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I support lots of initiatives from the EU resulting from the tech world being unable to self-regulate. This link-tax however is so extremely flawed, so obvious

I support lots of initiatives from the EU resulting from the tech world being unable to self-regulate. This link-tax however is so extremely flawed, so obviously lobbied by special interest and just fundamentally backwards wrt how the www works... I can’t see how they think they’re going to win the public opinion to support or respect it.

realusername 8y ago
> I support lots of initiatives from the EU resulting from the tech world being unable to self-regulate. I agree for the GDPR but not with this copyright directive, it's a massive disaster lobbied by the large copyright holders.
- kmlx 8y ago
  my country's government (EU-based) uses GDPR in order to hide corrupt state employees from public scrutiny. last time it was used to hide identities of local police who were caught on tape causing grievous bodily harm to protesters. the state refused to name the culprits due to GDPR. the same GDPR is also currently used to turn people away from hospitals, as those require tens of pages of signatures in order for them to be able to treat you. does it matter to the state that they're abusing gdpr? to the contrary. they've just found another toy to fuck us over. meanwhile I'm not only abused by the state, but a bunch of US-based websites basically cut off europe from the rest of the world. in the end all I can say is that while I support the principle behind most EU ideas, the actual law that gets adopted is usually a far cry from what it should have been. also, this sort of naivety when it comes to the state power is still mind boggling. if you think google is bad, you have no idea.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    The problem is that the only way a lot of these EU regulations can get through is by general directive: the intents and goals are agreed upon as a group, the implementation is left to the individual state. You can imagine how impossible it would be to get all European countries to agree on anything otherwise. On top of that, a lot of these rules do really need to be adapted to local national contexts to makes sense. However, that also leaves plenty of room for exploitation, like the stuff you mentioned. I'm sorry to hear the GDPR is being abused this way.
    - dantheman 8y ago
      Perhaps if it's hard to get agreement that's a good thing? Then only things that are truly agreed to would happen at the EU level. That seems like a feature of the system, not a bug.
      - vanderZwan 8y ago
        It is a feature of the system, and arguably a bug in human society
    - icebraining 8y ago
      The GDPR was implemented as a Regulation, not as a Directive, which means it wasn't adapted; the original text was directly applied to every EU nation. Of course, there's still the problem between the law and its enforcement. But that's often a problem even inside a single country.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    I wouldn't want my government to release the names of state employees, corrupt or not, to the people - especially if those people can become the target of mob justice. Of course, they should still be brought to trail or whatever when they are corrupt, but if that doesn't happen, then that is the problem - not that they're not being exposed to public rule.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >especially if those people can become the target of mob justice. Well at some point that becomes the only form of justice available. If the state is protecting bad actors what form of justice is left?
      - Vinnl 8y ago
        Correct; if the state can no longer democratically be controlled by citizens, revolution is the only option. However, when the state is protecting bad actors, one should not call for the law to be adjusted to allow for mob justice, but for a functioning judiciary branch.
        ealhad 8y ago
        Thank you.
  - Tsubasachan 8y ago
    Well the EU was originally supposed to be a club of like minded elites. Now countries like Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg share the EU with Bulgaria. Now if the EU was just an economic Union like the old EEC this wouldn't be a problem but we are long past that. This was all foreseen by the way but it was expected that the new member states would be uplifted like Spain and Portugal where in the 1970s.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Why does your country's government need the GDPR? Why couldn't they just pass their own law to do that?
dageshi 8y ago
Well, that is the double edged sword. For two decades or more we enjoyed an internet that was more or less free from regulation because the politicians of the era didn't really use it or understand it. Now the politicians do use it (I doubt they understand it) and are happy to regulate it, I imagine we can expect much more like this from the EU.
- matt4077 8y ago
  It has nothing to with any politicians using or not using the internet. It simply was "unregulated" because it has less impact on the world, and because existing laws were by and large adequate to capture everything that did happen (contrary to popular opinion, the internet has always been subject to regular laws, and some fraud on E-bay is not materially different from offline fraud)
  - Shivetya 8y ago
    No. What happened is politicians have found a new avenue for indirect taxation and the pay off long term is in the hundred of billions if not trillions of dollars over decades. The simplicity of it all is that it relies on the same two methods most indirect taxation works, ignorance and exploitation of jealousy. The ignorance part is easy, the public doesn't understand the scope of the issue or how it is a tax on their activities. The jealousy is sold by portraying those being taxed directly as not paying their fair share and such. Indirect taxes are the unseen but real burden on your paycheck
    - simias 8y ago
      I suppose you can reduce the fact that some people don't like that international tech giants effectively don't pay the same amount of taxes as the homegrown competition as "jealousy" but it's not extremely constructive. The big problem for the EU is that the internet is effectively a border-less global playing field which makes is very hard to enforce laws, taxes and regulations locally. I agree that their current approach is deeply flawed but at the same time it doesn't seem like we're nearing any kind of global governance for the internet so it seems that the alternative is either Chinese-style crass protectionism or just giving up and letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison.

realusername 8y ago

> I support lots of initiatives from the EU resulting from the tech world being unable to self-regulate. I agree for the GDPR but not with this copyright directive, it's a massive disaster lobbied by the large copyright holders.

kmlx 8y ago
my country's government (EU-based) uses GDPR in order to hide corrupt state employees from public scrutiny. last time it was used to hide identities of local police who were caught on tape causing grievous bodily harm to protesters. the state refused to name the culprits due to GDPR. the same GDPR is also currently used to turn people away from hospitals, as those require tens of pages of signatures in order for them to be able to treat you. does it matter to the state that they're abusing gdpr? to the contrary. they've just found another toy to fuck us over. meanwhile I'm not only abused by the state, but a bunch of US-based websites basically cut off europe from the rest of the world. in the end all I can say is that while I support the principle behind most EU ideas, the actual law that gets adopted is usually a far cry from what it should have been. also, this sort of naivety when it comes to the state power is still mind boggling. if you think google is bad, you have no idea.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  The problem is that the only way a lot of these EU regulations can get through is by general directive: the intents and goals are agreed upon as a group, the implementation is left to the individual state. You can imagine how impossible it would be to get all European countries to agree on anything otherwise. On top of that, a lot of these rules do really need to be adapted to local national contexts to makes sense. However, that also leaves plenty of room for exploitation, like the stuff you mentioned. I'm sorry to hear the GDPR is being abused this way.
  - dantheman 8y ago
    Perhaps if it's hard to get agreement that's a good thing? Then only things that are truly agreed to would happen at the EU level. That seems like a feature of the system, not a bug.
    - vanderZwan 8y ago
      It is a feature of the system, and arguably a bug in human society
  - icebraining 8y ago
    The GDPR was implemented as a Regulation, not as a Directive, which means it wasn't adapted; the original text was directly applied to every EU nation. Of course, there's still the problem between the law and its enforcement. But that's often a problem even inside a single country.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I wouldn't want my government to release the names of state employees, corrupt or not, to the people - especially if those people can become the target of mob justice. Of course, they should still be brought to trail or whatever when they are corrupt, but if that doesn't happen, then that is the problem - not that they're not being exposed to public rule.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >especially if those people can become the target of mob justice. Well at some point that becomes the only form of justice available. If the state is protecting bad actors what form of justice is left?
    - Vinnl 8y ago
      Correct; if the state can no longer democratically be controlled by citizens, revolution is the only option. However, when the state is protecting bad actors, one should not call for the law to be adjusted to allow for mob justice, but for a functioning judiciary branch.
      - ealhad 8y ago
        Thank you.
- Tsubasachan 8y ago
  Well the EU was originally supposed to be a club of like minded elites. Now countries like Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg share the EU with Bulgaria. Now if the EU was just an economic Union like the old EEC this wouldn't be a problem but we are long past that. This was all foreseen by the way but it was expected that the new member states would be uplifted like Spain and Portugal where in the 1970s.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Why does your country's government need the GDPR? Why couldn't they just pass their own law to do that?

dageshi 8y ago

Well, that is the double edged sword. For two decades or more we enjoyed an internet that was more or less free from regulation because the politicians of the era didn't really use it or understand it. Now the politicians do use it (I doubt they understand it) and are happy to regulate it, I imagine we can expect much more like this from the EU.

matt4077 8y ago
It has nothing to with any politicians using or not using the internet. It simply was "unregulated" because it has less impact on the world, and because existing laws were by and large adequate to capture everything that did happen (contrary to popular opinion, the internet has always been subject to regular laws, and some fraud on E-bay is not materially different from offline fraud)
- Shivetya 8y ago
  No. What happened is politicians have found a new avenue for indirect taxation and the pay off long term is in the hundred of billions if not trillions of dollars over decades. The simplicity of it all is that it relies on the same two methods most indirect taxation works, ignorance and exploitation of jealousy. The ignorance part is easy, the public doesn't understand the scope of the issue or how it is a tax on their activities. The jealousy is sold by portraying those being taxed directly as not paying their fair share and such. Indirect taxes are the unseen but real burden on your paycheck
  - simias 8y ago
    I suppose you can reduce the fact that some people don't like that international tech giants effectively don't pay the same amount of taxes as the homegrown competition as "jealousy" but it's not extremely constructive. The big problem for the EU is that the internet is effectively a border-less global playing field which makes is very hard to enforce laws, taxes and regulations locally. I agree that their current approach is deeply flawed but at the same time it doesn't seem like we're nearing any kind of global governance for the internet so it seems that the alternative is either Chinese-style crass protectionism or just giving up and letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison.