14 ms·
Today, Europe Lost The Internet. Now, We Fight Back
- macspoofing 8y agoEurope, oh brother. Hysterics are always directed towards America, but time and time again it is Europe that falls flat on its face.
- Mahn 8y agoYou are getting downvoted, but it's true, as an European it's appalling to see Europe constantly sabotaging itself when it comes to tech.
- singularity2001 8y agoInteresting: Is foreign judicial sabotage a thing in intelligence circles?
- andybak 8y agoI think there's sufficient blame around for everyone to go home with a prize. Trade our shitty copyright for your shitty healthcare. :)
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoMercantile liberalism leads to such ridiculous outcomes the world over (and time and time again).
- QasimK 8y agoI was so excited over how the EU managed to get GDPR so right, that I couldn't believe that the EU would get something else about the internet so wrong immediately afterwards.
- kodablah 8y agoI had the opposite opinion of the GDPR and have the same opinion about this legislation (namely heavy-handed internet governance, which is not unique to EU, is problematic regardless of original intention).
- Mahn 8y agoAny sort of legislation is problematic if the people responsible for legislating do not understand that which is being legislated.
- groestl 8y agoThe GDPR was basically a legislative accident, in that the a member of the Greens and strong proponent of privacy and data protection was made rapporteur to the European Parlament for the proposal [0]. There is an interesting documentary on that ("Democracy", 2015, by David Bernet). This new Copyright Directive seems to be an accident in the opposite direction, with Axel Voss as rapporteur. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Philipp_Albrecht https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Philipp_Albrecht
- mschuster91 8y ago> This new Copyright Directive seems to be an accident in the opposite direction, with Axel Voss as rapporteur. It's not an accident. Look who will profit from the link tax the most... the Axel Springer Verlag, owner of many large publications in Germany, especially the tabloid BILD. The boss of ASV is Friede Springer... who happens to be good friends with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Axel Voss is in the same party (CDU). Now add in that for a very long time the BILD was considered to be the "inofficial voice" of the CDU/CSU (the refugee influx changed that a bit, as BILD heavily went down the racist route and attacking Merkel's refugee politics but still, the paper is leaning heavily conservative). Sascha Lobo, German journalist for SPIEGEL, has outlined the entire stuff here (in German, though): http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/leistungsschutzrecht-fuer-presseverleger-so-ein-quatschgesetz-a-1212697.html http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/leistungsschutzre...
- briandear 8y agoOff topic, but how is attacking refugee policy “racist?” Are debates of such policy not allowed? Germany had the exact same debates over Serbian and Bosnian refugees during those wars. Syrian refugees were treated better legally than Bosnians and Serbs — Bosnians and Serbs were granted “temporary protection” status and not permitted to stay permanently and they were informed of that policy upon arrival, unlike Syrian refugees which have the opportunity for permenant resettlement. If it’s “racist” to debate that, then racism as a word has lost all meaning. If anything Syrian refugees have been granted greater privileges than Bosnian-Serbs. It would seem that policy could, be considered racist. Folks have bent over backwards to be as “unracist” as possible and thus, bad policy has happened because any debate on the topic is automatically shut down as racism. You can’t have a legitimate policy debate without being called a racist anymore.
- blfr 8y agoGDPR has been an UX disaster in practice. Now they're also going after content.
- pedrocr 8y agoIt's only a UX disaster because it makes it obvious what horrible things you now have to accept just to read some mildly interesting thing on some crappy site. That may be bad UX for the site but it's actually good UX for the user. Makes you consume less crap.
- andybak 8y agoNo. It makes me click a lot more checkboxes to do the same stuff I was prepared to do beforehand.
- jeremyt 8y agoNo it doesn't. It teaches you after about 20 times, that all sites are equally bad and now I can just safely ignore these popup notices. It promotes apathy.
- mcv 8y agoThe UX disaster is that apparently some sites use third-party cookies to store my preferences regarding to what cookies I will allow and which I refuse. Because my browser rejects all third-party cookies (obviously), they keep losing these preferences and I have to keep telling them that I don't want these cookies.
- fludlight 8y agoSearch, social, aggregators, and adtech's growing bite out of the whole advertising and media sales pie has been hurting the profits of older, lower-tech content companies. About a decade ago, it became apparent that Silicon Valley was "front-running" Hollywood and eating their lunch. This is an attempt to reverse that trend. The newspaper, sporting event, TV, and movie library companies went to their buddies at the EU and got GDPR passed which banned modern adtech under the guise of privacy and data nationalism. Now they've changed copyright law to place restrictions on social, search, and aggregators. Might as well call it the FIFA Fucks FAANG Act of 2018.
- etatoby 8y agoThis is a very interesting point of view. They could be two products of the same lobbying interests, and they just manged to pass the most user-palatable one first.
- jimnotgym 8y agoBut this has only passed the EU parliament, that is a long way from becoming a regulation.
- Havoc 8y ago>I was so excited over how the EU managed to get GDPR so right Agreed, though I could really have done without every damn site having an extra popup that gives me a choice that isn't a choice...click accept.
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's actually a point of proof in favor of the GDPR, it shows clearly that companies are still trying to work their way around reasonable controls placed on the privacy of their end users. The fact that they resort to implicit blackmail to force your consent (which isn't consent if it is forced...) is interesting.
- etatoby 8y ago"Accept our terms or do your business elsewhere" is how markets have always operated. It's not "blackmailing" and it's not "forcing your consent." The EU looks like it's turning more and more into a non-free regime. And your comment, among many others, signals that it's exactly what many Europeans want. Which is sad.
- jacquesm 8y agoI don't see how you managed to go from the curbing of the free-for-all with respect to private individuals data and the management thereof to a 'non-free regime', it's rather the opposite. As a result of the GDPR I have the ability to stand up to companies that abuse my data, which effectively makes me more free (at their expense). So yes, those companies are engaging in forcing of consent, and forced or coerced consent is no consent.
- antidesitter 8y agoHow are they engaging in “forcing of consent”?
- etatoby 8y agoThey are not forcing anything. In a free market you are free not to buy their product, and they should be free to offer it with the terms they like. But freedom is a scarce resource these days.
- westurner 8y agoHere's a quote from this excellent article: > An error rate of even one percent will still mean tens of millions of acts of arbitrary censorship, every day. And a redundant -- positively defiant -- link and page title: "Today, Europe Lost The Internet. Now, We Fight Back." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-inte... Firms with 50 or less employees should stay that small, really. VPN providers in North and South America FTW.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> VPN providers in North and South America FTW. Article 13 will affect the entire Internet, not just people in Europe. Most people on the Internet use large, multinational platforms. Those platforms will set rules according to the lowest common denominator, because it's the easiest to implement. This means that people all over the world are going to have a much more difficult time with any user-generated content. That's true even for user-created content, even if there is no other copyright holder involved (look at how badly Content ID has played out).
- irrational 8y agoOr they just stop doing business in Europe.
- hutzlibu 8y agoSince europe is a quite big market, maybe not an option and easier to geolocate and restrict just EU-Traffic
- trothamel 8y agoOr just not, if there's no nexus to europe. I suspect for a small business, the right thing to do would be to simply ignore EU directives. I would not be surprised if the US passes a law to make judgements against US companies without a European nexus (users in Europe would not count) unenforceable in the US. That was done with the SPEECH act to stop libel tourism.
- tempz 8y agoIt is far from 'clear' or 'obvious' that the Directive is a bad deal for content producers. Read it yourself - especially Articles 11 and 13. The narrative funded through GOOGL (and its affiliate EFF) and other big platforms is that this is evil doing of big content distribution monopolies. What is missing in this picture is that this Directive gives affordable enforcement muscle to all content producers, including the smallest ones. This Directive is the death knell for these platforms, which peddle content produced by 'nobodies' (their users) without any remuneration. There is nothing natural, just or given about it.
- specializeded 8y agoWhat is missing in this picture is that this Directive gives affordable enforcement muscle to all copyright owners*, including the smallest ones.
- anigbrowl 8y agoAll content producers are copyright owners by definition, except insofar as they have contracted deals about the content in question prior to production.
- AllegedAlec 8y agoIt promises that muscle over the backs of people creating platforms, though. How is a small company going to ever create an upload filter that has little to none false positives and false negatives when even the FAANGs are not able to do this?
- bambax 8y ago> In the meantime, there are upcoming EU elections, in which EU politicians will have to fight for their jobs. There aren't many places where a prospective Member of the European Parliament can win an election by boasting about expansions of copyright, but there are lots of potential electoral opponents who will be too happy to campaign on "Vote for me, my opponent just broke the Internet." The problem is, in countries like France, EVERY elected official (and EVERY political candidate) is in favor of this, and the public doesn't seem to care at all...
- nicolaslem 8y agoThese last few days I was very surprise to hear repeatedly on France Info (big national news radio) the side of the artists against Youtube and not once hear about the consequences for the Internet.
- servs 8y agoI am not surprised. I have been following copyright and "digital" law for about two decades. Most people just haven't changed their minds on copyright, wiretaps or many other things. If you want to convince people it has to be better than "it ruins the Internet". Because a lot of people don't even like the Internet that much. They already see it as run by large companies, trash social media and various malicious things that may affect their kids or get them scammed. A lot of people that are "pro" Internet just haven't given it much thought, they are mainly accepting their own chosen status quo. And that is getting worse every year. All these things we are talking about like remixing, encryption and social media have been studied and talked about in the past. Unfortunately few people care about a solution, they are happy if they read Reddit, watch some porn and "fight" by clicking some links every couple of years. I guess that sound cynical, but if one side is saying what is in-line with the rest of society and the other doesn't really have a story then it is going to be what it is.
- nine_k 8y agoIt's curious how Internet regulations in EU end up with effects rather similar to those achieved bu regulations in Russia, or Turkey, or some other not-quite-free country — though the intentions are allegedly different.
- pas 8y agoWhat are the effects? Do you happen to have data and some kind of comparison?
- liftbigweights 8y agoWhy is it curious? Russia modeled their censorship regime off of germany's censorship regime. Reporters Without Borders had a nice write-up about it. https://rsf.org/en/news/russian-bill-copy-and-paste-germanys-hate-speech-law https://rsf.org/en/news/russian-bill-copy-and-paste-germanys... For some odd reason, we think that europe ( which gave us nazism, fascism and communism ) is some bastion of freedom. It's not. It's never been. And it looks like it never will be. It's not europe catching up to russia, china or turkey when it comes to censorship or surveillance. It's actually russia, china and turkey catching up to europe.
- singularity2001 8y agoThe second part is too harsh, unless you go back 80 years.
- etatoby 8y agoIt's not curious. To me it's quite obvious. The intentions are not much different either: protect the interests of a few against those of the many. Sometimes they may use words that signal a different intent, to assuage the populace, but the reality is all too obvious, in every single regulation that came out of that monstrosity.
- panzagl 8y agoBetween GPDR and the copyright law it seems like the Internet is effectively read-only for European citizens and companies, at least below a certain size.
- commandlinefan 8y ago"It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics. Encryption is too important to be left solely to governments." -- Bruce Schneier
- shrewduser 8y agoThis is an embarrassment and totally changes the colour of my view of brexit in one fell swoop. I would not want to be a member state of an organization that thinks this is remotely ok either.
- cultus 8y agoI wasn't a Brexit fan but the EU seems to make boneheaded decisions like this pretty often. It really does suggest some fundamental structural reform could be in order.
- jimnotgym 8y agoIt hasn't made a decision. The EU parliament is just one step.
- etatoby 8y agoThe EU in its current shape seems almost purpose-built to detach the decision making process from public scrutiny, influence, and accountability. At the same time, it facilitates lobbying by private interests to a dangerous degree. I don't know whether those responsible for creating it did so on purpose, or by incompetence.
- Someguywhatever 8y agoLets build a gigantic bureaucracy and allow the most technologically illiterate people to decide weighty matters they haven't the foggiest clue about. What could go possibly go wrong?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoI think you just wrote "A Brief History of the World since 1689".
- nnain 8y agoMay I use this everytime I describe the Politics+Tech situation in India!
- 8y ago
- Mefis 8y agoTech giants must pay for work of artists and journalists which they use Small and micro platforms excluded from directive’s scope Hyperlinks, “accompanied by “individual words” can be shared freely Journalists must get a share of any copyright-related remuneration obtained by their publishing house Doesn't sound so bad... http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR12103/parliament-adopts-its-position-on-digital-copyright-rules http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR...
- jimnotgym 8y agoJust to be clear, as bad as this is, passing the European Parliament stage does not make it law. Now the national governments get their say. Plenty to fight for yet.
- hutzlibu 8y agoI don't like this law, but I don't think that the ones who made it are as stupid as most people here think it is. They are just ignorant of all the fallout and they care much more about, that this is directed against the "tech-giants", who happen to be mostly US companys. "We maybe cannot compete on internet technology, but we can regulate you". Plus, there is also allmost a economy war going on right now ... And of course to set up censorship in general. To start to fight hate speech, fake news, terror propaganda ... and whatever else might be inconvinient.
- andybak 8y agoLawmakers should appreciate the risk of unintended consequences - especially on this scale. I think "stupid" is a fairly reasonable appraisal.
- jimnotgym 8y agoI think you might find that US media firms are the ones lobbying for this in the first place. I don't think this is an anti-US regulation at heart. Btw, there are plenty of steps after the EU parliament before this becomes law.
- xienze 8y ago> And of course to set up censorship in general. To start to fight hate speech, fake news, terror propaganda ... and whatever else might be inconvinient. This is what it’s really about. They’re trying to ram through legislation that requires content providers to remove “extremist content” (as defined by our benevolent overlords) within an hour: http://www.13abc.com/content/news/EU-to-give-internet-firms-1-hour-to-remove-extremist-content-493050811.html http://www.13abc.com/content/news/EU-to-give-internet-firms-...
- singularity2001 8y ago> stupid as most people here think … They are just ignorant two words, one similar meaning
- hutzlibu 8y ago
- pier25 8y agoSo would these laws apply only to servers physically in Europe?
- brightball 8y agoGotta say, I wonder what the Brexit reaction to this will be?
- jacquesm 8y agoTo make a UK version of the law.
- timrichard 8y agoRubbish. Both major parties would be sensitive to the backlash, as neither is in a particularly strong position. 'U-turn' is an integral part of the UK political lexicon. That's the benefit of a working democracy where decisions are taken within the reach of the people. When legislation like this is steamrollered through the EU, it's obvious that resistance is futile.
- peterwwillis 8y agoLooks like Europeans can no longer hang over our American heads that our politicians are crazy. Turns out theirs are crazy too.
- lossolo 8y agoPlease weight your words. Europe didn't lose its Internet today. As to the content of this article: > Article 13: the Copyright Filters. All but the smallest platforms will have to defensively adopt copyright filters that examine everything you post and censor anything judged to be a copyright infringement. It's worth to mention what is smallest. Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC Article 2.2 states: Within the SME category, a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million. [4] They will not censor anything that is not copyrighted material and you have right to dispute that censoring (it's also in article 13) in case you have copyright to material posted/it's not copyrighted material. In which case they can't stop you posting that based on this law. Any action taken by platforms to check that uploads do not breach copyright rules must be designed in such a way as to avoid catching non-infringing works. As stated in Article 13.2a: Member States shall provide that where right holders do not wish to conclude licensing agreements, online content sharing service providers and right holders shall cooperate in good faith in order to ensure that unauthorised protected works or other subject matter are not available on their services. Cooperation between online content service providers and right holders shall not lead to preventing the availability of non-infringing works or other protected subject matter, including those covered by an exception or limitation to copyright. [1] These platforms will moreover be required to establish rapid redress systems (operated by the platform’s staff, not algorithms) through which complaints can be lodged when an upload is wrongly taken down. As stated in article 13.2b: Members States shall ensure that online content sharing service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case the cooperation referred to in paragraph 2a leads to unjustified removals of their content. Any complaint filed under such mechanisms shall be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review. Right holders shall reasonably justify their decisions to avoid arbitrary dismissal of complaints. Moreover, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, Directive 2002/58/EC and the General Data Protection Regulation, the cooperation shall not lead to any identification of individual users nor the processing of their personal data. Member States shall also ensure that users have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright rules [1] > Article 11: Linking to the news using more than one word from the article is prohibited unless you're using a service that bought a license from the news site you want to link to. This is wrong unless you make money of what you do, which point 1a clearly states: Article 11.1a: The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall not prevent legitimate private and non-commercial use of press publications by individual users. [1] Additionally if you make money of it you can link to the article and include individual words: Article 11.2a: The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall not extend to mere hyperlinks which are accompanied by individual words. [1] > Article 12a: No posting your own photos or videos of sports matches. Only the "organisers" of sports matches will have the right to publicly post any kind of record of the match. No posting your selfies, or short videos of exciting plays. You are the audience, your job is to sit where you're told, passively watch the game and go home. You know that exactly the same law applies to artists on concerts? You can legally record that and make selfies for your personal use but you can't share recordings publicly without consent? Most artists/copyright holders ignore that, this is why you see recordings on social media, youtube etc. But if they wanted to they could sue you. But sports at the moment is different. Some EU countries introduce protection of sports events on national level but not all. Look at ECJ (European Court of Justice) decision in Premier League v QC Leisure [2] in which court stated that sports events as such (notably football games) do not qualify as protected subject matter under EU copyright law. The Court explained that in order to be classified as a “work of authorship” the subject-matter concerned would have to be original in the sense of the author’s own intellectual creation. However, sporting events cannot be regarded as intellectual creations within the meaning of the EU Information Society Directive. This applies in particular to football matches, which are subject to rules of the game which leave no room for creative expressive freedom. The Court went even further and stated that sports events are not protected by European Union law on any other basis in the field of intellectual property, excluding therefore neighbouring or related rights to copyright (including database suigeneris rights) as well. [3] Terms and conditions of access attached to sport event tickets have nowadays developed into quite lengthy lists of contractual obligations, which can vary depending on the type of event and on its commercial relevance. By way of illustration, together with the prohibition to carry into the stadium items considered dangerous or otherwise inappropriate, the use of recording and broadcasting equipment, the unauthorized transmission and/or recording through mobile phones or other recording devices, and sometimes even flash photography are explicitly forbidden. These rules are purely contractual. Therefore, in the case in which a spectator has, without authorization, succeeded in recording the match on a personal device such as a smartphone and has uploaded the video on an online platform, a third party acting in good faith (such as the online platform) will not be bound by that contractual agreement. It follows that the platform operator, as well as any other third party, cannot be forced merely on this contractual basis to take down the content from the platform. Whereas it has been argued that amateur recordings do not really pose serious commercial threats to sports organisers (and in any case they still represent a breach of contract), the gap in the “house right” based legal protection of sports organisers is in the absence of third-party effects. [3] This is the reason why article 12.a was introduced, not someone personal selfies. Context is really important when commenting on law. [1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+TA+P8-TA-2018-0337+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//... [2] 403/08 and 429/08 Football Association Premier League Ltd and others v QC Leisure and others and Karen Murphy v Media Protection Services Ltd (2011) ECR-I-9083. [3] Margoni, T. (2016) The protection of sports events in the EU: Property,intellectual property, unfair competition and special forms of protection. [4] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:124:0036:0041:EN:PDF https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...
- sunstone 8y agoIt's awkward when government decisions are not subject to persuasive lobbying.
- petre 8y agoIs there a list with EU MPs and how they voted on this issue? I want to consider it when voting in the next EU Parliament election.
- keth 8y agoI believe you are looking for this: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bPV%2b20180912%2bRES-RCV%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN&language=EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f... Additionaly there is also this picture from Julia Reda: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm5kGq5X0AANQZs.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm5kGq5X0AANQZs.jpg Source: https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1039881088078958592 https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1039881088078958592
- dvh 8y ago>Linking to the news using more than one word from the article is prohibited What if someone write app that rewrite article using most common synonyms not present in the article?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]