hypothetical computer system to locate the same resource. Reading rsync's linked article, >> Consider also that it would be trivial for a programmer of a web browser to alter the behavior of the browser such that a normal text link that points to a file determined to be a picture would result in the actual picture being displayed - exactly as it would have been if an inline link were being used. Further, it would also be trivial to rewrite the browser to display the picture in question given an english sentence on the web page that described the address of the picture, thus prompting this (as yet) imaginary web browser to, once again, display the picture. >> The important point is that the behavior of any given web browser as relates to the use of links (inline or otherwise) is in fact completely arbitrary. Therefore the prohibition of one kind of linking over another not only demonstrates a failure to grasp how the underlying technology works (and could be made to work) but also represents a legal precedent that would require constant maintenance and revision to remain relevant.

ohthehugemanate 11y ago

I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology. Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question. It's not possible to win in that situation. You're asking someone whose paradigm of video was formed by the advent of color TV, to understand the cultural and technological consequences of popcorn time. It's like the tech problems of WWI: generals who only knew cavalry rushes continued ordering i calvary rushes, even against machine gun fire and even against staggering numbers of dead. So I think I give up now. Technological issues may as well ignore the legal framework, because the legal framework ignores the technological issues. If we stop fighting, the rules will get so ridiculous as to he openly impossible to satisfy, offering industries the choice to either ignore them, or go out of business. In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. So fuck em. Legislators can figure it out when it hits their tax receipts.

tobltobs 11y ago
"It only strangles big industry" Actually it helps the big industry as the small business owner are struggling. For example the VAT MOSS rule. Amazon, Google or Apple will not have any problem to fulfill this law. A small company selling software to EU customer will not be able to handle the bureaucratic effort.
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  Will cheap services pop up which help small companies fulfill MOSS requirements while not being an onerous burden?
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Not in EU; don't know anything. What stops people from simply contracting or incorporating in another country like, say, Panama or something, and billing from there? Then VAT would be out of scope wouldn't it?

jjuhl 11y ago

This is so broken. I'm giving up. The political system is broken beyond repair.

Kristine1975 11y ago

There's a lot of "considering" and "seems" in the article, and skimming the leaked document I didn't find anything definite either. So I'm not particulary worried.

mcs_ 11y ago

when was internet free? i always have paid to use it. i understand free software but internet is here cause an infrastructure was created and deployed (means paid). my lan is free (cause i paid for that). i don't get the point. someone wants to control a wan. is that a news?

andor 11y ago

"the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new public" That's not really the most straight forward reasoning? I'd say linking is not COPYright infringement because nothing is ever copied.

dclowd9901 11y ago

Since democracy seems incapable of progressing with changes in the world, would it ever be possible to have a bureaucratic technocracy? Something where technocrats write up and implement legislation rather than people who have no understanding?

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Technocracy seems to be as much of a myth as meritocracy. How do you decide who is actually an expert in their field? And they are still completely undemocratic.
fsloth 11y ago
Um, it's not democracy that's at fault. Legislative structures first goal is to protect capital. In practice this leads to lobbyists influencing legal decisions. In the fantasy technocracy - unless it was totalitarian communism - there would be instruments to sound the markets for need for legislation and big capital would have as much say so there as here now.

tetheno 11y ago

"And it's clear: When, like that, the number of subscribers dramatically declines, young people no longer subscribe to newspapers as my generation did, when the number of papers sold at newsstands declines, when the classified ads for the labour market, for used cars and for apartments decline because it all becomes an online service then newspapers are in existential danger. One can either accept that, or act now – in five years it would be too late." I say, let them die. Most newspapers are a joke. I don't subscribe to them because it's actually a way to become misinformed about any specific topic. Or at least that's what I see in their take of any topic I know profoundly. There are alternatives. Reader-supported news like LWN seem to be working. I get most of my content from topic specific websites, blogs, and mail lists. About the classified ads. Why is that a problem at all? "Maybe Google will only accept an European provision, accept European instruments because then, if needed, via the competition law and the European Commissioner for Competition measures, penalties and legal action in case of breach of European rules are possible" Transcription -> Steal.

mtgx 11y ago

Take Ottinger out of the Commission, and this idea will die. He was the one pushing for such a tax in Germany, too. He has strong ties with GEMA there.

5ersi 11y ago

Will this also way the other way around ? I.e. will newspapers also need to pay if they link to external source?

dreamdu5t 11y ago

Hyperlinks are not a problem. Government is a problem. The EA and it's legislators are a problem.

sacado2 11y ago

A hyperlink is the same as a reference in a book. That means referencing a precise portion of a book (for instance, ISBN + page number, or just title + publisher + chapter number) would become a copyright violation too. I'm not sure the EC is conscious of that, because it would have huge consequences. The cost of academic research papers, for instance, with their pages full of references, would become dramatically high to produce, or even impossible (what if I don't want you to talk about my works ?)

ryanmarsh 11y ago

I'd like to know how many of the people complaining here about their legislators have called, written, or visited* (yes you can do that) said legislators to help educate them. *In the U.S.

chejazi 11y ago

Silly for digital media to try and leech off of the more successful tech cos. In general, digital media is scrambling with various monetization strategies. But they're thinking about the problem wrong. They obsess over how to monetize people already on their site. Instead, they should start asking how they can monetize people coming to their site. I think the proposition linked by OP is a very premature recognition of that. The proposed solution is way out in left field, but there are saner approaches, such as the use of interstitial advertising. Of course, now adblockers become relevant to the discussion, and I won't go down that rabbit hole (here, at least.) Disclosure: I operate a link shortener [1] that pays people based on their traffic using interstitial advertising. [1] https://credhot.com https://credhot.com

alkonaut 11y ago

I don't understand. Help me. Why do you even PUT content at a linkable url online if you don't want anyone linking to it? If I wanted to control exactly who views my content and where they come from I can just check headers for internal linking or generate unique single-use URLs for each visitor. What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?

kalleboo 11y ago
> What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover? Newspapers want Google to give them money
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Or else what? Or they will stop being indexed by Google? Why would they want that? It makes no sense!
  - DanBC 11y ago
    It doesn't make any sense. Google should sometimes just give people what they claim they want. "Be careful what you wish for". Unions often have "work to rule" - you do what you're paid to do and no more, and it's an effective method of industrial action. If a newspaper site doesn't want Google to index them Google should just drop them. Maybe provide help about setting up robots.txt. Does Google have a blog post about why they index pages behind a paywall, and why they're happy to not index pages behind paywalls? (I understand it as "we want to index stuff that people can get to. If they can't get to it we don't want to index it") Or maybe Google should just give ads and paywalled content the same shaded background?

endymi0n 11y ago

And another strike by the same EU Digital Economy commissioner (!) that "had no sympathy for Jennifer Lawrence when she happens to post her private pictures online". I'm pretty hopeless, especially because there's no way on gods green earth to get rid of this guy. EU is so high above country level politics (yet defines >80% of laws in the end), it's hard to even get people to the voting booth. And even if they do, it's completely parliamentary, no chance to influence anything. It doesn't help that completely incompetent politicians in the country parties get dilbertized one level up so they "can't hurt anymore". This pirate politician is about the only one there decently transparent and accountable.

Radle 11y ago

Any fellow Europeans here, who remember the good old time, when we used to make jokes about American Politics being so stupid? I feel sad, very sad.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mikerichards 11y ago

When you have a culture of statism this is what you get. You elect governments that want to and do micromanage your lives. Don't blame it on the politicians. You guys elected these people. They're just following the ideology of their politics.

alexro 11y ago
Don't you think that the whole 'democracy' model is flawed from the top to the bottom? If there were no good candidates offered to the public, how would the public choose a good one? And if a good one would somehow emerge, it is trivial to 'catch him' with a pack of heroin or being related to 'enemies', isn't it?

Joeri 11y ago

Time to play devil's advocate and do a thought experiment. What if we created a site containing every word and every conjugation in a way that could be linked to. This work is clearly not a copyright violation. What if we then wrote a "compression" program that took any text file and converted it to a file containing only links to this site. Few would argue that is not a copyright violation. Yet the resulting file contains nothing of the original, it is just a link. If linking to a whole text with a single link is not a copyright violation, at what point between that and our "compressed" file does it cross the line, and why? Or, put another way, if links had been copyright violations from the start, would we think that it was a sensible and logical characteristic of copyright?

waxjar 11y ago
That experiment has been done before! https://github.com/philipl/pifs https://github.com/philipl/pifs
- sonthonax 11y ago
  What is the legal implication of distributing a range of Pii that can be translated into copyrighted material?
spc476 11y ago
Because governments and large corporations want colored (or coloured) bits. (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

rubiquity 11y ago

I think it's a great idea because those media companies will get crippled when everyone stops linking to them. What a great way to put a serious dent in an annoying industry.

waxjar 11y ago

When I lock my front door and leave a spare key under the doormat, my insurance company is not obliged by law to pay for any damages if the spare key is used by thieves to enter my house. I could have easily prevented the situation. Content publishers should properly lock their front doors, too, and not have spare keys lying around all over the place.

ikeboy 11y ago

Remember all these sites that ban hyperlinking to them in their ToS: https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+from+any+other+website+without+our+initial+and+ongoing+consent https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+fro...

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Let it pass. Let these nimwits embarrass themselves.

fried_chicken 11y ago

Just let them pass the legislation. Any media company actually trying to enforce their "rights" will promptly die.

henrikschroder 11y ago

If you are a EU citizen, vote pirate in the EU elections. We got Christian Engström last term, and we have Julia Reda this term. They're doing a ton of good. We need more.

kalleboo 11y ago

Why are tech companies so bad at lobbying? If a small, dying industry like publishing is strong enough to push through stuff like this, why can't cash-flush tech companies combat it?

scotty79 11y ago

Internet already has this. If you want to be paid by google for linking to your site you just need to put NOINDEX in proper place in the page header. Though it's really up to google if they choose to list you and pay you or not list you.

Amarandei 11y ago

What exactly makes a text a hyperlink? Does it have to be only the usual <a href="#">text</a> ? What if I do this: <div link="#">text</div> And then I use JavaScript to redirect, is it still considered a hyperlink? Have I just found a loop hole? :)