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Italy Wikipedia shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law
- x775 8y agoI encourage everyone in the EU to reach out to their representatives by mail (or by phone, even better!) and let them know how you feel about the proposal. I have already sent mails to mine, and have at time of writing gotten two responses indicating a shared opposition of the proposal. I moreover asked whether they are experiencing any significant surge in comments compared to other controversial topics to which they, much to my disappointment, said they are not. Whilst this likely depends entirely on the representative in question, I was reassured that every comment was read and taken into consideration - if anything then in an aggregated manner.
- LaurentS 8y agoI've just put together a simple list of MEPs and their voting intentions (far from complete, it's only the few I've heard about more or less directly). It would be great if you can add what you've heard from MEPs you've spoken to. If anything, it may help focus efforts when speaking to MEPs. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A8H7OQfyjzdn8RhQ7ifwMoKp8axVjjkEXRu4PJUY1zg/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A8H7OQfyjzdn8RhQ7ifw...
- Kliment 8y agoOne important aspect about this is that this week's vote is a simple yes/no matter. If the vote is yes, the proposal continues to the next stage unamended. If the vote is no, each specific part of the proposal will be subject to amendments, which can then be voted on in a separate session. So having this table divided by article is not very sensible. I called a bunch of German MEPs over the past few weeks. I spoke to every parliamentary group except the far-right. The CDU and CSU are voting for this, which makes sense as it's their proposal. They had zero interest in talking about the actual contents, saying instead that Voss is their expert on the topic and they trust his opinion. Every other parliamentary group among the German MEPs is opposed. There is one person in the Green group that is an exception (Helga Trüpel). She is violently in support and doesn't seem to want to discuss the matter (when I called a staffer told me that they were overwhelmed with calls about this topic and I should call another time but her Twitter feed leaves zero doubts). Every other member of the Green group is against, as are all the FDP representatives, all the SDP representatives, and all the Linke representatives. I didn't feel comfortable speaking with any AfD and associated people. I spoke to a handful of CDU people who asked me to email with specific questions, and then replied to said email with a one-liner saying they fully support their colleague's proposal. It's still a good idea to call German representatives outside the CDU/CSU faction and ask them to please attend the vote - attendance is possibly going to be more important here than convincing them of a position because it appears the party lines are now clear. It might be a good idea to NOT call EPP/CDU/CSU members because that might motivate them to attend and the lower their attendance the better.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoWhen you visit wikipedia in the UK you some times see a banner with information. I'm posting here the content and links of the banner: > To all our readers in the UK This Tuesday we need your help. On 5 July 2018, the European Parliament will vote on a new copyright directive. If approved, these changes threaten to disrupt the open Internet that Wikipedia is a part of. You have time to act. Join the discussion. Thank you. > Contact your MEP: https://changecopyright.org/ https://changecopyright.org/ > Read about on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_... > Learn more: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/2018_European_Parliament_vote https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/2018_European_Parl... In particular that changecopyright.org link seems organized by Mozilla, and connects you directly with an MEP.
- anoncow 8y agoThe internet that we have now, wouldn't have been possible with laws like these in place. Remember that when you are trying to rationalise this and other overreaching laws like the GDPR. We will be destroying the future if we allow this.
- saiya-jin 8y agoGeneric response and not this law in particular - things have changed. Internet protocols were not defined with security in mind and look where it has led to. Cryptocurrencies were created in similar naive fashion, and look what kind of pathetic amoral shit they evolved into. We didn't have PRISM, Guantanamo, war on terror creating and seeding terror, war on drugs creating whole drug empires and cartels, extroverty sociopath with most power in the world and so on. some things are not possible anymore, some new are. I'll take at least some attempt to protect end user data over outright lying to my face and "we're above the law" any day.
- supuun 8y agoWhat's wrong with GDPR?
- jamesgeck0 8y agoIt impacts the majority of the web and it's vague in a number of important places.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- abhiminator 8y ago>Article 13 has been the most controversial, requiring websites to enforce copyright, even on content uploaded by users. (emphasis mine) This is laughable. Laws like the aforementioned shows how disconnected the lawmakers and regulators in the European Union (not that they're unique) are from the tech/media industry and general internet-using public at large. Regulations like these could backfire real bad even with best of intentions from folks at the helm of regulatory bodies, who -- more often than not -- have scanty, if any, understanding of the how online social platforms work.
- dokein 8y agoIt turns out that regulations are made largely by old lawyers, who are more connected and charismatic than smart and practical, and haven't operated in the real-world for decades.
- abhiminator 8y agoAbsolutely. This was on full-wide display at Mark Zuckerberg's senate testimony back in April, when a large proportion of senators had no idea what they were talking about when it came to technical aspects of Cambridge Analytica issue -- no wonder given the median age in that hearing was 62. [0] [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/10/17222062/mark-zuckerberg-testimony-graham-facebook-regulations https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/10/17222062/m...
- StreamBright 8y agoThis is why lawyers should not run anything especially not countries and unions (like the EU).
- jonhendry18 8y ago"It turns out that regulations are made largely by old lawyers, who are more connected and charismatic than smart and practical, and haven't operated in the real-world for decades." Maybe that's the career path for aging programmers. Get a law degree.
- mabbo 8y ago> Mr Voss also rubbished claims of an "upload filter", saying the proposal would only affect 1%-5% of the internet. He also said the rules would apply to "only those that actually publish copyright protected content" and earn money from it. The rubbish I see here is a man who doesn't understand the laws he's trying to push forward. All websites (for the most part) are trying to make at least enough money to keep running via advertising. Any website with a comments section (hey, this one included) would need to extensively monitor all posts by the public to ensure no one posts anything copyrighted. What it will effectively mean is that many websites won't bother allowing access from the EU anymore. Already, I have to screenshot and email my sister in Britain recipes from a Canadian website that doesn't want to deal with GDPR. Imagine how difficult it will be when there's copyright liabilities from content you didn't know you were 'publishing'.
- new_guy 8y ago>Already, I have to screenshot and email my sister in Britain recipes from a Canadian website that doesn't want to deal with GDPR. Have her install this https://anonymox.net/en https://anonymox.net/en it's a free Firefox addon that'll let her access the sites by making them think she's in the US
- michaelmrose 8y agoTo be clear its not just hiding your IP you are proxying all your potentially sensitive data via their servers. Also bandwidth may be cheap but its not free. It mentions a paid option for a bout 5 euros a month that is 10x faster with unlimited bandwidth. I interpret this to mean that the free option has a finite supply of bandwidth and is slow which is logical because otherwise people that want to watch 4k netflix over it would put them out of business. I also see that they offer a browser plugin but don't seem to provide say an openvpn connection which seems inferior as that protects all forms of data rather than just browsing data.
- timrichard 8y agoJust to mention another option, Opera installs with a free VPN built-in.
- walterbell 8y agoSince the companies who are advocating for economic censorship of the open web like lists so much, is there a github repo of all companies:products:services and associated lobbyists who are advocating for the proposed EU copyright law? Such a list will be necessary for mass-market boycott, divestment and sanction of the companies who killed the open web. Users will have lots of time available to focus and channel their energy, if these laws are passed, economically outlawing most user-generated content. In the history of online and offline publishing, what have been the commercial and censorship consequences of centralized copyright registers/databases and pre/post publication filters?
- raverbashing 8y agoAxel Springer
- adventured 8y agoWhat the EU is doing is no more a killing of the open Web, than what China has done. China's economy will soon surpass the size of the EU, and of course its population post Brexit is 3x that of the EU. The open Web will persist. Some countries/regions will be part of it, some won't.
- walterbell 8y agoHow much bigger would be China's economy with an open web?
- mark_edward 8y agoIt'd probably be smaller because they'd have no domestic tech industry and be on Google Apple FB like everywhere else
- walterbell 8y agoTrade policy (protectionism) can co-exist with an open web, so Chinese tech companies could not only exist, they could serve non-Chinese customers in an open web, growing their market and competing globally with Google/FB/etc.
- ccnafr 8y agoEU policy lobbying at its finest
- akerro 8y agoOver 50000 people work full time lobbying in EU http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20180108STO91215/transparency-register-who-is-lobbying-the-eu-infographic http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/2...
- zavi 8y agoWikipedia is an American service. EU legislators should not stop until every major American service is destroyed or at least kicked out of Europe. GDPR is a good first step; proposed copyright legislation is the next one. There's no place for American hegemony and corporate greed in Europe.
- walterbell 8y agoHow are EU startups going to compete if this proposed law is passed? If the proposed law is intended as a trade barrier, it needs to favor EU startups.
- walterstucco 8y agoBy asking for permissions to the authors... It doesn't sound so bad.
- AJ007 8y agoHow did that work out for Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union was in power?
- cooper12 8y agoWhy are people so desperate to trot out this one tired example while ignoring every other country and pretending context doesn't exist?
- lostjohnny 8y agoActually, not that bad, if you ask me We had the the Russian Film School, the Polish Film and Animation school because of that We had Stanisław Lem and Andrei Tarkovsky We had East Germany Punk that inspired a lot of European bands (including Italian CCCP) Now there is no typical eastern cultural product anymore. Even in China they now produce massive blockbusters with American actors...
- bayfullofrays 8y agoI don’t know why you’re getting downvotes. American business represent some of the absolute worst excesses of capitalist greed and have no place in somewhere as progressive and forward thinking in Europe, or even China. Pro-people laws like the GDRP and this copyright go a long way in fighting communities that the alt-right and neo Nazis fester in. Just imagine if that Nazi frog could be wiped from the internet and its posters arrested for hate speech. I’m excited about this and it brings us closer to a world where America means less and people mean more.
- hartator 8y agoFunny that we heard so much about net neutrality, but no one seems to care about copyright laws or GDPR.
- rarec 8y agoFunny how American dominated websites care more of American politics over European ones. To be glib about it, it also goes to show the demographics at work here. Even now, GDPR resulted in more of a pain for Europeans than Americans; it's quite common now to see comments about how this site is blocked in Europe or some bypass method to get to an article. This copyright law will very likely amount to the same deal, being a thorn in the side of Europeans but Americans couldn't care less.
- akerro 8y agoBecause most major websites are in US. I can totally see Google, Twitter and Yahoo making huge profit from that law. They host insane amount of contents, both text and multimedia. Someone will offer an API where EU services will be able to upload picture, video or text to get estimate if that content is copyrighted. Sounds like ContentID that YouTube already has. That's just another law that will export money and business from EU to US. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17195493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17195493
- miguelrochefort 8y agoThe government shouldn't regulate the Internet. Every time they try to regulate it, it's a complete nightmare. I'm sure they have very good intentions.
- flurdy 8y agoI see the EC responded to Jimmy's tweet: https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1014131021137285127 https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1014131021137285127
- mljoe 8y agoThe Wikimedia Foundation hosts collaborative projects which are not encyclopedias. WikiNews for instance cuts right into the heart of what EC is trying to stop. Really shows how much thought the EC put into their "arbitrary exceptions to appease powerful entities" strategy.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- walterstucco 8y agoAs Italian, I feel like this is gone completely out of hand. Wikipedia content is licensed under CC license. There's no way their content could not be linked elsewhere. Wikipedia also rises the question of the content they link, as, for example in the footnotes In Italy it can be admitted under the "right to inform" (diritto di cronaca), it applies to everyone, not only to the press Most of all the law only applies to content sharing providers, not to individuals This is similar to what Xanadu envisioned, and could start a real fight back to fake news and the spreading of lies and online violence towards minorities EU has a long history of being with the people of EU, not the corporations and I trust them Besides, the law in Italy is being opposed by the worst kind of net abusers around, some of them are in charge thanks to the wave of fake news that started with Cambridge Analytica and some of them have been called out by CA itself (even though they didn't explicitly said the names, there are evidences that Matteo Salvini, leader of Lega, have been working with them)
- TekMol 8y agoThere would be a simple solution to a law that forbids linking to content without consent of the author: Only link to content where the author added a standardized 'You are free to link to this page.' meta tag. In no time, every page on the net would carry that tag. Because authors want to be linked to.
- pier25 8y agoSo I imagine this would only apply to servers hosted in the EU, no?
- akerro 8y agoAnd services that make money in EU. Technically your service won't be able sell or buy from EU companies without having this filter and respecting (another dead regulation) GDPR.
- tzfld 8y agoI don't know if there is something more irritating than seeing people in power trying to regulate a field they have no idea about.
- marcodave 8y agoI would guess that more irritating than that, are ignorant people trying to discuss a field they have no idea about (I'm looking at you, antivaxxers)
- kodablah 8y agoHa. The scope and enforcement of these actions and their predecessors make me want to write a new children's book entitled, "The Boy Who Cried 'Follow This Large Internet Law'".
- nopacience 8y agoWould Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com) suffer directly since it exists out of content generated by users (Article 13) ? And it links to other websites. (Article 11) ? Who is behind the recent changes on the internet ? Months ago Agit Pai(FCC) ended net neutrality. Month ago, may 25th, GDPR initiated (except this benefits the individual). Now there is a push for laws that defeat the basics of the internet, the hyperlink: Article 11: requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content. Article 13: requiring websites to enforce copyright, even on content uploaded by users. There is a bigger force behind those recent major changes that can break the internet as we know. But who ?
- beagle3 8y agoGDPR is for the people, was passed over a year ago. Don’t put all these things together.
- jstarfish 8y ago> There is a bigger force behind those recent major changes that can break the internet as we know. But who ? You're framing it as a conspiracy theory, but the answer is simple: business interests. The internet is no longer about personal stuff-- your Geocities page, sharing 128kb MP3s with your friends, and blogging on LiveJournal. It's a platform to influence people and sell shit, and everybody who likes money wants to get in on that action. And yes, these disparate interests are totally content to exploit it by lobbying for changes in their favor until it's too fragmented, restrictive and worthless to be useful to anybody, yet like cable television we'll treat it as something essential to life and pay the monthly bill through retirement just the same.
- CydeWeys 8y agoIt's worth pointing out the slight error in the article title here -- Wikipedia isn't organized by countries but by languages. Now granted, most Italian speakers are in Italy, so this isn't as bad of an error as conflating the Portuguese Wikipedia (most readers are Brazilian) with Portugal, or the English Wikipedia with England. But Italian is also an official language of Switzerland, and fairly widely spoken in other countries like Slovenia and Croatia, and of course the whole expat Italian community in places like the US and Southern America. And, most saliently, the Italian Wikipedia, like all Wikipedias, is run by a US-based organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. This affects the legal ramifications of this law on the Italian Wikipedia greatly.
- circlefavshape 8y agoWikipedia servers are run by The Wikimedia Foundation. The wikipedias themselves are run by their own communities
- CydeWeys 8y agoThe local communities can be (and have been) overridden on policies by the WMF. They aren't sovereign. It all comes down to the WMF, ultimately. They have final say on everything. Local language communities are more like users of the site, from a legal perspective.
- TekMol 8y agoThe web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product later". Now lawmakers seem busy putting another burden on top of that. Laws that put Europe behind the rest of the world in how easy it is to build online services. Where will Europe be in 20 years? Will it become a developing continent of the digital area? Or will German Engineers somehow make up for innovation via assiduous execution? I find it hard to see how that could work. Politicians might think 'Now that we have the web, lets regulate it'. But I wonder: Now that we lost the web, how will we avoid the same with AI? AI will have orders of magnitude more impact on our lives then the web. How will we avoid losing crypto? In the age of crypto, people might freely chose what currency to use. Do we want the worlds currency to be owned by a US company? How will we avoid losing biotech? Will the same happen to our bodies that happened to our data? Will they be owned by a handful of US companies?
- woolvalley 8y agoEuropean engineers will move to places that pay them higher, like a chunk of them do today.
- DJHenk 8y agoThey do that? I never noticed anything like that. Do you have a source? And while this bill indeed is a disaster, I really don't mind some extra regulations. They might not get it right the first time, but seeing how normal Americans get screwed and exploited over and over by internet companies, I think it's better than having no regulation at all.
- woolvalley 8y agoI have coworkers here in the USA, from Europe. You do know the pay is significantly higher for software engineers in the USA compared to anywhere in the EU correct?
- x_marco_it_x 8y agoI thought that wikipedia was made for the use of the public, but it is using the public (denying access to the encyclopedia to it) to promote the political agenda of a smaller group (the wikipedia community) instead. If the role of the internet is to concentrate resources, to put out of business alternatives, to command and conquer the masses, it's better to legistlate it away. I want my encarta disks back.
- marcoc 8y agoYou're either trolling or a russian bot. No sane person can believe that Wikipedia is pushing a political agenda ("using the public" !?) to "put out of business alternatives". Wikipedia is defending an idea on which the Internet and Wikipedia itself is build. And the smaller group you refer to is a group of hundreds of millions of daily users.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoGood for them. Hopefully the message will be heard.
- dejudicibus 8y agoWe need support to ensure that everybody in world understand that the web is in danger. Not the European web because there is nothing like that. Web is global. If this law will be approved, it will impact the whole web and create a precedent for other countries to approve similar regulations. All governments, even the Western ones, want to control the web. This is a first tragic step. So, please, shut down all Wikipedia in world for at least one day. It is a small sacrifice to obtain a great victory for freedom. An Italian Wikipedian
- mongol 8y agoIt is such bullshit to talk about "copyrighted content" as if there were special more important kinds that are protected. Even CC content is copyrighted
- gonvaled 8y agoI hope this law is used to rebalance how unfairly the US has treated the EU in services.
- ashelmire 8y agoI believe I found the text of the proposed law, though this may be an older version: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52016PC0593 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... >Article 11 of the proposed law requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content. I don't see how the law does this. The proposal states, under section 33: >This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public. This is the only mention of linking that I could find in the law. As for article 13, it does seem far too broad. There needs to be explicit exemptions for what we call "fair use" in the US. Educational, research, transformative uses, parody, etc, must be preserved.
- Pica_soO 8y agoOnce more into the breach deer friends.. Again and again we are supposed to rally, infinite protest against rows and rows of copyright reform - this is a dead alley. No protest culture or NGO has ever sustained a movement as long as the market interests undermining the allmende and democracy. The right to time wise inject laws similar in intention into the governing process- must be limited. Once a proposal has been voted for or against, it must be stable for 4 or 8 years. Stable being only open to more precise definition, but not intent inversion or redefinition.
- eulers__number 8y agocopyright needs to be abolished
- lostjohnny 8y agoCould this be the renaissance of RSS syndication? The users autonomously aggregate the RSS published by the authors or the owners of the content an build their own personal aggregators at home. You wanna share it? Just share the links to the RSS (which are public and used exactly for that purpose) The owner is in control of what's being distributed, the user is in control of what they are reading Wikipedia itself is a form a centralization of data and content, which is undesirable anyway.
- lorenzobr 8y agoThis is just another shitshow driven by publishers, unions and music labels lobbying politicians in the attempt to make money given they have no clue how to innovate and make money anymore. I wish people in the news would call this bs out for what it is but I doubt they ever will considered news publishers are among the ones lobbying. They'll be happy for us to be forced through their bs paywalls. This is a very different matter from the GDPR, don't get fooled.
- personjerry 8y agoWhy Italy? Why not a country with more impact on EU laws, like Germany or France?