8 ms·

EU copyright reforms draw fire from scientists

256 points by touristtam 8y ago

cft 8y ago
Just the mere fact that the EU government can be so technically inept as to draft and circulate such a legislation makes me totally distrust its intentions.
- zavi 8y ago
  I'm getting GDPR flashbacks.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    GDPR benefited citizens and hurt big companies, article 13 benefits big companies and hurts everyone else
    - sandov 8y ago
      Big companies are made by citizens. GDPR hurt everyone.
    - sfifs 8y ago
      GDPR is helping US internet giants and squelching smaller players. I work in the media space and can see where advertiser money is flowing. Advertisers who had previously spread their money supporting smaller publishers including European publishers are now concentrating it in walled gardens to limit any potential liability reasoning that the walled gardens will better be able to handle any arising litigation through their bottomless cash reserves :-)
      - sincerely 8y ago
        If the “smaller players” aren’t willing to the take the reasonable steps to protect user data that would cause them to not be sued, then I’m fine with that.
        sfifs 8y ago
        I believe you are missing the point of the comment. Even if smaller players take all super duper steps to protect user data, advertisers have no real way of knowing if they are in fact compliant whereas they have a simple way of looking at the published balance sheets of the big players and seeing the huge cash pile and armies of lawyers. The scare caused by activists weilding "nightmare letters" doesn't help. Also there's a body of thought in legal circles that even vendor chains needs to be evaluated which is causing advertisers to be wary. Far simpler to just throw money at the biggies who will deal with this. As usual, the smart money will be in the certification industry that will inevitably come up to tax the mid sized players while the small publishers will die out.
        bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        Either that or new small players will spring up that do not base their business on the user as a commodity.
        rmah 8y ago
        Problem is, those players will still incur the compliance costs. The GDPR rules are not simply penalties for bad behavior. They mandate proscriptive actions companies must take, policies they need to design, services they must perform on demand, etc. whether the company is engaging in bad behavior or not.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I think the basis of GP's comment is the bias a lot of GDPR supporters - myself included - have: we'd like to see the entire advertising industry die. So even if the effects hit smaller publishers more than the large ones, as long as it causes enough damage to the whole business model and incentivizes people to look for alternatives, it's a step in the right direction.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > even if the effects hit smaller publishers more than the large ones, as long as it causes enough damage to the whole business model and incentivizes people to look for alternatives, it's a step in the right direction Remember the adage “divide and conquer”? If you want to destroy something, consolidating its power base (like GDPR does to advertising in Europe) is a poor first move.
      - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        I think the fine structure of GDPR means that what might otherwise appear to be bottomless cash reserves are in fact only significant cash reserves, furthermore not only the advertisers have made this mistake but also the big players who seem to be operating at least on a quasi-antagonistic mode. So what I think is - when the antagonism ends up taking big chunks of money everyone will suddenly realize "oh shit, it's not bottomless" at which point there will opportunities to take advantage of. But maybe my take is too reasonable and instead the advertisers will think oh damn, stuff is really messed up better stay the course with these big guys to get us through these troubled times!
- skywhopper 8y ago
  I don't think it's bad intentions, just very very poor intuition about how computers and software works. They take it as a given that software-based content filters can and do work reasonably well and that the exceptions are exceedingly rare. Just like the press and government and most Hacker News patrons think that self-driving cars are imminent and real AI is just around the corner, and electronic voting is a good idea; and how the press believe that there's probably a backdoor solution for encryption that is still totally safe.
  - cft 8y ago
    I think their calculation is far more rational: "There are no large internet companies in Europe (due to their own anti-startup regulation and taxation regime btw), but there are large copyright owners. So let's at least maximize the the value to the EU copyright lobby without any regard for the EU internet lobby (since we have none)".
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      >"anti-startup regulation and taxation regime" Plenty of startups from the EU have made it big. Just off the top of my head Spotify and Sitecore are pretty big.
      - pacnard 8y ago
        Europe has a bigger population than the US, it should have a lot more startups, but politicians, bureaucrats, existing rules, etc make the economy too unstable and incapable of welcoming new player. People here have learned to aspire for the 9-5 job and can't even imagine that problems are solved by entrepeneurs and not the government.
        pavelludiq 8y ago
        The reason Europe doesn't have as many startups as the US is because nobody in their right mind would fund things like Juicero here, not because the bureaucracy. The "splash the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks" approach isn't the only way to build businesses. Frankly the myopia of SV culture is quite amusing to me. California just can't shake it's gold rush mentality it seems. I'm not saying it hasn't served a lot of people well( obviously it has, but to assume it's the best strategy is pretty short sighted, especially considering I've never seen any actual evidence that it produces a larger number of sustainable businesses. In fact most US startups seem to me to be more like schemes for getting aquihire, or straight up hail marries, rather that actual attempts to make money and build a sustainable business. Also, any entrepreneur that takes the attitude of "it's impossible to do with all of these rules and bureaucracy" is hardly deserving of the name, especially considering it's not really that bad[1], if they were serious, they would find a way to use the rules to their advantage rather than finding excuses or complaining over nothing. [1] For example in many parts of the EU, not only are taxes much lower than the rest, but costs of living and doing business are as well, and many of the rules are less enforced, maybe Europeans simply don't value collectible blockchain cat pictures or IoT fidget spinners as much as Americans do and are less willing to invest in them.
- merinowool 8y ago
  It is not about being inept but rather being willing to pass whatever someone pays you to pass. They simply don't care about the consequences because these will have nothing to do with them. If sh*t hits the fan, they'll retire on some island rich and happy.
- DanBC 8y ago
  Have you read the draft legislation? Where did you read it?
shmerl 8y ago
> The European Parliament legal committee’s vote on the law, scheduled for 23–24 April The vote will be on June 20, 2018. See https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ Hopefully enough people will protest, like happened with ACTA.
bausshf 8y ago
Worse than net neutrality
- Tharkun 8y ago
  Are you saying net neutrality is a bad thing? Why so?
  - bausshf 8y ago
    I mean the net neutrality ban. I should probably have been clear about that.
qwerty456127 8y ago
> Intellectual-property experts agree that existing EU copyright rules need an overhaul for the digital age Variations of this idea are the root of all the bullshit that has began with the DMCA and keeps on with periodical attempts to expand it with SOPA/PIPA/ACTA etc.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  And the sad fact is that they are right, it does need an overhaul, just pretty much in the opposite direction. With the need for traditional publishers and distributors a thing of the past we should be looking into other ways to monetize the arts to support the artists rather than doubling down on scarcity.
  - dpwm 8y ago
    Experts cost money. One side can pay for experts, the other can't. In this case it's the newspapers and publishers. Other times it will be the copyright lobby. It's reminds me of well-funded think-tanks providing experts with academic credentials very articulately arguing that supply-side effects are a great reason to cut taxes for the super-rich and decrease or privatize those costly public services. How many think-tanks advocating increasing taxes for the rich to pay for public services for all get a steady income stream? It's like a biased random walk. Sometimes things go backwards a bit, but the direction's set by underlying bias of the system.
    - adventured 8y ago
      The other side can pay for 10000x more experts. Google is on the other side and the EU has been intentionally ignoring what they've said on the subject for years.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- dbuder 8y ago
  It should read, highly paid and well credentialed consultants said what they were paid to say.
forapurpose 8y ago
I worry that the days of openness - of FOSS and SV startups, as leading examples - might be looked back on as a halcyon nirvana, a wild and free era, remembered by the few who understand what openness means and what its implications were, and who still remember as new generations grow up accustomed to something else. In the case of something so fundamentally technical, most of the public doesn't understand it; they would not understand the significance and what it has begotten. How many noticed what happened to the streetcars? How many Americans notice their horrible healthcare system, despite overwhelming evidence of far better alternatives? Look at the CPTPP[0], net neutrality, and this proposed law. Look at the brazen abuse of power by big business in Washington (and in American state capitals and in Seattle and in campaign finance). If you think horrible laws won't happen, won't become fate; if you think it will work out in the end, you haven't read history. There not only have been horrible things like segregation and mass incarceration, which (have) lasted generations, or war upon war, but again and again industry has seized power and cemented their position, and soon it becomes a norm that nobody notices, with vested interests that won't want to change. Look at the current patent system, as a modern, IT-implicated example. Or a better example: Most people blindly accept region restrictions, for example on films, as a norm - maybe something they try to workaround, but an inevitable situation; it's not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 EDIT: Added region restrictions example
- mar77i 8y ago
  Why is it hard to do sane policy? Because if you listen to the key powers, those key powers act not in the interest of the public but in their own instead. The problem isn't going to get better, as history already shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs I wonder how it would even theoretically be possible to balance such gravely contrasting needs/wants by whatever definition of representation without ending up at Douglas Adams' quote about summarizing this problem.
elihu 8y ago
> Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies to academic publications. In other words, this proposed rule is to address the made-up problem that publishers aren't content that third-party news aggregators are doing them a favor by sending them readers; they want to milk them for additional revenue. The EU parliament committee seems to be acting consistent with the belief that fixing this perceived unfairness is more important than considering the unintentional negative side-effects.
- Gys 8y ago
  The questions asked by the parlement (and the US senate) to Mark Zuckerberg show very clearly how minimal knowledge politicians have of the reality as percieved by 'the rest of us'.
  - mathinpens 8y ago
    did you actually read or watch the whole testimony (of either testimony) or you basing this on ~5 minutes of youtube click bait footage of older senators being confused... I watched the entire zuckerberg united states senate testimony and I found much of the questioning incisive and valuable
    - Gys 8y ago
      I admit I only read some articles on both encounters (in reputable newspapers). However, those are very much in line with my personal experiences from the years that was running a media company. Politicians are focussed on getting in office and staying there. Being friends with (listing to) the big guys (big names, important companies) is cool and good for status. Mingling with the little guys is only neccessary every so many years (because, what do they know anyway ?). Yes, it made me a little frustrated ;-)
merinowool 8y ago
This proposal shows how a body that has a power of creating regulation can get corrupted and there is nobody dare to investigate. I won't mention how much tax payer money could have been already wasted on this. People should be in jail over this.
andrenth 8y ago
This should be eye-opening to a number of Europeans here on HN who, in the GDPR debate, basically dismissed any possible negative implications of the law by trusting their politicians and basically saying “we don’t have to worry because this is not the United States”.
- cyphar 8y ago
  The problems with EU's incredibly overzealous copyright laws have been known and talked about for decades (in Germany if you take a photograph of the building the architect has some copyrights to that photo). It is a significant issue, and one that is probably perpetuated by the large EU publishing houses like Springer Verlag and so on. But I think that arguing that because of this issue, other unrelated legislation like GDPR is now somehow "tainted" is being a bit melodramatic. It's not. Privacy laws have been incredibly important in Europe's history and have also been a theme over many decades as well. Not to mention that GDPR was effectively an extension of previous privacy general directives passed in 1995 and earlier. Many non-EU countries also have EU-style privacy laws (like Switzerland).
  - germanier 8y ago
    > in Germany if you take a photograph of the building the architect has some copyrights to that photo FWIW that is the case i'm almost every country (by the Berne Convention) and some are even more restrictive. See e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora... for an overview of the international situation (but please don't depend on that for subtleties).
- Angostura 8y ago
  One is a reasonable set of regulations. The other is unreasonable. Reasonable people can see the difference.
- gepi79 8y ago
  > This should be eye-opening to a number of Europeans here on HN who, in the GDPR debate, basically dismissed any possible negative implications of the law by trusting their politicians and basically saying “we don’t have to worry because this is not the United States”. The EU is not a democracy. It does not matter what some Europeans think. It probably will not matter that some Europeans protest. The involved politicians decide what they want and probably nobody will know what politician voted for what. By far most Europeans have no idea what is going on. Like my entire family. Even if they did, they would not understand or trust some website like changecopyright.org that might as well be a criminal website that collects personal information or a website to support the nefarious intentions of evil Facebook or evil Google. The mainstream media are "protected" by these laws and will not speak about them or against them. Instead it is said that Google profits from the hard work of the European media and should pay for it. I guess the few owners of the media wrote the new copyright laws in the first place. P.S. The downvoters are ignorant as usual because they have nothing else to say. I have contacted my MEP. I have sent links to my (somewhat politically interested) family without getting any response.
mindslight 8y ago
How is it even difficult to reform copyright? You focus on the term, and set a timeline for it to ramp down. Say 5 years per year.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Their definition of "reform" is different.
gnomewascool 8y ago
If you're am EU citizen, you can call an MEP, either with Mozilla's simple but basic tool[0] or by looking at the list of swing MEPs[1] and using EDRi'S talking points[2]. [0] https://changecopyright.org https://changecopyright.org [1] https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf. [2] https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested-talking-points/ https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested-talkin...
- tremon 8y ago
  I also want to mention https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/, a joint campaign from some 20 organizations (including Creative Commons and Wikimedia). The FSFE and EFF are running their own campaigns as well: https://savecodeshare.eu/ https://savecodeshare.eu/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ring-alarm-eu-copyright-filtering-proposal https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ri...
hmd_imputer 8y ago
Forget refugee crisis, the real issue in Europe is the regulation crisis.
slimshady94 8y ago
The vote mentioned in the article was almost 2 months ago.
- mtgx 8y ago
  The vote by the European Parliament, which is what matters, is next week on June 20.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies to academic publications. The EU repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with badly-written laws—aimed at Facebook and Google—landing on itself. Revenue thresholds, for GDPR or this, only above which these requirements activate, are a simple fix. No idea why the European bureaucracy repeatedly opposes such thresholds.
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  The EU repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with badly-written laws—aimed at Facebook and Google—landing on itself. Does it?
  - frockington 8y ago
    Europe has been lagging in growth for over a decade now
- Brotkrumen 8y ago
  How GDPR is always listed as bad is beyond me. Do you actually know what it does or are you just repeating what the sellers of your data are moaning about right now? Privacy is broken, GDPR with informed consent requirements for nonessential data uses, is a first step in the right direction. All the bitching right now is from companies that made money off of selling you out.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    And from consumers who want those services to exist at the prices they are currently offered at.
expertentipp 8y ago
At this stage it’s clearly an open war between German publishers and media industry with Google and Facebook. The EU citizens will receive the beatings, particular how western world was patronizingly teasing the Great Firewall of China only 5-10 years ago.
haywirez 8y ago
Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against next week by the majority of the JURI committee. List of handles of reportedly yet undecided MEPs: @Emil_Radev @1PavelSvoboda @KaufmannSylvia @enricogasbarra @mady_delvaux @FrancisZD @TadeuszZwiefka @marinhoepinto (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg) Full list of Legal Affairs (JURI) committee members that will cast a vote: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/e0lavem/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co... MEP @Senficon is leading the charge against this on Twitter with some sensible alternatives proposed. A good takedown of this proposal that gets into details: https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council-parliament-edge-towards-finalizing-positions-article-13-remains-mess/ https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council-parl... This reddit thread is also a great resource: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/?st=jig36rhl&sh=1d6eb9ca https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co...
sandworm101 8y ago
I am not an EU lawyer, but in north america this sort of academic use would not be a copyright violation. (1) You cannot copyright facts. A study saying that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer" does not control that fact. Anyone else can also say that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer". They don't even meed to cite the original study (plagiarism is different than copyright). This is well-understood doctrine, especially for people who make things like maps. A chart or a table is just a representation of facts. Copyright would only be an issue for something like a diagram or photograph, something with some creative input. And even then ... see (2). (2) Academic citation is covered by 'fair use'. One academic paper incorporating a bit from another does so to either rely upon it for some grander theory (comment) or to say that it is wrong about something (criticism). Google and similar entities covered by this law add nothing and so are not covered by fair use.

256 points by touristtam 8y ago

cft 8y ago

Just the mere fact that the EU government can be so technically inept as to draft and circulate such a legislation makes me totally distrust its intentions.

zavi 8y ago
I'm getting GDPR flashbacks.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  GDPR benefited citizens and hurt big companies, article 13 benefits big companies and hurts everyone else
  - sandov 8y ago
    Big companies are made by citizens. GDPR hurt everyone.
  - sfifs 8y ago
    GDPR is helping US internet giants and squelching smaller players. I work in the media space and can see where advertiser money is flowing. Advertisers who had previously spread their money supporting smaller publishers including European publishers are now concentrating it in walled gardens to limit any potential liability reasoning that the walled gardens will better be able to handle any arising litigation through their bottomless cash reserves :-)
    - sincerely 8y ago
      If the “smaller players” aren’t willing to the take the reasonable steps to protect user data that would cause them to not be sued, then I’m fine with that.
      - sfifs 8y ago
        I believe you are missing the point of the comment. Even if smaller players take all super duper steps to protect user data, advertisers have no real way of knowing if they are in fact compliant whereas they have a simple way of looking at the published balance sheets of the big players and seeing the huge cash pile and armies of lawyers. The scare caused by activists weilding "nightmare letters" doesn't help. Also there's a body of thought in legal circles that even vendor chains needs to be evaluated which is causing advertisers to be wary. Far simpler to just throw money at the biggies who will deal with this. As usual, the smart money will be in the certification industry that will inevitably come up to tax the mid sized players while the small publishers will die out.
        bryanrasmussen 8y ago
        Either that or new small players will spring up that do not base their business on the user as a commodity.
        rmah 8y ago
        Problem is, those players will still incur the compliance costs. The GDPR rules are not simply penalties for bad behavior. They mandate proscriptive actions companies must take, policies they need to design, services they must perform on demand, etc. whether the company is engaging in bad behavior or not.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I think the basis of GP's comment is the bias a lot of GDPR supporters - myself included - have: we'd like to see the entire advertising industry die. So even if the effects hit smaller publishers more than the large ones, as long as it causes enough damage to the whole business model and incentivizes people to look for alternatives, it's a step in the right direction.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > even if the effects hit smaller publishers more than the large ones, as long as it causes enough damage to the whole business model and incentivizes people to look for alternatives, it's a step in the right direction Remember the adage “divide and conquer”? If you want to destroy something, consolidating its power base (like GDPR does to advertising in Europe) is a poor first move.
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      I think the fine structure of GDPR means that what might otherwise appear to be bottomless cash reserves are in fact only significant cash reserves, furthermore not only the advertisers have made this mistake but also the big players who seem to be operating at least on a quasi-antagonistic mode. So what I think is - when the antagonism ends up taking big chunks of money everyone will suddenly realize "oh shit, it's not bottomless" at which point there will opportunities to take advantage of. But maybe my take is too reasonable and instead the advertisers will think oh damn, stuff is really messed up better stay the course with these big guys to get us through these troubled times!
skywhopper 8y ago
I don't think it's bad intentions, just very very poor intuition about how computers and software works. They take it as a given that software-based content filters can and do work reasonably well and that the exceptions are exceedingly rare. Just like the press and government and most Hacker News patrons think that self-driving cars are imminent and real AI is just around the corner, and electronic voting is a good idea; and how the press believe that there's probably a backdoor solution for encryption that is still totally safe.
- cft 8y ago
  I think their calculation is far more rational: "There are no large internet companies in Europe (due to their own anti-startup regulation and taxation regime btw), but there are large copyright owners. So let's at least maximize the the value to the EU copyright lobby without any regard for the EU internet lobby (since we have none)".
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    >"anti-startup regulation and taxation regime" Plenty of startups from the EU have made it big. Just off the top of my head Spotify and Sitecore are pretty big.
    - pacnard 8y ago
      Europe has a bigger population than the US, it should have a lot more startups, but politicians, bureaucrats, existing rules, etc make the economy too unstable and incapable of welcoming new player. People here have learned to aspire for the 9-5 job and can't even imagine that problems are solved by entrepeneurs and not the government.
      - pavelludiq 8y ago
        The reason Europe doesn't have as many startups as the US is because nobody in their right mind would fund things like Juicero here, not because the bureaucracy. The "splash the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks" approach isn't the only way to build businesses. Frankly the myopia of SV culture is quite amusing to me. California just can't shake it's gold rush mentality it seems. I'm not saying it hasn't served a lot of people well( obviously it has, but to assume it's the best strategy is pretty short sighted, especially considering I've never seen any actual evidence that it produces a larger number of sustainable businesses. In fact most US startups seem to me to be more like schemes for getting aquihire, or straight up hail marries, rather that actual attempts to make money and build a sustainable business. Also, any entrepreneur that takes the attitude of "it's impossible to do with all of these rules and bureaucracy" is hardly deserving of the name, especially considering it's not really that bad[1], if they were serious, they would find a way to use the rules to their advantage rather than finding excuses or complaining over nothing. [1] For example in many parts of the EU, not only are taxes much lower than the rest, but costs of living and doing business are as well, and many of the rules are less enforced, maybe Europeans simply don't value collectible blockchain cat pictures or IoT fidget spinners as much as Americans do and are less willing to invest in them.
merinowool 8y ago
It is not about being inept but rather being willing to pass whatever someone pays you to pass. They simply don't care about the consequences because these will have nothing to do with them. If sh*t hits the fan, they'll retire on some island rich and happy.
DanBC 8y ago
Have you read the draft legislation? Where did you read it?

shmerl 8y ago

> The European Parliament legal committee’s vote on the law, scheduled for 23–24 April The vote will be on June 20, 2018. See https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ Hopefully enough people will protest, like happened with ACTA.

bausshf 8y ago

Worse than net neutrality

Tharkun 8y ago
Are you saying net neutrality is a bad thing? Why so?
- bausshf 8y ago
  I mean the net neutrality ban. I should probably have been clear about that.

qwerty456127 8y ago

> Intellectual-property experts agree that existing EU copyright rules need an overhaul for the digital age Variations of this idea are the root of all the bullshit that has began with the DMCA and keeps on with periodical attempts to expand it with SOPA/PIPA/ACTA etc.

eikenberry 8y ago
And the sad fact is that they are right, it does need an overhaul, just pretty much in the opposite direction. With the need for traditional publishers and distributors a thing of the past we should be looking into other ways to monetize the arts to support the artists rather than doubling down on scarcity.
- dpwm 8y ago
  Experts cost money. One side can pay for experts, the other can't. In this case it's the newspapers and publishers. Other times it will be the copyright lobby. It's reminds me of well-funded think-tanks providing experts with academic credentials very articulately arguing that supply-side effects are a great reason to cut taxes for the super-rich and decrease or privatize those costly public services. How many think-tanks advocating increasing taxes for the rich to pay for public services for all get a steady income stream? It's like a biased random walk. Sometimes things go backwards a bit, but the direction's set by underlying bias of the system.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The other side can pay for 10000x more experts. Google is on the other side and the EU has been intentionally ignoring what they've said on the subject for years.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
dbuder 8y ago
It should read, highly paid and well credentialed consultants said what they were paid to say.

forapurpose 8y ago

I worry that the days of openness - of FOSS and SV startups, as leading examples - might be looked back on as a halcyon nirvana, a wild and free era, remembered by the few who understand what openness means and what its implications were, and who still remember as new generations grow up accustomed to something else. In the case of something so fundamentally technical, most of the public doesn't understand it; they would not understand the significance and what it has begotten. How many noticed what happened to the streetcars? How many Americans notice their horrible healthcare system, despite overwhelming evidence of far better alternatives? Look at the CPTPP[0], net neutrality, and this proposed law. Look at the brazen abuse of power by big business in Washington (and in American state capitals and in Seattle and in campaign finance). If you think horrible laws won't happen, won't become fate; if you think it will work out in the end, you haven't read history. There not only have been horrible things like segregation and mass incarceration, which (have) lasted generations, or war upon war, but again and again industry has seized power and cemented their position, and soon it becomes a norm that nobody notices, with vested interests that won't want to change. Look at the current patent system, as a modern, IT-implicated example. Or a better example: Most people blindly accept region restrictions, for example on films, as a norm - maybe something they try to workaround, but an inevitable situation; it's not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 EDIT: Added region restrictions example

mar77i 8y ago
Why is it hard to do sane policy? Because if you listen to the key powers, those key powers act not in the interest of the public but in their own instead. The problem isn't going to get better, as history already shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs I wonder how it would even theoretically be possible to balance such gravely contrasting needs/wants by whatever definition of representation without ending up at Douglas Adams' quote about summarizing this problem.

elihu 8y ago

> Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies to academic publications. In other words, this proposed rule is to address the made-up problem that publishers aren't content that third-party news aggregators are doing them a favor by sending them readers; they want to milk them for additional revenue. The EU parliament committee seems to be acting consistent with the belief that fixing this perceived unfairness is more important than considering the unintentional negative side-effects.

Gys 8y ago
The questions asked by the parlement (and the US senate) to Mark Zuckerberg show very clearly how minimal knowledge politicians have of the reality as percieved by 'the rest of us'.
- mathinpens 8y ago
  did you actually read or watch the whole testimony (of either testimony) or you basing this on ~5 minutes of youtube click bait footage of older senators being confused... I watched the entire zuckerberg united states senate testimony and I found much of the questioning incisive and valuable
  - Gys 8y ago
    I admit I only read some articles on both encounters (in reputable newspapers). However, those are very much in line with my personal experiences from the years that was running a media company. Politicians are focussed on getting in office and staying there. Being friends with (listing to) the big guys (big names, important companies) is cool and good for status. Mingling with the little guys is only neccessary every so many years (because, what do they know anyway ?). Yes, it made me a little frustrated ;-)

merinowool 8y ago

This proposal shows how a body that has a power of creating regulation can get corrupted and there is nobody dare to investigate. I won't mention how much tax payer money could have been already wasted on this. People should be in jail over this.

andrenth 8y ago

This should be eye-opening to a number of Europeans here on HN who, in the GDPR debate, basically dismissed any possible negative implications of the law by trusting their politicians and basically saying “we don’t have to worry because this is not the United States”.

cyphar 8y ago
The problems with EU's incredibly overzealous copyright laws have been known and talked about for decades (in Germany if you take a photograph of the building the architect has some copyrights to that photo). It is a significant issue, and one that is probably perpetuated by the large EU publishing houses like Springer Verlag and so on. But I think that arguing that because of this issue, other unrelated legislation like GDPR is now somehow "tainted" is being a bit melodramatic. It's not. Privacy laws have been incredibly important in Europe's history and have also been a theme over many decades as well. Not to mention that GDPR was effectively an extension of previous privacy general directives passed in 1995 and earlier. Many non-EU countries also have EU-style privacy laws (like Switzerland).
- germanier 8y ago
  > in Germany if you take a photograph of the building the architect has some copyrights to that photo FWIW that is the case i'm almost every country (by the Berne Convention) and some are even more restrictive. See e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora... for an overview of the international situation (but please don't depend on that for subtleties).
Angostura 8y ago
One is a reasonable set of regulations. The other is unreasonable. Reasonable people can see the difference.
gepi79 8y ago
> This should be eye-opening to a number of Europeans here on HN who, in the GDPR debate, basically dismissed any possible negative implications of the law by trusting their politicians and basically saying “we don’t have to worry because this is not the United States”. The EU is not a democracy. It does not matter what some Europeans think. It probably will not matter that some Europeans protest. The involved politicians decide what they want and probably nobody will know what politician voted for what. By far most Europeans have no idea what is going on. Like my entire family. Even if they did, they would not understand or trust some website like changecopyright.org that might as well be a criminal website that collects personal information or a website to support the nefarious intentions of evil Facebook or evil Google. The mainstream media are "protected" by these laws and will not speak about them or against them. Instead it is said that Google profits from the hard work of the European media and should pay for it. I guess the few owners of the media wrote the new copyright laws in the first place. P.S. The downvoters are ignorant as usual because they have nothing else to say. I have contacted my MEP. I have sent links to my (somewhat politically interested) family without getting any response.

mindslight 8y ago

How is it even difficult to reform copyright? You focus on the term, and set a timeline for it to ramp down. Say 5 years per year.

dingo_bat 8y ago
Their definition of "reform" is different.

gnomewascool 8y ago

If you're am EU citizen, you can call an MEP, either with Mozilla's simple but basic tool[0] or by looking at the list of swing MEPs[1] and using EDRi'S talking points[2]. [0] https://changecopyright.org https://changecopyright.org [1] https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf. [2] https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested-talking-points/ https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested-talkin...

tremon 8y ago
I also want to mention https://saveyourinternet.eu/ https://saveyourinternet.eu/, a joint campaign from some 20 organizations (including Creative Commons and Wikimedia). The FSFE and EFF are running their own campaigns as well: https://savecodeshare.eu/ https://savecodeshare.eu/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ring-alarm-eu-copyright-filtering-proposal https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ri...

hmd_imputer 8y ago

Forget refugee crisis, the real issue in Europe is the regulation crisis.

slimshady94 8y ago

The vote mentioned in the article was almost 2 months ago.

mtgx 8y ago
The vote by the European Parliament, which is what matters, is next week on June 20.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies to academic publications. The EU repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with badly-written laws—aimed at Facebook and Google—landing on itself. Revenue thresholds, for GDPR or this, only above which these requirements activate, are a simple fix. No idea why the European bureaucracy repeatedly opposes such thresholds.

matthewmacleod 8y ago
The EU repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with badly-written laws—aimed at Facebook and Google—landing on itself. Does it?
- frockington 8y ago
  Europe has been lagging in growth for over a decade now
Brotkrumen 8y ago
How GDPR is always listed as bad is beyond me. Do you actually know what it does or are you just repeating what the sellers of your data are moaning about right now? Privacy is broken, GDPR with informed consent requirements for nonessential data uses, is a first step in the right direction. All the bitching right now is from companies that made money off of selling you out.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  And from consumers who want those services to exist at the prices they are currently offered at.

expertentipp 8y ago

At this stage it’s clearly an open war between German publishers and media industry with Google and Facebook. The EU citizens will receive the beatings, particular how western world was patronizingly teasing the Great Firewall of China only 5-10 years ago.

haywirez 8y ago

Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against next week by the majority of the JURI committee. List of handles of reportedly yet undecided MEPs: @Emil_Radev @1PavelSvoboda @KaufmannSylvia @enricogasbarra @mady_delvaux @FrancisZD @TadeuszZwiefka @marinhoepinto (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg) Full list of Legal Affairs (JURI) committee members that will cast a vote: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/e0lavem/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co... MEP @Senficon is leading the charge against this on Twitter with some sensible alternatives proposed. A good takedown of this proposal that gets into details: https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council-parliament-edge-towards-finalizing-positions-article-13-remains-mess/ https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council-parl... This reddit thread is also a great resource: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/?st=jig36rhl&sh=1d6eb9ca https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co...

sandworm101 8y ago

I am not an EU lawyer, but in north america this sort of academic use would not be a copyright violation. (1) You cannot copyright facts. A study saying that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer" does not control that fact. Anyone else can also say that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer". They don't even meed to cite the original study (plagiarism is different than copyright). This is well-understood doctrine, especially for people who make things like maps. A chart or a table is just a representation of facts. Copyright would only be an issue for something like a diagram or photograph, something with some creative input. And even then ... see (2). (2) Academic citation is covered by 'fair use'. One academic paper incorporating a bit from another does so to either rely upon it for some grander theory (comment) or to say that it is wrong about something (criticism). Google and similar entities covered by this law add nothing and so are not covered by fair use.