10 ms·

EU copyright reform: the facts

273 points by raleighm 8y ago

Ygg2 8y ago
Holy crap on a stick. These new laws are just stupid. I don't generally see eye to eye with libertarians (or whoever advocates for minimal interference of state), but out of touch laws like this are just the worst.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  The EU and its member states have a penchant for crazy laws like this, GDPR, local movie quotas on services like Netflix, arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute, arresting people for having potato peelers in public, and so on. I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. I'm aware comparisons to 1984 are a cliche but the EU truly has been inching towards it.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    GDPR is not a crazy law and it's pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect in a '1984' state.
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      It unnecessarily limits the freedom of anybody who owns a website and doesn't grant any actual freedom to anybody else, almost as if the governments want to be the only ones allowed to collect data.
      - M2Ys4U 8y ago
        The right to privacy is a human right. It's like saying that laws against torture limit the freedom of anybody who owns thumb screws. Well, yes, because _not being tortured_ is a right that everybody has.
        jimmaswell 8y ago
        Why is it your human right that if you write your name on a piece of paper and give it to someone, you can use the state to force them to give you the paper back or destroy it? That's GDPR.
  - skummetmaelk 8y ago
    Come on now. You cannot compare this to GPDR. GPDR was about protecting individuals, this is about protecting corporate interests. That's why this seems batshit crazy and GPDR is reasonable. The rest of your points are worthless anecdotes. Yes it may have happened once, and yes it was stupid, but it's not like you will be chased down by the police if you walk around with a potato peeler. You cannot seriously believe that.
    - timrichard 8y ago
      > GPDR was about protecting individuals, this is about protecting corporate interests Or how about both rooted in a power-grab by an aspiring superstate that has long been resentful of the influence the US and it's corporates has over it's Internet-dependent citizens? Or perhaps I'm being too cynical. The remote, barely accountable, hard-lobbied politicians are only looking out for individuals. These new content filter and link tax proposals as just anomalies.
    - kodablah 8y ago
      Please stop judging a law on what it's about but instead on its real life consequences. Intent matters little if people/companies are unnecessarily hurt.
      - Tomte 8y ago
        People aren't hurt by less data-selling. I love the GDPR. It came out of nowhere (I hadn't heard much about it before the big hubbub), I couldn't believe they were doing something so bold, and it reinvigorated my belief in the European Union.
        kodablah 8y ago
        > People aren't hurt by less data-selling You're doing the intent thing where you are saying what you think is the case or the intent instead of the reality. People are hurt by the money they spend applying reasonable compliance risk avoidance measures when new laws come out. People running companies, employees of those companies, customers of those companies, and society as a whole. Maybe you feel the harm is worth it, but please stop pretending it doesn't exist. And it didn't come out of nowhere, data protection laws had existed before, didn't work before, so they doubled down on the already-failed legislative approach with the same not-working institutions instead of taking more practical or incremental approaches.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    Some of us actually do live here. And some of us absolutely share your views. But you need look no further than this very forum to see one country's feeble attempts to leave the sorry cirkus habitually likened to the end of civilisation as we know it. We're on a road to nowhere good whatsoever.
  - ethelward 8y ago
    > GDPR “My oh my, we won't be able to sell people online life without them knowing it” > local movie quotas on services like Netflix Promoting local culture, what a shame. > arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute Of course, if someone is training their dog to do a “Bellamy” salute when prompted by statements including “Heil Hitler” and “gas the Jews”, the chances that this guy is a closet neo-nazi are so low[0] – BTW, you're the only one presenting it as a Bellamy salute, that sounds like if you were trying to cover a neo-nazi. > I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. Nah, even for vacations, please don't come here, it's awful, you wouldn't like it. [0] https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/scottish-man-who-taught-dog-to-do-nazi-salute-crowdfunds-over-185-000-1.6032122 https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/scottish-man-who-t...
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      I meant having a guaranteed number of vacation days. And I don't care if the guy was a neo-nazi; it shouldn't be the government's job to decide what jokes are too offensive.
      - Tomte 8y ago
        Strange how Anmericans always think it's bad that parts of Europe ban outright Nazi symbols and speech, when it was America that forced us to do so. Americans even shut down newspapers after WW2 and only gave out licenses to start a newspaper after background checks and ideological checks. Strange how things you made us do somehow morphed into something that you cannot accept at all.
  - klmr 8y ago
    That’s pure trolling: First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against (but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, good on Mozilla). > GDPR While not uncontroversial, GDPR is generally seen as a good thing by experts. > arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute This didn’t happen. The man was arrested for hate speech, not for gestures his dog made. It’s also unrelated to EU law. > arresting people for having potato peelers in public This didn’t happen. The man was arrested for wielding a weapon in public. This weapon happened to be a knife (but not a potato peeler, though it was called that by the press: it had a fixed > 3″ long blade) but the nature of the weapon is secondary; what’s relevant for the arrest was the fact that the man wielded it as a weapon. And, again, this has nothing to do with EU legislation. And some additional context: the knife wielding laws in the UK are indeed pretty draconian but the UK, which is generally pretty low on violent crimes, has a specific problem with knife crimes and is therefore tackling the problem heads-on. Seems reasonable. > I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. Really? https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... (In fact, even with occasional questionable laws being passed on EU levels the legal situation in the EU, both on EU and on country level, is still a lot saner than e.g. in the US.)
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      > First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against (but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, good on Mozilla). As they say, don't count your chickens before they're hatched
      - klmr 8y ago
        I’m not — I’m actually contacting my MEP.
      - jotm 8y ago
        Rejected by a very close vote, must I say. That's ridiculous, imo
    - 8y ago
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I'm assuming that "bellamy" is a weird autocorrect for "Hitler", in which case I refer to my recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927075 The illegal act was sending the threatening message "gas the jews" through a telecommunications system. The potato peeler incident: https://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/british-man-arrested-for-wielding-potato-peeler/ https://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/british-man-arrested-for-... Homeless man with learning difficulties wielding a knife-like object in public? In both cases the relevant law is UK domestic criminal law, not EU law.
    - GW150914 8y ago
      Actually the Bellamy Salute was a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute The Bellamy salute is a palm-out salute described by Francis Bellamy, the author of the American Pledge of Allegiance, as the gesture which was to accompany the pledge. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute". Both the Pledge and its salute originated in 1892. Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazis adopted a salute which was very similar, and which was derived from the Roman salute, a gesture that was popularly (albeit erroneously) believed to have been used in ancient Rome.[1] This resulted in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942. Along with the swastika, just another thing the fascists stole and corrupted.
  - lucozade 8y ago
    You are absolutely correct. If you have ever owned a potato peeler or a right-leaning dog, it is imperative that you never set foot in Europe. It's just not worth taking that chance. I'm sure the poor folk in Europe will manage to struggle on without you and they thank you for your concern.
esquivalience 8y ago
Whether or not you agree with the copyright reforms, it is not helpful to present these opinions (e.g. 'will negatively affect...') as fact. You may as well stand outside the legislative building with a placard. To my mind, it's impossible to take part in the debate until you've realised that your position is a point of view; that other have a different point of view; and that compromise is going to be necessary.
- ManlyBread 8y ago
  It's quite hard to talk about a compromise when there's zero benefit in accepting the new law to begin with. Remember how effective the SOPA/ACTA protests were, the only reason these succeded was because no one was interested in a compromise.
  - GekkePrutser 8y ago
    They weren't effective. The same has already been implemented through a loophole with Canada (CETA) so US companies can already force their lower standards on us through their Canadian subsidiaries. Simple distraction and switch and playing into the mindset that Canada has somehow ties with Europe and is therefore 'good'. It's amazing how they get away with these things.
- SpEd3Y 8y ago
  How is it helpful for you to present your opinion (about their opinions as facts not being helpful) as a fact? :)
- GavinMcG 8y ago
  How fitting that your username is a sort of false "equivalence".
- seucs 8y ago
  I don't agree with these copyright reforms, but I do agree with you. I remember thinking when the swedish pirate party got started in 2006 that it was already late to talk about these issues. Because there had already been so much written about it in the '90s and early '00. Now more than 10 years later neither the tech companies nor "the community" have dealt with any of it. Instead they have been chasing opportunities, not willing to do anything that might jeopardize their own position. Eventually reality just catches up with you and whoever can present a solution will get their chance.
snarf21 8y ago
In my mind, the most salient point is this one: FACT: The proposed new copyright rules will lead to direct surveillance of users’ activities online. This and the recent 5 eyes document to require backdoors for all technology and services are the same. The surveillance state is coming. It is being bought. You are being sold. But don't worry, they are doing this for our own security and safety. No one need watch the watchers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 8y ago
  How is that a "fact"? Pretty much every time you upload data to a website, there will be some sort of validation of the uploaded data that will happen. That's not "surveillance" it's a basic process that happens on the Internet. "Surveillance" requires going a step further to track what users are doing. (E.g. checking your ID at a club is not "surveillance"; having the bouncers file a report so someone can track what clubs each person goes to is surveillance.) Mozilla points to nothing in Article 13 to suggest such tracking would be required. They seem to be speculating that such tracking will happen. That may or may not be a good conjecture, but that doesn't make it a "fact."
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    The european law requires services to have tools to not just validate content format, but process and categorize the content itself. The australian 5 eyes memo says they think they can / should be able to require services to report all of this output directly to them.
kmisiunas 8y ago
For EU people who want to take action: call or email your Member European Parliament (MEP) and let them know that don't supper the policy (or support it?!?). You can call them via: https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-call https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-call Or email by finding your MEP details on: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html More info on taking action can br found here (scroll a little): https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/
- Y_Y 8y ago
  You can use an automated (customisable) tool at saveyourinternet.eu to do this too.
  - mstade 8y ago
    Thank you, I've now used this to send an email to my representatives.
    - Kliment 8y ago
      Having called a few of them and spoken to them on the phone about this they are mostly pissed off about the cookie-cutter emails spamming them about this but quite happy to talk about it on the phone.
      - guy98238710 8y ago
        On the other hand, some of us are much better at typing than talking. And some might have a fit of social phobia at the mere thought of a phone call. The templates might be tedious, but they are there for people who would otherwise post some random flame or rant. Pages encouraging phone calls have scripted templates on them too.
        Kliment 8y ago
        Yeah and that's fine, personal emails were quite well received. Template emails were universally ignored, regardless of which side of the issue the representative stood.
vfc1 8y ago
"Only a handful of the largest tech companies have the technical and financial means to operate the sprawling filtering systems that this law demands." The smaller platforms often use under the hood Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or equivalent. Probably the copyright verification is going to be added at that level, and hopefully will be transparent to the platforms built on top of those cloud services. So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it might look.
- feanaro 8y ago
  > So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it might look. ... this would not impact smaller SaaS companies ... This isn't a law yet and I don't think most people want it to become one. That said, I disagree that this isn't a terrible burden for the small guy. Even if it would be trivial to set up, all the other downsides remain and it leads to lock-in in the form of dependence on large companies who have implemented this. More importantly, why do we want this? What benefits does this bring? I don't see many for the ordinary person.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    > More importantly, why do we want this? What benefits does this bring? I don't see many for the ordinary person. Maybe it could shift liability? So if someone posts the lyrics to a song and Sony sues them for 50,000 euro could they argue that it is the fault of the ISP for not filtering their post properly? This is a longshot, but I was trying very hard to think of some way in which this law doesn't screw over individuals for the benefit of large corporations.
- GekkePrutser 8y ago
  This is exactly what I fear: everyone outsourcing their filtering to a handful of big companies. These companies will then have the definitive say on what is posted online and what isn't. The Chinese will be jealous of our new censorship machine.
no1youknowz 8y ago
From the viewpoint of regulations on business: - GDPR (Facebook/Google) - Article 11 (Reddit) - Article 13 (Github) - Mandated EU Content on streaming providers (Netflix) - EU Internet sales tax (Amazon) The simple question begs: how many more regulations aimed at US companies are coming? At this rate, the more regulations are created at fighting US companies. The number of internet startups and business located in the EU will one day cycle downward to zero. What are they going to do next?
- pjc50 8y ago
  > EU Internet sales tax (Amazon) This is the proposal that Amazon should pay tax where the goods are sold, rather than hiding it in Luxembourg?
- Y_Y 8y ago
  Well if they only cycle to zero then they'll just come back up again just as fast, so that seems not so bad. Article 13 is hardly an attack on Github, even if it may affect them. The EU loves US money and tech, and is happy to keep it (it seems it's happy to stay too). I'm totally against this proposal, but not because of anti-regulation dogma. That's rightly unpopular in prosperous and socialist Europe.
- klmr 8y ago
  Art 13 isn’t a EU vs US thing. It‘s a digital vs analog thing (or, more precisely, old-style copyright holders vs young content creators).
  - jotm 8y ago
    It's a carebear legislation aimed at protecting imbecile content creators who can't be bothered with at least trying to run it like a real business. Why not let people figure it out and deal with it on their own, ffs
- frockington 8y ago
  If you can't generate your own innovation and revenue you have to steal it from somewhere. It'll be interesting to see how much longer the EU consumer can stay relevant before they fade into a tertiary market
kd5bjo 8y ago
Is there a simple, objective summary of the proposed rules? Everything I've seen is propaganda trying to convince me they're the end of the internet, which makes me quite wary of the authors' motivations.
- pjc50 8y ago
  You can read the directive itself: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    Yes, but with all the cross-references and legalese specifying which level of government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the directive, the actual regulations can be hard to extract for an untrained reader. Hence my request for an objective summary.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      > which level of government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the directive At least that's an easy question to answer: the member states. A directive obliges member states to introduce local legislation to achieve a particular effect. Usually it's transcribed pretty closely, but some states may use their sovereignty to impose additional restrictions (if they're not precluded by the Directive, a different directive, or human rights law). Generally if you want to speed up reading a Directive you can skip all the "Whereas" clauses, they're not binding but do specify the reasoning behind the directive.
      - kd5bjo 8y ago
        And the real meaning of stuff like [1.11.3]? It's got to be there, or else the law is underspecified, but it doesn't make for effective lay communication. I still think a real summary would be useful for all the people that don't have your personal guidance about how to decode legislation. [1.11.3] Articles 5 to 8 of Directive 2001/29/EC and Directive 2012/28/EU shall apply mutatis mutandis in respect of the rights referred to in paragraph 1.
andyjohnson0 8y ago
Anyone want to speculate on the chances of this getting approved by the European Parliament? Last July they blocked an earlier version and sent it back to the commission. Edit: And as someone living in the UK, I'm also wondering what the implications of this are for brexit[1]. Will the post-brexit interface between the EU and the UK w/r/t copyright be made even more complicated by this, with knock-on effects on digital service providers on each side? [1] which I continue to oppose
- pjc50 8y ago
  > I'm also wondering what the implications of this are for brexit We're well into "who knows?" territory, but what would definitely happen is the UK would lose any say over the EU rules. The UK isn't really large enough to be its own market for startups (unlike the EU and US), so we'd mostly end up using companies hosted in one or the other and obliged to follow their rules. (Safe Harbour is probably a more interesting one to consider!)
  - frockington 8y ago
    If the EU continues down the regulatory path, the UK could become the startup capital of Europe if they market correctly
    - blibble 8y ago
      the UK is already the startup capital of Europe
      - jotm 8y ago
        *still. As it is, not for much longer
      - snaky 8y ago
        That's only true for Fintech.
    - jotm 8y ago
gcb0 8y ago
the IP Juggernauts are pushing so hard and strong that they will be their demise, hopefully. they are trying too hard to have their claws on every jurisdiction and be the international police that can prosecute everyone based on content piracy. And they are very close to that. They already have control on north America and southeast Asia (via US, ChinaN and TPP agreements). Now they are "fixing" what they wanted im GDPR but lawmakers were too clever to see the tricks then, so they are being more explicit. But eventually, what people will start doing is what we see in china. everyone in country A will do whatever it takes to consume content/interact with other people via sites in country B, which is not under the same jurisdiction of country A. Hopefully people will still be able to live as they live today, and only yhe advertising market will suffer as brands now can't reliably reach one market or another. Maybe that fixes advertising too and force brands to sponsor services regardless of demographic. or maybe I am too optimistic and the IP conglomerates will win and people will not have access to any content that is not made and authorized by them.
phonicspree 8y ago
Good on Mozilla for taking this on. There's so many problems with this. It sets up the infrastructure for control of media. Is an image being shared that is unflattering to the current powers that be? Well, now we have a mandated system in place that can immediately pull that image from the web. I don't think getting totalitarian control is the goal here, but it is the end result of it.
scotty79 8y ago
If we all ignore all copyright it will go away and with it all the nighmares conceived to prop up its rotting corpse. But it won't happen sooner than before majority of creators learn that copyright does not benefit them in any way. We can teach them that by never paying for copyrighted things.
- apocalypstyx 8y ago
  There is one apocalyptic scenario here that everyone ignores: it is monetary compensation that keeps the social norm. Remove that, make it so only the rich or the obsessed write, make music, etc, and they will increasing do so for their own ends, because there is no reason not to. Social alone approval will motivate very few to commit to the amount of work necessary for most creative endeavors. On the surface, of course, this would seem ridiculous. But we only have to examine how much cultural capital is employed to keep writers writing toward the money and controlled by editors, and ratings boards, etc. And the common consumer expects what they, the consumer, to always be delivered unto with exactly that which they claim to desire. Under the monetary system reproductive advantage slates toward those who accrue capital. However remove that, and the 'shock value' of 'independent artistic work' becomes the most viable remaining path to mate attraction. So, remove the money, and the only artists, writers, etc, who remain, are the ones that the mass of consumers despise as 'experimental' and 'weird', etc. And given that humanity is pretty much by definition a story species, the resulting effects on society as a whole, with such a major hit to the mytho-poetic infrastructure that undergirds any society, might be very interesting. Most likely some government or wealth-backed cultural production engine will emerge in the vacuum, however, the question might be whether it will do so fast enough.
  - clarry 8y ago
    I think everyone ignores it because it's so far fetched (even if they go as far as assuming copyright == monetary compensation)
    - apocalypstyx 8y ago
      How does anyone otherwise do work that is distributed via mass mechanical reproduction? Disney could operate private theatres that threw out and banned people with recording devices, but how could home distribution function. For popular work, we are back at the pre-copyright world of patronage. Popular appeal might lead certain rare individuals to monetary compensation in academia, but this, I would say, will be country and culturally dependent. In France, for example, I might see it, but not the United States. And it might lead to a certain amount of tribal-production to sustain the replication of certain cultural norms, but in order for that to e so the trend of production and consumption previously adhered to in these industries (from the consumer viewpoint) will have to be reverse: the consumer will be paying patronage in advance of the creation of the work which will then be mechanically mass reproduced upon release. However, I think a smaller amount of people than currently consumptive model of media will be as likely to switch wholly to a 'pig-in-a-poke'-model. Even with things like netflix, the primary draw has always been that which pre-exists, that which the consumer already knows to be available, and its primary value is not weighted on what necessarily 'might' be produced in the future. People might be willing to fund such models through 'micro transaction', however, any individual funding themselves, thus, would necessarily require a proportionally larger base of funders; however this would have the function of keeping the cultural mytho-poetic framework in check, producing what commonly referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'. Also, however, even if someone were to make a living in this manner, they might not what to in that, no matter what survivable level of income they may derive, a Disney would then, through the sheer economy of their scale, be able to transform that, now mechanically reproduced work into something distributed through the private theatre system at no cost for the acquiring of the source material. This alone may be a sufficient psychological demotivator for many, and present a common source of burnout (thus requiring a change in employment), or even an obstacle to many taking up the profession at all. The question remains, if the so-called creator is likely to get no monetary compensation, and little in the way of social capital anyway, what will induce them to create any works besides those they want to create. The problem is that 'artistry' in the mytho-poetics of most western countries attains a somewhat religious significance, but the most of its practitioners (or at least those who mange to make their primary living at it) would leave so-called creative fields for greener pastures; it's a job. (I suppose I should add here that I am very much against to current copyright system as it stands now, though I realize my reply might indicate otherwise. I do, however, become aggravated when the attitudes of so-called consumers amounts to a type a slavery where they want what they want [produced but want it for free, resembles too much those companies that have baited artists and writer with 'exposure' for far too long. As it stands, what is said about the disruptive potential of the internet aside, most writers and artists make what they do (and paltry sums at that) by effectively signing over their copyrights in perpetuity to what amounts to intellectual property holding companies. So the law may say the author owns it, but to see anything from it (in the vast majority of cases) they have to give that right away, and then so-called consumers come along and claim (purely to pinch pennies) that authors should relinquish even (and presenting no alternative) that is, to me, as aggravating as the media conglomerates who do the same.)
fermigier 8y ago
Julia Reda's page on the EU Copyright reform is actually the best resource to get the facts right: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ (edit: Not just the facts of course, also her opinion, shared by many organisations and individuals knowledgeable on how the Internet should work, eg. Vinton Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee, see https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf).
lowry 8y ago
With all due respect... these are not facts. Read Julia Reda https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/, not dumbass Mozilla copywriters.
zenovision 8y ago
Europe is a no-go area for any startup. Instead of building your product, you will spend all your time complying with thousands of GDPR-like laws, difficult tax regulations, different languages etc. and every country has also a lot of additional national laws (Hackerparagraf in germany for example). It's just not worth it.
- jopsen 8y ago
  It's not that bad... In practice startups don't have worry about these things before they grow large. I've yet to be fined for not having a cookie popup on my blog :)

273 points by raleighm 8y ago

Ygg2 8y ago

Holy crap on a stick. These new laws are just stupid. I don't generally see eye to eye with libertarians (or whoever advocates for minimal interference of state), but out of touch laws like this are just the worst.

jimmaswell 8y ago
The EU and its member states have a penchant for crazy laws like this, GDPR, local movie quotas on services like Netflix, arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute, arresting people for having potato peelers in public, and so on. I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. I'm aware comparisons to 1984 are a cliche but the EU truly has been inching towards it.
- adrianN 8y ago
  GDPR is not a crazy law and it's pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect in a '1984' state.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    It unnecessarily limits the freedom of anybody who owns a website and doesn't grant any actual freedom to anybody else, almost as if the governments want to be the only ones allowed to collect data.
    - M2Ys4U 8y ago
      The right to privacy is a human right. It's like saying that laws against torture limit the freedom of anybody who owns thumb screws. Well, yes, because _not being tortured_ is a right that everybody has.
      - jimmaswell 8y ago
        Why is it your human right that if you write your name on a piece of paper and give it to someone, you can use the state to force them to give you the paper back or destroy it? That's GDPR.
- skummetmaelk 8y ago
  Come on now. You cannot compare this to GPDR. GPDR was about protecting individuals, this is about protecting corporate interests. That's why this seems batshit crazy and GPDR is reasonable. The rest of your points are worthless anecdotes. Yes it may have happened once, and yes it was stupid, but it's not like you will be chased down by the police if you walk around with a potato peeler. You cannot seriously believe that.
  - timrichard 8y ago
    > GPDR was about protecting individuals, this is about protecting corporate interests Or how about both rooted in a power-grab by an aspiring superstate that has long been resentful of the influence the US and it's corporates has over it's Internet-dependent citizens? Or perhaps I'm being too cynical. The remote, barely accountable, hard-lobbied politicians are only looking out for individuals. These new content filter and link tax proposals as just anomalies.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    Please stop judging a law on what it's about but instead on its real life consequences. Intent matters little if people/companies are unnecessarily hurt.
    - Tomte 8y ago
      People aren't hurt by less data-selling. I love the GDPR. It came out of nowhere (I hadn't heard much about it before the big hubbub), I couldn't believe they were doing something so bold, and it reinvigorated my belief in the European Union.
      - kodablah 8y ago
        > People aren't hurt by less data-selling You're doing the intent thing where you are saying what you think is the case or the intent instead of the reality. People are hurt by the money they spend applying reasonable compliance risk avoidance measures when new laws come out. People running companies, employees of those companies, customers of those companies, and society as a whole. Maybe you feel the harm is worth it, but please stop pretending it doesn't exist. And it didn't come out of nowhere, data protection laws had existed before, didn't work before, so they doubled down on the already-failed legislative approach with the same not-working institutions instead of taking more practical or incremental approaches.
- interfixus 8y ago
  Some of us actually do live here. And some of us absolutely share your views. But you need look no further than this very forum to see one country's feeble attempts to leave the sorry cirkus habitually likened to the end of civilisation as we know it. We're on a road to nowhere good whatsoever.
- ethelward 8y ago
  > GDPR “My oh my, we won't be able to sell people online life without them knowing it” > local movie quotas on services like Netflix Promoting local culture, what a shame. > arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute Of course, if someone is training their dog to do a “Bellamy” salute when prompted by statements including “Heil Hitler” and “gas the Jews”, the chances that this guy is a closet neo-nazi are so low[0] – BTW, you're the only one presenting it as a Bellamy salute, that sounds like if you were trying to cover a neo-nazi. > I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. Nah, even for vacations, please don't come here, it's awful, you wouldn't like it. [0] https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/scottish-man-who-taught-dog-to-do-nazi-salute-crowdfunds-over-185-000-1.6032122 https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/scottish-man-who-t...
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    I meant having a guaranteed number of vacation days. And I don't care if the guy was a neo-nazi; it shouldn't be the government's job to decide what jokes are too offensive.
    - Tomte 8y ago
      Strange how Anmericans always think it's bad that parts of Europe ban outright Nazi symbols and speech, when it was America that forced us to do so. Americans even shut down newspapers after WW2 and only gave out licenses to start a newspaper after background checks and ideological checks. Strange how things you made us do somehow morphed into something that you cannot accept at all.
- klmr 8y ago
  That’s pure trolling: First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against (but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, good on Mozilla). > GDPR While not uncontroversial, GDPR is generally seen as a good thing by experts. > arresting people who train their dog to do a bellamy salute This didn’t happen. The man was arrested for hate speech, not for gestures his dog made. It’s also unrelated to EU law. > arresting people for having potato peelers in public This didn’t happen. The man was arrested for wielding a weapon in public. This weapon happened to be a knife (but not a potato peeler, though it was called that by the press: it had a fixed > 3″ long blade) but the nature of the weapon is secondary; what’s relevant for the arrest was the fact that the man wielded it as a weapon. And, again, this has nothing to do with EU legislation. And some additional context: the knife wielding laws in the UK are indeed pretty draconian but the UK, which is generally pretty low on violent crimes, has a specific problem with knife crimes and is therefore tackling the problem heads-on. Seems reasonable. > I can't think of a single reason other than vacation days that I'd ever want to live there. Really? https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... (In fact, even with occasional questionable laws being passed on EU levels the legal situation in the EU, both on EU and on country level, is still a lot saner than e.g. in the US.)
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    > First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against (but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, good on Mozilla). As they say, don't count your chickens before they're hatched
    - klmr 8y ago
      I’m not — I’m actually contacting my MEP.
    - jotm 8y ago
      Rejected by a very close vote, must I say. That's ridiculous, imo
  - 8y ago
- pjc50 8y ago
  I'm assuming that "bellamy" is a weird autocorrect for "Hitler", in which case I refer to my recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927075 The illegal act was sending the threatening message "gas the jews" through a telecommunications system. The potato peeler incident: https://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/british-man-arrested-for-wielding-potato-peeler/ https://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/british-man-arrested-for-... Homeless man with learning difficulties wielding a knife-like object in public? In both cases the relevant law is UK domestic criminal law, not EU law.
  - GW150914 8y ago
    Actually the Bellamy Salute was a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute The Bellamy salute is a palm-out salute described by Francis Bellamy, the author of the American Pledge of Allegiance, as the gesture which was to accompany the pledge. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute". Both the Pledge and its salute originated in 1892. Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazis adopted a salute which was very similar, and which was derived from the Roman salute, a gesture that was popularly (albeit erroneously) believed to have been used in ancient Rome.[1] This resulted in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942. Along with the swastika, just another thing the fascists stole and corrupted.
- lucozade 8y ago
  You are absolutely correct. If you have ever owned a potato peeler or a right-leaning dog, it is imperative that you never set foot in Europe. It's just not worth taking that chance. I'm sure the poor folk in Europe will manage to struggle on without you and they thank you for your concern.

esquivalience 8y ago

Whether or not you agree with the copyright reforms, it is not helpful to present these opinions (e.g. 'will negatively affect...') as fact. You may as well stand outside the legislative building with a placard. To my mind, it's impossible to take part in the debate until you've realised that your position is a point of view; that other have a different point of view; and that compromise is going to be necessary.

ManlyBread 8y ago
It's quite hard to talk about a compromise when there's zero benefit in accepting the new law to begin with. Remember how effective the SOPA/ACTA protests were, the only reason these succeded was because no one was interested in a compromise.
- GekkePrutser 8y ago
  They weren't effective. The same has already been implemented through a loophole with Canada (CETA) so US companies can already force their lower standards on us through their Canadian subsidiaries. Simple distraction and switch and playing into the mindset that Canada has somehow ties with Europe and is therefore 'good'. It's amazing how they get away with these things.
SpEd3Y 8y ago
How is it helpful for you to present your opinion (about their opinions as facts not being helpful) as a fact? :)
GavinMcG 8y ago
How fitting that your username is a sort of false "equivalence".
seucs 8y ago
I don't agree with these copyright reforms, but I do agree with you. I remember thinking when the swedish pirate party got started in 2006 that it was already late to talk about these issues. Because there had already been so much written about it in the '90s and early '00. Now more than 10 years later neither the tech companies nor "the community" have dealt with any of it. Instead they have been chasing opportunities, not willing to do anything that might jeopardize their own position. Eventually reality just catches up with you and whoever can present a solution will get their chance.

snarf21 8y ago

In my mind, the most salient point is this one: FACT: The proposed new copyright rules will lead to direct surveillance of users’ activities online. This and the recent 5 eyes document to require backdoors for all technology and services are the same. The surveillance state is coming. It is being bought. You are being sold. But don't worry, they are doing this for our own security and safety. No one need watch the watchers.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 8y ago
How is that a "fact"? Pretty much every time you upload data to a website, there will be some sort of validation of the uploaded data that will happen. That's not "surveillance" it's a basic process that happens on the Internet. "Surveillance" requires going a step further to track what users are doing. (E.g. checking your ID at a club is not "surveillance"; having the bouncers file a report so someone can track what clubs each person goes to is surveillance.) Mozilla points to nothing in Article 13 to suggest such tracking would be required. They seem to be speculating that such tracking will happen. That may or may not be a good conjecture, but that doesn't make it a "fact."
- shkkmo 8y ago
  The european law requires services to have tools to not just validate content format, but process and categorize the content itself. The australian 5 eyes memo says they think they can / should be able to require services to report all of this output directly to them.

kmisiunas 8y ago

For EU people who want to take action: call or email your Member European Parliament (MEP) and let them know that don't supper the policy (or support it?!?). You can call them via: https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-call https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-call Or email by finding your MEP details on: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html More info on taking action can br found here (scroll a little): https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/

Y_Y 8y ago
You can use an automated (customisable) tool at saveyourinternet.eu to do this too.
- mstade 8y ago
  Thank you, I've now used this to send an email to my representatives.
  - Kliment 8y ago
    Having called a few of them and spoken to them on the phone about this they are mostly pissed off about the cookie-cutter emails spamming them about this but quite happy to talk about it on the phone.
    - guy98238710 8y ago
      On the other hand, some of us are much better at typing than talking. And some might have a fit of social phobia at the mere thought of a phone call. The templates might be tedious, but they are there for people who would otherwise post some random flame or rant. Pages encouraging phone calls have scripted templates on them too.
      - Kliment 8y ago
        Yeah and that's fine, personal emails were quite well received. Template emails were universally ignored, regardless of which side of the issue the representative stood.

vfc1 8y ago

"Only a handful of the largest tech companies have the technical and financial means to operate the sprawling filtering systems that this law demands." The smaller platforms often use under the hood Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or equivalent. Probably the copyright verification is going to be added at that level, and hopefully will be transparent to the platforms built on top of those cloud services. So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it might look.

feanaro 8y ago
> So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it might look. ... this would not impact smaller SaaS companies ... This isn't a law yet and I don't think most people want it to become one. That said, I disagree that this isn't a terrible burden for the small guy. Even if it would be trivial to set up, all the other downsides remain and it leads to lock-in in the form of dependence on large companies who have implemented this. More importantly, why do we want this? What benefits does this bring? I don't see many for the ordinary person.
- jandrese 8y ago
  > More importantly, why do we want this? What benefits does this bring? I don't see many for the ordinary person. Maybe it could shift liability? So if someone posts the lyrics to a song and Sony sues them for 50,000 euro could they argue that it is the fault of the ISP for not filtering their post properly? This is a longshot, but I was trying very hard to think of some way in which this law doesn't screw over individuals for the benefit of large corporations.
GekkePrutser 8y ago
This is exactly what I fear: everyone outsourcing their filtering to a handful of big companies. These companies will then have the definitive say on what is posted online and what isn't. The Chinese will be jealous of our new censorship machine.

no1youknowz 8y ago

From the viewpoint of regulations on business: - GDPR (Facebook/Google) - Article 11 (Reddit) - Article 13 (Github) - Mandated EU Content on streaming providers (Netflix) - EU Internet sales tax (Amazon) The simple question begs: how many more regulations aimed at US companies are coming? At this rate, the more regulations are created at fighting US companies. The number of internet startups and business located in the EU will one day cycle downward to zero. What are they going to do next?

pjc50 8y ago
> EU Internet sales tax (Amazon) This is the proposal that Amazon should pay tax where the goods are sold, rather than hiding it in Luxembourg?
Y_Y 8y ago
Well if they only cycle to zero then they'll just come back up again just as fast, so that seems not so bad. Article 13 is hardly an attack on Github, even if it may affect them. The EU loves US money and tech, and is happy to keep it (it seems it's happy to stay too). I'm totally against this proposal, but not because of anti-regulation dogma. That's rightly unpopular in prosperous and socialist Europe.
klmr 8y ago
Art 13 isn’t a EU vs US thing. It‘s a digital vs analog thing (or, more precisely, old-style copyright holders vs young content creators).
- jotm 8y ago
  It's a carebear legislation aimed at protecting imbecile content creators who can't be bothered with at least trying to run it like a real business. Why not let people figure it out and deal with it on their own, ffs
frockington 8y ago
If you can't generate your own innovation and revenue you have to steal it from somewhere. It'll be interesting to see how much longer the EU consumer can stay relevant before they fade into a tertiary market

kd5bjo 8y ago

Is there a simple, objective summary of the proposed rules? Everything I've seen is propaganda trying to convince me they're the end of the internet, which makes me quite wary of the authors' motivations.

pjc50 8y ago
You can read the directive itself: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- kd5bjo 8y ago
  Yes, but with all the cross-references and legalese specifying which level of government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the directive, the actual regulations can be hard to extract for an untrained reader. Hence my request for an objective summary.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > which level of government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the directive At least that's an easy question to answer: the member states. A directive obliges member states to introduce local legislation to achieve a particular effect. Usually it's transcribed pretty closely, but some states may use their sovereignty to impose additional restrictions (if they're not precluded by the Directive, a different directive, or human rights law). Generally if you want to speed up reading a Directive you can skip all the "Whereas" clauses, they're not binding but do specify the reasoning behind the directive.
    - kd5bjo 8y ago
      And the real meaning of stuff like [1.11.3]? It's got to be there, or else the law is underspecified, but it doesn't make for effective lay communication. I still think a real summary would be useful for all the people that don't have your personal guidance about how to decode legislation. [1.11.3] Articles 5 to 8 of Directive 2001/29/EC and Directive 2012/28/EU shall apply mutatis mutandis in respect of the rights referred to in paragraph 1.

andyjohnson0 8y ago

Anyone want to speculate on the chances of this getting approved by the European Parliament? Last July they blocked an earlier version and sent it back to the commission. Edit: And as someone living in the UK, I'm also wondering what the implications of this are for brexit[1]. Will the post-brexit interface between the EU and the UK w/r/t copyright be made even more complicated by this, with knock-on effects on digital service providers on each side? [1] which I continue to oppose

pjc50 8y ago
> I'm also wondering what the implications of this are for brexit We're well into "who knows?" territory, but what would definitely happen is the UK would lose any say over the EU rules. The UK isn't really large enough to be its own market for startups (unlike the EU and US), so we'd mostly end up using companies hosted in one or the other and obliged to follow their rules. (Safe Harbour is probably a more interesting one to consider!)
- frockington 8y ago
  If the EU continues down the regulatory path, the UK could become the startup capital of Europe if they market correctly
  - blibble 8y ago
    the UK is already the startup capital of Europe
    - jotm 8y ago
      *still. As it is, not for much longer
    - snaky 8y ago
      That's only true for Fintech.
  - jotm 8y ago

gcb0 8y ago

the IP Juggernauts are pushing so hard and strong that they will be their demise, hopefully. they are trying too hard to have their claws on every jurisdiction and be the international police that can prosecute everyone based on content piracy. And they are very close to that. They already have control on north America and southeast Asia (via US, ChinaN and TPP agreements). Now they are "fixing" what they wanted im GDPR but lawmakers were too clever to see the tricks then, so they are being more explicit. But eventually, what people will start doing is what we see in china. everyone in country A will do whatever it takes to consume content/interact with other people via sites in country B, which is not under the same jurisdiction of country A. Hopefully people will still be able to live as they live today, and only yhe advertising market will suffer as brands now can't reliably reach one market or another. Maybe that fixes advertising too and force brands to sponsor services regardless of demographic. or maybe I am too optimistic and the IP conglomerates will win and people will not have access to any content that is not made and authorized by them.

phonicspree 8y ago

Good on Mozilla for taking this on. There's so many problems with this. It sets up the infrastructure for control of media. Is an image being shared that is unflattering to the current powers that be? Well, now we have a mandated system in place that can immediately pull that image from the web. I don't think getting totalitarian control is the goal here, but it is the end result of it.

scotty79 8y ago

If we all ignore all copyright it will go away and with it all the nighmares conceived to prop up its rotting corpse. But it won't happen sooner than before majority of creators learn that copyright does not benefit them in any way. We can teach them that by never paying for copyrighted things.

apocalypstyx 8y ago
There is one apocalyptic scenario here that everyone ignores: it is monetary compensation that keeps the social norm. Remove that, make it so only the rich or the obsessed write, make music, etc, and they will increasing do so for their own ends, because there is no reason not to. Social alone approval will motivate very few to commit to the amount of work necessary for most creative endeavors. On the surface, of course, this would seem ridiculous. But we only have to examine how much cultural capital is employed to keep writers writing toward the money and controlled by editors, and ratings boards, etc. And the common consumer expects what they, the consumer, to always be delivered unto with exactly that which they claim to desire. Under the monetary system reproductive advantage slates toward those who accrue capital. However remove that, and the 'shock value' of 'independent artistic work' becomes the most viable remaining path to mate attraction. So, remove the money, and the only artists, writers, etc, who remain, are the ones that the mass of consumers despise as 'experimental' and 'weird', etc. And given that humanity is pretty much by definition a story species, the resulting effects on society as a whole, with such a major hit to the mytho-poetic infrastructure that undergirds any society, might be very interesting. Most likely some government or wealth-backed cultural production engine will emerge in the vacuum, however, the question might be whether it will do so fast enough.
- clarry 8y ago
  I think everyone ignores it because it's so far fetched (even if they go as far as assuming copyright == monetary compensation)
  - apocalypstyx 8y ago
    How does anyone otherwise do work that is distributed via mass mechanical reproduction? Disney could operate private theatres that threw out and banned people with recording devices, but how could home distribution function. For popular work, we are back at the pre-copyright world of patronage. Popular appeal might lead certain rare individuals to monetary compensation in academia, but this, I would say, will be country and culturally dependent. In France, for example, I might see it, but not the United States. And it might lead to a certain amount of tribal-production to sustain the replication of certain cultural norms, but in order for that to e so the trend of production and consumption previously adhered to in these industries (from the consumer viewpoint) will have to be reverse: the consumer will be paying patronage in advance of the creation of the work which will then be mechanically mass reproduced upon release. However, I think a smaller amount of people than currently consumptive model of media will be as likely to switch wholly to a 'pig-in-a-poke'-model. Even with things like netflix, the primary draw has always been that which pre-exists, that which the consumer already knows to be available, and its primary value is not weighted on what necessarily 'might' be produced in the future. People might be willing to fund such models through 'micro transaction', however, any individual funding themselves, thus, would necessarily require a proportionally larger base of funders; however this would have the function of keeping the cultural mytho-poetic framework in check, producing what commonly referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'. Also, however, even if someone were to make a living in this manner, they might not what to in that, no matter what survivable level of income they may derive, a Disney would then, through the sheer economy of their scale, be able to transform that, now mechanically reproduced work into something distributed through the private theatre system at no cost for the acquiring of the source material. This alone may be a sufficient psychological demotivator for many, and present a common source of burnout (thus requiring a change in employment), or even an obstacle to many taking up the profession at all. The question remains, if the so-called creator is likely to get no monetary compensation, and little in the way of social capital anyway, what will induce them to create any works besides those they want to create. The problem is that 'artistry' in the mytho-poetics of most western countries attains a somewhat religious significance, but the most of its practitioners (or at least those who mange to make their primary living at it) would leave so-called creative fields for greener pastures; it's a job. (I suppose I should add here that I am very much against to current copyright system as it stands now, though I realize my reply might indicate otherwise. I do, however, become aggravated when the attitudes of so-called consumers amounts to a type a slavery where they want what they want [produced but want it for free, resembles too much those companies that have baited artists and writer with 'exposure' for far too long. As it stands, what is said about the disruptive potential of the internet aside, most writers and artists make what they do (and paltry sums at that) by effectively signing over their copyrights in perpetuity to what amounts to intellectual property holding companies. So the law may say the author owns it, but to see anything from it (in the vast majority of cases) they have to give that right away, and then so-called consumers come along and claim (purely to pinch pennies) that authors should relinquish even (and presenting no alternative) that is, to me, as aggravating as the media conglomerates who do the same.)

fermigier 8y ago

Julia Reda's page on the EU Copyright reform is actually the best resource to get the facts right: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ (edit: Not just the facts of course, also her opinion, shared by many organisations and individuals knowledgeable on how the Internet should work, eg. Vinton Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee, see https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf).

lowry 8y ago

With all due respect... these are not facts. Read Julia Reda https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/, not dumbass Mozilla copywriters.

zenovision 8y ago

Europe is a no-go area for any startup. Instead of building your product, you will spend all your time complying with thousands of GDPR-like laws, difficult tax regulations, different languages etc. and every country has also a lot of additional national laws (Hackerparagraf in germany for example). It's just not worth it.

jopsen 8y ago
It's not that bad... In practice startups don't have worry about these things before they grow large. I've yet to be fined for not having a cookie popup on my blog :)