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Despite best efforts, there's just no way around the general notion that affecting the tide affects all boats. You take the bad with the good of an internet wit

Despite best efforts, there's just no way around the general notion that affecting the tide affects all boats. You take the bad with the good of an internet with fewer restrictions, or you add both bad and good for everyone with restrictions. Even attempts to target legislation tend to have an unquantifiable ripple effect beyond the foresight of naive legislators.

Silhouette 8y ago
Despite best efforts, there's just no way around the general notion that affecting the tide affects all boats. Of course there is. You just add a minimum scale requirement before these obligations kick in, so they only affect sites that are big enough both to cause significant problems with illegitimate uploads and to have the resources to do something reasonable about it. Laws are written like this all the time in places with more sensible legal cultures, but the EU is infamous for not understanding why that is useful, and that brings us back to quanticle's point.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > Of course there is. You just add a minimum scale requirement before these obligations kick in, so they only affect sites that are big enough This is what I'm referencing in my last sentence, "Even attempts to target legislation tend to have an unquantifiable ripple effect beyond the foresight of naive legislators." This naive view doesn't respect the intertwining nature of businesses of all sizes that work in the industry nor does it take into account the chilling effects on growth (the latter being less of an issue). Small businesses lean on larger ones that might be targeted in a myriad of ways including infrastructure, standards, software, employment, acquisition potential, marketing, etc. Targeting them is like targeting me and to say "only affect sites that are big enough" is part of the classist dialog that too often exists in a utopian vacuum that assumes all results are the exact representation of their intentions.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    You are trying to make this into more than it is. The principle that some things are too small to be concerned about is a long-standing legal tradition, hence de minimis and so on. In my own country, the UK, many rules do not fully apply to very small businesses and various extra allowances are made financially, precisely because imposing the same rules on a five-person start-up as a 2,500-person international corporation may be disproportionate. There is nothing at all unusual or naive about this. It's done all the time. It's just not something the EU in particular has ever been very good at understanding or dealing with. For example, by their own admission, several of the key officials involved in the VAT changes a few years ago literally did not realise that many thousands of microbusinesses that would also be covered by the new rules even existed, nor that the new rules would essential cause them to not exist any more. The new copyright regime we're talking about here is a different context but still has the same underlying problem.
marcosdumay 8y ago
> You take the bad with the good of an internet with fewer restrictions, or you add both bad and good for everyone with restrictions. One could try enacting clear restrictions that do not require a team of lawyers to divine a meaning, and one of lobbyists to make sure the meaning is correct. You can write regulations that take intention and unlawful gains into account. And, finally, you can get somebody that understands the subject to tell you what can actually be done and what is sci-fi. But it seems that lawmakers worldwide consider themselves above that kind of concern.

Silhouette 8y ago

Despite best efforts, there's just no way around the general notion that affecting the tide affects all boats. Of course there is. You just add a minimum scale requirement before these obligations kick in, so they only affect sites that are big enough both to cause significant problems with illegitimate uploads and to have the resources to do something reasonable about it. Laws are written like this all the time in places with more sensible legal cultures, but the EU is infamous for not understanding why that is useful, and that brings us back to quanticle's point.

kodablah 8y ago
> Of course there is. You just add a minimum scale requirement before these obligations kick in, so they only affect sites that are big enough This is what I'm referencing in my last sentence, "Even attempts to target legislation tend to have an unquantifiable ripple effect beyond the foresight of naive legislators." This naive view doesn't respect the intertwining nature of businesses of all sizes that work in the industry nor does it take into account the chilling effects on growth (the latter being less of an issue). Small businesses lean on larger ones that might be targeted in a myriad of ways including infrastructure, standards, software, employment, acquisition potential, marketing, etc. Targeting them is like targeting me and to say "only affect sites that are big enough" is part of the classist dialog that too often exists in a utopian vacuum that assumes all results are the exact representation of their intentions.
- Silhouette 8y ago
  You are trying to make this into more than it is. The principle that some things are too small to be concerned about is a long-standing legal tradition, hence de minimis and so on. In my own country, the UK, many rules do not fully apply to very small businesses and various extra allowances are made financially, precisely because imposing the same rules on a five-person start-up as a 2,500-person international corporation may be disproportionate. There is nothing at all unusual or naive about this. It's done all the time. It's just not something the EU in particular has ever been very good at understanding or dealing with. For example, by their own admission, several of the key officials involved in the VAT changes a few years ago literally did not realise that many thousands of microbusinesses that would also be covered by the new rules even existed, nor that the new rules would essential cause them to not exist any more. The new copyright regime we're talking about here is a different context but still has the same underlying problem.

marcosdumay 8y ago

> You take the bad with the good of an internet with fewer restrictions, or you add both bad and good for everyone with restrictions. One could try enacting clear restrictions that do not require a team of lawyers to divine a meaning, and one of lobbyists to make sure the meaning is correct. You can write regulations that take intention and unlawful gains into account. And, finally, you can get somebody that understands the subject to tell you what can actually be done and what is sci-fi. But it seems that lawmakers worldwide consider themselves above that kind of concern.