6 ms·

It may be bad for the internet, but it seems fair and also consistent with earlier EU rules, such as the "right to be forgotten". It places an extra burden on t

It may be bad for the internet, but it seems fair and also consistent with earlier EU rules, such as the "right to be forgotten". It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Of course, that may be considered bad for the internet, because most people, as long as they are not the victim, like to see leaked nudes and download stuff for free, and the internet has grown in no small part because of this. I think that now that the internet is mature as it is, some limits are necessary to keep things fair and protect people from the mob, and the internet will live on nonetheless. Like the Norwegian piece the other day about the famous Vietnam war picture that Facebook considered nudity this is yet another signal that local law and culture needs more consideration by the big web publishers.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> I think that now that the internet is mature as it is, some limits are necessary to keep things fair and protect people from the mob, and the internet will live on nonetheless. The problem is, if you have a different internet in the US than you do in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia then it isn't the internet anymore. There is no way to do that and still allow people in Europe to communicate with people in the US -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same). The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that. And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Sure, we shouldn’t have different internets for different countries. But instead of applying US law globally, we might want to instead apply EU or Chinese law globally. It can’t be that laws that only 300 million people can vote for are applied to billions of people.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    The answer is not to argue over whose censorship laws to apply, the answer is to not have government censorship.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      Copyright is one form of government censorship.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        Copyright is supposed to be a temporary monopoly granted by the demos, the reason for which is to enrich the space of published artistic works. It's so sad to see it perceived as an imposition by authorities. Not wrong, just sad.
        bediger4000 10y ago
        The "temporary" part seems to have disappeared, at least in the USA. Very, very little material enters the public domain every year. The rules about copyright (instant when fixed in tangible form, long lasting, can last for years after an author's death) make it almost impossible to tell based on the material itself, whether that material is copyright. I have to conclude that today's US copyright is an imposition by authorities, albeit a subtle one. But you should look up the history of copyright. The Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...) was essentially a censorship law. Copyright is censorship of a sort.
        pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        I, along with most commentators it seems, consider the shift to give rights to authors (over a private, closed, cabal of printers) in the Statute of Anne to be the shift to copyright of a form recognisable today. The Licensing Act you refer to was a censorship law, not a copyright law; it IIRC doesn't protect authors rights nor give them primacy as the creators of [copyright] works.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >sort of communist police state // What's communist about this?
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > What's communist about this? Soviet Russia, East Germany, China. Now name a libertarian police state.
fauigerzigerk 10y ago
>It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Why did you insert the word "big" in front of "commercial sites"? There is no such qualification in the court's ruling. Every small blogger who makes a little money through ads now has an obligation to check whether or not the owner of every single linked page owns the copyrights to the content they publish (or will publish on that page in the future). I have no idea how anyone could possibly perform these checks. Do you ask the linked site for proof? But if anyone is going to find a way through this legal nightmare it's going to be the very biggest players with big legal departments.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >Every small blogger who makes a little money through ads // FWIW you don't usually, in copyright, have to make money for a site to be considered commercial. Depriving another entity of the ability to fully profit can be enough, or even advertising something you're not directly profiting from.
- Maarten88 10y ago
  > now has an obligation to check whether or not the owner of every single linked page owns the copyrights That isn't what the ruling says: you can still assume content is legal. Only when you know (or "should have known") it isn't do you need to unlink it. In this case, geenstijl.nl (which is a professionally-run news site that likes to troll and stir up anything to get traffic) repeatedly linked to leaked playboy pictures uploaded somewhere on the internet. There was no way they could claim innocence. They expressly and repeatedly decided to link content they knew was illegal and would get them a ton of traffic.
  - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
    >That isn't what the ruling says: you can still assume content is legal. Only when you know (or "should have known") it isn't do you need to unlink it. That is simply incorrect. Here's what the ruling says: When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published. "Carry out the checks necessary" means that you cannot simply "assume content is legal".

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> I think that now that the internet is mature as it is, some limits are necessary to keep things fair and protect people from the mob, and the internet will live on nonetheless. The problem is, if you have a different internet in the US than you do in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia then it isn't the internet anymore. There is no way to do that and still allow people in Europe to communicate with people in the US -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same). The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that. And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.

kuschku 10y ago
Sure, we shouldn’t have different internets for different countries. But instead of applying US law globally, we might want to instead apply EU or Chinese law globally. It can’t be that laws that only 300 million people can vote for are applied to billions of people.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  The answer is not to argue over whose censorship laws to apply, the answer is to not have government censorship.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Copyright is one form of government censorship.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Copyright is supposed to be a temporary monopoly granted by the demos, the reason for which is to enrich the space of published artistic works. It's so sad to see it perceived as an imposition by authorities. Not wrong, just sad.
      - bediger4000 10y ago
        The "temporary" part seems to have disappeared, at least in the USA. Very, very little material enters the public domain every year. The rules about copyright (instant when fixed in tangible form, long lasting, can last for years after an author's death) make it almost impossible to tell based on the material itself, whether that material is copyright. I have to conclude that today's US copyright is an imposition by authorities, albeit a subtle one. But you should look up the history of copyright. The Licensing of the Press Act of 1662 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...) was essentially a censorship law. Copyright is censorship of a sort.
        pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        I, along with most commentators it seems, consider the shift to give rights to authors (over a private, closed, cabal of printers) in the Statute of Anne to be the shift to copyright of a form recognisable today. The Licensing Act you refer to was a censorship law, not a copyright law; it IIRC doesn't protect authors rights nor give them primacy as the creators of [copyright] works.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>sort of communist police state // What's communist about this?
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > What's communist about this? Soviet Russia, East Germany, China. Now name a libertarian police state.

fauigerzigerk 10y ago

>It places an extra burden on the big, commercial sites to remove links (or stop linking on the first place) to content that is considered illegal in the EU. Why did you insert the word "big" in front of "commercial sites"? There is no such qualification in the court's ruling. Every small blogger who makes a little money through ads now has an obligation to check whether or not the owner of every single linked page owns the copyrights to the content they publish (or will publish on that page in the future). I have no idea how anyone could possibly perform these checks. Do you ask the linked site for proof? But if anyone is going to find a way through this legal nightmare it's going to be the very biggest players with big legal departments.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>Every small blogger who makes a little money through ads // FWIW you don't usually, in copyright, have to make money for a site to be considered commercial. Depriving another entity of the ability to fully profit can be enough, or even advertising something you're not directly profiting from.
Maarten88 10y ago
> now has an obligation to check whether or not the owner of every single linked page owns the copyrights That isn't what the ruling says: you can still assume content is legal. Only when you know (or "should have known") it isn't do you need to unlink it. In this case, geenstijl.nl (which is a professionally-run news site that likes to troll and stir up anything to get traffic) repeatedly linked to leaked playboy pictures uploaded somewhere on the internet. There was no way they could claim innocence. They expressly and repeatedly decided to link content they knew was illegal and would get them a ton of traffic.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  >That isn't what the ruling says: you can still assume content is legal. Only when you know (or "should have known") it isn't do you need to unlink it. That is simply incorrect. Here's what the ruling says: When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published. "Carry out the checks necessary" means that you cannot simply "assume content is legal".