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I have yet to see an informed discussion about this law anywhere. The "copyright" (if there were such a thing) reform is about regulating two things - display

I have yet to see an informed discussion about this law anywhere. The "copyright" (if there were such a thing) reform is about regulating two things - display of StackOverflow, Wikipedia, news, and other (commercial) info content full-text in link previews of search machines and news aggregators and discussion boards - requirement for file sharing platforms to make an effort to check user uploads for "copyright" infringements. I understand the latter is to fill a gap where file sharing platforms just shrug-away accusations of large scale copyright infringement by their users, yet receive all the economic benefit. Obviously, scanning upload content for infringement isn't technically feasible without also requiring publishers to somehow register content/hashes to claim commercial rights, and mechanisms in place for resolving disputes, etc. The law text as it is written seems also too broadly applicable. Because of these flaws, the content filtering part should maybe be unbundled into a separate law after further discussion. I also believe the Web can come up with technical superior, more practical solutions. For example, using HTML metadata to tag content, embedding and linking content from an origin site, and/or exposing snippets as public syndication feeds. In fact, these mechanisms have been in place for such a long time that they might've been forgotten already. I don't have a definite opinion yet. I guess if one accepts the EU is mainly an institution concerned with common economic market conditions, it should strive to make the Web work better for content creators than it is now with very few ad networks raking in cash. OTOH, link preview and content scanning laws are obviously lobbied for by big media (the former by German newspapers as it seems, the latter supposedly by Hollywood and music publishers).

pjc50 8y ago
- requirement for file sharing platforms to make an effort to check user uploads for "copyright" infringements. This is a lot bigger than it sounds, though; it turns upload from something that can be implemented in a weekend to something that requires reimplementing content-id. It also seems to mandate cloud storage systems to go rummaging through your files for infringement. If it applies to images and copyright is effectively restored to photographers, that's also the end of tumblr and imgur. Or just banning Europe, again :(
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> Obviously, scanning upload content for infringement isn't technically feasible without also requiring publishers to somehow register content/hashes to claim commercial rights, and mechanisms in place for resolving disputes, etc. It isn't feasible at all. It's already common to upload encrypted zip files and distribute the passphrase with the link, as a method of privacy protection against the hosting provider. But that obviously also defeats any kind of hashing or fingerprinting system and would be employed universally by pirates as soon as any such thing was mandated. It's just a garbage law that imposes costs and yields no benefits.
danShumway 8y ago
Why the quotes? EU itself refers to this as copyright reform[0]. I assume they know what's in their own directive. There are a lot of reasons why this is a bad idea, but just looking at precedent alone should be enough to give people pause. Germany already introduced a link tax 4 years ago. Google just stopped showing link snippets for publishers, publishers realized their click-through rates from search results were a lot worse without snippets, and most of them gave Google free licenses to include the snippets. It was a complete failure. Ironically, a law that was intended to stop Google from gobbling up more ad revenue created a situation where Google's position was even more entrenched, because they were free to continue operating as normal and small sites weren't. The upload filter is problematic because it's an automated upload filter that would be required by law to preserve safe havens, would have zero consideration for fair use, would have no real penalties for misuse by bad actors, and would serve as precedent for whatever the next thing is that lawmakers decide to block. But again, skipping all of that we also have data on upload filters, ie Youtube's content ID, which is regularly abused by bad actors to remove fair-use content, troll and attack activists, and censor criticism. Creatives and small publishers hate content ID. I have a fair amount of respect for EU lawmakers for often taking experimental approaches to laws where they'll do limited trials or gather data to get a more educated understanding of what a policy will do. Ignoring any of the common sense problems with the proposal, it's kind of crazy to me that any of this is still on the table when there are zero practical examples of link taxes or upload filters actually working in the real world. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/modernisation-eu-copyright-rules https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/modernisation-...

pjc50 8y ago

- requirement for file sharing platforms to make an effort to check user uploads for "copyright" infringements. This is a lot bigger than it sounds, though; it turns upload from something that can be implemented in a weekend to something that requires reimplementing content-id. It also seems to mandate cloud storage systems to go rummaging through your files for infringement. If it applies to images and copyright is effectively restored to photographers, that's also the end of tumblr and imgur. Or just banning Europe, again :(

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> Obviously, scanning upload content for infringement isn't technically feasible without also requiring publishers to somehow register content/hashes to claim commercial rights, and mechanisms in place for resolving disputes, etc. It isn't feasible at all. It's already common to upload encrypted zip files and distribute the passphrase with the link, as a method of privacy protection against the hosting provider. But that obviously also defeats any kind of hashing or fingerprinting system and would be employed universally by pirates as soon as any such thing was mandated. It's just a garbage law that imposes costs and yields no benefits.

danShumway 8y ago

Why the quotes? EU itself refers to this as copyright reform[0]. I assume they know what's in their own directive. There are a lot of reasons why this is a bad idea, but just looking at precedent alone should be enough to give people pause. Germany already introduced a link tax 4 years ago. Google just stopped showing link snippets for publishers, publishers realized their click-through rates from search results were a lot worse without snippets, and most of them gave Google free licenses to include the snippets. It was a complete failure. Ironically, a law that was intended to stop Google from gobbling up more ad revenue created a situation where Google's position was even more entrenched, because they were free to continue operating as normal and small sites weren't. The upload filter is problematic because it's an automated upload filter that would be required by law to preserve safe havens, would have zero consideration for fair use, would have no real penalties for misuse by bad actors, and would serve as precedent for whatever the next thing is that lawmakers decide to block. But again, skipping all of that we also have data on upload filters, ie Youtube's content ID, which is regularly abused by bad actors to remove fair-use content, troll and attack activists, and censor criticism. Creatives and small publishers hate content ID. I have a fair amount of respect for EU lawmakers for often taking experimental approaches to laws where they'll do limited trials or gather data to get a more educated understanding of what a policy will do. Ignoring any of the common sense problems with the proposal, it's kind of crazy to me that any of this is still on the table when there are zero practical examples of link taxes or upload filters actually working in the real world. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/modernisation-eu-copyright-rules https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/modernisation-...