5 ms·

> Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use? They do, and free speech and fair

by 08-15 8y ago

> Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use? They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.

wolfgke 8y ago
> They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them. The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use". Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (freie Meinungsäußerung). "Freie Meinungsäußerung", for example, does not include defamation criticism or libel. So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians, because this concept is simply not ingrained in German culture. To all the US free speech advocates: why is posting a copyrighted file in the internet not considered free speech and thus copyright law is to be abolished?
- 08-15 8y ago
  As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we? Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles. > So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians The Eurocrats do not want free speech to establish itself in the EU. That's very important to them.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    We do have free speech in the EU, claming otherwise would indicate that the European countries are no democracies. While the extent of free speech might vary from country to country, denying it is there goes way to far. Sure, there are limitations to it, e.g. denying the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in Germany, and with regards to defamation. But otherwise just about any opinion can be voiced freely. Thid doesn't mean that thios particular EU law is any good, it just screams big media corporation lobbyism all over it. And yes, this implies some future potential limitations to free speech,l either by technically limiting the reech of smaller players (regardless of what the law states) and by giving governmants a tool to keep things of the internet. Especially the last part is troubling.
    - jexah 8y ago
      What you are describing is a merged set of other named rights, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association, etc. The US (as far as I am aware) is the only country in the world with the Right to Free Speech. Free being the keyword here, "unconstrained". Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.
      - hef19898 8y ago
        Well, at least in Germany you can say all kinds of negative Things aboiut the government you want as long as you are not personally insulting anybody. In France as well as far as I know. Wether it is part of freedom of Speech or Freedom of Expression, well I'm no constitutional lawyer.
      - vidarh 8y ago
        You don't have the right to say anything you want in the US either. Free speech is full of exceptions in US law as well, starting with the most obvious example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" [1] (though the original decision the phrase refers to had nothing to do with someone shouting "fire"...) In other words: speech that would be likely to incite imminent lawless action. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
- charleslmunger 8y ago
  IANAL, but the legal answer for why free speech and copyright aren't mutually exclusive is that copyright is an explicitly listed power of congress in the constitution: The Congress shall have Power To... ...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; and Congress shall make no law... ...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; So it's implied (by the constitution not being tautological) that there's a balance between the right of the people (free speech) and an power of congress (to implement copyright). Note also that that defamation/libel are not protected by the first amendment, but the theshold for proving it is high - information has to be known to be false to the speaker, and inflict an actual injury. For public figures and politicians, the speaker has to have "actual malice". These are not often proven. For example, "sell more newspapers" would not rise to the level of "actual malice".
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Note that the power grant to Congress to establish copyright was in the original Constitution, while freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment, which - as the name says - is an amendment, which, by definition, changes the existing powers. The legal argument for that, rather, is that all rights are implicitly limited, and that, depending on how important the right in question is, how small the limitation is in scope, and how important the social objective that the limitation is intended to enable, it can be constitutional - with courts being the arbiters of what's important and what's small. The fact that the colonies had slander and libel laws on the book even as they passed the Constitution is often cited as a justification for this point of view. I think it's a case of parallel construction. The original First Amendment was not a problem to libel and slander because it simply didn't apply to the states at all, only the federal government, same as all others until they were incorporated via 14A. It does, however, clearly conflict with copyright, and there's nothing in the text of the Constitution that resolves that conflict one way or the other, or even sets clear guidelines on how you'd do so. So what we have in practice is mostly judicial precedent - and most of it is constructed out of necessity to make things work (i.e. "we've always done it this way", or "bad things happen if we don't do it this way"). So you have a patchwork of concepts like fair use, creative expression etc. The most convincing argument that I have heard is that freedom of speech is about freedom to express ideas, not freedom to use specific words to express those ideas. Since copyright only applies to the latter, it's not an infringement. I'm not sure I fully buy it, but it does highlight an important distinction. Stuff like fair use stems from that, to enable you to express an idea that's criticism of someone else's words. Here's an interesting read on the subject: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1103&context=jcl https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
gefh 8y ago
Please elaborate?
- 08-15 8y ago
  The impact on free speech and fair use is not a side effect of this new law, it's its purpose.

by 08-15 8y ago

> Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use? They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.

wolfgke 8y ago

> They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them. The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use". Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (freie Meinungsäußerung). "Freie Meinungsäußerung", for example, does not include defamation criticism or libel. So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians, because this concept is simply not ingrained in German culture. To all the US free speech advocates: why is posting a copyrighted file in the internet not considered free speech and thus copyright law is to be abolished?

08-15 8y ago
As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we? Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles. > So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians The Eurocrats do not want free speech to establish itself in the EU. That's very important to them.
- hef19898 8y ago
  We do have free speech in the EU, claming otherwise would indicate that the European countries are no democracies. While the extent of free speech might vary from country to country, denying it is there goes way to far. Sure, there are limitations to it, e.g. denying the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in Germany, and with regards to defamation. But otherwise just about any opinion can be voiced freely. Thid doesn't mean that thios particular EU law is any good, it just screams big media corporation lobbyism all over it. And yes, this implies some future potential limitations to free speech,l either by technically limiting the reech of smaller players (regardless of what the law states) and by giving governmants a tool to keep things of the internet. Especially the last part is troubling.
  - jexah 8y ago
    What you are describing is a merged set of other named rights, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association, etc. The US (as far as I am aware) is the only country in the world with the Right to Free Speech. Free being the keyword here, "unconstrained". Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.
    - hef19898 8y ago
      Well, at least in Germany you can say all kinds of negative Things aboiut the government you want as long as you are not personally insulting anybody. In France as well as far as I know. Wether it is part of freedom of Speech or Freedom of Expression, well I'm no constitutional lawyer.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      You don't have the right to say anything you want in the US either. Free speech is full of exceptions in US law as well, starting with the most obvious example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" [1] (though the original decision the phrase refers to had nothing to do with someone shouting "fire"...) In other words: speech that would be likely to incite imminent lawless action. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
charleslmunger 8y ago
IANAL, but the legal answer for why free speech and copyright aren't mutually exclusive is that copyright is an explicitly listed power of congress in the constitution: The Congress shall have Power To... ...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; and Congress shall make no law... ...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; So it's implied (by the constitution not being tautological) that there's a balance between the right of the people (free speech) and an power of congress (to implement copyright). Note also that that defamation/libel are not protected by the first amendment, but the theshold for proving it is high - information has to be known to be false to the speaker, and inflict an actual injury. For public figures and politicians, the speaker has to have "actual malice". These are not often proven. For example, "sell more newspapers" would not rise to the level of "actual malice".
- int_19h 8y ago
  Note that the power grant to Congress to establish copyright was in the original Constitution, while freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment, which - as the name says - is an amendment, which, by definition, changes the existing powers. The legal argument for that, rather, is that all rights are implicitly limited, and that, depending on how important the right in question is, how small the limitation is in scope, and how important the social objective that the limitation is intended to enable, it can be constitutional - with courts being the arbiters of what's important and what's small. The fact that the colonies had slander and libel laws on the book even as they passed the Constitution is often cited as a justification for this point of view. I think it's a case of parallel construction. The original First Amendment was not a problem to libel and slander because it simply didn't apply to the states at all, only the federal government, same as all others until they were incorporated via 14A. It does, however, clearly conflict with copyright, and there's nothing in the text of the Constitution that resolves that conflict one way or the other, or even sets clear guidelines on how you'd do so. So what we have in practice is mostly judicial precedent - and most of it is constructed out of necessity to make things work (i.e. "we've always done it this way", or "bad things happen if we don't do it this way"). So you have a patchwork of concepts like fair use, creative expression etc. The most convincing argument that I have heard is that freedom of speech is about freedom to express ideas, not freedom to use specific words to express those ideas. Since copyright only applies to the latter, it's not an infringement. I'm not sure I fully buy it, but it does highlight an important distinction. Stuff like fair use stems from that, to enable you to express an idea that's criticism of someone else's words. Here's an interesting read on the subject: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1103&context=jcl https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

gefh 8y ago

Please elaborate?

08-15 8y ago
The impact on free speech and fair use is not a side effect of this new law, it's its purpose.