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I doubt most of those people who've bought into the notion that small businesses like Reddit and nonprofit services like Wikipedia would be affected have read t

I doubt most of those people who've bought into the notion that small businesses like Reddit and nonprofit services like Wikipedia would be affected have read the relevant text, considering the text specifically says nonprofits and small businesses are exempt [1] from the rules of Article 13 (the takedown one). I'm also puzzled by the people saying it's difficult to comprehend. The hardest part is mentally joining the diffs in amendments to the static copy before a document is updated. EU legislation is not nearly as weasely as US, and likes to use precise terms it defines earlier in the document. Such is the case with the terms 'information society service' and 'online content sharing service provider' [2], whose exact definitions are relevant. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18488844 [2] search for 'Amendment 150' in http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua...

Recursing 8y ago
How is Reddit a small business?
- sarcasmic 8y ago
  They're supposedly under 500 employees, which is the EU threshold for small and medium enterprise. They prominently mention their small business status in their post. It's likely that their assertion is deliberate.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - abc-xyz 8y ago
    Reddit having under 500 employees is beyond ridiculous.. it might be understandable if they were a honorable company that protected people's privacy, but they're the complete opposite, and they even go out of their way to make it near impossible for 99% of their users to download a video on their site (kinda hypocritical). If Reddit didn't exist and their traffic was driven to niche forums/websites then you could expect hundreds of thousands of jobs.
    - why_only_15 8y ago
      So it's great that Reddit exists because now you don't have to have hundreds of thousands of people maintaining these small websites and have hundreds of people maintaining one website.
      - abc-xyz 8y ago
        It would be great if they were a honorable company (ideally a non-profit org) that protected user privacy rather than taking great pride in violating it. And I don't think it's great that you have one site controlled by an evil company and filled with low quality content/discussion about every niche topic when you could instead visit 2-10 websites about the niche content you care about.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Employee count seems like a really bad way to measure business size. A hardware store business with only a couple of stores could hit 500 and still be virtually unknown to everyone but a business like reddit owns one of the biggest websites in the world with an almost global impact.
sarcasmic 8y ago
To add to my earlier, as a personal note, this is frustrating to me, because the text is clearly worded to target the likes of Google and YouTube without calling them out by name, while exempting pretty much all of academia, hobbyist sites, small businesses, intranets, and content platforms that don't actively promote and significantly profit off of their collection and curation of low-effort, low-remix, non-OC, verbatim reposts of someone else's copyrighted content. Yet, through the lobbying of interested parties the message becomes deliberately muddled. Sites like Reddit spread the FUD because were it not for their status as a small enterprise, the letter of the law could threaten their business model of aggregating large amounts of user-submitted content and profiting off of ads surfaced adjacent to them -- ironically, the old Reddit before ads would likely be exempt entirely. They see this law as an existential threat and lobby against it; this I can understand. What puzzles me is parties like the EFF and Wikimedia Foundation spreading the FUD. Wikimedia would clearly be exempt. What gives?
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > the text is clearly worded to target the likes of Google and YouTube without calling them out by name Google and YouTube already do this via ContentID, a system which only abuses small time creators. I don't see how expanding this EU-wide helps small businesses. Do you? > What gives? Room for abuse? Who do you think pushed for this? It wasn't your friendly neighborhood photographer. It was the RIAA/MPA etc. Just look at the DMCA. > What puzzles me is parties like the EFF and Wikimedia Foundation spreading the FUD What puzzles me is why would anyone who is not a dinosaur gatekeeper be for this?
- kodablah 8y ago
  Surely you can recognize targeting hosts of small business's content and traffic sources is essentially targeting small business. I would imagine this only frustrates you because you are not one of those small businesses leveraging the services of larger ones. Intent notwithstanding, who is really going to be harmed? Who is really going to be helped? Are your answers to those just hopes and is it fair for your hopes to affect the rest of the pragmatic internet?
- skewart 8y ago
paganel 8y ago
Reddit is not a “small business” anymore, it hasn’t been one for quite some time now. Let alone the fact that it’s the fourth most visited website in the United States, it’s now mentioned almost everywhere, from SEC press releases, The Economist articles or “Cahiers du Cinema” movie reviews (the last one really puzzled me as the current batch of Cahiers du Cinema writers are pretty anti-US and anti-technology).
- dijit 8y ago
  EU has a proper definition of what a small business is: > SMEs are defined by the European Commission as having less than 250 persons employed. They should also have an annual turnover of up to EUR 50 million, or a balance sheet total of no more than EUR 43 million (Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003). These definitions are important when assessing which enterprises may benefit from EU funding programmes aimed at promoting SMEs, as well as in relation to certain policies such as SME-specific competition rules. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/structural-business-statistics/sme https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statis...
  - paganel 8y ago
    Am on mobile and I’m too lazy to link, but I’ve found stories about Reddit having already reached $100 million in yearly turnover, which means that they’re no longer seen as a SME based on the second part of your post.
    - dijit 8y ago
      Yes. But the term is not ambiguous as the parent seemed to indicate.
  - ascar 8y ago
    According to Wikipedia Reddit had 230 employees 2017, so they are scratching the threshold or are already over it.
    - 8y ago
hyperpape 8y ago
If the law so clearly excludes Reddit, why are we reading this blog post? Is your claim that Reddit is confused about the law? Or something else?
zamalek 8y ago
The requirements are unreasonable no matter the size of the company. A perfect copyright filter is impossible. No matter how many resources you throw at the problem, content will spill through the cracks. The directive outlaws content sharing websites, regardless of who's running those websites.
ddingus 8y ago
Reddit is not a small business.

Recursing 8y ago

How is Reddit a small business?

sarcasmic 8y ago
They're supposedly under 500 employees, which is the EU threshold for small and medium enterprise. They prominently mention their small business status in their post. It's likely that their assertion is deliberate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- abc-xyz 8y ago
  Reddit having under 500 employees is beyond ridiculous.. it might be understandable if they were a honorable company that protected people's privacy, but they're the complete opposite, and they even go out of their way to make it near impossible for 99% of their users to download a video on their site (kinda hypocritical). If Reddit didn't exist and their traffic was driven to niche forums/websites then you could expect hundreds of thousands of jobs.
  - why_only_15 8y ago
    So it's great that Reddit exists because now you don't have to have hundreds of thousands of people maintaining these small websites and have hundreds of people maintaining one website.
    - abc-xyz 8y ago
      It would be great if they were a honorable company (ideally a non-profit org) that protected user privacy rather than taking great pride in violating it. And I don't think it's great that you have one site controlled by an evil company and filled with low quality content/discussion about every niche topic when you could instead visit 2-10 websites about the niche content you care about.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Employee count seems like a really bad way to measure business size. A hardware store business with only a couple of stores could hit 500 and still be virtually unknown to everyone but a business like reddit owns one of the biggest websites in the world with an almost global impact.

sarcasmic 8y ago

To add to my earlier, as a personal note, this is frustrating to me, because the text is clearly worded to target the likes of Google and YouTube without calling them out by name, while exempting pretty much all of academia, hobbyist sites, small businesses, intranets, and content platforms that don't actively promote and significantly profit off of their collection and curation of low-effort, low-remix, non-OC, verbatim reposts of someone else's copyrighted content. Yet, through the lobbying of interested parties the message becomes deliberately muddled. Sites like Reddit spread the FUD because were it not for their status as a small enterprise, the letter of the law could threaten their business model of aggregating large amounts of user-submitted content and profiting off of ads surfaced adjacent to them -- ironically, the old Reddit before ads would likely be exempt entirely. They see this law as an existential threat and lobby against it; this I can understand. What puzzles me is parties like the EFF and Wikimedia Foundation spreading the FUD. Wikimedia would clearly be exempt. What gives?

AsyncAwait 8y ago
> the text is clearly worded to target the likes of Google and YouTube without calling them out by name Google and YouTube already do this via ContentID, a system which only abuses small time creators. I don't see how expanding this EU-wide helps small businesses. Do you? > What gives? Room for abuse? Who do you think pushed for this? It wasn't your friendly neighborhood photographer. It was the RIAA/MPA etc. Just look at the DMCA. > What puzzles me is parties like the EFF and Wikimedia Foundation spreading the FUD What puzzles me is why would anyone who is not a dinosaur gatekeeper be for this?
kodablah 8y ago
Surely you can recognize targeting hosts of small business's content and traffic sources is essentially targeting small business. I would imagine this only frustrates you because you are not one of those small businesses leveraging the services of larger ones. Intent notwithstanding, who is really going to be harmed? Who is really going to be helped? Are your answers to those just hopes and is it fair for your hopes to affect the rest of the pragmatic internet?
skewart 8y ago

paganel 8y ago

Reddit is not a “small business” anymore, it hasn’t been one for quite some time now. Let alone the fact that it’s the fourth most visited website in the United States, it’s now mentioned almost everywhere, from SEC press releases, The Economist articles or “Cahiers du Cinema” movie reviews (the last one really puzzled me as the current batch of Cahiers du Cinema writers are pretty anti-US and anti-technology).

dijit 8y ago
EU has a proper definition of what a small business is: > SMEs are defined by the European Commission as having less than 250 persons employed. They should also have an annual turnover of up to EUR 50 million, or a balance sheet total of no more than EUR 43 million (Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003). These definitions are important when assessing which enterprises may benefit from EU funding programmes aimed at promoting SMEs, as well as in relation to certain policies such as SME-specific competition rules. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/structural-business-statistics/sme https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statis...
- paganel 8y ago
  Am on mobile and I’m too lazy to link, but I’ve found stories about Reddit having already reached $100 million in yearly turnover, which means that they’re no longer seen as a SME based on the second part of your post.
  - dijit 8y ago
    Yes. But the term is not ambiguous as the parent seemed to indicate.
- ascar 8y ago
  According to Wikipedia Reddit had 230 employees 2017, so they are scratching the threshold or are already over it.
  - 8y ago

hyperpape 8y ago

If the law so clearly excludes Reddit, why are we reading this blog post? Is your claim that Reddit is confused about the law? Or something else?

zamalek 8y ago

The requirements are unreasonable no matter the size of the company. A perfect copyright filter is impossible. No matter how many resources you throw at the problem, content will spill through the cracks. The directive outlaws content sharing websites, regardless of who's running those websites.

ddingus 8y ago

Reddit is not a small business.