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European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

290 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

mattsfrey 9y ago
"The biggest and most worrisome changes are to the "link tax" proposal, which would establish a special copyright-like fee to be paid by websites to news publishers, in exchange for the privilege of using short snippets of quoted text as part of a link to the original news article. Voss's latest amendments would make the link tax an inalienable right, that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to." "...that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to." This is horrendous. I generally favor: "Do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." However this seems like a blatant attempt to shut down any interpretive or third party news sites in favor of centralized media control.
- nannePOPI 9y ago
  European leaders are creating a crony-capitalism hellhole where globalists reign supreme. Recent laws like the cookie regulations or GDPR are made for the purpose to stop the spread of free information and favor regulatory bodies and the already estabilished companies. Of course I'm citing the laws that directly influence the web, but there are many more in all industries. With this proposal they want to impede freedom of information while at the same time get some of that sweet tax money in the pockets of their allies. It is that simple, and it's not a conspiracy: it's a natural process, they just have to support people who align with them and push them forward while slowing down the rise of other forces. You don't need a conspiracy for that, just a common culture and a shared goal, and the globalists have them.
  - ggm 9y ago
    GDPR is not about stopping the spread of free information. its about personal data. You are completely mis-characterising the nature of the GDPR legislation. Regulators are not enemies. Regulators are the enemies of established companies, and operate in favour of civil society as civil servants: they are subject to oversight, and are imposed to create oversight over entities who are not equilibriating in favour of wider society. They are anti monopolist. Your response is really strange in this regard. Freedom of information is not an absolute. You have a right to privacy as an individual. If you hold certain digital assets like domain names, you are losing some of that privacy to have a WHOIS record, and GDPR is restoring some of it. If you browse web pages and entities hold onto your cookies and create value by integrating over sets of cookies at different websites GDPR is returning to you, the individual, some control over that.
    - jccooper 9y ago
      That sort of democratic heroism is far from certain. "Regulators" and legislation are just as likely (or perhaps more) to be captured by and/or favor large incumbents as to combat them. By its very nature regulation favors established companies, who can afford better to pay for the burden.
      - civilitty 9y ago
        And yet, the result of our regulatory system has been net positive to an extreme degree - you argument is trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. The very nature of political development in the western world has, for the last few centuries, been as much about how to put the "right" people and systems in positions of power. Let's continue to focus on that instead of giving up. To use an analogy: if you love to travel the world but keep getting sick from preventable infectious diseases, the solution is to buy bottled water, mosquito repellent, and vaccinations, not stop traveling all together.
    - nannePOPI 9y ago
      You must have a really short memory to say that "regulators are not enemies". Just look at any history book, tell me what you find. Since English is not my first language, it tires me to write in it, so I'll give a little example that will destroy the "GDPR protects privacy" once and for all. If I make a website with a comment system, or maybe a forum, I need to reveal to the world my identity otherwise the EU will go after me. You see, before GDPR I could put up a website, put on WHOIS privacy using a company unreachable by the EU, and then create a cool forum where I criticize the stupid policies of the european governments (and I can tell you, there are a lot). My identity would be REALLY protected, and even my political stance. "Who is this guy explaining people why we're so bad? Damn him!", would say the evil bureaucrats while stroking his Stalin-inspired mustache. Instead now I need to write a stupid page where I say "[MY NAME] will manage your data this and this way". So, the government will know my political stance and my opinions, will have a complete name to easily link to the website. But there is more! After that, not only they'll have my name, but yet an extra set of law, with wide space for interpretations, that they can use to persecute me further. They can drag me to court because "I didn't treat data right", and it doesn't matter if I was complying or not, the risk of going to court is enough for many people to just not open the website. Of course, I make the political example, but think about sexual fetishes forum and things like that. The EU wants me to reveal to the world what my sexual preferences are, with all the risks that come with it! That's what the GDPR is. I can't even make a website to discuss my sexual tastes without telling the world who I am! To sum it up: if you create a website, your privacy will be lost, and everyone will be able to know that you are the creator of that website. Then, many people won't create websites because they'll be scared of being dragged to court. Small, indpendent, websites will die and only big companies will rule the internet. This is the reality and I don't know how people who supposedly use the internet in a professional way can't see it.
  - sykh 9y ago
    With this proposal they want to impede freedom of information while at the same time get some of that sweet tax money in the pockets of their allies. This sounds plausible but do you have evidence that it is actually true? An equally plausible reason for the proposed change is that European leaders see what media consolidation leads too. Too many people relying on too few sources for information. Perhaps this legislation is an ill thought out way to try to counteract the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica controversy. Newspapers, and magazines are dying. They are no longer able to do the sort of investigative journalism like in the past. Consolidation has led to a degradation of quality and has caused too few people to control too much information. Witness the shenanigans of Sinclair Broadcasting recently. I don't know the merits of the legislation in question but without evidence it's a hard sell to ascribe its passing to what you claim.
    - nannePOPI 9y ago
      These kind of laws make it much more difficult to spread content and therefore they consolidate informations in few player, often loved by the governments and their puppeteers. We used to be able to put a website online, gather emails to send newsletters, offer services to our users, etc without any help from the government. Now, every time I put a new website online I have to fill pages of pages with stupid policies and I know I'm not even fully compliant because honestly it's impossible to really be since it's all about how it's interpreted by the current bureaucrat. These kind of laws don't deserve a place in Europe. You need people to be able to be naturally compliant, so that they can promote their stuff wihout being scared of persecution if they say something the government doesn't like. Today you don't make a website and say controversial stuff, otherwise you know that when the government will notice it will uses the broad interpretations that stupid laws like the cookie law or GPDR give them to drag you into court and destroy you. By government of course I mean bureaucrats, political figures and your bigger competitors. These kind of laws, like the GDPR, where they say "we will use them for good, don't worry, we will ony use them on big companies" are those that freedom-minded people should be mostly scared about. Of course the proposal in OP is much worse and makes no sense.
      - sykh 9y ago
  - losteric 9y ago
    What do you of America? No net neutrality, media monopolization, telecom-monopolization, rising economic oligarchy, active collusion by heads of the executive branch, unsubstantiated attacks on quiet well-justified investigations, war mongering around the globe... to start with. I'm curious what kind of language you'd use to describe America after throwing that hyperbole at Europe.
    - nannePOPI 9y ago
      My judgement is that US is also in a bad spot, but at least the first amendment give them a little more protection, and there is a much stronger stance on freedom of speech, and even more variety in opinions compared to Europe.
  - mattsfrey 9y ago
    The cookie regs seem largely a moot effort given the pervasiveness of cookie usage, GDPR though I think is actually a generally good idea. The "nightmare scenario" that certain articles have detailed might be overburdening for companies, but in general having the right to be forgotten and know how your data is being distributed are large advancements in personal data rights. This new reg to me is just bewildering however - not even allowing media sources to opt out of it? That just makes no sense to me and comes off as an attempt to destroy smaller / independent outlets. Hopefully it dies on the vine.
    - destructaball 9y ago
      On something of a tangent I suspect that large parts of the GDPR will be comparably moot. Many companies including Twillo and Delta have rolled out their tracking controls behind feature flags. If you decide that you'd rather not be tracked they make you stare at a spinner for ~100 seconds while your privacy settings are "being applied". Keeping privacy as inconvenient as possible is big business.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > Keeping privacy as inconvenient as possible is big business. To some extent, this risks running afoul of GDPR and getting hit with a big fine. But no doubt companies will try to find the sweet spot of being as annoying as possible while still being technically compliant.
        Ygg2 9y ago
        Let HHGTG be your guide. "The information was on display on Alpha Centauri for at least 20 years". I.e. if they make a GDPR request put them on the waiting line with rest of customers. Press 1 for account related matter, Press 2 for account information, please enter your account number. Please enter your account number to confirm. Press 3 for privacy related information. Press 4 for information regarding GDPR. Please enter account information. Please verify account number. Redirecting to customer support. Please press 9 to continue. Please press 2 for verifying you are EU citizen. Enter verification data.
  - fao_ 9y ago
    > Recent laws like the cookie regulations or GDPR are made for the purpose to stop the spread of free information and favor regulatory bodies and the already estabilished companies. How are the cookie regulations made to stop the spread of free information? GDPR explicitly restricts certain kinds of information. Things that you would consider private and not want to be leaked to the public, like your tax documents, and your healthcare records. From what I can see, it's America that's the problem, with things like TPP. America is generally more crony-capitalist than Europe, even though some European countries do have crony-capitalism, they're usually good at fending it off. Globalism isn't inherently a bad thing for the individual and workers, however. It lends huge power to the worker to strike and obtain better conditions, as you can see: But the reality is the very opposite. When 3,000 General Motors brake parts workers went on strike in Dayton, Ohio, in 1996, they shut down General Motors operations across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Over 125,000 General Motors workers were laid off within days. The strike cost the company around $45 million a day, and the Clinton government screamed at both sides to settle. When an almost general strike took place in Denmark, Saab was forced to stop car production in Sweden because it ran out of essential components from Danish suppliers. The assembly of Saab’s convertible motors in Finland was also forced to stop. Volvo also announced that its production lines in Sweden and the Netherlands had been very badly affected. In 1988, when Ford workers in Britain struck, they brought the whole of Ford Europe to a halt within three or four days. Because of the multinationals, the impact of an individual group of workers can be much greater than ever before. One need only compare the above examples with the first general strike in history that took place in England in 1832. Then workers had to move from one factory to another to “turn over” the workers. Behind the theory of globalisation there is complete mechanical formal logic. The dialectic is completely foreign to it. The logic of the globalisation theory is similar to that which motivated the Pentagon when it launched its war on Vietnam. They were convinced that the United States military machine was omnipotent and that the Vietnamese were relatively powerless. And the argument went like this. In the 19th century Britain beat India into submission. The military machine of the United States in the 1960s was incomparably stronger than the military machine of Britain in the 19th century. At the same time Vietnam is a much smaller country with a much smaller population than India. If Britain could win in the 19th century, the United States could certainly have a walkover in the 20th century. Looked at dialectically the picture is exactly the opposite. In the Indian uprising of 1857, when a British soldier was killed, how much damage did it do to Britain? How much is a British soldier, a worker in uniform, worth? Let us say £100. The American military machine is in comparably greater. A US aeroplane is worth, let us say, $1 million. What a temptation for a Vietnamese to throw a hand grenade at it. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap04.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium...)
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    > globalists Did you mean actual globalists, or were you just using a racist dog-whistle to imply Jews?
    - YouAreGreat 9y ago
      Did you mean to suss out dog whistlers or are you just trying to divert attention from globalists? #notyourshield
    - swebs 9y ago
      Is that an actual question, or are you trying to deflect the valid criticisms of globalism by slandering it's opponents?
      - henrikschroder 9y ago
        It was an actual question. Sometimes people who use the word are genuinely interested in the debate. Most of the time though, it's just some idiot who is interested in blaming everything that's bad with the world on some nefarious Other.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  That's a strange interpretation, and I say it doesn't seem like you're trying too hard to assume good faith. The EU is worried about publishers both big and small. Currently, investing half a year's worth of a journalist's work into investigations is a rather bad business decision, because everyone can freely reuse the facts you uncovered: spend a year finding corruption, write it up in a day, 10 minutes later it's on AP. Ther 'inalienable' is to ensure you're not pressured into giving those rights away by a stronger actor such as Google. The principle is the same that makes it impossible for you to agree to buy something new without warranty. Your idea also doesn't make much sense because the current crisis of journalism has hit smaller publishers hardest. The New York Times will survive. The Bodunken Tribune is probably long dead already. And the major players for centralization are obviously Google and Facebook, the two largest targets of this legislation. All this DOES NOT mean I believe this proposal to be a good idea! I think it's too much beaurocracy for too little effect, plus probably unintended consequences. But it's hard to completely disregard the true motivation and ascribe malice.
  - mattsfrey 9y ago
    The way I look at it is it will constrain the ability to deliver news to those who can afford to produce original content, which will be larger outlets with more resources. This allows a vastly smaller group to control the narrative. How will this effect google or facebook at all? Anyone with a blog looking to quote a news outlet and provide commentary is now mandatorily taxed? How do you NOT see this as bad? What good can come of it at all?
    - IAmEveryone 9y ago
      > How will this effect google or facebook at all? Google and Facebook show titles and quotes of linked articles. This legislation is specifically aimed at them. Noncommercial actors (bloggers etc) are supposed to be exempt. > How do you NOT see this as bad? It is extremely frustrating how people on HN apparently have no ability to acknowledge a valid argument for a position they oppose. Read the last two paragraphs of my post again. It clearly states, in rule-braking all-caps even, that I do not support this legislation. > What good can come of it at all? It will shift (as you note) money from those reprinting news to those producing original content. The former is cheap, commoditized, and in no danger. The latter is fundamental for a functioning democracy.
nexz 9y ago
Please EFF, keep ruining the US internet and leave the EU alone, thank you.
- positr0n 9y ago
  How is the EFF ruining the US internet?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
codazoda 9y ago
The news industry is already in trouble. This seems like it could backfire in a way that news services might automatically be de-listed from many services and simply lose ALL of their traffic. Seems like it's meant to save them but could sink them by accident.
- phkahler 9y ago
  What they really need is for sites to stop ripping off their stories. How often do you see an article that is essentially a reprint of a story written somewhere else. It's not really a reprint, it's written as an alleged summary of the other story but contains all the details and some irrelevant banter by the author. This stuff is all over the internet and prevents readers from needing to read the original source.
  - ddmd1 9y ago
    Is it really any different in print media where half the stories come from AP or Reuters? Everyone is rewriting the same stories.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Pretty sure print media pays AP and Reuters. Which is the point here.
- paxys 9y ago
  This has been done in the past, and publishers always cave after seeing a massive drop in traffic. This new law makes it so that they can't allow Google to use their snippets for free even if they wanted to.
deleted 9y ago
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tajen 9y ago
How is Switzerland by the way? I wonder whether moving is an option, plus my city is getting pretty unsafe with all the arabics (just seen a beat-up of an elderly this afternoon, Lyon, France) and I’m looking for a place with a safer government.
mtmail 9y ago
The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative, sometimes called the "Google tax": Allow newspapers to charge for snippets. Newspapers did because after lots of lobbying it would look bad if they didn't. Google News delisted all that charged money. Shortly after the large newspapers allowed Google to use snippets without payment. So small websites (search engines) lost while those delivering substantial traffic (monopolies like Google) still strive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...
- latexr 9y ago
  > The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative There’d be little point in making the post longer by mentioning Germany inline as well. The shorter and more digestible the post is, the more likely people will read and share. Germany’s case is mentioned in the post they link to when referencing Spain’s situation[1]. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-thanks-ancillary-copyright-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop...
pdonis 9y ago
Upload filtering would be required for code sharing sites like Github? WTF?
- latexr 9y ago
  See their blog post on it[1]. I think it made HN’s front page at the time. [1]: https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters-code/ https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filter...
th-ai 9y ago
If Kryder's Law holds, then by 2030 local hard drives will store petabytes (4x library of congress or 500 mp4 years). 32 terabyte thumb drives will cost $10. Routes around ISP's will be plentiful. How can copyright survive?
- dbasedweeb 9y ago
  Because it’s a huge “if” and assumes that by 2030 the A/V standard won’t grow as well? I hope you’re right, but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains.
  - xoa 9y ago
    >but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains Yes, but to your question regarding A/V standards, that works both ways. While past performance often isn't a great predictor, human biological specs are a decent predictor for the near future. If we take 8k as the current bleeding edge (given actual beyond-the-lab 8k screens exist, albeit at horrendous bleeding edge pricing), we're somewhere around one more doubling (quadrupling of pixels) away from the point where the number of image elements will literally exceed the number of retina in a human eye. Now yeah, the human eye jitters around a fair amount, and maybe there'd be some value in peripheral vision coverage too in theory, but even taking all of that into consideration to be very conservative we're still rapidly approaching the point where our display tech can exceed the limits of human visual acuity, at which point it's reasonable to predict that we will in fact be "done" when it comes to A/V standards (post-human seems farther away then 2030). And even that is getting into heavily diminishing returns territory. It really does make for something interesting to think about, similar to that of audio where we've already been "done" for a long time now. We've lived in an era where a significant amount of innovation and money flowing around and such came out of a lot of work to ever more closely match our synthetic light outputs to the input capabilities of our vision systems. But that's not a forever thing, our vision system is such a powerful part of our senses that it's been a very hard target, but there is in fact a hard physical limit there. When it's reached, and there will be no more video format changes ever again, and no more screen changes ever again, no more chances to sell "remastered" and "updated" versions of older visual products, etc., it may make for some real changes in the industry. And to GP's point, the theoretical limits of information storage in matter do seem to be a lot farther beyond the theoretical end of information requirements necessary to match a human's AV. Optimistically for all parties though, the music scene seems to have done alright through that transition so far, on both the production/industry and consumer side (where we enjoy near universal DRM free high quality competition). Granted, that was after a lot of very ugly thrashing...
vatueil 9y ago
There was a previous discussion based on a similar article from Creative Commons a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999 c3o (Christopher Clay), who works in the EU Parliament according to his profile, posted several informative comments including one explaining the backstory behind the proposed legislation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099 > The back story of the law may shed some light. > First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content. > After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license. > The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain. > This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  This dude seems to think that it's a dick measuring contest, when it reality it boils down to a cost-benefit analysis. If Google thinks it will lose money, it will shut down the service.
  - toyg 9y ago
    This was mentioned in the other thread as well - and it's a scenario that publishers would love, as it puts them back in control of "news portals".
    - stickfigure 9y ago
      Except that it won't. All the news portals/aggregators will simply move out of the EU. And then the EU can try to escalate by blocking non-EU news sites. Boy is that going to be an interesting day.
rotrux 9y ago
Is anyone really surprised by this? We (America) just signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act into law last month without so much as a blip from The AP or Thompson Reuters. The internet is sorta like the printing-press but more important. Of course it's threatening the powers-that-be & of course they're gonna' try and get that under control.
- tzs 9y ago
  > We (America) just signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act into law last month without so much as a blip from The AP or Thompson Reuters. Blip from Reuters: [1] Blip from AP: [2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/u-s-spending-bill-includes-bid-to-solve-international-email-privacy-impasse-idUSKBN1GY07K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/u-s-s... [2] https://apnews.com/d22a0de1f9434490b938ec1db8e149ef/Budget-bill-likely-would-end-Supreme-Court-email-search-case https://apnews.com/d22a0de1f9434490b938ec1db8e149ef/Budget-b...
- incompatible 9y ago
  The idea that the powers-that-be are working on getting this new Internet thing under their control has been a recurring meme for a long time. I'm sure it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing a good job so far; unless they are somehow secretly behind Google and Facebook.
  - rotrux 9y ago
    > "...I'm sure it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing a good job so far" Totally agree except RE: the last year or so. If you look closely "they" appear to be wising-up. The CLOUD act (at least how I'm reading it) says that the American internet is American...in other words, "If we wanna subpoena your s#!t in Thailand, we can cuz your cloud-provider is probably based in Seattle, WA, USA." Law is ultimately about precedent, and there is now a precedent for America to get a warrant allowing them to see any American company's consumer-data, regardless of where that data is geographically.
cromwellian 9y ago
I wonder how this will hold up with AI written summaries that don't use any of the original text.
greggman 9y ago
I'm guessing this is an unpopular idea but is it possible we just don't need as many journalists? I 100% Agree that journalism is important but before the internet, for the most post, every news paper needed people to cover every story they wanted to run. Even if they took a story from the AP or Ruters they still needed someone to dig that up. Now, there is no reason why the AP and Rutere can't just publish their content themselves to the entire world. Similaly a local newspaper doesn't need to pay someone to cover the world news. We don't need every major news paper from every country to have reporters in every other country as they can just use someone else's reporting. I'm guessing your first thought to that is we need multiple voices and points of view and I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that in 1975 you probably had 2-5 reporters from Sweden in NYC, 5-15 from Germany, 5-15 from France, 4-7 from Italy, 2-3 from Spain, 5-15 from the UK, 3-4 from Ireland etc etc. Add up all the major countries and their might have been 400+ NYC foreign correspondents. Do we need all 400 or has the internet made it so we only need 10-20? Apply that concept everywhere, even to local papers and it seems like the biggest hit to journalism isn't Google, it's the internet itself. Just like a few wheat harvesting machine replace hundreds of workers the world has changed to one where far less journalists can do the work of what used to take many more?
- icebraining 9y ago
  What specifically did the Internet change that allows for the same coverage with so fewer correspondents?
- temporalparts 9y ago
  I know I'm a day late, but thought I would provide my perspective. I think there's two aspects to this, is journalism sustainable and is journalism worthwhile. I think publishers are having a hard time with the former, but I think undeniably it is valuable in the latter. As the world becomes more complex and bad actors are becoming more sophisticated, I think the world needs more journalists to uncover truth and reality, especially since there is profit to be made from writing fake news. I think the fact that it's not sustainable now means that we should move to a model where we subsidize news with public funding; not sure what the best structure is, but there is so much good public externalities to journalism that it's worthwhile to fund it with public money.
nine_k 9y ago
Well, let's suppose the legislation is voted into law. Every news outlet with a grain of reason offers every major search engine or news aggregator, or maybe a whole self-publishing platform like Twitter a blanket deal: €20 per month for unlimited use of blurbs and links, as long as blurbs are short and are actual quotations. So, the market would have fended off the attack on the way it operates, and ready to continue as usual. The losers would be the non-commercial sites. Wikipedia would have hard time showing you all these Creative Commons-licensed pictures. Free (as in beer) publications would see large drops in traffic, not being able to offer their content legally for free, or re-licence it (it's often quite involved). What a useful law that might be. /s
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  €20 per month is an astonishingly optimistic figure.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    I think that large papers could ask, say, 1000 or something, to avoid being ridiculed, but no public news source in their sane mind would turn this fee into a profit center. They'd have much more to lose if their traffic slumps.
deleted 9y ago
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capturesss 9y ago
The underlaying question in this law is about estimating the monetary value of a piece of information and creating a market for selling information. As an example, here in Spain the master of Madrid Community's mayor has been deeply investigated, here that information has strong political implications, and produces monetary value for some political parties. A law can't be easily applied to Giants and ants, to huge actors and to individual bloggers, the model can't scale appropiately. So I would suggest just to impose a tax to huge actors and forget about creating a law that ranges from bloggers to google or twitter, those entities can't be measured with the same rule. Googling about how to quantify in dollar the value of journalism, I found 1)http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-journalism-worth/ http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-journalism-... 2) The limits of quantification: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://mediashift.org/&httpsredir=1&article=4265&context=californialawreview https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref... 3)https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-Investigative-Journalism/dp/0674545508 https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-Inves...
Crontab 9y ago
I generally have a favorable opinion of Europe but this copyright law proposal, and the stupid "right to be forgotten" nonsense, shows that they are far from perfect.
- latexr 9y ago
  See also: the law that ended roaming charges also shoehorned the taking away of Net Neutrality rules.
DoctorOetker 9y ago
This 'link tax' sounds awful. Will WikiPedia need to start paying 'link tax' ?

290 points by DiabloD3 9y ago

"The biggest and most worrisome changes are to the "link tax" proposal, which would establish a special copyright-like fee to be paid by websites to news publishers, in exchange for the privilege of using short snippets of quoted text as part of a link to the original news article. Voss's latest amendments would make the link tax an inalienable right, that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to." "...that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to." This is horrendous. I generally favor: "Do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." However this seems like a blatant attempt to shut down any interpretive or third party news sites in favor of centralized media control.

nannePOPI 9y ago
European leaders are creating a crony-capitalism hellhole where globalists reign supreme. Recent laws like the cookie regulations or GDPR are made for the purpose to stop the spread of free information and favor regulatory bodies and the already estabilished companies. Of course I'm citing the laws that directly influence the web, but there are many more in all industries. With this proposal they want to impede freedom of information while at the same time get some of that sweet tax money in the pockets of their allies. It is that simple, and it's not a conspiracy: it's a natural process, they just have to support people who align with them and push them forward while slowing down the rise of other forces. You don't need a conspiracy for that, just a common culture and a shared goal, and the globalists have them.
- ggm 9y ago
  GDPR is not about stopping the spread of free information. its about personal data. You are completely mis-characterising the nature of the GDPR legislation. Regulators are not enemies. Regulators are the enemies of established companies, and operate in favour of civil society as civil servants: they are subject to oversight, and are imposed to create oversight over entities who are not equilibriating in favour of wider society. They are anti monopolist. Your response is really strange in this regard. Freedom of information is not an absolute. You have a right to privacy as an individual. If you hold certain digital assets like domain names, you are losing some of that privacy to have a WHOIS record, and GDPR is restoring some of it. If you browse web pages and entities hold onto your cookies and create value by integrating over sets of cookies at different websites GDPR is returning to you, the individual, some control over that.
  - jccooper 9y ago
    That sort of democratic heroism is far from certain. "Regulators" and legislation are just as likely (or perhaps more) to be captured by and/or favor large incumbents as to combat them. By its very nature regulation favors established companies, who can afford better to pay for the burden.
    - civilitty 9y ago
      And yet, the result of our regulatory system has been net positive to an extreme degree - you argument is trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. The very nature of political development in the western world has, for the last few centuries, been as much about how to put the "right" people and systems in positions of power. Let's continue to focus on that instead of giving up. To use an analogy: if you love to travel the world but keep getting sick from preventable infectious diseases, the solution is to buy bottled water, mosquito repellent, and vaccinations, not stop traveling all together.
  - nannePOPI 9y ago
    You must have a really short memory to say that "regulators are not enemies". Just look at any history book, tell me what you find. Since English is not my first language, it tires me to write in it, so I'll give a little example that will destroy the "GDPR protects privacy" once and for all. If I make a website with a comment system, or maybe a forum, I need to reveal to the world my identity otherwise the EU will go after me. You see, before GDPR I could put up a website, put on WHOIS privacy using a company unreachable by the EU, and then create a cool forum where I criticize the stupid policies of the european governments (and I can tell you, there are a lot). My identity would be REALLY protected, and even my political stance. "Who is this guy explaining people why we're so bad? Damn him!", would say the evil bureaucrats while stroking his Stalin-inspired mustache. Instead now I need to write a stupid page where I say "[MY NAME] will manage your data this and this way". So, the government will know my political stance and my opinions, will have a complete name to easily link to the website. But there is more! After that, not only they'll have my name, but yet an extra set of law, with wide space for interpretations, that they can use to persecute me further. They can drag me to court because "I didn't treat data right", and it doesn't matter if I was complying or not, the risk of going to court is enough for many people to just not open the website. Of course, I make the political example, but think about sexual fetishes forum and things like that. The EU wants me to reveal to the world what my sexual preferences are, with all the risks that come with it! That's what the GDPR is. I can't even make a website to discuss my sexual tastes without telling the world who I am! To sum it up: if you create a website, your privacy will be lost, and everyone will be able to know that you are the creator of that website. Then, many people won't create websites because they'll be scared of being dragged to court. Small, indpendent, websites will die and only big companies will rule the internet. This is the reality and I don't know how people who supposedly use the internet in a professional way can't see it.
- sykh 9y ago
  With this proposal they want to impede freedom of information while at the same time get some of that sweet tax money in the pockets of their allies. This sounds plausible but do you have evidence that it is actually true? An equally plausible reason for the proposed change is that European leaders see what media consolidation leads too. Too many people relying on too few sources for information. Perhaps this legislation is an ill thought out way to try to counteract the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica controversy. Newspapers, and magazines are dying. They are no longer able to do the sort of investigative journalism like in the past. Consolidation has led to a degradation of quality and has caused too few people to control too much information. Witness the shenanigans of Sinclair Broadcasting recently. I don't know the merits of the legislation in question but without evidence it's a hard sell to ascribe its passing to what you claim.
  - nannePOPI 9y ago
    These kind of laws make it much more difficult to spread content and therefore they consolidate informations in few player, often loved by the governments and their puppeteers. We used to be able to put a website online, gather emails to send newsletters, offer services to our users, etc without any help from the government. Now, every time I put a new website online I have to fill pages of pages with stupid policies and I know I'm not even fully compliant because honestly it's impossible to really be since it's all about how it's interpreted by the current bureaucrat. These kind of laws don't deserve a place in Europe. You need people to be able to be naturally compliant, so that they can promote their stuff wihout being scared of persecution if they say something the government doesn't like. Today you don't make a website and say controversial stuff, otherwise you know that when the government will notice it will uses the broad interpretations that stupid laws like the cookie law or GPDR give them to drag you into court and destroy you. By government of course I mean bureaucrats, political figures and your bigger competitors. These kind of laws, like the GDPR, where they say "we will use them for good, don't worry, we will ony use them on big companies" are those that freedom-minded people should be mostly scared about. Of course the proposal in OP is much worse and makes no sense.
    - sykh 9y ago
- losteric 9y ago
  What do you of America? No net neutrality, media monopolization, telecom-monopolization, rising economic oligarchy, active collusion by heads of the executive branch, unsubstantiated attacks on quiet well-justified investigations, war mongering around the globe... to start with. I'm curious what kind of language you'd use to describe America after throwing that hyperbole at Europe.
  - nannePOPI 9y ago
    My judgement is that US is also in a bad spot, but at least the first amendment give them a little more protection, and there is a much stronger stance on freedom of speech, and even more variety in opinions compared to Europe.
- mattsfrey 9y ago
  The cookie regs seem largely a moot effort given the pervasiveness of cookie usage, GDPR though I think is actually a generally good idea. The "nightmare scenario" that certain articles have detailed might be overburdening for companies, but in general having the right to be forgotten and know how your data is being distributed are large advancements in personal data rights. This new reg to me is just bewildering however - not even allowing media sources to opt out of it? That just makes no sense to me and comes off as an attempt to destroy smaller / independent outlets. Hopefully it dies on the vine.
  - destructaball 9y ago
    On something of a tangent I suspect that large parts of the GDPR will be comparably moot. Many companies including Twillo and Delta have rolled out their tracking controls behind feature flags. If you decide that you'd rather not be tracked they make you stare at a spinner for ~100 seconds while your privacy settings are "being applied". Keeping privacy as inconvenient as possible is big business.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > Keeping privacy as inconvenient as possible is big business. To some extent, this risks running afoul of GDPR and getting hit with a big fine. But no doubt companies will try to find the sweet spot of being as annoying as possible while still being technically compliant.
      - Ygg2 9y ago
        Let HHGTG be your guide. "The information was on display on Alpha Centauri for at least 20 years". I.e. if they make a GDPR request put them on the waiting line with rest of customers. Press 1 for account related matter, Press 2 for account information, please enter your account number. Please enter your account number to confirm. Press 3 for privacy related information. Press 4 for information regarding GDPR. Please enter account information. Please verify account number. Redirecting to customer support. Please press 9 to continue. Please press 2 for verifying you are EU citizen. Enter verification data.
- fao_ 9y ago
  > Recent laws like the cookie regulations or GDPR are made for the purpose to stop the spread of free information and favor regulatory bodies and the already estabilished companies. How are the cookie regulations made to stop the spread of free information? GDPR explicitly restricts certain kinds of information. Things that you would consider private and not want to be leaked to the public, like your tax documents, and your healthcare records. From what I can see, it's America that's the problem, with things like TPP. America is generally more crony-capitalist than Europe, even though some European countries do have crony-capitalism, they're usually good at fending it off. Globalism isn't inherently a bad thing for the individual and workers, however. It lends huge power to the worker to strike and obtain better conditions, as you can see: But the reality is the very opposite. When 3,000 General Motors brake parts workers went on strike in Dayton, Ohio, in 1996, they shut down General Motors operations across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Over 125,000 General Motors workers were laid off within days. The strike cost the company around $45 million a day, and the Clinton government screamed at both sides to settle. When an almost general strike took place in Denmark, Saab was forced to stop car production in Sweden because it ran out of essential components from Danish suppliers. The assembly of Saab’s convertible motors in Finland was also forced to stop. Volvo also announced that its production lines in Sweden and the Netherlands had been very badly affected. In 1988, when Ford workers in Britain struck, they brought the whole of Ford Europe to a halt within three or four days. Because of the multinationals, the impact of an individual group of workers can be much greater than ever before. One need only compare the above examples with the first general strike in history that took place in England in 1832. Then workers had to move from one factory to another to “turn over” the workers. Behind the theory of globalisation there is complete mechanical formal logic. The dialectic is completely foreign to it. The logic of the globalisation theory is similar to that which motivated the Pentagon when it launched its war on Vietnam. They were convinced that the United States military machine was omnipotent and that the Vietnamese were relatively powerless. And the argument went like this. In the 19th century Britain beat India into submission. The military machine of the United States in the 1960s was incomparably stronger than the military machine of Britain in the 19th century. At the same time Vietnam is a much smaller country with a much smaller population than India. If Britain could win in the 19th century, the United States could certainly have a walkover in the 20th century. Looked at dialectically the picture is exactly the opposite. In the Indian uprising of 1857, when a British soldier was killed, how much damage did it do to Britain? How much is a British soldier, a worker in uniform, worth? Let us say £100. The American military machine is in comparably greater. A US aeroplane is worth, let us say, $1 million. What a temptation for a Vietnamese to throw a hand grenade at it. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/chap04.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium...)
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  > globalists Did you mean actual globalists, or were you just using a racist dog-whistle to imply Jews?
  - YouAreGreat 9y ago
    Did you mean to suss out dog whistlers or are you just trying to divert attention from globalists? #notyourshield
  - swebs 9y ago
    Is that an actual question, or are you trying to deflect the valid criticisms of globalism by slandering it's opponents?
    - henrikschroder 9y ago
      It was an actual question. Sometimes people who use the word are genuinely interested in the debate. Most of the time though, it's just some idiot who is interested in blaming everything that's bad with the world on some nefarious Other.
IAmEveryone 9y ago
That's a strange interpretation, and I say it doesn't seem like you're trying too hard to assume good faith. The EU is worried about publishers both big and small. Currently, investing half a year's worth of a journalist's work into investigations is a rather bad business decision, because everyone can freely reuse the facts you uncovered: spend a year finding corruption, write it up in a day, 10 minutes later it's on AP. Ther 'inalienable' is to ensure you're not pressured into giving those rights away by a stronger actor such as Google. The principle is the same that makes it impossible for you to agree to buy something new without warranty. Your idea also doesn't make much sense because the current crisis of journalism has hit smaller publishers hardest. The New York Times will survive. The Bodunken Tribune is probably long dead already. And the major players for centralization are obviously Google and Facebook, the two largest targets of this legislation. All this DOES NOT mean I believe this proposal to be a good idea! I think it's too much beaurocracy for too little effect, plus probably unintended consequences. But it's hard to completely disregard the true motivation and ascribe malice.
- mattsfrey 9y ago
  The way I look at it is it will constrain the ability to deliver news to those who can afford to produce original content, which will be larger outlets with more resources. This allows a vastly smaller group to control the narrative. How will this effect google or facebook at all? Anyone with a blog looking to quote a news outlet and provide commentary is now mandatorily taxed? How do you NOT see this as bad? What good can come of it at all?
  - IAmEveryone 9y ago
    > How will this effect google or facebook at all? Google and Facebook show titles and quotes of linked articles. This legislation is specifically aimed at them. Noncommercial actors (bloggers etc) are supposed to be exempt. > How do you NOT see this as bad? It is extremely frustrating how people on HN apparently have no ability to acknowledge a valid argument for a position they oppose. Read the last two paragraphs of my post again. It clearly states, in rule-braking all-caps even, that I do not support this legislation. > What good can come of it at all? It will shift (as you note) money from those reprinting news to those producing original content. The former is cheap, commoditized, and in no danger. The latter is fundamental for a functioning democracy.

nexz 9y ago

Please EFF, keep ruining the US internet and leave the EU alone, thank you.

positr0n 9y ago
How is the EFF ruining the US internet?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

codazoda 9y ago

The news industry is already in trouble. This seems like it could backfire in a way that news services might automatically be de-listed from many services and simply lose ALL of their traffic. Seems like it's meant to save them but could sink them by accident.

phkahler 9y ago
What they really need is for sites to stop ripping off their stories. How often do you see an article that is essentially a reprint of a story written somewhere else. It's not really a reprint, it's written as an alleged summary of the other story but contains all the details and some irrelevant banter by the author. This stuff is all over the internet and prevents readers from needing to read the original source.
- ddmd1 9y ago
  Is it really any different in print media where half the stories come from AP or Reuters? Everyone is rewriting the same stories.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Pretty sure print media pays AP and Reuters. Which is the point here.
paxys 9y ago
This has been done in the past, and publishers always cave after seeing a massive drop in traffic. This new law makes it so that they can't allow Google to use their snippets for free even if they wanted to.

deleted 9y ago

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tajen 9y ago

How is Switzerland by the way? I wonder whether moving is an option, plus my city is getting pretty unsafe with all the arabics (just seen a beat-up of an elderly this afternoon, Lyon, France) and I’m looking for a place with a safer government.

mtmail 9y ago

The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative, sometimes called the "Google tax": Allow newspapers to charge for snippets. Newspapers did because after lots of lobbying it would look bad if they didn't. Google News delisted all that charged money. Shortly after the large newspapers allowed Google to use snippets without payment. So small websites (search engines) lost while those delivering substantial traffic (monopolies like Google) still strive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...

latexr 9y ago
> The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative There’d be little point in making the post longer by mentioning Germany inline as well. The shorter and more digestible the post is, the more likely people will read and share. Germany’s case is mentioned in the post they link to when referencing Spain’s situation[1]. [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-thanks-ancillary-copyright-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop...

pdonis 9y ago

Upload filtering would be required for code sharing sites like Github? WTF?

latexr 9y ago
See their blog post on it[1]. I think it made HN’s front page at the time. [1]: https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters-code/ https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filter...

th-ai 9y ago

If Kryder's Law holds, then by 2030 local hard drives will store petabytes (4x library of congress or 500 mp4 years). 32 terabyte thumb drives will cost $10. Routes around ISP's will be plentiful. How can copyright survive?

dbasedweeb 9y ago
Because it’s a huge “if” and assumes that by 2030 the A/V standard won’t grow as well? I hope you’re right, but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains.
- xoa 9y ago
  >but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains Yes, but to your question regarding A/V standards, that works both ways. While past performance often isn't a great predictor, human biological specs are a decent predictor for the near future. If we take 8k as the current bleeding edge (given actual beyond-the-lab 8k screens exist, albeit at horrendous bleeding edge pricing), we're somewhere around one more doubling (quadrupling of pixels) away from the point where the number of image elements will literally exceed the number of retina in a human eye. Now yeah, the human eye jitters around a fair amount, and maybe there'd be some value in peripheral vision coverage too in theory, but even taking all of that into consideration to be very conservative we're still rapidly approaching the point where our display tech can exceed the limits of human visual acuity, at which point it's reasonable to predict that we will in fact be "done" when it comes to A/V standards (post-human seems farther away then 2030). And even that is getting into heavily diminishing returns territory. It really does make for something interesting to think about, similar to that of audio where we've already been "done" for a long time now. We've lived in an era where a significant amount of innovation and money flowing around and such came out of a lot of work to ever more closely match our synthetic light outputs to the input capabilities of our vision systems. But that's not a forever thing, our vision system is such a powerful part of our senses that it's been a very hard target, but there is in fact a hard physical limit there. When it's reached, and there will be no more video format changes ever again, and no more screen changes ever again, no more chances to sell "remastered" and "updated" versions of older visual products, etc., it may make for some real changes in the industry. And to GP's point, the theoretical limits of information storage in matter do seem to be a lot farther beyond the theoretical end of information requirements necessary to match a human's AV. Optimistically for all parties though, the music scene seems to have done alright through that transition so far, on both the production/industry and consumer side (where we enjoy near universal DRM free high quality competition). Granted, that was after a lot of very ugly thrashing...

vatueil 9y ago

There was a previous discussion based on a similar article from Creative Commons a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999 c3o (Christopher Clay), who works in the EU Parliament according to his profile, posted several informative comments including one explaining the backstory behind the proposed legislation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099 > The back story of the law may shed some light. > First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content. > After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license. > The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain. > This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.

Cyph0n 9y ago
This dude seems to think that it's a dick measuring contest, when it reality it boils down to a cost-benefit analysis. If Google thinks it will lose money, it will shut down the service.
- toyg 9y ago
  This was mentioned in the other thread as well - and it's a scenario that publishers would love, as it puts them back in control of "news portals".
  - stickfigure 9y ago
    Except that it won't. All the news portals/aggregators will simply move out of the EU. And then the EU can try to escalate by blocking non-EU news sites. Boy is that going to be an interesting day.

rotrux 9y ago

Is anyone really surprised by this? We (America) just signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act into law last month without so much as a blip from The AP or Thompson Reuters. The internet is sorta like the printing-press but more important. Of course it's threatening the powers-that-be & of course they're gonna' try and get that under control.

tzs 9y ago
> We (America) just signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act into law last month without so much as a blip from The AP or Thompson Reuters. Blip from Reuters: [1] Blip from AP: [2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/u-s-spending-bill-includes-bid-to-solve-international-email-privacy-impasse-idUSKBN1GY07K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/u-s-s... [2] https://apnews.com/d22a0de1f9434490b938ec1db8e149ef/Budget-bill-likely-would-end-Supreme-Court-email-search-case https://apnews.com/d22a0de1f9434490b938ec1db8e149ef/Budget-b...
incompatible 9y ago
The idea that the powers-that-be are working on getting this new Internet thing under their control has been a recurring meme for a long time. I'm sure it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing a good job so far; unless they are somehow secretly behind Google and Facebook.
- rotrux 9y ago
  > "...I'm sure it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing a good job so far" Totally agree except RE: the last year or so. If you look closely "they" appear to be wising-up. The CLOUD act (at least how I'm reading it) says that the American internet is American...in other words, "If we wanna subpoena your s#!t in Thailand, we can cuz your cloud-provider is probably based in Seattle, WA, USA." Law is ultimately about precedent, and there is now a precedent for America to get a warrant allowing them to see any American company's consumer-data, regardless of where that data is geographically.

cromwellian 9y ago

I wonder how this will hold up with AI written summaries that don't use any of the original text.

greggman 9y ago

I'm guessing this is an unpopular idea but is it possible we just don't need as many journalists? I 100% Agree that journalism is important but before the internet, for the most post, every news paper needed people to cover every story they wanted to run. Even if they took a story from the AP or Ruters they still needed someone to dig that up. Now, there is no reason why the AP and Rutere can't just publish their content themselves to the entire world. Similaly a local newspaper doesn't need to pay someone to cover the world news. We don't need every major news paper from every country to have reporters in every other country as they can just use someone else's reporting. I'm guessing your first thought to that is we need multiple voices and points of view and I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that in 1975 you probably had 2-5 reporters from Sweden in NYC, 5-15 from Germany, 5-15 from France, 4-7 from Italy, 2-3 from Spain, 5-15 from the UK, 3-4 from Ireland etc etc. Add up all the major countries and their might have been 400+ NYC foreign correspondents. Do we need all 400 or has the internet made it so we only need 10-20? Apply that concept everywhere, even to local papers and it seems like the biggest hit to journalism isn't Google, it's the internet itself. Just like a few wheat harvesting machine replace hundreds of workers the world has changed to one where far less journalists can do the work of what used to take many more?

icebraining 9y ago
What specifically did the Internet change that allows for the same coverage with so fewer correspondents?
temporalparts 9y ago
I know I'm a day late, but thought I would provide my perspective. I think there's two aspects to this, is journalism sustainable and is journalism worthwhile. I think publishers are having a hard time with the former, but I think undeniably it is valuable in the latter. As the world becomes more complex and bad actors are becoming more sophisticated, I think the world needs more journalists to uncover truth and reality, especially since there is profit to be made from writing fake news. I think the fact that it's not sustainable now means that we should move to a model where we subsidize news with public funding; not sure what the best structure is, but there is so much good public externalities to journalism that it's worthwhile to fund it with public money.

nine_k 9y ago

Well, let's suppose the legislation is voted into law. Every news outlet with a grain of reason offers every major search engine or news aggregator, or maybe a whole self-publishing platform like Twitter a blanket deal: €20 per month for unlimited use of blurbs and links, as long as blurbs are short and are actual quotations. So, the market would have fended off the attack on the way it operates, and ready to continue as usual. The losers would be the non-commercial sites. Wikipedia would have hard time showing you all these Creative Commons-licensed pictures. Free (as in beer) publications would see large drops in traffic, not being able to offer their content legally for free, or re-licence it (it's often quite involved). What a useful law that might be. /s

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
€20 per month is an astonishingly optimistic figure.
- nine_k 9y ago
  I think that large papers could ask, say, 1000 or something, to avoid being ridiculed, but no public news source in their sane mind would turn this fee into a profit center. They'd have much more to lose if their traffic slumps.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

capturesss 9y ago

The underlaying question in this law is about estimating the monetary value of a piece of information and creating a market for selling information. As an example, here in Spain the master of Madrid Community's mayor has been deeply investigated, here that information has strong political implications, and produces monetary value for some political parties. A law can't be easily applied to Giants and ants, to huge actors and to individual bloggers, the model can't scale appropiately. So I would suggest just to impose a tax to huge actors and forget about creating a law that ranges from bloggers to google or twitter, those entities can't be measured with the same rule. Googling about how to quantify in dollar the value of journalism, I found 1)http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-journalism-worth/ http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-journalism-... 2) The limits of quantification: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://mediashift.org/&httpsredir=1&article=4265&context=californialawreview https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref... 3)https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-Investigative-Journalism/dp/0674545508 https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-Inves...

Crontab 9y ago

I generally have a favorable opinion of Europe but this copyright law proposal, and the stupid "right to be forgotten" nonsense, shows that they are far from perfect.

latexr 9y ago
See also: the law that ended roaming charges also shoehorned the taking away of Net Neutrality rules.

DoctorOetker 9y ago

This 'link tax' sounds awful. Will WikiPedia need to start paying 'link tax' ?