11 ms·

A comment from someone who has actually read the article: https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_whole_world_should_be_up_in_arms_about/e5qn

A comment from someone who has actually read the article: https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_whole_world_should_be_up_in_arms_about/e5qndqn/ https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_w... For example: ...the EFF argue that the idea of what constitutes a link is not fully defined. I'm not sure what they're talking about. Recitals 31-36 set out the concepts in article 11, fairly clearly. They make it clear that what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text. They also make it clear what organisations this will affect - press organisations - with a fairly clear description of what a press organisation might constitute. (FWIW, memes are not covered, and anyone you hear talking about "banning memes" is getting their news from very poor sources.)

oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago
I read the articles as well, and this commenter is right that, on their face, they don't seem like they would apply to a site like Google News. That said, everyone, including Google, seems to think they do. And as far as I am aware, nobody at the EC has said anything to the contrary, even though it would be easy to do so. So it seems most likely to me that the naive reading of the text is incorrect, and that both this reddit commenter and myself are missing something.
- tumetab1 8y ago
  Both are missing the point of how this kind of "law" works. The wording is less relevant than the application of it. You can argue that something is outside of scope, according to the wording, and be correct while at the same time I can argue that the same is covered on how is expected to be applied. Given my understanding of the copyright lobbying-state officials work in the EU, Google News will be covered. Why? Because news organizations having being crying for long and have strong political connections.
  - quadcore 8y ago
    The thought of that happening in itself procures fears.
- bcheung 8y ago
  The problem is it is highly subjective. "Parliament’s text also strengthens the negotiating rights of authors and performers, by enabling them to “claim” additional remuneration from the party exploiting their rights when the remuneration originally agreed is “disproportionately” low compared to the benefits derived." "The text adds that these benefits should include “indirect revenues”. It would also empower authors and performers to revoke or terminate the exclusivity of an exploitation licence for their work if the party holding the exploitation rights is deemed not to be exercising this right."
- pbackx 8y ago
  To understand article 11, I think you should look at the reason it was created: Journalists (and newspapers) are looking for a way to get paid for their articles beyond luring people to their sites with clickbait titles and tons of ads. They want their own "article version" of Spotify, where they get a set amount for every article read. Obviously that's difficult to implement given the current way of the Internet (= Facebook sharing) and this is their attempt at getting their dream. Is this a good idea? You could say it may improve news reporting if it was well implemented. Or it could be completely abused. Anyway, looking at it like this, explains some of the legalese in article 11.
sputr 8y ago
The commenter you are quoting has not realized there are two problematic articles (11. and 13.) and that the "memes" story is for article 13 not 11. The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.
- IdiocyInAction 8y ago
  Why whould Google not just delist problematic sites like they did in Germany, as they tried to implement something similar there AFAIK?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    The last time I read about these regulations, it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators (i.e., news sites aren't allowed to agree to those terms). I don't have time to check right now, but that may be the case.
    - merb 8y ago
      > it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators and than, should they force google to pay instead of cutting these publishers off? in no way would that be legal. you can't force somebody to pay something, by forcing them to obey.
      - paulddraper 8y ago
        Yes, you'd like to think it's a free market.
        merb 8y ago
        well google in the end can just shutdown google news.
dannyobrien 8y ago
(Disclosure -- I work on this for EFF) You can read the recitals this commenter is describing here, including the latest amendments that were voted in the Parliamentary plenary. As you'd imagine, I disagree with his interpretation. https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Sept12_Voss.pdf https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se... Firstly, these are just recitals. They're not a binding part of the Directive, they just lay out the justifications for the law. If you do read the listed recitals, they mention links once, and don't define the term at all. When they do, the context is that "the act of hyperlinking" is not protected (ie the new ancillary right does not explicitly cover the act of hyperlinking). This is an attempt to refute an argument that no-one is making (though the language echoes a previous fight that rightsholders are still pursuing, which is links to infringing content should be punished as strongly as hosting content itself. That's what the "communication to the public" is about, and has been ongoing, but that's another story.) The concern over Article 11 isn't that it would criminalise linking to a news item; it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license. Such snippets of text are usually used when linking to a news article, especially when you're doing it automatically, so that's where the threat to linking to stories. A couple of other things to note in these amendments. One of the earlier arguments as to why Article 11 isn't so bad we heard is that there are already exemptions in copyright for quotation and critical review. We argued that under EU law, these exemptions are entirely optional at the national level, and news publishers will lobby to limit the effect of them on this new IP right. If you look at the amendment for Recital 34, this is now being explicitly set up to happen: the Recital now says that member states can apply these exceptions, instead of should. Just because the recitals aren't law, doesn't mean you can't use them to better understand the motives and justifications of the drafters. As others have noted, the "banning memes" line is about Article 13. An amendment proposed by a Parliamentary committee to create a "fair use"-style exception for user-generated content, specifically to protect remixes and memes, was struck down in today's vote. By contrast, an entirely new provision that gave organizers of sports events complete ownership of the IP rights to their games was voted in. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/ Basically, this directive remains an IP maximalists' dream. A bunch of new IP rights, some of which only apply online, with clear signals that they should be interpreted as broadly as possible.
belorn 8y ago
The article itself reference the acts of linking and hyperlinking without any words about "significant portions of the text". I would like to see some support to the claim that "what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text". In particular, the phrase "This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public." It is all over the text and amendments. What is the exact legal effect of that?
- Aeolun 8y ago
  I assume it means linking on your intranet is not prohibited.
akerro 8y ago
Not really, every meme will be a subject to legal actions like Grumpy Cat Limited https://www.catster.com/the-scoop/grumpy-cat-legal-settlement https://www.catster.com/the-scoop/grumpy-cat-legal-settlemen...
zavi 8y ago
News are mostly clickbait cancer anyways, if this is the final nail in their coffin (if Google/Reddit/Facebook stops serving news) so be it. Tech Giants will do just fine under this, just how Chinese tech giants are able to do their own censorship.

oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago

I read the articles as well, and this commenter is right that, on their face, they don't seem like they would apply to a site like Google News. That said, everyone, including Google, seems to think they do. And as far as I am aware, nobody at the EC has said anything to the contrary, even though it would be easy to do so. So it seems most likely to me that the naive reading of the text is incorrect, and that both this reddit commenter and myself are missing something.

tumetab1 8y ago
Both are missing the point of how this kind of "law" works. The wording is less relevant than the application of it. You can argue that something is outside of scope, according to the wording, and be correct while at the same time I can argue that the same is covered on how is expected to be applied. Given my understanding of the copyright lobbying-state officials work in the EU, Google News will be covered. Why? Because news organizations having being crying for long and have strong political connections.
- quadcore 8y ago
  The thought of that happening in itself procures fears.
bcheung 8y ago
The problem is it is highly subjective. "Parliament’s text also strengthens the negotiating rights of authors and performers, by enabling them to “claim” additional remuneration from the party exploiting their rights when the remuneration originally agreed is “disproportionately” low compared to the benefits derived." "The text adds that these benefits should include “indirect revenues”. It would also empower authors and performers to revoke or terminate the exclusivity of an exploitation licence for their work if the party holding the exploitation rights is deemed not to be exercising this right."
pbackx 8y ago
To understand article 11, I think you should look at the reason it was created: Journalists (and newspapers) are looking for a way to get paid for their articles beyond luring people to their sites with clickbait titles and tons of ads. They want their own "article version" of Spotify, where they get a set amount for every article read. Obviously that's difficult to implement given the current way of the Internet (= Facebook sharing) and this is their attempt at getting their dream. Is this a good idea? You could say it may improve news reporting if it was well implemented. Or it could be completely abused. Anyway, looking at it like this, explains some of the legalese in article 11.

sputr 8y ago

The commenter you are quoting has not realized there are two problematic articles (11. and 13.) and that the "memes" story is for article 13 not 11. The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.

IdiocyInAction 8y ago
Why whould Google not just delist problematic sites like they did in Germany, as they tried to implement something similar there AFAIK?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  The last time I read about these regulations, it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators (i.e., news sites aren't allowed to agree to those terms). I don't have time to check right now, but that may be the case.
  - merb 8y ago
    > it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators and than, should they force google to pay instead of cutting these publishers off? in no way would that be legal. you can't force somebody to pay something, by forcing them to obey.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      Yes, you'd like to think it's a free market.
      - merb 8y ago
        well google in the end can just shutdown google news.

dannyobrien 8y ago

(Disclosure -- I work on this for EFF) You can read the recitals this commenter is describing here, including the latest amendments that were voted in the Parliamentary plenary. As you'd imagine, I disagree with his interpretation. https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Sept12_Voss.pdf https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se... Firstly, these are just recitals. They're not a binding part of the Directive, they just lay out the justifications for the law. If you do read the listed recitals, they mention links once, and don't define the term at all. When they do, the context is that "the act of hyperlinking" is not protected (ie the new ancillary right does not explicitly cover the act of hyperlinking). This is an attempt to refute an argument that no-one is making (though the language echoes a previous fight that rightsholders are still pursuing, which is links to infringing content should be punished as strongly as hosting content itself. That's what the "communication to the public" is about, and has been ongoing, but that's another story.) The concern over Article 11 isn't that it would criminalise linking to a news item; it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license. Such snippets of text are usually used when linking to a news article, especially when you're doing it automatically, so that's where the threat to linking to stories. A couple of other things to note in these amendments. One of the earlier arguments as to why Article 11 isn't so bad we heard is that there are already exemptions in copyright for quotation and critical review. We argued that under EU law, these exemptions are entirely optional at the national level, and news publishers will lobby to limit the effect of them on this new IP right. If you look at the amendment for Recital 34, this is now being explicitly set up to happen: the Recital now says that member states can apply these exceptions, instead of should. Just because the recitals aren't law, doesn't mean you can't use them to better understand the motives and justifications of the drafters. As others have noted, the "banning memes" line is about Article 13. An amendment proposed by a Parliamentary committee to create a "fair use"-style exception for user-generated content, specifically to protect remixes and memes, was struck down in today's vote. By contrast, an entirely new provision that gave organizers of sports events complete ownership of the IP rights to their games was voted in. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/ Basically, this directive remains an IP maximalists' dream. A bunch of new IP rights, some of which only apply online, with clear signals that they should be interpreted as broadly as possible.

belorn 8y ago

The article itself reference the acts of linking and hyperlinking without any words about "significant portions of the text". I would like to see some support to the claim that "what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text". In particular, the phrase "This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public." It is all over the text and amendments. What is the exact legal effect of that?

Aeolun 8y ago
I assume it means linking on your intranet is not prohibited.

akerro 8y ago

Not really, every meme will be a subject to legal actions like Grumpy Cat Limited https://www.catster.com/the-scoop/grumpy-cat-legal-settlement https://www.catster.com/the-scoop/grumpy-cat-legal-settlemen...

zavi 8y ago

News are mostly clickbait cancer anyways, if this is the final nail in their coffin (if Google/Reddit/Facebook stops serving news) so be it. Tech Giants will do just fine under this, just how Chinese tech giants are able to do their own censorship.