21 ms·

European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

675 points by sebst 8y ago

izacus 8y ago
This bill pretty much demands that YouTube Content ID like systems are introduced across the web. With the wording, it's better for the site to delete more content on false positives than risk false negatives. All in the name of mighty copyright. Side effects of these false/negative averse copyright takedown systems can be easily seen on YouTube: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700
- Jabbles 8y ago
  An update to the original article you linked says that the issue was not with Content ID, but is "related to its updated partner agreements."
  - izacus 8y ago
    You can take example of any of the other thousands of false postive copyright takedowns happening across YouTube. Android Play Store too.
    - Jabbles 8y ago
      Sure. But not that one.
      - izacus 8y ago
        You have a point there.
- teamhappy 8y ago
  > With the wording, it's better for the site to delete more content on false positives than risk false negatives. What makes you say that? Last time I read parts of it I got the impression that if you're trying to get it right you're not liable.
- merinowool 8y ago
  That means if you have a website a third party would have control over everything that is being uploaded to it.
walterbell 8y ago
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5 > According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium—the “master switch.” > Wu chronicles the turning points of the century’s information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. > He advocates “not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach” that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy—those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access—and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a “Separations Principle” would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu’s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity—and necessary deregulation—in the information age.
mavidser 8y ago
This bill reminds me of the 'Melancholy Elephants'[0] story by Spider Robinson, about the dangers of unchecked copyright. [0]: http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
specializeded 8y ago
IIRC, EU citizens helped defeat ACTA by taking to the streets and influencing parliament. Would I be mistaken in believing it can be done again, even without the additional anti-US/trade treaty attitudes that helped against ACTA?
- sampo 8y ago
  European newspapers are left-leaning, so they were happy to write pieces criticizing free trade treaties. But now with the proposed link tax in Article 11, the newspapers pretty much support the proposed new copyright law. Without old media, it might be difficult to reach and inform a critical mass of people for demonstrations to happen.
  - CloudNetworking 8y ago
    "left-leaning". Hehe. Goes to show how much the left-right axis has tilted to the right since WW2.
  - toyg 8y ago
    > European newspapers are left-leaning You missed "some". I can assure you there are plenty of right-leaning newspapers in Europe: The Times, Financial Times, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, The Sun, Corriere della Sera, Libero, Il Giornale, Il Foglio, L'Opinion, La Croix, Frankfurter Allgemein Zeitung, Die Welt, El Paìs... It is true that the objections on this atrocious law are subdued to say the least, because the entire sector is complicit. Battered by the internet revolution, the press is desperate to find revenues. Part of the responsibility is squarely on "internet people" for their inability to find a modern business model for the sector, though: Google and friends have been happy to pick at the dying carcass of traditional media without giving anything back.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  they didn't defeat acta. lobby money already changed hand, they will keep renaming the bill and trying to showe it down our throats until succesful.
bogle 8y ago
It's really not very clear what the outcome of this is going to be although it doesn't look good. So "internet platforms" are going to filter all the content we post? Seeing as this isn't going to work properly what is the point of setting it down as a law? Someone's going to end up in court and only then are we going to know exactly how bad it is.
- saintPirelli 8y ago
  I wonder if this can be interpreted as a future edge for distributed platforms like mastodon, where you might not find "the responsible person/company" right away?
  - daveid 8y ago
    I'm seeing the opposite, as independent platforms like Mastodon won't be able to implement content ID they won't be complying with this new law, which means it'll potentially become legally dangerous to run Mastodon within the EU. It's like the EU parliament is bent on giving all the cards to Google and Facebook and shutting down European competition...
    - netheril96 8y ago
      I guess the EU's reasoning is that because there hasn't been any European competition for all these years, there probably won't ever be, so they might as well make those pesky American companies miserable.
frisco 8y ago
> They voted to approve the controversial Article 13, which critics warn could put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content. This won’t put an end to memes. It might encourage innovation around decentralization, though. It won’t end the internet, but given all of the stuff like this happening recently, it might be time for the internet to evolve. The technologies have been around for a while as a curiosity, and now there might be the market need.
- sebst 8y ago
  I hope you're right on this. Decentralization is what the internet was actually build for. Centralization, on the other side, brought the web to less technical people and thus scaled so massively. Can technical literacy which certainly increased (in some ways) lead to a new era of decentralization or will that be the fatal end of a symbolic "Eternal September"?
  - orwin 8y ago
    I was kinda skeptic about federation at first (mastodon, GNU.social etc), but i've installed and tested a nextcloud platform for one of my client and i've been really impressed so far. It's clunky, a bit bloated (for me, TUI > GUI for 90% of apps, so take it with a grain of salt) and have an average documentation (a pretty good documentation for a free software /s). But despite that, once installed successfully, it is better than most free cloud services i have used imo, except maybe gDrive (integration with email, android calendar and gSuite is hard to beat). If other federated services can see light, and if people start to care about it, internet will be a better place i think (sightly related: is lichess federated too? I know you can host a server yourself, but i'm not sure if it's true).
    - sebst 8y ago
      A long way to go: Have a professional install nextcloud for you vs. sign up at dropbox. And that's basically just for hoarding private files. The network effect makes it even worse: Why should I use XYZ if all my friends are on Facebook/WhatsApp/WhatsOEver? Decentralized infrastructure (as in email, usenet, irc, ...) needs to have a bigger popularity than every walled garden. Then, the internet will become "a better place" rather than "there is a better niche for hacker kind of people on the net"
indigochill 8y ago
If I may play the devil's advocate for a moment here, isn't this a boon for decentralizing media? If third-party publishers like YouTube are crippled, perhaps there's more room for self-hosting your content, enabling you to build your brand on your own terms rather than YouTube's? Perhaps it's time to stop outsourcing the publication of our content to third-parties and host it ourselves, especially now that granularly-scaling cloud servers are an option? But I'm not very familiar with this bill aside from the fact everyone hates it, so someone can probably point out why I'm wrong.
- bogle 8y ago
  I think the problem is that if we wish to draw attention to your excellent content then we must repost it or at least link to it. This is where those platforms we repost on will filter the repost (thus the nickname "link tax").
- PinguTS 8y ago
  I does not matter who hosts. Because, if you haven't paid your royalties, your are not allowed to host the remix/meme/... yourself. It hurts also decentralization has anybody who provides space becomes responsible.
- westpfelia 8y ago
  I would say it would encourage more networks to band forces just linking to each other not charging one another. Which just leads to growing echochambers.
- ptero 8y ago
  In addition to other concerns posted this bill seems to open the door wide to content trolls (similar to patent trolls) who could acquire a small portion of the content being referenced by a site, then threaten that site with large legal bills. This would likely hit small companies and individual users hardest and could be a boon to various governments who want to silence a particular view.
- nairboon 8y ago
  You're right, it's not just good decentralizing media, but for decentralized everything. The technology to go fully decentralized has been ready for years, but its usability is still lacking (high latency, low bandwidth etc.). But at some point, if the copyright industry goes to far and the existing services are significantly reduced or outlawed, decentralized solutions become attractive again. Right now the offer from Netflix is somewhat ok, although extremely reduced due to geographical restrictions, so not much need for Popcorntime. If the offer is further reduced while keeping the same price, at some point it'll be time for popcorn again... Analogously, if this media linking copyright stuff goes through and too far, somebody might build the popcorntime equivalent for news consumption...
josteink 8y ago
This is what happens when those in control don't understand, know or care about the things they regulate. So I guess this is bad. --goes and reads article-- > Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved. What the fucking FUCK? Pay to send companies actual traffic? Pay to be allowed to use the basic building-block of the world wide web on the world wide web? Just how is it possible to be so out of touch with how things work, and still be allowed to pass regulation? I'm honestly not able to come up with an analogy which sufficiently illustrates just how backwards this whole thing is.
- glitchc 8y ago
  They're dismantling content aggregation as a business model. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  I'm not too worried about this one. This will just mean platforms will not link to publishers. EVER It already failed in Spain and Germany, they will just shoot themselves in the foot again.
  - visarga 8y ago
    I wrote a Romanian news concentrator as a hobby project, guess I will have to put it down now. They were 99% bullshit anyway - clickbait and fake news. That's what they are protecting.
    - v_lisivka 8y ago
      Why not just use URL shortener outside of EU?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - CloudNetworking 8y ago
mrleiter 8y ago
It was approved on in a committee of the European parliament (for legal matters), which means that now they will enter negotiations with the European Council and then after some time and processes laid out in Art. 293ff TFEU, it will be debated in the European Parliament at some point. So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather unfortunate policy. EDIT: For more info: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180618IPR06024/copyright-meps-update-rules-for-the-digital-age http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180618IPR... Votes: Yes - 14 MEPs No - 9 MEPs Abstentions - 2 MEPs
- Silhouette 8y ago
  So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather unfortunate policy. But not that much time. The main European Parliament vote is due in July. For those of you in the EU, now is probably a good time to be writing to your MEPs.
  - merinowool 8y ago
    If this law has already been paid for, what you would get from your MEP is a template response in the spirit of "I share your concerns blah blah, but copyrights are important blah blah". I don't think you can do much about it at this point.
    - r3bl 8y ago
      You should really look up how EU regulations work.
      - merinowool 8y ago
        Enlighten me please, as I don't believe the reasons for passing it are genuine.
        ahartmetz 8y ago
        Lobbyists don't usually hand over money. Usually they are just good at appearing trustworthy and, uh, explaining the positions of their clients in terms that politicians understand. Therefore, their explainees think they are doing genuinely good things.
VMG 8y ago
I'm excited about this. This will boost VPN, Tor and other technologies that protect users from inane regulations. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/cryp...
- outsidetheparty 8y ago
  How do you figure? Doesn't matter if you're connecting via VPN or Tor if what you're connecting to has been scrubbed by these inane regulations. Unless you're expecting the whole internet to go all rebel pirate underground, which seems... implausible.
  - VMG 8y ago
    I expect companies to migrate to saner regulatory environments and geofilter the EU. VPN/Tor will help circumvent this.
    - outsidetheparty 8y ago
      Hm. Saner regulatory environments seem to be pretty thin on the ground, lately. Not sure I share your optimism that a significant number of companies will be willing to abandon a major world market, or to depend on a nudge-nudge-wink-wink "bypass our geofence and we'll pretend we don't notice your EU billing address" kind of thing...
      - VMG 8y ago
        Luckily now we not only have crypto-communication, but also currency :)
- merinowool 8y ago
  It is very easy to block VPN, Tor and other technologies. These can be in fact criminalised the same way drugs are. Possession of a VPN on your device could give you a criminal record.
teamhappy 8y ago
Here's the final document: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Searching for "article 11" (the link one) and "article 13" (the filter one) will help you find the relevant paragraphs. They're both very short and fairly easy to understand.
- BlackFly 8y ago
  Having read those articles, I struggle to understand how the interpretations of "link tax" and "automated filtering requirement" arose. Article 11 reiterates articles from directive 2001/29/EC which gives copyright holders sole discretion over reproduction in whole or part... but nothing that says a link is a reproduction. What am I missing? Maybe this forbids news aggregators from posting snippets of the articles, but hardly the titles. Article 13 certainly requires content providers to do something. But only provides an example of what that might be: "Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate." It definitely doesn't say automatic, and given YouTube's propensity to generate harmful false positives without recourse, there might be an argument that manual content recognition is more effective. In any case the article just seems to require that content providers do something beyond waiting for takedown notices, which seems reasonable. I am not a lawyer, so obviously I could be missing something subtle, but when I go read articles crying foul, they don't exactly help me understand what I am missing.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  I am reading and re-reading the article 11, but I just can't get past the legalese to parse it as "aggregators have to pay the publishers for linking their stuff"
- tom_mellior 8y ago
  That's a document from 2016. It's only "final" in the sense that it's the final version of the Commission's proposal, I think. https://edri.org/copyright-reform-document-pool/ https://edri.org/copyright-reform-document-pool/ has a whole lot of different versions of the text, though I don't know how to find out what text was actually voted on today. I expect it to show up at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=&reference=2016/0280(COD) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?... though apparently that may take a few days. Anyway, the version at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf for example adds the following paragraph to Article 11: "The rights referred to in the first subparagraph shall not apply in respect of uses of insubstantial parts of a press publication. Member States shall be free to determine the insubstantial nature of parts of press publications taking into account whether these parts are the expression of the intellectual creation of their authors, or whether these parts are individual words or very short excerpts, or both criteria." I don't find this particularly easy to understand, but one reading is "Member States may define article titles to be 'substantial'", in which case any use of them (as in linking) would be prohibited without a license.
timow1337 8y ago
Does anyone have a list of which MEPs voted for and against? I can't find it yet.
- aembleton 8y ago
  The minutes will be published in the next few days.
sqdbps 8y ago
A Couple of things: Mainstream news outlets on this side of the atlantic didn't do much reporting on this vote which might signal tacit support on their part (at least for the link payment portion of this thing which is frankly the sillies part) and that should shape everyone's understanding of their coverage of tech companies in general. Second, it's hard not to notice that much of what the EU does is trying to hurt US tech companies be that: copyright, GDPR, antitrust, taxes, and many other initiatives the goals of which are to control and "punish" these companies. It's easy to complaint about silly steel tariffs while they keep enacting these trade barriers on US industry, the fact the the news media isn't making that connection brings it back to the first point.
- merinowool 8y ago
  Another thing is that the media are licensed, so they cannot go against the government out of fear of losing such license. Now, one could assume that this copyright thing is a smokescreen to introduce EU wide censorship as everything users upload would have to be checked for "copyright breach".
  - detaro 8y ago
    Which media is "licensed" and thus can not go against the government?
    - merinowool 8y ago
      All radio and TV and in some countries the press as well.
- winkeltripel 8y ago
  > much of what the EU does is try to hurt US tech companies Well, somebody's got to take the fight to US tech titans. They're unhealthy for every economy.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    I think that is a defendable position so long as you are willing to accept the other side, which is massive tariffs against big EU industries. Someone has to take it to the German auto industry which has used lies & deception to up their market share while destroying the environment. Note that I disagree with both points, but they are internally consistent so long as you accept both.
agotterer 8y ago
So in the case of this link does that mean that HN would have to pay the BBC or filter the link out?
- nemo44x 8y ago
  Only for EU IP addresses. Seems like a good way to keep their people ignorant akin to China or NK firewalls. But in a way that appears less authoritarian and "to protect EU business interests". Lets face it - power structures are terrified of the open communication available today and how everyone is able to organize and see through their BS.
  - ShabbosGoy 8y ago
    Why not just range ban IP addresses originating from the EU? Seems like a simple and fair solution to me.
- Scarblac 8y ago
  Yes. The legislation is a direct attack on sites like HN and Reddit that have no content of their own but get all the traffic (and ad money, if HN had ads).
TuringTest 8y ago
"Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate." They may as well request providers to deploy magical leprechauns riding on rainbow unicorns, because such "effective" technologies don't exist. Case in point: Google's copyright detection.
glook 8y ago
Vint Cerf AND Tim Berners-Lee declare it "an imminent threat to the future of the Internet." Then Cory Doctorow calls it foolish. This feels like a no-brainer for opposition.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Those voices don't seem to reach MEPs.
  - saalweachter 8y ago
    ... none of those voices are from the EU[*]. (Well, I guess Tim Berners-Lee still is until Brexit finishes.)
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      That shouldn't matter at all, especially when it's about the internet.
firic 8y ago
I dislike this bill as much as other HNers but writing "Disastrous" in the title makes this look more like an option piece rather than a news piece. How hard is it to ask for news to report facts and for me to decide if the facts are disastrous or not?
bitL 8y ago
Can't wait for the first person jailed for operating a darknet news aggregator with links and thumbnail previews. The horror!
shmerl 8y ago
So corruption prevailed?
- c12 8y ago
  Corruption always prevails in the end. Humanity is weak. We are no better than babboons with diseased brains.
bluecalm 8y ago
EU has long proven record of making laws targeting specific big players and not caring about smaller local businesses and specifically not caring about promoting competition. VAT MOSS disaster didn't generate that much discussion because the ones hurt were busy selling their sweaters on Etsy and didn't have time to take it to the streets. I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your fees/licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by the engines. Old media will fight for their licenses and fees and die there as sites will just stop aggregating from them. That would be great outcome, they are pretty useless anyway and they give a lot of power to morons currently residing in EU structures. With some luck it can become a win-win. I just hope bloggers and small publishers won't need to run circles just to get their stuff indexed and linked.
- detaro 8y ago
  > I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your fees/licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by the engines. There's actually a proposal by Axel Voss (the MEP pushing this the most) to explicit forbid waiving it, since previous laws like this "didn't work" because nearly everyone waived their fees... It's truly a disgrace.
  - loa-in-backup 8y ago
    Horrid! The extension mentioned in parent would be making this whole thing passable, it is really something worth considering.
leifg 8y ago
As a EU citizen I have always been (and still am) a strong advocate for the European Union. I think the founding of the European Union was one of the greatest things that could ever happen to European citizens. I full heartedly believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after World War 2. The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss. But seeing the lawmakers fucking up more and more on these kind of laws makes it harder to build a reasonable argument against all the so called "EU critics" (most of the time just straight up racists). It also makes me wonder if the laws they pass in other areas are as disconnected from reality as this is.
- sparkling 8y ago
  The EU needs a full "rewrite". The levels or bureaucratic nonsense are unbelievable. Just the sheer number of laws and regulations being pumped out every year is crazy.
  - akie 8y ago
    That's such nonsense.
    - sparkling 8y ago
      Care to elaborate?
  - DanBC 8y ago
    Without looking, how many laws and regulations are being pumped out each year?
    - sparkling 8y ago
      In 2017 alone, the EU signed 430 international agreements, passed over 3400 pieces of legislation, passed 103 adjustments to various EFTA regulations.
- timrichard 8y ago
Jaruzel 8y ago
I submitted this link to HN a week ago [1]: https://savethelink.org/ https://savethelink.org/ The site highlights whats going on, and encourages people to write to their MEPs. If I understand the bill correctly, it will become illegal for 3rd party sites to use all those 'graph' meta-tags that provide rich snippets/previews when you post a link to your status etc. If so, then the impact of this will be massive. -- [1] but it failed to get any traction.
ericdykstra 8y ago
> it requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content. This is such ridiculous government overreach. Forcing people to create a business transaction that neither party wants?? The EU was a mistake.
lasermike026 8y ago
We are not progressing as a world society. The world is retreating. This is why people of conscience and ethics must double our effects to secure freedom for every person in the world. I condemn this legislation by the European parliament.
- aembleton 8y ago
  The legislation comes from the European Commission. It has been voted for by a committee of MEPs (they don't have the power to make changes to the legislation, but they could have sent it back).
pmlnr 8y ago
I remember the Internet Blackout Day in 2012, to stop SOPA/PIPA. I'm all in to organize something similar this time as well. The suggested replace snippets and linked titles with [censored by the EU] could work quite well, but it all needs coordination, and big players, like Wikipedia, Google, Twitter. Please, if you're in a position at large traffic sites, consider doing a campaign.
dalbasal 8y ago
Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The old news publishers will never make it online. They see their financials problems as being cause by a moral failing in society: "People do not value quality, and won't pay for it" or somesuch. They see the solutions as legalistic. Some law or industry association which will guarantee them an income. Meanwhile, on their own sites... They run one small square of content, overlaid and surrounded by loud, flashing ads. They plug in every last bit of ad-spy software available. They run fake news, via their "native content" widgets selling scams using blatant lies on literally fake news articles. Kettle, meet Pot. The only solutions they can think of are legalistic. An industry association that can stand up to google and demand money. A law that guarantees someone (anyone) pays them. There's no vision. The few, moderate paywall success stories are considered revolutionary. What does this add up to? Eveyone picks a newspaper or two, subscribes and reads just them? Have you not noticed how the internet works? Meanwhile, at least 50% of any broadsheet is straight plagiarism. Plagiarism is normal in news media. Does a paper pay another paper when they report on a report? Does twitter (or trump) get paid when your front page is an article about a tweet? Kettle, remember Pot from before? I really think there's no hope. Most of these dinos aren't going to make it. Don't let them break the internet on their way out.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The internet isn't some hip new technology only the young people understand. You act as if old media companies must still use rotary phones and manual typewriters, but these companies have changed with the decades and have adapted to the internet like everyone else. They understand the internet perfectly well, they just disagree with you about how they should use it.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    I'm claiming that many/most news companies that formed their culture in the pre-internet days have failed to find stable business models, and they are looking to legislation for a fix.
Proven 8y ago
I expected no less
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
billpg 8y ago
The pro-Brexit people must be happy with this news. "No, don't pay any attention to our complete lack of planning despite us wanting to leave the EU for decades. Pay attention to this thing they've done instead!"
peterwwillis 8y ago
Why is this even necessary? Publishers can just block Google Referer: links until Google pays them.
megaman22 8y ago
So, saying this goes into effect, what are the real consequences going to be? If I'm hosting outside the EU, do I have to deal with this Article 13 nonsense? It's a little funny, we just went through a cycle where people were moving their datacenters off of US territory because of NSA revelations, often to Europe. Are we going to see a backswing now, as EU regulations get more and more onerous (not to mention it keeps coming out that everyone and their brother was doing the same tapping as the NSA did...)?
NedIsakoff 8y ago
See everything evens out at the end, you get some good and some bad. In this case the good we got is the G.D.P.R. and the bad is this. Its like karma, it evens out eventually.
Grumbledour 8y ago
What I haven't heard mentioned yet is, that for the big companies like Google and Facebook, there won't actually be much change in regards to upload filters, because they already do this. The DMCA has led to quite a similar problem for them, so that for example youtube provides big license holders with backend to decide themselves which videos to block for reasons of copyright infringement. So in the end, they wont even have to do anything, they already have the infrastructure in place to overblock and have indeed done so for many years. But at the same time, where this becomes really disastrous is smaller communities, where admins and moderators have no chance of checking every post themselves for violations and neither the technological means to do it automatically. In Germany at least, this was from time to time reason for lawsuits but until now, the consensus of the courts was, that it is enough for the admin to remove the offending content after he was made aware of it. This changes now of course, which makes it practically impossible to offer these kind of services if you are not a big company with huge resources. I know Forums and the like are not as far spread as they once were, but this will make it practically impossible to create these kind of communities.
- doh 8y ago
  You are right. This bill is a disaster for smaller platforms. My company [0] built business around Content ID-like technology, so we should be celebrating, but we don't. We are going to announce, that our services will be provided to all impacted platforms free of charge. We are hoping to facilitate licensing deal between rights holders and the platforms, preferably on pay-per-play basis, instead of completely blocking content from being uploaded to the platforms. It still is not a great outcome, but at least it will not put smaller platforms out of business, and hopefully not completely stiff the innovation. [0] https://pex.com https://pex.com
aiisahik 8y ago
I once wrote a thesis on DMCA and Youtube during that huge Viacom vs Youtube litigation was going on. The copyright holders wanted to shift more of the burden of detecting and blocking copyright breach onto the web services by removing the DMCA safe harbor. Youtube ultimately won the case but they also implemented much of what Viacom wanted anyway - a fairly aggressive content filter that probably caught most of what Viacom wanted. However, the automated systems also prevented the posting of much fair use content since it can't really make the nuanced judgement call between blatant copying and fair uses. If Viacom had won that case, Youtube would have been forced to be much more restrictive in their automated filtering. Other video platforms would either have had to invest in the filtering tech or go out of business. The Coase theorem says that where there are two rational negotiating parties, the laws governing property rights don't really matter. The parties will generally negotiate their way to an optimal outcome. What does matter is the impact of those laws on the transaction costs. The transaction costs are higher for smaller parties and for parties where there is no significant financial interests at stake. Thus in evaluating these new laws, it's not really Google or big European news that we need to consider - rather we should ask how small news aggregators, independent bloggers, small news outlets, and individual readers going to react to this. Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator and vice versa? All laws that increase transaction costs will concentrate more market power in larger firms that have the scale to deal with the additional costs and undermine smaller players who do not. Lawmakers focus too much on the Google and the like. Google can look after itself.
- intrasight 8y ago
  > Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator You don't have to do that. You can continue to let them steal your content I assume.
- glitchc 8y ago
  Regarding the small aggregators, perhaps they shouldn't be aggregating, but rather producing their own content? It's a problem when a blog copies a Reuters or Associated Press article verbatim just to garner some ad views.
javajosh 8y ago
They should stop beating around the bush and pass a law that says, "Google must share ad revenue with all links returned by the search that generated the revenue."
Pen123 8y ago
just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>
Pen123 8y ago
6a7573742070656e747374696e67203c7363726970743e616c657274282268656c6c6f2058535322293c2f7363726970743e
Pen123 8y ago
">just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>
Pen123 8y ago
"">>just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>
Jaruzel 8y ago
Managed to find a good legal take on the proposed bill: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-reda-discusses-current-proposal-directive-copyright-digital-single-market/ http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-reda-d...
kuwze 8y ago
I believe that this bill would make copyleft licenses ineffective. I remember reading a more detailed article, but at the moment all I can find is this post by the FSF[0]. [0]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-risk-in-the-eu-take-action-now https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-risk...
test6554 8y ago
"This content is not available in your region" should go on their flag.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
I hope it goes through and it truly is 'disastrous'. People who make bad laws need to be held accountable. And I'm sure they will be after the affects of this law are seen first hand.
nns 8y ago
Article 13 puts more onus on websites to enforce copyright and could mean that every online platform that allows users to post text, sounds, code or images will need some form of content-recognition system to review all material that users upload.
IdiocyInAction 8y ago
As a european citizen, I fear that this marks the beginning of a new age of china-like censorship in europe. The EU was a very nice idea that got executed very badly.
sebst 8y ago
Technically, a law like this is prone to be abused for censorship purposes. Whether this “dual use” is intended or not by parliamentarian voters, is obviously unclear. To make it even worse, such laws don’t “outlaw” some behaviour, but put a high risk on it through civil law. So, it helps multinationals (and a possible malevolent regime) and hurts small companies as well as citizens. To me, it’s hard to believe this is not intended (like so many other (mostly) EU laws. However, always bear in mind Ayn Rand: > “Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
- hartator 8y ago
  Don’t forget compliance with GDPR probably means it’s not possible to comply with this new copyright laws. Fun times for EU startups. P.S.: Taking some risks quoting Ayn Rand on HN. :)
  - sebst 8y ago
    > Don’t forget compliance with GDPR probably means it’s not possible to comply with this new copyright laws. Fun times for EU startups. GDPR is a good example of another law which is potentially dangerous. However, I do see that it's hard to comply with both, but I don't see how they interact with other. > P.S.: Taking some risks quoting Ayn Rand on HN. :) Why?
    - hartator 8y ago
      > GDPR is a good example of another law which is potentially dangerous. However, I do see that it's hard to comply with both, but I don't see how they interact with other. The copyright law requires you to store metadata about the user who publish content forever while GDPR forbids you to do so. > Why? I would say most of HN leans left not libertarian.
kizer 8y ago
Can we just block Europe? Like, partition the internet or something... /s
- geoalchimista 8y ago
  This is likely what's gonna happen if these bills get passed. The Chinese GFW has created a "Chinternet" already, which not only blocks access to Google, Facebook, etc., but also throttles the bandwidth going out of China down to 1990s dial-up modem speed. The EU is not authoritarian but I suspect that EU regulators may do the same to block US websites that do not comply with their copyright laws in the future.
darth_mastah 8y ago
Maybe I don't understand the Article 11, but does it essentially mean problems for Hacker News?
choicenotchance 8y ago
I only see this as yet another way trying to extort from Google, Facebook, and other content publishing kinda companies outside EU. Not that I care, but I do see the EU's desperation quite a lot in it.
Kliment 8y ago
Here are the actual votes: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-committee-result-roll-call-votes-20062018.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-committee-...
pascalxus 8y ago
This copyright bill is a complete disaster. Here's a potential solution: A third party could create a website that allows website owners to register with them and agree to sell their links for some trivially small amount (if they want to give away their traffic), say .00000001 cents (effectively making it free). Then social sites with potential links would have a list they could check to ensure they're not accidentally linking to sites that require payment. Sure, it's a hack. imperfect solution to a disastrous regulations.

675 points by sebst 8y ago

This bill pretty much demands that YouTube Content ID like systems are introduced across the web. With the wording, it's better for the site to delete more content on false positives than risk false negatives. All in the name of mighty copyright. Side effects of these false/negative averse copyright takedown systems can be easily seen on YouTube: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700

Jabbles 8y ago
An update to the original article you linked says that the issue was not with Content ID, but is "related to its updated partner agreements."
- izacus 8y ago
  You can take example of any of the other thousands of false postive copyright takedowns happening across YouTube. Android Play Store too.
  - Jabbles 8y ago
    Sure. But not that one.
    - izacus 8y ago
      You have a point there.
teamhappy 8y ago
> With the wording, it's better for the site to delete more content on false positives than risk false negatives. What makes you say that? Last time I read parts of it I got the impression that if you're trying to get it right you're not liable.
merinowool 8y ago
That means if you have a website a third party would have control over everything that is being uploaded to it.

walterbell 8y ago

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5 > According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control of the new medium—the “master switch.” > Wu chronicles the turning points of the century’s information landscape: those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an unacceptable control of our most essential resource. > He advocates “not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional approach” that would enforce distance between the major functions in the information economy—those who develop information, those who own the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of access—and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting vertical integration, a “Separations Principle” would remove the temptations and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu’s engaging narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and galvanizing cry for sanity—and necessary deregulation—in the information age.

mavidser 8y ago

This bill reminds me of the 'Melancholy Elephants'[0] story by Spider Robinson, about the dangers of unchecked copyright. [0]: http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

specializeded 8y ago

IIRC, EU citizens helped defeat ACTA by taking to the streets and influencing parliament. Would I be mistaken in believing it can be done again, even without the additional anti-US/trade treaty attitudes that helped against ACTA?

sampo 8y ago
European newspapers are left-leaning, so they were happy to write pieces criticizing free trade treaties. But now with the proposed link tax in Article 11, the newspapers pretty much support the proposed new copyright law. Without old media, it might be difficult to reach and inform a critical mass of people for demonstrations to happen.
- CloudNetworking 8y ago
  "left-leaning". Hehe. Goes to show how much the left-right axis has tilted to the right since WW2.
- toyg 8y ago
  > European newspapers are left-leaning You missed "some". I can assure you there are plenty of right-leaning newspapers in Europe: The Times, Financial Times, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, The Sun, Corriere della Sera, Libero, Il Giornale, Il Foglio, L'Opinion, La Croix, Frankfurter Allgemein Zeitung, Die Welt, El Paìs... It is true that the objections on this atrocious law are subdued to say the least, because the entire sector is complicit. Battered by the internet revolution, the press is desperate to find revenues. Part of the responsibility is squarely on "internet people" for their inability to find a modern business model for the sector, though: Google and friends have been happy to pick at the dying carcass of traditional media without giving anything back.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
they didn't defeat acta. lobby money already changed hand, they will keep renaming the bill and trying to showe it down our throats until succesful.

bogle 8y ago

It's really not very clear what the outcome of this is going to be although it doesn't look good. So "internet platforms" are going to filter all the content we post? Seeing as this isn't going to work properly what is the point of setting it down as a law? Someone's going to end up in court and only then are we going to know exactly how bad it is.

saintPirelli 8y ago
I wonder if this can be interpreted as a future edge for distributed platforms like mastodon, where you might not find "the responsible person/company" right away?
- daveid 8y ago
  I'm seeing the opposite, as independent platforms like Mastodon won't be able to implement content ID they won't be complying with this new law, which means it'll potentially become legally dangerous to run Mastodon within the EU. It's like the EU parliament is bent on giving all the cards to Google and Facebook and shutting down European competition...
  - netheril96 8y ago
    I guess the EU's reasoning is that because there hasn't been any European competition for all these years, there probably won't ever be, so they might as well make those pesky American companies miserable.

frisco 8y ago

> They voted to approve the controversial Article 13, which critics warn could put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content. This won’t put an end to memes. It might encourage innovation around decentralization, though. It won’t end the internet, but given all of the stuff like this happening recently, it might be time for the internet to evolve. The technologies have been around for a while as a curiosity, and now there might be the market need.

sebst 8y ago
I hope you're right on this. Decentralization is what the internet was actually build for. Centralization, on the other side, brought the web to less technical people and thus scaled so massively. Can technical literacy which certainly increased (in some ways) lead to a new era of decentralization or will that be the fatal end of a symbolic "Eternal September"?
- orwin 8y ago
  I was kinda skeptic about federation at first (mastodon, GNU.social etc), but i've installed and tested a nextcloud platform for one of my client and i've been really impressed so far. It's clunky, a bit bloated (for me, TUI > GUI for 90% of apps, so take it with a grain of salt) and have an average documentation (a pretty good documentation for a free software /s). But despite that, once installed successfully, it is better than most free cloud services i have used imo, except maybe gDrive (integration with email, android calendar and gSuite is hard to beat). If other federated services can see light, and if people start to care about it, internet will be a better place i think (sightly related: is lichess federated too? I know you can host a server yourself, but i'm not sure if it's true).
  - sebst 8y ago
    A long way to go: Have a professional install nextcloud for you vs. sign up at dropbox. And that's basically just for hoarding private files. The network effect makes it even worse: Why should I use XYZ if all my friends are on Facebook/WhatsApp/WhatsOEver? Decentralized infrastructure (as in email, usenet, irc, ...) needs to have a bigger popularity than every walled garden. Then, the internet will become "a better place" rather than "there is a better niche for hacker kind of people on the net"

indigochill 8y ago

If I may play the devil's advocate for a moment here, isn't this a boon for decentralizing media? If third-party publishers like YouTube are crippled, perhaps there's more room for self-hosting your content, enabling you to build your brand on your own terms rather than YouTube's? Perhaps it's time to stop outsourcing the publication of our content to third-parties and host it ourselves, especially now that granularly-scaling cloud servers are an option? But I'm not very familiar with this bill aside from the fact everyone hates it, so someone can probably point out why I'm wrong.

bogle 8y ago
I think the problem is that if we wish to draw attention to your excellent content then we must repost it or at least link to it. This is where those platforms we repost on will filter the repost (thus the nickname "link tax").
PinguTS 8y ago
I does not matter who hosts. Because, if you haven't paid your royalties, your are not allowed to host the remix/meme/... yourself. It hurts also decentralization has anybody who provides space becomes responsible.
westpfelia 8y ago
I would say it would encourage more networks to band forces just linking to each other not charging one another. Which just leads to growing echochambers.
ptero 8y ago
In addition to other concerns posted this bill seems to open the door wide to content trolls (similar to patent trolls) who could acquire a small portion of the content being referenced by a site, then threaten that site with large legal bills. This would likely hit small companies and individual users hardest and could be a boon to various governments who want to silence a particular view.
nairboon 8y ago
You're right, it's not just good decentralizing media, but for decentralized everything. The technology to go fully decentralized has been ready for years, but its usability is still lacking (high latency, low bandwidth etc.). But at some point, if the copyright industry goes to far and the existing services are significantly reduced or outlawed, decentralized solutions become attractive again. Right now the offer from Netflix is somewhat ok, although extremely reduced due to geographical restrictions, so not much need for Popcorntime. If the offer is further reduced while keeping the same price, at some point it'll be time for popcorn again... Analogously, if this media linking copyright stuff goes through and too far, somebody might build the popcorntime equivalent for news consumption...

josteink 8y ago

This is what happens when those in control don't understand, know or care about the things they regulate. So I guess this is bad. --goes and reads article-- > Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved. What the fucking FUCK? Pay to send companies actual traffic? Pay to be allowed to use the basic building-block of the world wide web on the world wide web? Just how is it possible to be so out of touch with how things work, and still be allowed to pass regulation? I'm honestly not able to come up with an analogy which sufficiently illustrates just how backwards this whole thing is.

glitchc 8y ago
They're dismantling content aggregation as a business model. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
raverbashing 8y ago
I'm not too worried about this one. This will just mean platforms will not link to publishers. EVER It already failed in Spain and Germany, they will just shoot themselves in the foot again.
- visarga 8y ago
  I wrote a Romanian news concentrator as a hobby project, guess I will have to put it down now. They were 99% bullshit anyway - clickbait and fake news. That's what they are protecting.
  - v_lisivka 8y ago
    Why not just use URL shortener outside of EU?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - CloudNetworking 8y ago

mrleiter 8y ago

It was approved on in a committee of the European parliament (for legal matters), which means that now they will enter negotiations with the European Council and then after some time and processes laid out in Art. 293ff TFEU, it will be debated in the European Parliament at some point. So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather unfortunate policy. EDIT: For more info: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180618IPR06024/copyright-meps-update-rules-for-the-digital-age http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180618IPR... Votes: Yes - 14 MEPs No - 9 MEPs Abstentions - 2 MEPs

Silhouette 8y ago
So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather unfortunate policy. But not that much time. The main European Parliament vote is due in July. For those of you in the EU, now is probably a good time to be writing to your MEPs.
- merinowool 8y ago
  If this law has already been paid for, what you would get from your MEP is a template response in the spirit of "I share your concerns blah blah, but copyrights are important blah blah". I don't think you can do much about it at this point.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    You should really look up how EU regulations work.
    - merinowool 8y ago
      Enlighten me please, as I don't believe the reasons for passing it are genuine.
      - ahartmetz 8y ago
        Lobbyists don't usually hand over money. Usually they are just good at appearing trustworthy and, uh, explaining the positions of their clients in terms that politicians understand. Therefore, their explainees think they are doing genuinely good things.

VMG 8y ago

I'm excited about this. This will boost VPN, Tor and other technologies that protect users from inane regulations. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/cryp...

outsidetheparty 8y ago
How do you figure? Doesn't matter if you're connecting via VPN or Tor if what you're connecting to has been scrubbed by these inane regulations. Unless you're expecting the whole internet to go all rebel pirate underground, which seems... implausible.
- VMG 8y ago
  I expect companies to migrate to saner regulatory environments and geofilter the EU. VPN/Tor will help circumvent this.
  - outsidetheparty 8y ago
    Hm. Saner regulatory environments seem to be pretty thin on the ground, lately. Not sure I share your optimism that a significant number of companies will be willing to abandon a major world market, or to depend on a nudge-nudge-wink-wink "bypass our geofence and we'll pretend we don't notice your EU billing address" kind of thing...
    - VMG 8y ago
      Luckily now we not only have crypto-communication, but also currency :)
merinowool 8y ago
It is very easy to block VPN, Tor and other technologies. These can be in fact criminalised the same way drugs are. Possession of a VPN on your device could give you a criminal record.

teamhappy 8y ago

Here's the final document: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Searching for "article 11" (the link one) and "article 13" (the filter one) will help you find the relevant paragraphs. They're both very short and fairly easy to understand.

BlackFly 8y ago
Having read those articles, I struggle to understand how the interpretations of "link tax" and "automated filtering requirement" arose. Article 11 reiterates articles from directive 2001/29/EC which gives copyright holders sole discretion over reproduction in whole or part... but nothing that says a link is a reproduction. What am I missing? Maybe this forbids news aggregators from posting snippets of the articles, but hardly the titles. Article 13 certainly requires content providers to do something. But only provides an example of what that might be: "Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate." It definitely doesn't say automatic, and given YouTube's propensity to generate harmful false positives without recourse, there might be an argument that manual content recognition is more effective. In any case the article just seems to require that content providers do something beyond waiting for takedown notices, which seems reasonable. I am not a lawyer, so obviously I could be missing something subtle, but when I go read articles crying foul, they don't exactly help me understand what I am missing.
yoz-y 8y ago
I am reading and re-reading the article 11, but I just can't get past the legalese to parse it as "aggregators have to pay the publishers for linking their stuff"
tom_mellior 8y ago
That's a document from 2016. It's only "final" in the sense that it's the final version of the Commission's proposal, I think. https://edri.org/copyright-reform-document-pool/ https://edri.org/copyright-reform-document-pool/ has a whole lot of different versions of the text, though I don't know how to find out what text was actually voted on today. I expect it to show up at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=&reference=2016/0280(COD) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?... though apparently that may take a few days. Anyway, the version at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf for example adds the following paragraph to Article 11: "The rights referred to in the first subparagraph shall not apply in respect of uses of insubstantial parts of a press publication. Member States shall be free to determine the insubstantial nature of parts of press publications taking into account whether these parts are the expression of the intellectual creation of their authors, or whether these parts are individual words or very short excerpts, or both criteria." I don't find this particularly easy to understand, but one reading is "Member States may define article titles to be 'substantial'", in which case any use of them (as in linking) would be prohibited without a license.

timow1337 8y ago

Does anyone have a list of which MEPs voted for and against? I can't find it yet.

aembleton 8y ago
The minutes will be published in the next few days.

sqdbps 8y ago

A Couple of things: Mainstream news outlets on this side of the atlantic didn't do much reporting on this vote which might signal tacit support on their part (at least for the link payment portion of this thing which is frankly the sillies part) and that should shape everyone's understanding of their coverage of tech companies in general. Second, it's hard not to notice that much of what the EU does is trying to hurt US tech companies be that: copyright, GDPR, antitrust, taxes, and many other initiatives the goals of which are to control and "punish" these companies. It's easy to complaint about silly steel tariffs while they keep enacting these trade barriers on US industry, the fact the the news media isn't making that connection brings it back to the first point.

merinowool 8y ago
Another thing is that the media are licensed, so they cannot go against the government out of fear of losing such license. Now, one could assume that this copyright thing is a smokescreen to introduce EU wide censorship as everything users upload would have to be checked for "copyright breach".
- detaro 8y ago
  Which media is "licensed" and thus can not go against the government?
  - merinowool 8y ago
    All radio and TV and in some countries the press as well.
winkeltripel 8y ago
> much of what the EU does is try to hurt US tech companies Well, somebody's got to take the fight to US tech titans. They're unhealthy for every economy.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  I think that is a defendable position so long as you are willing to accept the other side, which is massive tariffs against big EU industries. Someone has to take it to the German auto industry which has used lies & deception to up their market share while destroying the environment. Note that I disagree with both points, but they are internally consistent so long as you accept both.

agotterer 8y ago

So in the case of this link does that mean that HN would have to pay the BBC or filter the link out?

nemo44x 8y ago
Only for EU IP addresses. Seems like a good way to keep their people ignorant akin to China or NK firewalls. But in a way that appears less authoritarian and "to protect EU business interests". Lets face it - power structures are terrified of the open communication available today and how everyone is able to organize and see through their BS.
- ShabbosGoy 8y ago
  Why not just range ban IP addresses originating from the EU? Seems like a simple and fair solution to me.
Scarblac 8y ago
Yes. The legislation is a direct attack on sites like HN and Reddit that have no content of their own but get all the traffic (and ad money, if HN had ads).

TuringTest 8y ago

"Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate." They may as well request providers to deploy magical leprechauns riding on rainbow unicorns, because such "effective" technologies don't exist. Case in point: Google's copyright detection.

glook 8y ago

Vint Cerf AND Tim Berners-Lee declare it "an imminent threat to the future of the Internet." Then Cory Doctorow calls it foolish. This feels like a no-brainer for opposition.

pmlnr 8y ago
Those voices don't seem to reach MEPs.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  ... none of those voices are from the EU[*]. (Well, I guess Tim Berners-Lee still is until Brexit finishes.)
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    That shouldn't matter at all, especially when it's about the internet.

firic 8y ago

I dislike this bill as much as other HNers but writing "Disastrous" in the title makes this look more like an option piece rather than a news piece. How hard is it to ask for news to report facts and for me to decide if the facts are disastrous or not?

bitL 8y ago

Can't wait for the first person jailed for operating a darknet news aggregator with links and thumbnail previews. The horror!

shmerl 8y ago

So corruption prevailed?

c12 8y ago
Corruption always prevails in the end. Humanity is weak. We are no better than babboons with diseased brains.

bluecalm 8y ago

EU has long proven record of making laws targeting specific big players and not caring about smaller local businesses and specifically not caring about promoting competition. VAT MOSS disaster didn't generate that much discussion because the ones hurt were busy selling their sweaters on Etsy and didn't have time to take it to the streets. I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your fees/licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by the engines. Old media will fight for their licenses and fees and die there as sites will just stop aggregating from them. That would be great outcome, they are pretty useless anyway and they give a lot of power to morons currently residing in EU structures. With some luck it can become a win-win. I just hope bloggers and small publishers won't need to run circles just to get their stuff indexed and linked.

detaro 8y ago
> I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your fees/licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by the engines. There's actually a proposal by Axel Voss (the MEP pushing this the most) to explicit forbid waiving it, since previous laws like this "didn't work" because nearly everyone waived their fees... It's truly a disgrace.
- loa-in-backup 8y ago
  Horrid! The extension mentioned in parent would be making this whole thing passable, it is really something worth considering.

leifg 8y ago

As a EU citizen I have always been (and still am) a strong advocate for the European Union. I think the founding of the European Union was one of the greatest things that could ever happen to European citizens. I full heartedly believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after World War 2. The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss. But seeing the lawmakers fucking up more and more on these kind of laws makes it harder to build a reasonable argument against all the so called "EU critics" (most of the time just straight up racists). It also makes me wonder if the laws they pass in other areas are as disconnected from reality as this is.

sparkling 8y ago
The EU needs a full "rewrite". The levels or bureaucratic nonsense are unbelievable. Just the sheer number of laws and regulations being pumped out every year is crazy.
- akie 8y ago
  That's such nonsense.
  - sparkling 8y ago
    Care to elaborate?
- DanBC 8y ago
  Without looking, how many laws and regulations are being pumped out each year?
  - sparkling 8y ago
    In 2017 alone, the EU signed 430 international agreements, passed over 3400 pieces of legislation, passed 103 adjustments to various EFTA regulations.
timrichard 8y ago

Jaruzel 8y ago

I submitted this link to HN a week ago [1]: https://savethelink.org/ https://savethelink.org/ The site highlights whats going on, and encourages people to write to their MEPs. If I understand the bill correctly, it will become illegal for 3rd party sites to use all those 'graph' meta-tags that provide rich snippets/previews when you post a link to your status etc. If so, then the impact of this will be massive. -- [1] but it failed to get any traction.

ericdykstra 8y ago

> it requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content. This is such ridiculous government overreach. Forcing people to create a business transaction that neither party wants?? The EU was a mistake.

lasermike026 8y ago

We are not progressing as a world society. The world is retreating. This is why people of conscience and ethics must double our effects to secure freedom for every person in the world. I condemn this legislation by the European parliament.

aembleton 8y ago
The legislation comes from the European Commission. It has been voted for by a committee of MEPs (they don't have the power to make changes to the legislation, but they could have sent it back).

pmlnr 8y ago

I remember the Internet Blackout Day in 2012, to stop SOPA/PIPA. I'm all in to organize something similar this time as well. The suggested replace snippets and linked titles with [censored by the EU] could work quite well, but it all needs coordination, and big players, like Wikipedia, Google, Twitter. Please, if you're in a position at large traffic sites, consider doing a campaign.

dalbasal 8y ago

Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The old news publishers will never make it online. They see their financials problems as being cause by a moral failing in society: "People do not value quality, and won't pay for it" or somesuch. They see the solutions as legalistic. Some law or industry association which will guarantee them an income. Meanwhile, on their own sites... They run one small square of content, overlaid and surrounded by loud, flashing ads. They plug in every last bit of ad-spy software available. They run fake news, via their "native content" widgets selling scams using blatant lies on literally fake news articles. Kettle, meet Pot. The only solutions they can think of are legalistic. An industry association that can stand up to google and demand money. A law that guarantees someone (anyone) pays them. There's no vision. The few, moderate paywall success stories are considered revolutionary. What does this add up to? Eveyone picks a newspaper or two, subscribes and reads just them? Have you not noticed how the internet works? Meanwhile, at least 50% of any broadsheet is straight plagiarism. Plagiarism is normal in news media. Does a paper pay another paper when they report on a report? Does twitter (or trump) get paid when your front page is an article about a tweet? Kettle, remember Pot from before? I really think there's no hope. Most of these dinos aren't going to make it. Don't let them break the internet on their way out.

krapp 8y ago
>Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The internet isn't some hip new technology only the young people understand. You act as if old media companies must still use rotary phones and manual typewriters, but these companies have changed with the decades and have adapted to the internet like everyone else. They understand the internet perfectly well, they just disagree with you about how they should use it.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  I'm claiming that many/most news companies that formed their culture in the pre-internet days have failed to find stable business models, and they are looking to legislation for a fix.

Proven 8y ago

I expected no less

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

billpg 8y ago

The pro-Brexit people must be happy with this news. "No, don't pay any attention to our complete lack of planning despite us wanting to leave the EU for decades. Pay attention to this thing they've done instead!"

peterwwillis 8y ago

Why is this even necessary? Publishers can just block Google Referer: links until Google pays them.

megaman22 8y ago

So, saying this goes into effect, what are the real consequences going to be? If I'm hosting outside the EU, do I have to deal with this Article 13 nonsense? It's a little funny, we just went through a cycle where people were moving their datacenters off of US territory because of NSA revelations, often to Europe. Are we going to see a backswing now, as EU regulations get more and more onerous (not to mention it keeps coming out that everyone and their brother was doing the same tapping as the NSA did...)?

NedIsakoff 8y ago

See everything evens out at the end, you get some good and some bad. In this case the good we got is the G.D.P.R. and the bad is this. Its like karma, it evens out eventually.

Grumbledour 8y ago

What I haven't heard mentioned yet is, that for the big companies like Google and Facebook, there won't actually be much change in regards to upload filters, because they already do this. The DMCA has led to quite a similar problem for them, so that for example youtube provides big license holders with backend to decide themselves which videos to block for reasons of copyright infringement. So in the end, they wont even have to do anything, they already have the infrastructure in place to overblock and have indeed done so for many years. But at the same time, where this becomes really disastrous is smaller communities, where admins and moderators have no chance of checking every post themselves for violations and neither the technological means to do it automatically. In Germany at least, this was from time to time reason for lawsuits but until now, the consensus of the courts was, that it is enough for the admin to remove the offending content after he was made aware of it. This changes now of course, which makes it practically impossible to offer these kind of services if you are not a big company with huge resources. I know Forums and the like are not as far spread as they once were, but this will make it practically impossible to create these kind of communities.

doh 8y ago
You are right. This bill is a disaster for smaller platforms. My company [0] built business around Content ID-like technology, so we should be celebrating, but we don't. We are going to announce, that our services will be provided to all impacted platforms free of charge. We are hoping to facilitate licensing deal between rights holders and the platforms, preferably on pay-per-play basis, instead of completely blocking content from being uploaded to the platforms. It still is not a great outcome, but at least it will not put smaller platforms out of business, and hopefully not completely stiff the innovation. [0] https://pex.com https://pex.com

aiisahik 8y ago

I once wrote a thesis on DMCA and Youtube during that huge Viacom vs Youtube litigation was going on. The copyright holders wanted to shift more of the burden of detecting and blocking copyright breach onto the web services by removing the DMCA safe harbor. Youtube ultimately won the case but they also implemented much of what Viacom wanted anyway - a fairly aggressive content filter that probably caught most of what Viacom wanted. However, the automated systems also prevented the posting of much fair use content since it can't really make the nuanced judgement call between blatant copying and fair uses. If Viacom had won that case, Youtube would have been forced to be much more restrictive in their automated filtering. Other video platforms would either have had to invest in the filtering tech or go out of business. The Coase theorem says that where there are two rational negotiating parties, the laws governing property rights don't really matter. The parties will generally negotiate their way to an optimal outcome. What does matter is the impact of those laws on the transaction costs. The transaction costs are higher for smaller parties and for parties where there is no significant financial interests at stake. Thus in evaluating these new laws, it's not really Google or big European news that we need to consider - rather we should ask how small news aggregators, independent bloggers, small news outlets, and individual readers going to react to this. Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator and vice versa? All laws that increase transaction costs will concentrate more market power in larger firms that have the scale to deal with the additional costs and undermine smaller players who do not. Lawmakers focus too much on the Google and the like. Google can look after itself.

intrasight 8y ago
> Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator You don't have to do that. You can continue to let them steal your content I assume.
glitchc 8y ago
Regarding the small aggregators, perhaps they shouldn't be aggregating, but rather producing their own content? It's a problem when a blog copies a Reuters or Associated Press article verbatim just to garner some ad views.

javajosh 8y ago

They should stop beating around the bush and pass a law that says, "Google must share ad revenue with all links returned by the search that generated the revenue."

Pen123 8y ago

just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>

Pen123 8y ago

6a7573742070656e747374696e67203c7363726970743e616c657274282268656c6c6f2058535322293c2f7363726970743e

Pen123 8y ago

">just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>

Pen123 8y ago

"">>just pentsting <script>alert("hello XSS")</script>

Jaruzel 8y ago

Managed to find a good legal take on the proposed bill: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-reda-discusses-current-proposal-directive-copyright-digital-single-market/ http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-reda-d...

kuwze 8y ago

I believe that this bill would make copyleft licenses ineffective. I remember reading a more detailed article, but at the moment all I can find is this post by the FSF[0]. [0]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-risk-in-the-eu-take-action-now https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-risk...

test6554 8y ago

"This content is not available in your region" should go on their flag.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

I hope it goes through and it truly is 'disastrous'. People who make bad laws need to be held accountable. And I'm sure they will be after the affects of this law are seen first hand.

nns 8y ago

Article 13 puts more onus on websites to enforce copyright and could mean that every online platform that allows users to post text, sounds, code or images will need some form of content-recognition system to review all material that users upload.

IdiocyInAction 8y ago

As a european citizen, I fear that this marks the beginning of a new age of china-like censorship in europe. The EU was a very nice idea that got executed very badly.

sebst 8y ago

Technically, a law like this is prone to be abused for censorship purposes. Whether this “dual use” is intended or not by parliamentarian voters, is obviously unclear. To make it even worse, such laws don’t “outlaw” some behaviour, but put a high risk on it through civil law. So, it helps multinationals (and a possible malevolent regime) and hurts small companies as well as citizens. To me, it’s hard to believe this is not intended (like so many other (mostly) EU laws. However, always bear in mind Ayn Rand: > “Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

hartator 8y ago
Don’t forget compliance with GDPR probably means it’s not possible to comply with this new copyright laws. Fun times for EU startups. P.S.: Taking some risks quoting Ayn Rand on HN. :)
- sebst 8y ago
  > Don’t forget compliance with GDPR probably means it’s not possible to comply with this new copyright laws. Fun times for EU startups. GDPR is a good example of another law which is potentially dangerous. However, I do see that it's hard to comply with both, but I don't see how they interact with other. > P.S.: Taking some risks quoting Ayn Rand on HN. :) Why?
  - hartator 8y ago
    > GDPR is a good example of another law which is potentially dangerous. However, I do see that it's hard to comply with both, but I don't see how they interact with other. The copyright law requires you to store metadata about the user who publish content forever while GDPR forbids you to do so. > Why? I would say most of HN leans left not libertarian.

kizer 8y ago

Can we just block Europe? Like, partition the internet or something... /s

geoalchimista 8y ago
This is likely what's gonna happen if these bills get passed. The Chinese GFW has created a "Chinternet" already, which not only blocks access to Google, Facebook, etc., but also throttles the bandwidth going out of China down to 1990s dial-up modem speed. The EU is not authoritarian but I suspect that EU regulators may do the same to block US websites that do not comply with their copyright laws in the future.

darth_mastah 8y ago

Maybe I don't understand the Article 11, but does it essentially mean problems for Hacker News?

choicenotchance 8y ago

I only see this as yet another way trying to extort from Google, Facebook, and other content publishing kinda companies outside EU. Not that I care, but I do see the EU's desperation quite a lot in it.

Kliment 8y ago

Here are the actual votes: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-committee-result-roll-call-votes-20062018.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-committee-...

pascalxus 8y ago

This copyright bill is a complete disaster. Here's a potential solution: A third party could create a website that allows website owners to register with them and agree to sell their links for some trivially small amount (if they want to give away their traffic), say .00000001 cents (effectively making it free). Then social sites with potential links would have a list they could check to ensure they're not accidentally linking to sites that require payment. Sure, it's a hack. imperfect solution to a disastrous regulations.