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Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoUnfortunately, there isn’t a vibrant free web. Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit. Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium. Most breaking news is first available on twitter. Even independent websites, most likely have Google analytics and Google ads. From a European point of view, the current copyright situation is just a wealth transfer from European companies who have the copyrights, to American advertising companies.
- HippoBaro 8y agoMy thought exactly. If there is a `vibrant free web`, I can't see it.
- nine_k 8y agoLook at this very site. People link here a lot, quote here a lot, and sometimes say controversial things here. If every submission had to be pre-moderated, and royalty paid for every substantial quotation, this site would be very different, and definitely less vibrant and free.
- jandrese 8y agoIf every submission had to be checked by a copyright cop first this site wouldn't exist. Message boards in general wouldn't exist. It would take way too much manpower to run, especially if you have to worry about things like song lyrics in the post and handling multiple languages.
- nine_k 8y agoQuoting TFA: «Article 13; which seeks to shift liability for platform users’ copyright infringements onto the platforms themselves — and which critics contend will therefore push them towards creating upload filters to monitor all content before it’s posted» Emphasis mine.
- mlinksva 8y agoTaxing ads seems like a better intervention than what is proposed.
- adventured 8y ago> Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit. Which costs $69 million per year to operate, has 300+ employees and requires six million donations. Your example also isn't free. > Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium Medium is less than 1% the size of Wordpress, both in terms of traffic and amount of content. The majority of all content on Wordpress sites is ad free. The consumer is paying for all of it in one manner or another. If it's a donation, it's coming out of your pocket. If it's an ad, it's data about you being monetized. There is no such thing as free if you're talking about something the size of Wikipedia or similar services.
- falcor84 8y agoI'm not sure what you're implying, but I would say that $69 million per year is incredibly small compared to the amazing benefit that Wikipedia provides the world. Also, this money comes out of the pockets of people like myself who are happy to sponsor it for everyone else. I personally love this patronage model and would be happy to sponsor an ad-free open-access newspaper in a similar way, if I found one that I had confidence in.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoThat's a silly way to value Wikipedia IMO. Fire is useful, so everyone who uses fire should pay a company some money? No, that's clearly mad. No matter how useful it is if it's poorly optimised or over costly then we should do better, not settle because it's already a great RoI.
- craftyguy 8y agoYour analogy is silly. Fire is free to make (discounting the extremely little time/effort to make it). Hosting an online encyclopedia with low latency, moderation, etc is not.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoFire costs resources and produces costly environmental impacts, in many of the ways we make it it's an engineering marvel (ICE for example), but yeah it's not the greatest analogy.
- kodablah 8y agoWhere you think most content is, or where most content actually is, should have nothing to do with laws targeting all content. To say that there isn't a vibrant free web and counter with what is the majority makes me think you meant to say that a vibrant free web isn't the majority instead of completely, 100% non-existent. Lots of us have sites and stuff out here, and once again the EU is only looking at one big goose to make laws, albeit well intentioned, that will affect the rest of us here in the gander. Always more laws, always more rules, always unintended consequences and lax enforcement; the wise just ignore these governments crying wolf again.
- raverbashing 8y agoFunny how the "big bad American companies" will be the only ones capable of following the draconian laws on filtering and blocking content. If anything they will make more money, not less. Not to mention the absurdity of the link tax, I'm thinking that could be the last nail on the coffin of traditional media.
- leephillips 8y agoWikipedia is contributing to the slow death of what could have been, and almost was, a web of independent pages maintained by individuals and groups. I have had a recurring experience of skimming a Wikipedia article, only to get the feeling that the text is familiar - then tracking it down to the book or article that it was lifted from, without attribution. If a "vibrant free web" means routine copyright theft committed by a homogenizing, centralized collective established as some kind of anonymous authority, I can do without it.
- mlinksva 8y agoPlease take the next step https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Violations_101 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_Copyright_Viola...
- leephillips 8y agoNearly 2000 words on how I can police their website for them? No, thanks. If they took this problem seriously they would build a system to catch copy-paste before it went live on their site.
- fasafsafsf 8y agoI think they already have such systems via bots, but they don't block or undo things automatically because I assume it's hard to know programmatically the licence of things that are posted on the Internet.
- mike22223333 8y agoIt it is hard, that they should not run wikipedia.
- fasafsafsf 8y agoThat is crazy. Even systems like ContentID are full of flaws.
- pjc50 8y agoArticle 13 is the key one, mandating upload filtering. This has all sorts of side effects - suddenly you can't make a Dropbox style file sharing site without implementing pre-emptive filtering. You can't rely on notify-and-takedown. Article 11 potentially has huge implications for social media sites; suddenly a user posting a news article link with a quote becomes a copyright liability. All the worry that was focused on the GDPR should be focused on this instead, in my opinion.
- haywirez 8y agoI feel like there isn't enough focus on this point - mandating extra elements (filters) inside an otherwise direct line of communication is always a bad idea. The best case scenario you get is the telephone game...
- quickben 8y agoThe problem is, that particular direct line of communication is lately somewhat of a one way line to propaganda, misinformation, libel, etc etc. Now we are at the popularity stage where money can be made from lawsuits too. This development was inevitable.
- doh 8y agoAbsolutely agree. Both articles are a huge mistake for EU and will have incredibly negative impact on users and DSPs while favoring rights holders. The status quo favors DSPs (and indirectly users) but damages rights holders. A solution is badly needed, however it should be one balancing needs of all 3 groups instead of favoring one (or two).
- CuriousSkeptic 8y agoWhy should there be “balancing”? The entire premise of copiright is just wrong to begin with. Here we have this perfectly anti-rival public good produced. But of course anti-rival just doesn’t work that well with free market economics, you know with the externalities and all. And since we just can’t imagine any other form of work allocation schemes than the free market, what to do?! Naturally the most obvious thing, destroy the pesky anti-rival externalities. Let’s waste as much effort, and misery, as it takes to force it into the shape of the rival goods we all know and love. It’s quite sad really.
- nnash 8y agoCan we just agree to silo off the EU? Why should foreign companies have to comply with these policies anyway? GDPR compliance has already had a negative impact on web UX.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y ago>Why should foreign companies have to comply with these policies anyway? Because they want revenue from EU citizens? Should a car company from China have to comply to US safety regulations when selling cars to US citizens? >GDPR compliance has already had a negative impact on web UX. Nah. I've switched off tracking on every website I use often via the popups and I've noticed much faster loading. Imo GDPR has made the web experience better.
- nnash 8y ago> Should a car company from China have to comply to US safety regulations when selling cars to US citizens? In your example, the car company is implicitly selling to a foreign country. When it comes to software/websites, a user from a foreign country is incidentally served rather than implicitly.
- point78 8y agoThe websites are profiting off the visitors no matter what country they're in. If they don't want to follow the laws then block the country.
- runeks 8y agoSo everyone who hosts a website has the obligation to read up on the legality of that particular website for all countries in the world, and block accordingly? That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
- point78 8y agoUh...yes? You think you can just open a business in country x, break their laws, then shrug your shoulders and say "Well it's legal where I'm from"
- qubax 8y agoWhat's with all the comments supporting censorship all of sudden? Every social media site now has hordes of "people" defending censorship. Is it just more european users on social media now? Or is it just government funded trolling? I just don't get it. Saudi arabia just declared online satire as a cybercrime punishable up to 5 years in prison. https://www.france24.com/en/20180904-saudi-arabia-declares-online-satire-punishable-offence https://www.france24.com/en/20180904-saudi-arabia-declares-o... We know how much china and russia loves censorship. And of course europe has a long tradition of censorship. As americans, we had long hoped that the world would join us and embrace freedom, but it looks more and more like we are forced to join them. I'd rather keep our freedom and separate the internet into "intranets". There is no european or saudi or chinese or russian websites or tech I need. Let the world have their backwards censorship and lets hold onto our freedom. If we have to cater to everyone's sensitivities, than that is a race to the lowest common denominator. That means we have no freedom at all.
- petre 8y agoI think the economic climate is worsening, there's much polarization which encourages censorship. Probably also gov't funded and big IP holder lobbying. The European officials act just like concerned grandparents, trying to censor selectively or regulate social media companies to self censor. Russia and China is no surprise.
- blackbrokkoli 8y agoFor real? I was with you until you started trying to sell me the US a good example - if your freedom is so exceptional why... ...do you have an abyssimal rate of reintegration of ex-prisoners to literally every other Western country? ...do you have a president who actively recommends violence against journalists? ...is an absolute majority of your news stations owned by one mega-corp? But we don't even have to go there. It's even in your comment: You are in the most free country, so the best path is to cut the freedom to communicate globally? Of course, you're writing this from your US-made phone, no parts from China, no ressources from Africa/Middle East. It was delivered by foot I guess, since who needs cars (crappy German engineering)? It's also impressing how you write stuff in HackerNews without even needing THE INTERNET (filthy Brits)! I actually believe that a lot of problem would be long solved if people would spend less time convincing themself how superior their random place of birth is!
- suckerburg 8y agoEU builds a good reputation after setting a good standard with GDPR, some politicians started talking about copying it which made me happy. Now I'm scared again wondering what would happen if they go through with this and politicians everywhere start copying it.
- Kenji 8y agoGDPR is a disaster. Look at those websites, now after cookie disclaimers you have popups with "privacy" options. I don't see how they ever built good rep.
- openbasic 8y agoGood reputation for what? Government interference in the free web? GDPR was just the first step. Open your eyes.
- sigzero 8y agoSuccinct! Great reply.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y agoLmao because we've seen how well a web operated on the free market works.
- blackbrokkoli 8y agoHonestly curious what definition of "free" you're using here? Are you saying that anything moving away from uncontrolled anarchy is cutting away freedom and we therefore shouldn't do that? The government forbids you to make a company spying in people bathrooms and sell the pictures, would you say that's interference in your free life as well?
- colemannugent 8y agoI don't want to put words in openbasic's mouth, but here I go anyway: >what definition of "free" you're using here Free as in relatively unencumbered by government regulation. I think it's fair to say based off his "GDPR was just the first step" comment that he views increased government control of the internet as the axis along which the freedom he is referring to is measured. >Are you saying that anything moving away from uncontrolled anarchy is cutting away freedom.. I take that as a given. Anarchy is the state in which people are unconstrained, and are thus maximally free. Anything short of anarchy implies that there is something limiting people's choices. >...and we therefore shouldn't do that? Isn't this basically the entire issue with governments? We give up freedoms in exchange for other benefits. Entire political philosophies devote their energy to the question of how much freedom we should exchange. >The government forbids you to make a company spying in people bathrooms and sell the pictures, would you say that's interference in your free life as well? Do you really think that openbasic is taking this EU move as a chance to advocate for total anarchy? Or is it more likely that they disagree with this freedom/benefits trade-off and you are strawmanning?
- StavrosK 8y agoSo what can we, as citizens, do to get the watered-down, "compromise" version of the bill that's still much worse than current laws, but a bit better than this travesty?
- John_KZ 8y agoThe WWW is fundamentally broken at this point, perhaps this legislation will completely destroy it and kickstart some other form of network.
- soris 8y agoThe EU needs to go.