7 ms·

I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a spectacular

by paol 8y ago

I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a spectacular own goal that is mainly going to hurt the idiots who lobbied for it. Giving companies direct liability for policing copyright in user-uploaded content is a much bigger disaster, on two separate fronts, both highly damaging: 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. Youtube reportedly spent tens of millions on it over several years. This tilts the field in favor of large incumbents even more than it already is by nature. While the amount of content to screen is really small, human-driven filtering is a possibility, but as soon as you need to scale up you're screwed. Any startup in Europe that needs to do this is a no-go from now on, IMO. 2) Back to that multi-milion content ID system: it sucks. It sucks really badly. It over-reports infringement left right and center. Now imagine what it will be like when youtube is liable a priori for every false negative; any sane legal department is going to demand a minimal number of false negatives at any cost. Now imagine what that will do to the false positive rate. Now imagine what the false positive rate will be when every site has to bodge together a similar system, with neither google's money nor google's technical expertise. The second point has been missed by most criticism of the Copyright Directive, and to me it's the biggest problem of all. I fear the wasteland that will result. Are we going back to the point where only a handful of content producers exist and everybody else should be content just consuming it? Welcome to the 20th century, Europe.

wbl 8y ago
No because you can publish it yourself. We don't need giant middlemen to use the Internet.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
  While that is true, it is quite difficult to compete against ad-revenue-driven content creation.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Eventually, people will have to run ads on their own websites, the same as before Youtube. There will be a lot less video content because serving video is a tough thing.
    - jopsen 8y ago
      I'm sure there are cloud providers out there offering this rather cheap... And it's only going to be cheaper in the future :)
      - Kalium 8y ago
        You're absolutely right! It's certainly going to become cheaper and easier to host video! With that said, is it perhaps possible that the problems publishers of content struggle with are in the main not those of the nuts and bolts of publishing? Perhaps, even, that these problems (content discovery, gaining access to users, analytics, ad management) might be well-addressed by platforms?
        whatshisface 8y ago
        We could start a company that indexes websites so that they can be discovered. To help them monetize their content, we could also design an advertising platform that didn't require any special contracts or business clout to join. An advertising platform that was based on the words on the webpage - we could use it to fund the discovery side of our business. Let me call up my Stanford buddies and we'll get going. I know a guy named Eric that might like this idea.
      - teraflop 8y ago
        It won't be so cheap if those cloud providers have to charge you the cost of the liability they're incurring for your potential copyright infringement.
- notatoad 8y ago
  most people do need middlemen though. if you require everybody to host their own content on their own websites, you go back to the old days of the internet where the only content was published by nerds. which had a certain charm, but was a lot smaller and less inclusive than today's internet.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    Alternatively: You create a market for better tools that make it easier for individuals and companies to self-publish.
    - dasil003 8y ago
      Problem is no one wants to be a pipe. Imagine what Twitter could have been if they had accepted this vision instead of turning into yet another media company that sells ads. Even ISPs are trying to be media companies.
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    it could be even easier than it was. there's no reason someone couldn't make a small bit of desktop software which, fed AWS/Azure/GCP/DO/github pages/etc credentials, set up every aspect of a website, and automatically synced some local directory of content to the relevant site.
    - jasode 8y ago
      >there's no reason someone couldn't make a small bit of desktop software which, fed AWS/Azure/GCP/DO/ The gp (notatoad) mentioned technical skill as a barrier and you responded to that point but easy-to-use idiot-proof software isn't really the issue. The bigger problem(s) mega-sites like Youtube solves is financial. When one uploads a video to Youtube, it doesn't matter if it gets 0 views or 1 billion views. The cost is the same to the uploader: $0. Hosting it on one's own with AWS/Azure/GCP/DigitalOcean/etc will have variable egress costs and budgeting/forecasting a potential expense of thousands of dollars is not something regular people want to tackle. (The difficulty of this should be apparent from the stories of sophisticated tech geeks getting blindsided by unexpected AWS bandwidth bills.) The other option of placing a bandwidth limit to cap the costs means you create a different problem: a popular video will result in web surfers seeing annoying "bandwidth exceeded" error messages. Another financial problem Youtube addresses is monetization. Hosting it on a self-managed cloud means less opportunities for ad revenue. Yes, a lot of HN despise ads but many uploaders of desirable video content like the ad payouts.
- Hemospectrum 8y ago
  Are you planning to run your own T1 lines to the backbone when you're building your own datacenter to host one video? We don't "need" them, sure, but we live in a society. We're supposed to be able to delegate work to others who specialize in doing it.
  - merlincorey 8y ago
    T1 lines provide a scant 1.544 Mbps of bandwidth. No one is doing any amount of video over T1 lines in 2018.
    - jamiek88 8y ago
      I took a double take at that. T1? For video? Does that still happen? I remember the massive boost getting a T1 at work was, in 2001.
    - Hemospectrum 8y ago
      Thanks, that was a dumb mistake on my part... And a mistake I wouldn’t make if I could rely on a third party to build and run a datacenter for me. I’m not interested in building a datacenter.
IanCal 8y ago
> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. There's stuff in every version I've read about the measures required being different due to size so I don't really follow the point here. And people on the other end (the uploaders) must have recourse, there's a mandated appeals process unlike the current situation.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  I'm sure you'll be able to fill out a form and get an email a day later, "We're sorry, we've reviewed your case but have decided against you (because we have no reason to ever take any risk)" The DMCA is a shining example of just how well these appeals processes work...
  - IanCal 8y ago
    > The measures taken by the online content sharing service providers should be without prejudice to the application of exceptions and limitations to copyright, including in particular those which guarantee the freedom of expression of users. For that purpose the service providers should put in place mechanisms allowing users to complain about the blocking or removal of uploaded content that could benefit from an exception or limitation to copyright. Replies to the users’ complaints should be provided in a timely manner. To make these mechanisms function, cooperation from rightholders is needed, in particular with regard to the assessment of the complaints submitted and justifications for the removal of users’ content. Emphasis mine. The section also says member states are free to put in place independent authorities to assess these, although I'm sure somewhere else it in this is a requirement rather than simply a suggestion. I'll update if I can find it. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf
  - AnssiH 8y ago
    I don't think that would satisfy the requirements of the directive: > 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. It also requires Member States to 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". (source PDF 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//... )
milesskorpen 8y ago
I'd hope (?) that one outcome is 3rd party sass companies which are willing to do this screening (ala Sift Science) and potentially even insure to handle the risk (ala Climate Corp, which offers farmers insurance based on the outcomes of its models). If the EU has these laws, this could be a solid business model.
- drb91 8y ago
  Yes, this can make jobs, and also some individuals very wealthy, but this is a net loss for the users of the internet: just another channel controlled by profit-seeking corporate motives.
- bduerst 8y ago
  You'd probably see search engines & other traffic generators (e.g. reddit) simply vertically integrating into news itself, which nobody wants. For example, Microsoft already owns CBS interactive and would push more news traffic there with Bing results, rather than pay a link tax to third parties.
- izacus 8y ago
  Those companies already exist (they're intermediaries between large publishers and YT) and all they bring to the table is yet another layer of "it's not my fault, the computer says no" indirection and blame shifting. They add another huge source of false positives which will delete what you create with no accountability.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > 3rd party sass companies which are willing to do this screening That’s not a technology business. It’s more like insurance. The principal balance sheet item would be legal liability. As a result, legal costs would be high. You’d need to capture most of publishers’ revenues, I think, to make the books balance.
sildur 8y ago
Where you see disasters, I see business oportunities.
- coldtea 8y ago
  People making money off of a disaster doesn't make it less disastrous. People can make money off of everything, including wars.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Are we going back to the point where only a handful of content producers exist and everybody else should be content just consuming it? YouTube could just block non-local content to users in the EU and charge content providers in the EU an upload fee. The upload fee could be made low enough so as to not be intrusitive (or incubate competition) but high enough to cover a good fraction of the additional costs.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  But I don't think it's a problem solvable by more money... The upload fee would just funnel to legal costs, since no one has anything better than content id, and europe is saying that content id isn't good enough.
matt4077 8y ago
Pre-screening is a huge burden indeed. Yet if we start with the assumption that copyright law is good in principle, I can sort of see the point of copyright holders: That burden or identifying infringing content exists no matter what. Right now, it falls on the creators to patrol the internet and play wack-a-mole with infringing uploads. I can't really come up with an argument why creators should be saddled with that effort, when they get nothing out of it by default. Whereas all the profits accrue with the platforms. It also seems trivially obvious that it's far easier for a platform to run some algorithm on their content, than it is for every single photographer and/or musician, author, etc. The latter would require an effort on the scale of Googlebot. If youtube wants to profit from the possibilities new technology creates, they are on the hook to create the concomitant tools to prevent harms. It's no different than, say, an inventor pushing a new method to synthesize insulin being responsible for its safety. If it's impossible to do so, they can't just throw up their hands, point to their best effort, and tell patients to "take adequate precautions".
paulie_a 8y ago
The weird thing is that Google previously and maybe still has enough cash around to simply buy the vast majority of the music and movie industry. I just checked, they literally could buy most of the music and movie industry. Problem solved
Reason077 8y ago
The Copyright Directive is a textbook example of regulatory capture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
AnssiH 8y ago
> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. I will be extremely surprised if that will be required from small companies, considering the directive expressly says that "special account shall be taken of [...] ensuring that the burden on SMEs remains appropriate and that automated blocking of content is avoided." (SME = Small and medium-sized enterprises) There is also no language saying that pre-screening is required, only that "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", which could, IMO, be satisfied by a DMCA-style complaints process. > The second point has been missed by most criticism of the Copyright Directive, and to me it's the biggest problem of all. IMO trying to fix the false positive issue is the best part of the directive, as it requires access to human review, reasonably justified decisions, and it requires users to have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes. This would be a big improvement over the current Youtube system. (source PDF: 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//... )
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  and i am sure the properly-greased hand will ascertain that the right businesses get classified as "SME" and the wrong ones do not ;)
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Nope, the EU has a formal definition of a SME: "The category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is made up of enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding 50 million euro, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding 43 million euro."
    - niftich 8y ago
      Source on the EU SME definition is: 'Evaluation of the SME definition - Final Report' [1], published 2014-03-28. [1] https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/5849c2fe-dcd9-410e-af37-1d375088e886 https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publi...
netcan 8y ago
This is a good example of how "Regulation" ends up favoring large companies and status quo.
tomphoolery 8y ago
> Back to that multi-milion content ID system: it sucks. It sucks really badly. It over-reports infringement left right and center. I literally built my own video sharing platform to get around it: http://brother.ly http://brother.ly Fuck YouTube and everyone who works for YouTube.

by paol 8y ago

wbl 8y ago

No because you can publish it yourself. We don't need giant middlemen to use the Internet.

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
While that is true, it is quite difficult to compete against ad-revenue-driven content creation.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Eventually, people will have to run ads on their own websites, the same as before Youtube. There will be a lot less video content because serving video is a tough thing.
  - jopsen 8y ago
    I'm sure there are cloud providers out there offering this rather cheap... And it's only going to be cheaper in the future :)
    - Kalium 8y ago
      You're absolutely right! It's certainly going to become cheaper and easier to host video! With that said, is it perhaps possible that the problems publishers of content struggle with are in the main not those of the nuts and bolts of publishing? Perhaps, even, that these problems (content discovery, gaining access to users, analytics, ad management) might be well-addressed by platforms?
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        We could start a company that indexes websites so that they can be discovered. To help them monetize their content, we could also design an advertising platform that didn't require any special contracts or business clout to join. An advertising platform that was based on the words on the webpage - we could use it to fund the discovery side of our business. Let me call up my Stanford buddies and we'll get going. I know a guy named Eric that might like this idea.
    - teraflop 8y ago
      It won't be so cheap if those cloud providers have to charge you the cost of the liability they're incurring for your potential copyright infringement.
notatoad 8y ago
most people do need middlemen though. if you require everybody to host their own content on their own websites, you go back to the old days of the internet where the only content was published by nerds. which had a certain charm, but was a lot smaller and less inclusive than today's internet.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  Alternatively: You create a market for better tools that make it easier for individuals and companies to self-publish.
  - dasil003 8y ago
    Problem is no one wants to be a pipe. Imagine what Twitter could have been if they had accepted this vision instead of turning into yet another media company that sells ads. Even ISPs are trying to be media companies.
- sigstoat 8y ago
  it could be even easier than it was. there's no reason someone couldn't make a small bit of desktop software which, fed AWS/Azure/GCP/DO/github pages/etc credentials, set up every aspect of a website, and automatically synced some local directory of content to the relevant site.
  - jasode 8y ago
    >there's no reason someone couldn't make a small bit of desktop software which, fed AWS/Azure/GCP/DO/ The gp (notatoad) mentioned technical skill as a barrier and you responded to that point but easy-to-use idiot-proof software isn't really the issue. The bigger problem(s) mega-sites like Youtube solves is financial. When one uploads a video to Youtube, it doesn't matter if it gets 0 views or 1 billion views. The cost is the same to the uploader: $0. Hosting it on one's own with AWS/Azure/GCP/DigitalOcean/etc will have variable egress costs and budgeting/forecasting a potential expense of thousands of dollars is not something regular people want to tackle. (The difficulty of this should be apparent from the stories of sophisticated tech geeks getting blindsided by unexpected AWS bandwidth bills.) The other option of placing a bandwidth limit to cap the costs means you create a different problem: a popular video will result in web surfers seeing annoying "bandwidth exceeded" error messages. Another financial problem Youtube addresses is monetization. Hosting it on a self-managed cloud means less opportunities for ad revenue. Yes, a lot of HN despise ads but many uploaders of desirable video content like the ad payouts.
Hemospectrum 8y ago
Are you planning to run your own T1 lines to the backbone when you're building your own datacenter to host one video? We don't "need" them, sure, but we live in a society. We're supposed to be able to delegate work to others who specialize in doing it.
- merlincorey 8y ago
  T1 lines provide a scant 1.544 Mbps of bandwidth. No one is doing any amount of video over T1 lines in 2018.
  - jamiek88 8y ago
    I took a double take at that. T1? For video? Does that still happen? I remember the massive boost getting a T1 at work was, in 2001.
  - Hemospectrum 8y ago
    Thanks, that was a dumb mistake on my part... And a mistake I wouldn’t make if I could rely on a third party to build and run a datacenter for me. I’m not interested in building a datacenter.

IanCal 8y ago

> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. There's stuff in every version I've read about the measures required being different due to size so I don't really follow the point here. And people on the other end (the uploaders) must have recourse, there's a mandated appeals process unlike the current situation.

vorpalhex 8y ago
I'm sure you'll be able to fill out a form and get an email a day later, "We're sorry, we've reviewed your case but have decided against you (because we have no reason to ever take any risk)" The DMCA is a shining example of just how well these appeals processes work...
- IanCal 8y ago
  > The measures taken by the online content sharing service providers should be without prejudice to the application of exceptions and limitations to copyright, including in particular those which guarantee the freedom of expression of users. For that purpose the service providers should put in place mechanisms allowing users to complain about the blocking or removal of uploaded content that could benefit from an exception or limitation to copyright. Replies to the users’ complaints should be provided in a timely manner. To make these mechanisms function, cooperation from rightholders is needed, in particular with regard to the assessment of the complaints submitted and justifications for the removal of users’ content. Emphasis mine. The section also says member states are free to put in place independent authorities to assess these, although I'm sure somewhere else it in this is a requirement rather than simply a suggestion. I'll update if I can find it. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf
- AnssiH 8y ago
  I don't think that would satisfy the requirements of the directive: > 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. It also requires Member States to 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". (source PDF 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//... )

milesskorpen 8y ago

I'd hope (?) that one outcome is 3rd party sass companies which are willing to do this screening (ala Sift Science) and potentially even insure to handle the risk (ala Climate Corp, which offers farmers insurance based on the outcomes of its models). If the EU has these laws, this could be a solid business model.

drb91 8y ago
Yes, this can make jobs, and also some individuals very wealthy, but this is a net loss for the users of the internet: just another channel controlled by profit-seeking corporate motives.
bduerst 8y ago
You'd probably see search engines & other traffic generators (e.g. reddit) simply vertically integrating into news itself, which nobody wants. For example, Microsoft already owns CBS interactive and would push more news traffic there with Bing results, rather than pay a link tax to third parties.
izacus 8y ago
Those companies already exist (they're intermediaries between large publishers and YT) and all they bring to the table is yet another layer of "it's not my fault, the computer says no" indirection and blame shifting. They add another huge source of false positives which will delete what you create with no accountability.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> 3rd party sass companies which are willing to do this screening That’s not a technology business. It’s more like insurance. The principal balance sheet item would be legal liability. As a result, legal costs would be high. You’d need to capture most of publishers’ revenues, I think, to make the books balance.

sildur 8y ago

Where you see disasters, I see business oportunities.

coldtea 8y ago
People making money off of a disaster doesn't make it less disastrous. People can make money off of everything, including wars.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Are we going back to the point where only a handful of content producers exist and everybody else should be content just consuming it? YouTube could just block non-local content to users in the EU and charge content providers in the EU an upload fee. The upload fee could be made low enough so as to not be intrusitive (or incubate competition) but high enough to cover a good fraction of the additional costs.

sdenton4 8y ago
But I don't think it's a problem solvable by more money... The upload fee would just funnel to legal costs, since no one has anything better than content id, and europe is saying that content id isn't good enough.

matt4077 8y ago

Pre-screening is a huge burden indeed. Yet if we start with the assumption that copyright law is good in principle, I can sort of see the point of copyright holders: That burden or identifying infringing content exists no matter what. Right now, it falls on the creators to patrol the internet and play wack-a-mole with infringing uploads. I can't really come up with an argument why creators should be saddled with that effort, when they get nothing out of it by default. Whereas all the profits accrue with the platforms. It also seems trivially obvious that it's far easier for a platform to run some algorithm on their content, than it is for every single photographer and/or musician, author, etc. The latter would require an effort on the scale of Googlebot. If youtube wants to profit from the possibilities new technology creates, they are on the hook to create the concomitant tools to prevent harms. It's no different than, say, an inventor pushing a new method to synthesize insulin being responsible for its safety. If it's impossible to do so, they can't just throw up their hands, point to their best effort, and tell patients to "take adequate precautions".

paulie_a 8y ago

The weird thing is that Google previously and maybe still has enough cash around to simply buy the vast majority of the music and movie industry. I just checked, they literally could buy most of the music and movie industry. Problem solved

Reason077 8y ago

The Copyright Directive is a textbook example of regulatory capture. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

AnssiH 8y ago

> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. I will be extremely surprised if that will be required from small companies, considering the directive expressly says that "special account shall be taken of [...] ensuring that the burden on SMEs remains appropriate and that automated blocking of content is avoided." (SME = Small and medium-sized enterprises) There is also no language saying that pre-screening is required, only that "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", which could, IMO, be satisfied by a DMCA-style complaints process. > The second point has been missed by most criticism of the Copyright Directive, and to me it's the biggest problem of all. IMO trying to fix the false positive issue is the best part of the directive, as it requires access to human review, reasonably justified decisions, and it requires users to have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes. This would be a big improvement over the current Youtube system. (source PDF: 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//... )

dmitrygr 8y ago
and i am sure the properly-greased hand will ascertain that the right businesses get classified as "SME" and the wrong ones do not ;)
- GordonS 8y ago
  Nope, the EU has a formal definition of a SME: "The category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is made up of enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding 50 million euro, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding 43 million euro."
  - niftich 8y ago
    Source on the EU SME definition is: 'Evaluation of the SME definition - Final Report' [1], published 2014-03-28. [1] https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/5849c2fe-dcd9-410e-af37-1d375088e886 https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publi...

netcan 8y ago

This is a good example of how "Regulation" ends up favoring large companies and status quo.

tomphoolery 8y ago

> Back to that multi-milion content ID system: it sucks. It sucks really badly. It over-reports infringement left right and center. I literally built my own video sharing platform to get around it: http://brother.ly http://brother.ly Fuck YouTube and everyone who works for YouTube.