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The likes of YouTube will be affected the least. They already have aggressive copyright enforcement measures in place, and they can afford to do that. Smaller,

The likes of YouTube will be affected the least. They already have aggressive copyright enforcement measures in place, and they can afford to do that. Smaller, more independent platforms will not be able to afford to implement compliance with these new regulations, and will potentially be driven out of business.

kakarot 8y ago
Yes, the Googles and Facebooks of the future will be affected the most. This is consolidation of power, finally locking down the Free Internet just as we've done with every other industry. Stripping the power to change from the small. And what are we doing about it?
- sparkzilla 8y ago
  While I agree that regulation favours big companies, potential competitors will base themselves offshore, or create distributed apps that have no jurisdiction.
  - jonathanstrange 8y ago
    Both strategies have been tried and are unlikely to hold up in court.
    - sparkzilla 8y ago
      A bit challenging to sue a project when it has no owners and no jurisdiction. PS: Jonathan Strange: Great books and even better TV.
      - mosselman 8y ago
        Nor customers/users. The problem is that 'normal' people don't know how to use most distributed/encrypted/stick-it-to-the-man products, nor do they care.
        sparkzilla 8y ago
        'Normal' people already use distributed content: Google and Facebook's content is held in data servers all across the planet. The next stage is to distribute the governance of that content, which similarly, most users won't be aware of.
        kakarot 8y ago
        This is just a pedantic disagreement about what "distributed" means. It's all about context.
      - adrianN 8y ago
        Somebody has to host the content. You can sue those people. P2P filesharing works the same way. Normal people get unfriendly letters from lawyers.
        sparkzilla 8y ago
        And yet people still download Torrents.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dingaling 8y ago
  > And what are we doing about it? Make our own content and host it ourselves? This type of law is only effective due to centralisation of Internet services. If everyone self-hosted and was accountable for their own content there would be no scope for such legislation. All HN would hold would be linked-lists of URLs, no actual comment content. Imagine a decentralised, federated HN where each comment originated from its owner's site.
  - quanticle 8y ago
    >This type of law is only effective due to centralisation of Internet services. This type of law encourages that very centralization. Look at the provisions of GDPR, for example. Do you think a two-person startup is going to have the resources to deal with all of its provisions? Or in this case: do you think that a new video-sharing startup is going to have the resources to deal with the more stringent copyright enforcement requirements? The EU has, in effect, made a Faustian bargain with Google, Facebook and Twitter: if you accept our regulation, we'll ensure that you have no competitors.
    - groestl 8y ago
      > Look at the provisions of GDPR, for example. Do you think a two-person startup is going to have the resources to deal with all of its provisions? GDPR is a bad example, because yes, that's definitely possible. And it should be, if that startup handles personal data.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        But what kind of startup doesn't handle personal data? All companies have that in the form of customer and supplier account information needed for billing purposes -- especially if they're not in the advertising business.
        groestl 8y ago
        Absolutely, and that's kind of my point. Even a single person operation can comply with the GDPR, as most of the policies to do so should alreay be state-of-the-art for companies who handle personal data (in a non-malicous way). I agree there is some annoying administrative overhead, but it's definitely manageable (speaking from experience here).
ericdykstra 8y ago
YouTube, the company, will be fine. They'll just ban any content that triggers their enforcement systems. I'm worried about YouTube, the platform, and the bastion of free exchange of information and ideas that is has been until now. A response-type video or movie review will almost certainly be false-flagged by a system like this. Of course, I agree with you that independent platforms are going to have a rough time. They either have to manually review all content themselves, not allow any user-uploaded content, or pay a company to do this for them.
- snaky 8y ago
  The worse for YouTube the platform, the better for free, decentralized, federated competitor platforms like PeerTube.
  - vorticalbox 8y ago
    Except they have to comply with the law too.
    - kragen 8y ago
      Well, of course the law applies to them too. But what happens in the instances that they don't comply? Laws are enforced by incentive structures, such as punishment. Who gets punished or otherwise incentivized to make PeerTube comply with the law, and what effect will that have on the functioning of PeerTube?
      - snaky 8y ago
        That's EU after all. They will mass punish everybody, then try to ban traffic. > “Thousands of Swedes have received threatening letters from law firms which accuse them of illegal downloading. They are asked to pay a sum of money, ranging from a couple of thousand Swedish Kronors up to several thousand, to avoid being brought to justice,” Bahnhof Communicator Carolina Lindahl notes. > “During 2018 the extortion business has increased dramatically. The numbers have already exceeded last year’s figures even though four months still remain.” > This year to date, 49 separate court cases have been filed requesting ISPs to disclose the personal details of the account holders behind 35,711 IP-addresses. As the chart below shows, that’s already more than the two previous years combined. > Also, the number of targeted people exceeds that of all US and Canadian file-sharing cases in 2018, which is quite extraordinary. https://torrentfreak.com/more-than-35000-pirates-targeted-in-swedish-lawsuits-this-year-180911/ https://torrentfreak.com/more-than-35000-pirates-targeted-in...
jonathanstrange 8y ago
What about distributed systems without central control? Will the new laws force them to introduce filtering into the software (which could e.g. be open source and forkable by anyone)? Or does this only apply to systems with a centralized repository? I'm curious how this is supposed to work.
- Natanael_L 8y ago
  Presumably anybody who runs a server / node would be liable
- greglindahl 8y ago
  You can look up the legal actions related to Usenet to see an example of US State Attorneys General banding together to attack a distributed system because a few people were posting bad stuff on it.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  "What about distributed systems without central control?" The copyright industry and their bought-and-paid-for politicians have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no mental model for such forms of distribution. Have you forgotten the panic that ensued fifteen years ago, when the music industry was suing middle schoolers? (The irony is that the very same platforms these industry lobbyists are whining about only became popular because they killed P2P via the courts.)
lossolo 8y ago
This is wrong. Small and micro platforms are excluded from directive’s scope. Source from legislation: In particular, small and micro enterprises as defined in Title I of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, should be expected to be subject to less burdensome obligations than larger service providers. Therefore, taking into account the state of the art and the availability of technologies and their costs, in specific cases it may not be proportionate to expect small and micro enterprises to apply preventive measures and that therefore in such cases these enterprises should only be expected to expeditiously remove specific unauthorised works and other subject matter upon notification by rightholders.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  The problem is that the gap between such platforms and Youtube is enormous, and long before they are even remotely competitive they will be required to spend vast sums of money on compliance. A secondary effect will be a reduced willingness to invest in small-to-medium sized competitors due to the regulatory costs and the risks of non-compliance, further hampering growth. Much as I hate to admit it, the biggest reason US tech companies have been so much more successful than European tech companies is that the US imposes far fewer regulations, which allows companies to use more of their revenue on growth.

kakarot 8y ago

Yes, the Googles and Facebooks of the future will be affected the most. This is consolidation of power, finally locking down the Free Internet just as we've done with every other industry. Stripping the power to change from the small. And what are we doing about it?

sparkzilla 8y ago
While I agree that regulation favours big companies, potential competitors will base themselves offshore, or create distributed apps that have no jurisdiction.
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  Both strategies have been tried and are unlikely to hold up in court.
  - sparkzilla 8y ago
    A bit challenging to sue a project when it has no owners and no jurisdiction. PS: Jonathan Strange: Great books and even better TV.
    - mosselman 8y ago
      Nor customers/users. The problem is that 'normal' people don't know how to use most distributed/encrypted/stick-it-to-the-man products, nor do they care.
      - sparkzilla 8y ago
        'Normal' people already use distributed content: Google and Facebook's content is held in data servers all across the planet. The next stage is to distribute the governance of that content, which similarly, most users won't be aware of.
        kakarot 8y ago
        This is just a pedantic disagreement about what "distributed" means. It's all about context.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Somebody has to host the content. You can sue those people. P2P filesharing works the same way. Normal people get unfriendly letters from lawyers.
      - sparkzilla 8y ago
        And yet people still download Torrents.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dingaling 8y ago
> And what are we doing about it? Make our own content and host it ourselves? This type of law is only effective due to centralisation of Internet services. If everyone self-hosted and was accountable for their own content there would be no scope for such legislation. All HN would hold would be linked-lists of URLs, no actual comment content. Imagine a decentralised, federated HN where each comment originated from its owner's site.
- quanticle 8y ago
  >This type of law is only effective due to centralisation of Internet services. This type of law encourages that very centralization. Look at the provisions of GDPR, for example. Do you think a two-person startup is going to have the resources to deal with all of its provisions? Or in this case: do you think that a new video-sharing startup is going to have the resources to deal with the more stringent copyright enforcement requirements? The EU has, in effect, made a Faustian bargain with Google, Facebook and Twitter: if you accept our regulation, we'll ensure that you have no competitors.
  - groestl 8y ago
    > Look at the provisions of GDPR, for example. Do you think a two-person startup is going to have the resources to deal with all of its provisions? GDPR is a bad example, because yes, that's definitely possible. And it should be, if that startup handles personal data.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      But what kind of startup doesn't handle personal data? All companies have that in the form of customer and supplier account information needed for billing purposes -- especially if they're not in the advertising business.
      - groestl 8y ago
        Absolutely, and that's kind of my point. Even a single person operation can comply with the GDPR, as most of the policies to do so should alreay be state-of-the-art for companies who handle personal data (in a non-malicous way). I agree there is some annoying administrative overhead, but it's definitely manageable (speaking from experience here).

ericdykstra 8y ago

YouTube, the company, will be fine. They'll just ban any content that triggers their enforcement systems. I'm worried about YouTube, the platform, and the bastion of free exchange of information and ideas that is has been until now. A response-type video or movie review will almost certainly be false-flagged by a system like this. Of course, I agree with you that independent platforms are going to have a rough time. They either have to manually review all content themselves, not allow any user-uploaded content, or pay a company to do this for them.

snaky 8y ago
The worse for YouTube the platform, the better for free, decentralized, federated competitor platforms like PeerTube.
- vorticalbox 8y ago
  Except they have to comply with the law too.
  - kragen 8y ago
    Well, of course the law applies to them too. But what happens in the instances that they don't comply? Laws are enforced by incentive structures, such as punishment. Who gets punished or otherwise incentivized to make PeerTube comply with the law, and what effect will that have on the functioning of PeerTube?
    - snaky 8y ago
      That's EU after all. They will mass punish everybody, then try to ban traffic. > “Thousands of Swedes have received threatening letters from law firms which accuse them of illegal downloading. They are asked to pay a sum of money, ranging from a couple of thousand Swedish Kronors up to several thousand, to avoid being brought to justice,” Bahnhof Communicator Carolina Lindahl notes. > “During 2018 the extortion business has increased dramatically. The numbers have already exceeded last year’s figures even though four months still remain.” > This year to date, 49 separate court cases have been filed requesting ISPs to disclose the personal details of the account holders behind 35,711 IP-addresses. As the chart below shows, that’s already more than the two previous years combined. > Also, the number of targeted people exceeds that of all US and Canadian file-sharing cases in 2018, which is quite extraordinary. https://torrentfreak.com/more-than-35000-pirates-targeted-in-swedish-lawsuits-this-year-180911/ https://torrentfreak.com/more-than-35000-pirates-targeted-in...

jonathanstrange 8y ago

What about distributed systems without central control? Will the new laws force them to introduce filtering into the software (which could e.g. be open source and forkable by anyone)? Or does this only apply to systems with a centralized repository? I'm curious how this is supposed to work.

Natanael_L 8y ago
Presumably anybody who runs a server / node would be liable
greglindahl 8y ago
You can look up the legal actions related to Usenet to see an example of US State Attorneys General banding together to attack a distributed system because a few people were posting bad stuff on it.
betterunix2 8y ago
"What about distributed systems without central control?" The copyright industry and their bought-and-paid-for politicians have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no mental model for such forms of distribution. Have you forgotten the panic that ensued fifteen years ago, when the music industry was suing middle schoolers? (The irony is that the very same platforms these industry lobbyists are whining about only became popular because they killed P2P via the courts.)

lossolo 8y ago

This is wrong. Small and micro platforms are excluded from directive’s scope. Source from legislation: In particular, small and micro enterprises as defined in Title I of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, should be expected to be subject to less burdensome obligations than larger service providers. Therefore, taking into account the state of the art and the availability of technologies and their costs, in specific cases it may not be proportionate to expect small and micro enterprises to apply preventive measures and that therefore in such cases these enterprises should only be expected to expeditiously remove specific unauthorised works and other subject matter upon notification by rightholders.

betterunix2 8y ago
The problem is that the gap between such platforms and Youtube is enormous, and long before they are even remotely competitive they will be required to spend vast sums of money on compliance. A secondary effect will be a reduced willingness to invest in small-to-medium sized competitors due to the regulatory costs and the risks of non-compliance, further hampering growth. Much as I hate to admit it, the biggest reason US tech companies have been so much more successful than European tech companies is that the US imposes far fewer regulations, which allows companies to use more of their revenue on growth.