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The EU's Copyright Proposal Is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even Wikipedia

253 points by Mononokay 8y ago

skrebbel 8y ago
I still don't understand how roughly the same people can do so well at the GDPR and at the same time screw up so badly on this copyright stuff. I mean, sure, GDPR isn't perfect but at its core it's a pro-citizen thing that has some decent vision behind it and had to resist a lot of corporate lobbying to make it through. This copyright bill seems to be the opposite in every respect. If anyone can explain to me how the same organizations can do both these things at about the same time then I'd love to learn :-)
- throwaway13337 8y ago
  Both GDPR and this new proposal are pro big internet businesses, and anti small businesses & community run organizations. Both increase consumer annoyance. And both will likely in the end not help consumers with privacy or otherwise. It seems like the same group could definitely be responsible. I see no contradiction.
  - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
    GDPR is strictly pro-consumer. Data hoarders like Google or Facebook are the ones that were hurt the most.
    - sp332 8y ago
      Google and Facebook were hurt somewhat but they'll be fine. Smaller competitors had to take relatively more resources to comply.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      The two most noticeable effects of the GDPR on average consumers so far seem to be a dramatic increase in unwanted messages from just about every organisations they've ever communicated with and the loss of access to various web sites based outside the EU. The intent may have been noble, but the execution was awful, to the point where the GDPR now seems to be widely regarded in non-techie circles with the same contempt as the "cookie" law that results in all of those annoying messages on web sites. It looks as though the proposed copyright changes are more of the same, horrible for smaller businesses and potentially resulting in the EU being actively cut out of even more Internet services because compliance is too onerous. Let's hope they do a better job of fixing it or forget the whole thing this time around.
      - jdietrich 8y ago
        >The two most noticeable effects of the GDPR on average consumers so far seem to be a dramatic increase in unwanted messages from just about every organisations they've ever communicated with and the loss of access to various web sites based outside the EU. The intent may have been noble, but the execution was awful, to the point where the GDPR now seems to be widely regarded in non-techie circles with the same contempt as the "cookie" law that results in all of those annoying messages on web sites. The GDPR became law two years ago; lots of companies that really should have known better ignored it until the eleventh hour. It is materially similar to the Data Protection Directive, which was passed in 1995. Had companies actually paid attention to the DPD, the GDPR would have been largely unnecessary. The GDPR isn't trivial to comply with, but data protection is not a trivial matter. The proposed Copyright Directive is in parts severely misguided and I will be petitioning my MEPs accordingly.
    - infinitismal8 8y ago
      How were data hoarders like Google and Facebook hurt? They now just gate their EU service behind an accept button. Will people stop using the service after reading what data is collected? No
    - ghein 8y ago
      Very stringent regulation is in the interests of large businesses. They have the resources while smaller businesses do not. We've seen this in reports after GDPR go live where Google's advertising market share went up: they had the resources to demonstrate compliance as well as a better ability to get consent (google vs random ad exchange asking for your consent.. google vs a restaurant you go to a few times a year..). People announce good intentions and create laws and regulations embodying these intentions. They don't look at what the second and third order responses are likely to be, just at what they consider bad behavior and what looks to be a first order response to that. It is very, very hard to create laws and regulations that will have the actual effect that you intend but it is very easy to write laws that have good names and have superficial appeal. Whether the subject is market structure, privacy, or taxation, far too many supposedly intelligent people adopt or accept the superficial response rather than the well thought through one. You wouldn't accept that approach in your code but you're happy to accept it in national and international governance. People are then shocked that they don't obtain their desired results and argue for new, improved, superficial laws and regulations.
      - nerdponx 8y ago
        This is true about a lot of regulations, e.g. slaughterhouse regulations in the USA. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have those regulations, or at least some version of those regulations.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > This is true about a lot of regulations Managing how the regulatory burden falls is a core part of lawmaking. GDPR fails in this respect. Complain-investigate regimes (where complaints frequently trigger a regulatory interaction) are effective. They're also among the most-onerous forms of oversight. (Second to mandatory licensing and auditing.) Add to that the power of each of the EU's twenty-eight national data regulators to interpret the rules. Result? A law that's great for Facebook and Google and terrible for almost anyone else. To wit, Facebook and Google's shares of EU advertising has risen since GDPR went into effect.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      That is naive. The GDPR is structured to require processes that favor implementation by the management structures already in place in big businesses, leaving the little people scrambling. Being good for the consumer is just a cover story.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      They will hurt but the smaller companies will stop operating in the EU altogether. So yes its pro big business, just like the war on drugs has for effect to support the large cartels while getting rid of the small local dealers.
    - vesinisa 8y ago
      That is incorrect. GDPR allows hoarding data from consumers, but requires explicit consent. The business model of FB is to offer a free service in exchange of consent to tracking and targeted ads. Hoards of internet users are already 'hooked' on FB, and would consent to sharing anything with them if it's a prerequisite to participate in the platform. New and coming businesses require jumping through more hoops to implement GDPR, while big players with their lawyer armies have no trouble adjusting to regulation, hindering competition.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
        > and would consent to sharing anything with them if it's a prerequisite to participate in the platform. It has to be freely given consent, so it cannot be a prerequisite.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        Facebook has armies of lawyers and lobbyists dealing with this ambiguity in each of the EU’s twenty-eight capitals.
        20after4 8y ago
        You are free to not use Facebook.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
        And I am free to use Facebook and not consent. Your point being?
    - merinowool 8y ago
      GDPR vastly increased potential attack surfaces (people taught to click consent buttons without reading, easier fishing - click to login to update your personal information, data portability - scammer can more easily extract personal data by impersonation and much more) and provides false sense of security. It only benefits civil servants and large corporations.
    - narrator 8y ago
      How about distributed systems like Mastodon or Blockchain or IPFS? They might not even be able to comply with GDPR.
  - s2g 8y ago
    Well then the only solution left is to make any big business so small that there are no entrenched players. Or live in a corporate ruled regulation free dystopia.
  - bertolo1988 8y ago
    How is GDPR pro business if companies had to stop contact costumers? Can you imagine how much businesses are ilegal now? Telemarketing is ilegal now, consultancy companies can't recruit new people via email or phone. People are yet to realize the true impact of GDPR.
    - dingo_bat 8y ago
      > How is GDPR pro business if companies had to stop contact costumers? GDPR is pro big business. For example, Google, Facebook have not changed their tracking activities at all. OTOH, many small businesses had to stop tracking people and gather less data.
      - bertolo1988 8y ago
        Agreed
- posterboy 8y ago
  maybe they adhered to the same principles, seeing content mafiosi as citizens, too. The article makes it sound as if having your news article cited would become opt-in.
- rbehrends 8y ago
  Because it's not "the same people". This is legislation in a huge bicameral legislature with a multitude of interested parties, including 28 member states and eight political groups. That's before we even consider lobbying interests. Such legislation is usually a tug-of-war that involves lots of horsetrading and compromise (similar to the US Congress, really), because it requires majorities in both houses of the legislature. So you have the various political factions duke it out in the lower house (European Parliament) and the member states in the upper house (Council of the EU). The current proposal has seen a lot of back-and-forth between the conflicting interests of the member states (for example, Germany likes Article 11, but doesn't like Article 13, while other member states have different priorities).
  - merinowool 8y ago
    Think how much tax payer money those bureacrats wasted. Unbelievable
- bertolo1988 8y ago
  Are you aware that GDPR made every business that relied on finding costumers trough phone or email ilegal? How can you defend a legislation that makes everyone illegal, even outside your jurisdiction?
  - pas 8y ago
    That's not the case. They can find costumers through various channels, but they need consent first, they can't spam.
    - bertolo1988 8y ago
      Not correct. They can't contact without positive consent. How can they prompt consent if they can't contact them in the first place?
- jakeogh 8y ago
  The GDPR tricked people into being ok with the gov deciding what you can remember, this just takes the next step. It's a standard incrementalism approach, shrouding them in "just for the corps" to start.
  - Retra 8y ago
    The government doesn't decide what you can remember, your customers do.
    - jakeogh 8y ago
      Gov decided on classes of stuff you need permission to remember, and that's just the beginning, next the blacklists will be explicit (like this proposal).
      - Retra 8y ago
        And then fascism of course.
        jakeogh 8y ago
        Na, the member states are just going to xEXIT, taking their self-determinism with them.
- zaarn 8y ago
  The copyright proposal is from Mr. Voss, CDU politician. He already tried to push a similar law in germany, somewhat successfully in that the parliament basically holed it out to be effectively worthless for what he attempted to do. The reason this gets any support at all is because of corporations like Axel Springer SE (not to be confused with Springer S+B Media) which are the utmost cancer on modern journalism and media. Of course, once it got through they managed to get delisted on Google News as a reaction and IIRC it took about 48 hours for them to cave in instead of demanding money from Google. At the moment the CDU fraction in the EU parliament is pushing this and trying to pressure other parties into voting yes. It should be noted that as in all governments, the EU does do several things at once and different interest groups may propose laws so the people who build up the GDPR may have no involvement in this.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Watch out, the shills are out in force today. There’s a lot of money in personalized ads and many people here bring home the bacon due to tracking, so GDPR is threatening their future. It’s amazing to witness. I mean, several years back I was naive enough to think that the smart people of HN are above such hypocrisy. How wrong I was. I have been involved btw in implementing GDPR compliance. The companies facing difficulties are those that were irresponsible with user data to begin with. And indeed GDPR is a threat to their business model if they don’t change. Which is good – if GDPR wouldn’t be a threat to the business model of irresponsible companies, then it wouldn’t be relevant at all. Also that line about big companies being the only ones capable of implementing GDPR is ridiculous payed marketing via tainted publications like TechCrunch and it’s catching on apparently. But yes, it’s about time companies show some responsibility for it. Because if your whole business model relies on the ignorance of users, you’re doing something nefarious.
  - jakeogh 8y ago
    Ya, pointing out it's (EU) government mandated attack on memory (in a thread about mandated memory blacklists), all the way down to who visited your property; must be shills. Shocking that the shills are on the right side of the WOGPC, OR (less surprising) your assumption is incorrect. I doubt you will address the real issue; that this a EU gov mandated memory hole and the GDPR is the obvious framework to start with in the historically standard incrementalism approach.
tofof 8y ago
On this side of the Atlantic, we successfully blocked SOPA from becoming reality (so far). Looks like it's your turn, EU techies.
- lossolo 8y ago
  We blocked ACTA and SOPA in EU couple of years ago.
IanCal 8y ago
> Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works. I don't understand where this level of detail has come from. Can someone explain? Here's article 13 as far as I can tell > Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter. > 2.Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1. > 3.Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments. Edit - > after Article 13 becomes law, any information hosted in the EU might disappear—and links to US mirrors might become infringing How would links be infringing? Also where in A13 are they talked about at all? Edit 2 - I need to dig out a source but I'm near certain that there is an allowance for review, critique and satirisation of the news in the EU docs they're talking about. > news sites may seek to withhold linking licenses from critics who want to quote from them in order to analyze, correct and critique their articles
- microcolonel 8y ago
politician 8y ago
Copyright. These media companies would be all over a technology that injected content via direct neural stimulation at an authorized retail outlet. Or a technology that was a permanently sealed container containing the content that must never ever ever be shared. After all, if you can prevent sharing it 1 million times, that translates into pretty low false negative rate on preventing acceptable sharing. Or a tax collected that covered 100% of estimated revenues "just in case". Ads, however, are vitally important to our global economy and must be shared widely, as wide as possible.
sbhn 8y ago
It’s only bad for Californian copyright lawyers
- k_sh 8y ago
  Why?
tehabe 8y ago
For all EU citizens please write, call, speak to your MEP! The vote is on June 20. This cannot wait until the law is done. https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/
- honestoHeminway 8y ago
  Cant we automate that- just like they automated copyright law rewrites in those media companies. You can not ralley succesfull protests year after year.
- runj__ 8y ago
  I wrote my MEP a while ago and he responded and made a youtube clip talking about this issue, one of the few times I really felt like I was part of the EU.
merinowool 8y ago
All content will have to go through "filters" - that means it is the end of end to end encrypted services.
- notahacker 8y ago
  The proposed law applies only to commercial sites which publish user-submitted content which can be accessed by the general public.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    For now. If this becomes commonplace and accepted, you can be damn sure they will try to extend this to more and more channels.
  - merinowool 8y ago
    I can't see how a messenger type of software to which general public has access wouldn't fall into that.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Because the stuff you put in your messenger is usually not posted publicly but to private groups or single contacts?
    - notahacker 8y ago
      If something is end to end encrypted, then by definition it is not made available (in unencrypted form) to the general public (as opposed to a select group of individuals with the relevant keys/logins) The fact the software itself may be available to the wider public to set up other private communications channels to exchange other messages with other parties is irrelevant
      - merinowool 8y ago
        In that case it will be very simple to circumvent. As webpage could be delivered once you log in, in form of an encrypted message.
honestoHeminway 8y ago
Its the defeat of democracy by exaustion. If you marshall copyright rewrite laws every half year, the organizations who ralley to protests to prevent or repent those laws are going to admit defeat by exaustion. We need a law, that prevents significant changes to a topic after it has been created for at least 4 years. Precising and edge case ammendments - yes, but direction/ intentionwise, the law remains locked in place for one voting period.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
soufron 8y ago
Come on... this is not "Eu's copyright Proposal"... it's one proposal, from one MEP, for one commission of the Parliament...
- dannyobrien 8y ago
  No: it’s worse than that. This is the last committee vote before a plenary, and the main parties and the member states have decided to support it. The only way this is stopped from becoming law is if you contact your MEP now. https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi...
dingo_bat 8y ago
Government mandated, privately paid censorship. That's what it has come to. Again, just like GDPR, this won't hurt any big sites at all (Youtube already does this). But smaller players will struggle, and users will get inconvenienced and censored.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
IMHO it isn't helpful that anti-"copyright"-reform initiatives such as https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/, https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi... and now EFF use clickbaity, juvenile, and outright incorrect arguments, foul language, and lacking nuance. Am I an outlier in thinking that YouTube/Google and others should be held liable for willfully profitting from "copyright" infringement at a massive scale, yet simply find the proposed law very badly done and in obvious need of consideration? The elephant in the room being that there is no "media database" that could be used for content scanning; the entire concept is technically infeasible. The whole idea of scanning "uploads" stinks; why not requiring that works are linked to rather uploaded, or use HTML metadata to represent an asserted license/"copyright" weaver. Moreover, the law isn't aligned with press laws: it's completely unclear who is subject to this law in the first place eg. if you're hosting sites on your domain, or at your IP, yet others take responsibility and are mentioned by name for the site's content (under VisdP in German press law, for example).
- pimmen 8y ago
  I sent an email to my MEPs saying exactly this; it's not technically feasible to implement this without having the media in question, so you are shifting this very steep requirement of proof from the accuser to the accused. The media companies are the accusers, they should build this database to make it easier for them to prove their case.
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    Interesting. How did you formulate your concerns? IANAL (well, took four semesters) and it's difficult even for most lawyers to recap the entire legal theory behind commercial and moral rights of works. Do you know a better template text than https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/ and in German? I agree the law should be reconsidered, or at least, as you say, should address publishers's part in eg. maintaining and distributing SHA keys for works they claim, though we all know this can trivially be defeated by just recoding content. I also don't understand why concepts of other parts of the law (link previews of snippets from news, Wikipedia and StackOverflow being shown on SERP pages so users don't go to the original source) aren't integrated, when there are obvious, widely used, and readily available techniques for linking, annotations and HTML metadata, or why these two issues should belong in the same law. I guess it's just a profoundly incompetent law. I'm still confused who is behind the push for this part of "copyright" reform. German party CDU they say (eg. the party of Ms Merkel) with their buddy/sponsor Axel Springer Verlag, but OTOH last year's equally flawed law for online platforms self-censoring was initiated by Heiko Maas, SPD, so the lack of public or parliamentary discussion smells like a hidden quid-pro-quo deal here to me. I'd really appreciate links to more balanced and comprehensive coverage; even netzpolitik.org coverage is too one-sided IMHO.

253 points by Mononokay 8y ago

I still don't understand how roughly the same people can do so well at the GDPR and at the same time screw up so badly on this copyright stuff. I mean, sure, GDPR isn't perfect but at its core it's a pro-citizen thing that has some decent vision behind it and had to resist a lot of corporate lobbying to make it through. This copyright bill seems to be the opposite in every respect. If anyone can explain to me how the same organizations can do both these things at about the same time then I'd love to learn :-)

throwaway13337 8y ago
Both GDPR and this new proposal are pro big internet businesses, and anti small businesses & community run organizations. Both increase consumer annoyance. And both will likely in the end not help consumers with privacy or otherwise. It seems like the same group could definitely be responsible. I see no contradiction.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
  GDPR is strictly pro-consumer. Data hoarders like Google or Facebook are the ones that were hurt the most.
  - sp332 8y ago
    Google and Facebook were hurt somewhat but they'll be fine. Smaller competitors had to take relatively more resources to comply.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    The two most noticeable effects of the GDPR on average consumers so far seem to be a dramatic increase in unwanted messages from just about every organisations they've ever communicated with and the loss of access to various web sites based outside the EU. The intent may have been noble, but the execution was awful, to the point where the GDPR now seems to be widely regarded in non-techie circles with the same contempt as the "cookie" law that results in all of those annoying messages on web sites. It looks as though the proposed copyright changes are more of the same, horrible for smaller businesses and potentially resulting in the EU being actively cut out of even more Internet services because compliance is too onerous. Let's hope they do a better job of fixing it or forget the whole thing this time around.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >The two most noticeable effects of the GDPR on average consumers so far seem to be a dramatic increase in unwanted messages from just about every organisations they've ever communicated with and the loss of access to various web sites based outside the EU. The intent may have been noble, but the execution was awful, to the point where the GDPR now seems to be widely regarded in non-techie circles with the same contempt as the "cookie" law that results in all of those annoying messages on web sites. The GDPR became law two years ago; lots of companies that really should have known better ignored it until the eleventh hour. It is materially similar to the Data Protection Directive, which was passed in 1995. Had companies actually paid attention to the DPD, the GDPR would have been largely unnecessary. The GDPR isn't trivial to comply with, but data protection is not a trivial matter. The proposed Copyright Directive is in parts severely misguided and I will be petitioning my MEPs accordingly.
  - infinitismal8 8y ago
    How were data hoarders like Google and Facebook hurt? They now just gate their EU service behind an accept button. Will people stop using the service after reading what data is collected? No
  - ghein 8y ago
    Very stringent regulation is in the interests of large businesses. They have the resources while smaller businesses do not. We've seen this in reports after GDPR go live where Google's advertising market share went up: they had the resources to demonstrate compliance as well as a better ability to get consent (google vs random ad exchange asking for your consent.. google vs a restaurant you go to a few times a year..). People announce good intentions and create laws and regulations embodying these intentions. They don't look at what the second and third order responses are likely to be, just at what they consider bad behavior and what looks to be a first order response to that. It is very, very hard to create laws and regulations that will have the actual effect that you intend but it is very easy to write laws that have good names and have superficial appeal. Whether the subject is market structure, privacy, or taxation, far too many supposedly intelligent people adopt or accept the superficial response rather than the well thought through one. You wouldn't accept that approach in your code but you're happy to accept it in national and international governance. People are then shocked that they don't obtain their desired results and argue for new, improved, superficial laws and regulations.
    - nerdponx 8y ago
      This is true about a lot of regulations, e.g. slaughterhouse regulations in the USA. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have those regulations, or at least some version of those regulations.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > This is true about a lot of regulations Managing how the regulatory burden falls is a core part of lawmaking. GDPR fails in this respect. Complain-investigate regimes (where complaints frequently trigger a regulatory interaction) are effective. They're also among the most-onerous forms of oversight. (Second to mandatory licensing and auditing.) Add to that the power of each of the EU's twenty-eight national data regulators to interpret the rules. Result? A law that's great for Facebook and Google and terrible for almost anyone else. To wit, Facebook and Google's shares of EU advertising has risen since GDPR went into effect.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    That is naive. The GDPR is structured to require processes that favor implementation by the management structures already in place in big businesses, leaving the little people scrambling. Being good for the consumer is just a cover story.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    They will hurt but the smaller companies will stop operating in the EU altogether. So yes its pro big business, just like the war on drugs has for effect to support the large cartels while getting rid of the small local dealers.
  - vesinisa 8y ago
    That is incorrect. GDPR allows hoarding data from consumers, but requires explicit consent. The business model of FB is to offer a free service in exchange of consent to tracking and targeted ads. Hoards of internet users are already 'hooked' on FB, and would consent to sharing anything with them if it's a prerequisite to participate in the platform. New and coming businesses require jumping through more hoops to implement GDPR, while big players with their lawyer armies have no trouble adjusting to regulation, hindering competition.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      > and would consent to sharing anything with them if it's a prerequisite to participate in the platform. It has to be freely given consent, so it cannot be a prerequisite.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        Facebook has armies of lawyers and lobbyists dealing with this ambiguity in each of the EU’s twenty-eight capitals.
      - 20after4 8y ago
        You are free to not use Facebook.
        zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
        And I am free to use Facebook and not consent. Your point being?
  - merinowool 8y ago
    GDPR vastly increased potential attack surfaces (people taught to click consent buttons without reading, easier fishing - click to login to update your personal information, data portability - scammer can more easily extract personal data by impersonation and much more) and provides false sense of security. It only benefits civil servants and large corporations.
  - narrator 8y ago
    How about distributed systems like Mastodon or Blockchain or IPFS? They might not even be able to comply with GDPR.
- s2g 8y ago
  Well then the only solution left is to make any big business so small that there are no entrenched players. Or live in a corporate ruled regulation free dystopia.
- bertolo1988 8y ago
  How is GDPR pro business if companies had to stop contact costumers? Can you imagine how much businesses are ilegal now? Telemarketing is ilegal now, consultancy companies can't recruit new people via email or phone. People are yet to realize the true impact of GDPR.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    > How is GDPR pro business if companies had to stop contact costumers? GDPR is pro big business. For example, Google, Facebook have not changed their tracking activities at all. OTOH, many small businesses had to stop tracking people and gather less data.
    - bertolo1988 8y ago
      Agreed
posterboy 8y ago
maybe they adhered to the same principles, seeing content mafiosi as citizens, too. The article makes it sound as if having your news article cited would become opt-in.
rbehrends 8y ago
Because it's not "the same people". This is legislation in a huge bicameral legislature with a multitude of interested parties, including 28 member states and eight political groups. That's before we even consider lobbying interests. Such legislation is usually a tug-of-war that involves lots of horsetrading and compromise (similar to the US Congress, really), because it requires majorities in both houses of the legislature. So you have the various political factions duke it out in the lower house (European Parliament) and the member states in the upper house (Council of the EU). The current proposal has seen a lot of back-and-forth between the conflicting interests of the member states (for example, Germany likes Article 11, but doesn't like Article 13, while other member states have different priorities).
- merinowool 8y ago
  Think how much tax payer money those bureacrats wasted. Unbelievable
bertolo1988 8y ago
Are you aware that GDPR made every business that relied on finding costumers trough phone or email ilegal? How can you defend a legislation that makes everyone illegal, even outside your jurisdiction?
- pas 8y ago
  That's not the case. They can find costumers through various channels, but they need consent first, they can't spam.
  - bertolo1988 8y ago
    Not correct. They can't contact without positive consent. How can they prompt consent if they can't contact them in the first place?
jakeogh 8y ago
The GDPR tricked people into being ok with the gov deciding what you can remember, this just takes the next step. It's a standard incrementalism approach, shrouding them in "just for the corps" to start.
- Retra 8y ago
  The government doesn't decide what you can remember, your customers do.
  - jakeogh 8y ago
    Gov decided on classes of stuff you need permission to remember, and that's just the beginning, next the blacklists will be explicit (like this proposal).
    - Retra 8y ago
      And then fascism of course.
      - jakeogh 8y ago
        Na, the member states are just going to xEXIT, taking their self-determinism with them.
zaarn 8y ago
The copyright proposal is from Mr. Voss, CDU politician. He already tried to push a similar law in germany, somewhat successfully in that the parliament basically holed it out to be effectively worthless for what he attempted to do. The reason this gets any support at all is because of corporations like Axel Springer SE (not to be confused with Springer S+B Media) which are the utmost cancer on modern journalism and media. Of course, once it got through they managed to get delisted on Google News as a reaction and IIRC it took about 48 hours for them to cave in instead of demanding money from Google. At the moment the CDU fraction in the EU parliament is pushing this and trying to pressure other parties into voting yes. It should be noted that as in all governments, the EU does do several things at once and different interest groups may propose laws so the people who build up the GDPR may have no involvement in this.
bad_user 8y ago
Watch out, the shills are out in force today. There’s a lot of money in personalized ads and many people here bring home the bacon due to tracking, so GDPR is threatening their future. It’s amazing to witness. I mean, several years back I was naive enough to think that the smart people of HN are above such hypocrisy. How wrong I was. I have been involved btw in implementing GDPR compliance. The companies facing difficulties are those that were irresponsible with user data to begin with. And indeed GDPR is a threat to their business model if they don’t change. Which is good – if GDPR wouldn’t be a threat to the business model of irresponsible companies, then it wouldn’t be relevant at all. Also that line about big companies being the only ones capable of implementing GDPR is ridiculous payed marketing via tainted publications like TechCrunch and it’s catching on apparently. But yes, it’s about time companies show some responsibility for it. Because if your whole business model relies on the ignorance of users, you’re doing something nefarious.
- jakeogh 8y ago
  Ya, pointing out it's (EU) government mandated attack on memory (in a thread about mandated memory blacklists), all the way down to who visited your property; must be shills. Shocking that the shills are on the right side of the WOGPC, OR (less surprising) your assumption is incorrect. I doubt you will address the real issue; that this a EU gov mandated memory hole and the GDPR is the obvious framework to start with in the historically standard incrementalism approach.

tofof 8y ago

On this side of the Atlantic, we successfully blocked SOPA from becoming reality (so far). Looks like it's your turn, EU techies.

lossolo 8y ago
We blocked ACTA and SOPA in EU couple of years ago.

IanCal 8y ago

> Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works. I don't understand where this level of detail has come from. Can someone explain? Here's article 13 as far as I can tell > Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter. > 2.Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1. > 3.Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments. Edit - > after Article 13 becomes law, any information hosted in the EU might disappear—and links to US mirrors might become infringing How would links be infringing? Also where in A13 are they talked about at all? Edit 2 - I need to dig out a source but I'm near certain that there is an allowance for review, critique and satirisation of the news in the EU docs they're talking about. > news sites may seek to withhold linking licenses from critics who want to quote from them in order to analyze, correct and critique their articles

microcolonel 8y ago

politician 8y ago

Copyright. These media companies would be all over a technology that injected content via direct neural stimulation at an authorized retail outlet. Or a technology that was a permanently sealed container containing the content that must never ever ever be shared. After all, if you can prevent sharing it 1 million times, that translates into pretty low false negative rate on preventing acceptable sharing. Or a tax collected that covered 100% of estimated revenues "just in case". Ads, however, are vitally important to our global economy and must be shared widely, as wide as possible.

sbhn 8y ago

It’s only bad for Californian copyright lawyers

k_sh 8y ago
Why?

tehabe 8y ago

For all EU citizens please write, call, speak to your MEP! The vote is on June 20. This cannot wait until the law is done. https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/

honestoHeminway 8y ago
Cant we automate that- just like they automated copyright law rewrites in those media companies. You can not ralley succesfull protests year after year.
runj__ 8y ago
I wrote my MEP a while ago and he responded and made a youtube clip talking about this issue, one of the few times I really felt like I was part of the EU.

merinowool 8y ago

All content will have to go through "filters" - that means it is the end of end to end encrypted services.

notahacker 8y ago
The proposed law applies only to commercial sites which publish user-submitted content which can be accessed by the general public.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  For now. If this becomes commonplace and accepted, you can be damn sure they will try to extend this to more and more channels.
- merinowool 8y ago
  I can't see how a messenger type of software to which general public has access wouldn't fall into that.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Because the stuff you put in your messenger is usually not posted publicly but to private groups or single contacts?
  - notahacker 8y ago
    If something is end to end encrypted, then by definition it is not made available (in unencrypted form) to the general public (as opposed to a select group of individuals with the relevant keys/logins) The fact the software itself may be available to the wider public to set up other private communications channels to exchange other messages with other parties is irrelevant
    - merinowool 8y ago
      In that case it will be very simple to circumvent. As webpage could be delivered once you log in, in form of an encrypted message.

honestoHeminway 8y ago

Its the defeat of democracy by exaustion. If you marshall copyright rewrite laws every half year, the organizations who ralley to protests to prevent or repent those laws are going to admit defeat by exaustion. We need a law, that prevents significant changes to a topic after it has been created for at least 4 years. Precising and edge case ammendments - yes, but direction/ intentionwise, the law remains locked in place for one voting period.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

soufron 8y ago

Come on... this is not "Eu's copyright Proposal"... it's one proposal, from one MEP, for one commission of the Parliament...

dannyobrien 8y ago
No: it’s worse than that. This is the last committee vote before a plenary, and the main parties and the member states have decided to support it. The only way this is stopped from becoming law is if you contact your MEP now. https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi...

dingo_bat 8y ago

Government mandated, privately paid censorship. That's what it has come to. Again, just like GDPR, this won't hurt any big sites at all (Youtube already does this). But smaller players will struggle, and users will get inconvenienced and censored.

tannhaeuser 8y ago

IMHO it isn't helpful that anti-"copyright"-reform initiatives such as https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/, https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi... and now EFF use clickbaity, juvenile, and outright incorrect arguments, foul language, and lacking nuance. Am I an outlier in thinking that YouTube/Google and others should be held liable for willfully profitting from "copyright" infringement at a massive scale, yet simply find the proposed law very badly done and in obvious need of consideration? The elephant in the room being that there is no "media database" that could be used for content scanning; the entire concept is technically infeasible. The whole idea of scanning "uploads" stinks; why not requiring that works are linked to rather uploaded, or use HTML metadata to represent an asserted license/"copyright" weaver. Moreover, the law isn't aligned with press laws: it's completely unclear who is subject to this law in the first place eg. if you're hosting sites on your domain, or at your IP, yet others take responsibility and are mentioned by name for the site's content (under VisdP in German press law, for example).

pimmen 8y ago
I sent an email to my MEPs saying exactly this; it's not technically feasible to implement this without having the media in question, so you are shifting this very steep requirement of proof from the accuser to the accused. The media companies are the accusers, they should build this database to make it easier for them to prove their case.
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  Interesting. How did you formulate your concerns? IANAL (well, took four semesters) and it's difficult even for most lawyers to recap the entire legal theory behind commercial and moral rights of works. Do you know a better template text than https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/ and in German? I agree the law should be reconsidered, or at least, as you say, should address publishers's part in eg. maintaining and distributing SHA keys for works they claim, though we all know this can trivially be defeated by just recoding content. I also don't understand why concepts of other parts of the law (link previews of snippets from news, Wikipedia and StackOverflow being shown on SERP pages so users don't go to the original source) aren't integrated, when there are obvious, widely used, and readily available techniques for linking, annotations and HTML metadata, or why these two issues should belong in the same law. I guess it's just a profoundly incompetent law. I'm still confused who is behind the push for this part of "copyright" reform. German party CDU they say (eg. the party of Ms Merkel) with their buddy/sponsor Axel Springer Verlag, but OTOH last year's equally flawed law for online platforms self-censoring was initiated by Heiko Maas, SPD, so the lack of public or parliamentary discussion smells like a hidden quid-pro-quo deal here to me. I'd really appreciate links to more balanced and comprehensive coverage; even netzpolitik.org coverage is too one-sided IMHO.