24 ms·

Article 13 is almost finished and will change the internet as we know it

• philipps 8y ago
  I am curious about other interpretations of the impact this law will have. Would it encourage the development of more peer-to-peer sharing networks, which lack a central space to upload? I wish we had the kind of concerted effort that the copyright lobby is able to launch, but focused on issues that reduce the net benefit of these platform more than copyright infringement: hate speech or intentional misinformation.
  • cinquemb 8y ago
    Maybe not encourage, but it will increase the incentives for those to pursue other options if complying will get increasingly more expensive. Though I doubt traditional corporations will be able to take advantage of it since they will be tied by the rules to continue their advantage in the status quo.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    Shifting legal risks from you to your users doesn't seem like a good strategy for growing your product.
    • zdkl 8y ago
      Maybe that is the point. We need services not products, and maybe limiting the viability of traditional centralised (risk, data, prestation) products could allow a new category of distributed (risk, data,...) services to fill in the need.
  • Arnt 8y ago
    It'll encourage growth of telegram/whatsapp groups where stuff is forwarded around and reaches a large audience, but without a crawlable URL. Social networks.
    • glogla 8y ago
      Like in the old Direct Connect days.
  • ahje 8y ago
    The popularity of modern streaming services combined with the shortage of IP addresses and subsequent spread of carrier-grade NAT will make it a bit difficult for regular P2P networks to make a come-back. I can, however, imagine this will have result in a small boost for self-hosted content. I can imagine someone writing a TOR-based eMule client or something along those lines but it won't be anywhere near as common as it was back in the days; ease of use has always been an important factor and today we actually do have commercial alternatives in place this time. As I see it, the main impact will be for social networks and other sites that allow user uploads. There's an actual chance the people behind the law simply don't understand that what they're asking isn't possible, and that many politicians think we just need to solve this with blockchains and machine learning (because that's apparently how to fix everything nowadays). In the real world, however, I really see no way to comply with that law without mass-monitoring and very far-reaching automatic censorship of uploaded content.
• LoSboccacc 8y ago
  Well there goes my startup idea I was working on and off last two years.
  • DanBC 8y ago
    Your startup idea was to host large amounts of copyrighted material for profit, without checking who had the rights to distribute that material? In some parts of the EU that's already illegal. Not just a civil tort for which you can be sued, but an actual criminal offence for which you can be prosecuted. Which would you prefer?
    • LoSboccacc 8y ago
      > Your startup idea was to host large amounts of copyrighted material for profit, without checking who had the rights to distribute that material? of course not don't be silly. but so far liability was on the uploader, when the police comes knocking you gave out user data and that was it. see, for example, the jsfiddle constant issue with illegal content: https://remysharp.com/2015/09/18/jsbin-toxic-part-5 https://remysharp.com/2015/09/18/jsbin-toxic-part-5 people miss here that any user generated content could be part of a copyright. even text if they are lyrics. there's NO user platform that's safe.
      • DanBC 8y ago
        Can you post a link to the bits of article 13 (from the EU source) that you think make your idea unworkable?
• suomiperkels 8y ago
  That's why more and more people feel resentment towards their states and the EU. This is a blatant corruption and this is only going to get worse. There should be an investigation of all the people involved, money traced even for distant family members and acquaintances. If any shady behaviour is discovered then the justice should be dispensed. Any politician that abuses his position to serve company interest in exchange for money should receive a capital punishment as a deterrent
• marak830 8y ago
  Bloody hell that's rather terrifying. After GDPR I was thinking Europe would be the bastion of the internet, now it looks like it's time to decentralise the internet completely. Which is going to surely have it's own issues I'm sure.
  • joejerryronnie 8y ago
    Therein lies the problem of regulating something like the internet. It’s impossible for regulating bodies to find the perfect balance and then just stop.
  • vixen99 8y ago
    its own issues
    • marak830 8y ago
      Yeah phone autocorrect.
• shubb 8y ago
  So usenet is dead, right? 90%, usenet ISPs are a download server pretenting to be a mail server so they can claim safe harbour. If they are responsible for auditing their content, presumably this isn't viable anymore...
  • yani 8y ago
    I am so tired of this abuse ... finally there is light
    • ahje 8y ago
      How will this help? The usenet providers will be responsible for the uploads their own customers do -- not for the content posted elsewhere on Usenet.
      • shubb 8y ago
        If in a federated platform the ISP is not responsible for content they agregate, that's a big loophole. It would really encourage P2P approaches.
• radarsat1 8y ago
  The GDPR has already resulted in quite a few websites simply refusing to serve the EU. Will this clinch it? Will the EU be cut off form the internet due to over-regulation that no one wants to put themselves at risk over?
  • kuu 8y ago
    Nope
  • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    I've so far only noticed the blocking on (tabloid) US news sites which when visited with a VPN are full of trackers and overflowing with ads. It didn't feel like a loss to me but would be curious to know if there are services which people feel they really needed/wanted but now can't access w/out VPN?
    • mbel 8y ago
      Instapaper was a sort of nice utility that blocked EU users after May last year. Fortunately there are alternatives, some of them arguably superior (pinboard?).
      • fredoliveira 8y ago
        To be fair, it's been back for a few months and when they did bring it back, they apologized for how they handled the issue for EU citizens.
    • tallanvor 8y ago
      The Chicago Tribune is not a tabloid, and it blocks EU visitors now, nor are many TV stations that now block people from outside the US. Even a VPN doesn't always solve the problem, unfortunately. It's also very annoying that Google News still shows links from those sites even though you can't actually visit them.
      • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
• ptah 8y ago
  seems fair, if you're going to make your money from user created content
• yani 8y ago
  I like this new law. My rights are abused every hour and corporations hide behind the safe harbour. It is a really good thing. Keep up EU
  • kmonsen 8y ago
    Can you be more specific? Which rights?
    • yani 8y ago
      I have a software product. People resell it on marketplaces. They make €30~50,000 per year from doing this. When I contact the marketplaces they hide behind safe harbour - yes, they suspend the user account but the same user will register the next day under a different name and keep the same practice. The responsibility of the content published should be shifted from the author to the platform so abuse like this is not repeated.
      • ad_hominem 8y ago
        > The responsibility of the content published should be shifted from the author to the platform How is the platform going to know what's legally published and what isn't? In some cases I suppose you can work with an industry, like YouTube's Content ID for music, however even with Google's resources Content ID still has severe glitches[1] (should they be legally responsible for false positives too?). Otherwise what, hire an army of mechanical turks to manually review every single thing that's uploaded? At best I think under this kind of system you're going to get a stagnant landscape where only corporate giants with deep pockets and/or industry connections can create new innovative products. There's going to be no more upstart Instagrams, Snapchats, Soundclouds, whatever if the company can get sued into oblivion if some rando takes a pic or uploads a snippet of copyrighted material. [1]: https://twitter.com/SmellyOctopus/status/1082771468377821185 https://twitter.com/SmellyOctopus/status/1082771468377821185
      • stordoff 8y ago
        > I have a software product. People resell it on marketplaces. Can you elaborate on why this is occurring in an illegal fashion? UsedSoft v Oracle [1] and Aleksandrs Ranks and Jurijs Vasiļevičs [2] seem to broadly suggest that reselling used software is legal. [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=124564&doclang=EN http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=124... [2] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=184446&doclang=EN http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=184...
• haywirez 8y ago
  I'm worried about influencing outcomes in the EU due to language barriers, especially on boring and "unsexy" issues like Internet regulation. It'd be important for the EU to be able to vote for representatives regardless of your primary jurisdiction. Even if I manage to convince most of the representatives from my region, they will be outvoted by the French who had a big hand in passing the proposal forward the last time... It's like they reside in a completely different universe, with no hope of meaningful communication. Edit: adding a link to this false-positive emulator script[0] as an example of how stupid the proposal is. [0]: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1015594170424193024 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1015594170424193024
  • aloisdg 8y ago
    This is why we need Esperanto.
    • azangru 8y ago
      Or English as the officially recognised global language ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      • austincheney 8y ago
        Why not Mandarin?
        • eps 8y ago
          Because English is one of the simplest languages to learn. A better question is why not Spanish?
          • StavrosK 8y ago
            Please stop with this fiction. I bet you never had to learn English as a second language. It's very hard.
            • 8y ago
• tikumo 8y ago
  This wil change nothing that is not already in effect for most sites. Try to upload a movie to Youtube, it will be removed. But only when the owner/author complains or some automatic filter is triggered. There is also too much content to check and enforce it all.
  • abdulmuhaimin 8y ago
    yeah, youtube is already there, but with the amount of copyright system abuse there are, I personally dont want others to become like youtube in regards to copyright/legality.
  • toyg 8y ago
    Not most sites. In fact, youtube is somewhat the exception; they developed censoring capabilities only because their size made them too big of a target to dodge legal pressure. There are bazillions of other sites who don’t (and often can’t) police anything of what they host unless they are threatened with litigation.
  • c3o 8y ago
    YouTube has stated that if this passes, "EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times" – i.e. despite all the overblocking and mistakes, still too much slips through ContentID for them to take the risk of direct liability. https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/11/i-support-goals-of-article-13-i-also.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/11/i-support-go...
    • consp 8y ago
      I hope this happens and everyone will wake up, complain and the directive will be changed.
      • philpem 8y ago
        In all likelihood, EU users will just end up using VPN-type services to bypass the blocks... rather than talking to their MEPs. (I don't blame them to be fair, I've gone down the MEP route - they replied with a form letter to the effect of "this is party policy and I'll support it because it's for your own good, and I'm not discussing it further")
• SidItion 8y ago
  Julia is running her own upload filter in advance of the legislation she is fighting. My comment does not appear on her site.
• danijelb 8y ago
  In a weird way, this might be EU's strategy to finally deal significant damage to Google and Facebook, as this law will encourage development of alternatives on decentralized peer-to-peer technologies. However, I'm not sure if EU politicians are that smart...
  • jaabe 8y ago
    It’s not made by EU politicians, it’s made by a combination of lawyers, engineers and public administration majors. In many ways the EU is a functioning technocracy, and if you ever read through the actual EU documents it shows. They are almost always sound, they are also massively bureaucratic and around 90% longer than necessary, but I’ve never read through something that wasn’t sound. Disclaimer: I haven’t read up on article 13, but I do read (and sit through) a good deal of EU standards and proposals for EU wide Enterprise Architectural principles, and they are never thwarted by politics.
    • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
      >the EU is a functioning technocracy, only it's not really functioning is it?
      • sexydefinesher 8y ago
        What do you see as not functioning in the EU?
        • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
          have you ever been to rural Germany, Italy, France or heard of gilets jaunes? Any idea why they might exist? I live in a very poor EU country (out of choice) and most young people fuck off to Germany or France because their home states have no jobs for them. They don't come back either which causes a massive brain drain on these places. Ask the so called middle class in Croatia, Slovakia, Italy what they think of the EU and how well it works for them. Avg salary in these places is 500 to 1000 EUR. And if you visit supermarkets all they have is shit. Literally everything like fresh veg tastes like feet because the good stuff that is locally produced gets exported to the rich places. Companies have 2 production lines making low-grade products (despite being the same brand) for these markets. I'm not an arm-chair bureaucrat who forms his opinion on Google. I actually live in these placed because despite all this shit and poverty the people are actually warm. One more example: thousands of people wiping arses in nursery homes in Germany are working through shady polish, slovenian, etc outsourcing companies where they're stripped of all benefits that a German would enjoy. They work for 500 to 1000 / month (in a high cost country) because their home country has no jobs for them. Then they're being exploited by the rich EU countries. Again I lived in Germany, ran 2 companies there, lived in France (operated 3 businesses), now I live in Eastern EU. As much as I want the EU to succeed I can't be blind to the hypocrisy that I see every day on the streets in my own surrounding.
• austincheney 8y ago
  How will this be different from SOPA?
  • raverbashing 8y ago
    It isn't different from SOPA (or from ACTA)
• josteink 8y ago
  OK. So I'd like to help make some noise surrounding this issue. Who should I email for best impact?
  • mpartel 8y ago
    Your MEPs, politely and in your own words.
    • petre 8y ago
      I've already tried e-mailing the MEPs, it doesn't work. If you do get a response it goes in the lines of sorry mate, but you're wrong, here's why blah blah; our party consensus is that we're doing the right thing by voting for this controversial measure. Good luck with that.
      • corin_ 8y ago
        That doesn't mean that contacting MEPs "doesn't work", you can't expect them to change their opinion immediately based on receiving one email from one of their constituents.
      • tomatotomato37 8y ago
        Use handwritten snail mail; generally the less effort a communication medium takes the less the politicians pay attention. Though with how many of them are on board you may want to start researching up on their opponents for the next election
• bloak 8y ago
  It's unclear to me what "internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of ... works uploaded by their users" really means. It presumably applies to Facebook. It presumably doesn't apply to e-mail. But if I had a social networking service that had no advertising and was only accessible to its paying users, would the law apply to it? What if postings were encrypted and could only be read by users that had requested access to them? Would the company running the service be expected to either backdoor the encryption or create bogus accounts and request access from those bogus accounts in order to monitor postings that might contain infringing content?
• DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  this ham fisted proposal was heavily pushed by France. Yet legislators have no idea why people hate Brussels and the EU? This is how people get red-pilled! But maybe it's what all us Europeans deserve ... Time to put on a yellow vest and add this to the agenda of demands. Go yellow or go home.
• Legogris 8y ago
  This has the potential of being a blessing in the disguise since these barriers will not hold for decentralized alternatives where there is no obvious platform operator to hold responsible.
  • andybak 8y ago
    A ray of light in the gloom... I do hope so. And as sad as the damage of current internet culture will be, there are many potential unintended consequences that may be - at least - interesting.
  • unhammer 8y ago
    Don't they already have that covered through existing policy, though? bittorrent is highly policed
    • pas 8y ago
      only the centralized public trackers are "affected". and the fact that they are still around and kicking, and distributed decentralized anonymous reputation-market systems are pretty empty shows that that policing is rather weak (otherwise people would move toward the "policing resistant" networks)
• DanBC 8y ago
  A friendly reminder that almost no-one commenting in this thread has read the full articles and recitals.
  • philpem 8y ago
    I'd love to see a "cliff's notes" summary of what A13 means as it is right now. Something like the "Doorstep EU" app does for Brexit-related news -- an actual, thought-out summary which links to authoritative reference material.
    • c3o 8y ago
      Isn't that what the linked-to article is?
  • vnchr 8y ago
    So, it could be worse... EDIT: Intending to provide a more useful response now, here are links from the post above to the articles[1] and recitals[2] of the current negotiations. I'm seeing relevant platform liability language in the row labeled 239. While marked for continued discussion, the proposed language is concerning to me: "Licensing agreements which are concluded by online content sharing service providers with right holders for the acts of communication referred to in paragraph 1..., shall cover the liability for works uploaded by the users of such online content sharing services in line with the terms and conditions set out in the licensing agreement, provided that such users do not act for commercial purposes." [1] https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Copyright-Directive_4-column-document_ARTICLES-Version-6.1-updated-after....docx https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Copyright-Di... [2] https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Copyright-Directive_4-column-document_RECITALS-Version-6.1-updated-after....docx https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Copyright-Di...
  • akerro 8y ago
    Hhmm who could we read it on time when it was created behind closed doors?
  • buboard 8y ago
• nercury 8y ago
  Small companies won't have resources to create their own content filters. Guess who is going to sell content-filter-as-a-service?
  • philpem 8y ago
    "Facebook Content Filter - protect your site from A13, only $1 per upload..."
    • anticensor 8y ago
      €100 extra if you also wish for Google ContentID protection
  • hu3 8y ago
    From the article: > Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted from the law.
    • Ravengenocide 8y ago
      From the article: > This was one of the European Parliament’s main improvements to the text. Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.
• belorn 8y ago
  > Legal content should not be blocked. I don't think this will happen, but if this is actually made into a liability then this would create a rather interesting situation where a platform could be sued for blocking fair use content and miss-identified content.
  • philpem 8y ago
    I think the net result would probably be a rapid increase of the "451 Not Available For Legal Reasons" errors which have appeared post-GDPR. That and a load of innovative start-ups simply setting up overseas instead of inside Europe, and perhaps major sites simply preventing any kind of contribution from European users. After all, there's no A13 clause which says that if your US site allows uploads, your European one also has to?
  • Puidwen 8y ago
    That legal content part seems a little like damned if you and damned it you don't.
• tanilama 8y ago
  Poor Europeans. The European's Great Firewall.
• jasonjayr 8y ago
  Is AWS's S3 (or other object store providers) on the hook for upload filtering? Maybe just their EU locations?
  • mrep 8y ago
    Well, you have to sign up with a credit card for AWS so I would think they would just pass on the lawsuits straight to you as they know who you are.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• dotdi 8y ago
  I'm an EU citizen. Honest question here: What can I do to influence this decision?
  • chosenbreed37 8y ago
    > I'm an EU citizen. Honest question here: What can I do to influence this decision? Mmm...maybe you could write to your local/nearest European Parliament Representative...I think they call them MEPs...
• theokeist 8y ago
  To me it seems like EU is now in the same situatin as Galactic Senate before the rise of an Empire. They have almost the same problems... EU is shame of true democracy but is a gem when it comes to bureaucracy.
• mscasts 8y ago
  I hope my country leaves the European union, soon.
  • chosenbreed37 8y ago
    > I hope my country leaves the European union, soon. LOL...why though? By the way...which country is that?
    • mscasts 8y ago
      It won't happen any time soon I'm afraid. I want to leave the eu because I don't believe in big centralized countries making decisions for hundreds of millions of people. I like decentralization. Just look on all the big countries of the world, they all kind of suck. There is simply no way for ordinary citizens to have any effect on EU because of it's size alone. Almost all my countries MEPs voted no to Article 13 but it still got passed. I don't want Germany and France to control Sweden (which is the country I'm from).
• red75prime 8y ago
  What if an internet platform requires encryption of every upload? And other internet platform stores keys for such uploads, and decryption happens on user's computer.
• porlune 8y ago
  This seems like it will benefit the whales more than the fish, as they can absorb copyright infringement costs into their already expansive legal departments, whereas a smaller company will likely go belly up or be chummed.
  • chrisweekly 8y ago
    Kudos for the extended, non-mixed metaphor. I think it works!
  • akerro 8y ago
    Same happened with GDPR, it brings profits only to bigger players. https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2018/gdpr-google-online-ads-data-privacy/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2018/gdpr-goog... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/23/google-owner-alphabet-reports-earnings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/23/google-ow... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/24/alphabet_q1_2018/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/24/alphabet_q1_2018/
  • ddxxdd 8y ago
    The same can be said for every other EU law. Net neutrality regulations include vague language that allows "reasonable network management", which is a multi-million dollar legal hassle that stresses small ISP owners. And I shudder to think how Duck Duck Go's programmers will manage to comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten [from a search engine's results]". I hope the politicians in Washington, D.C. recognize that America is the world's last refuge for small business growth and economic innovation.
    • Kiro 8y ago
      DDG can safely rely on Bing for that.
    • ben_w 8y ago
      The EU doesn’t have net neutrality. I know this because I’ve seen offers which include zero-rating Netflix. America isn’t free from regulatory capture, despite being historically better at innovation than either my home nation or my nation of birth.
• losthobbies 8y ago
  I wrote to my MEP and this is the response I got: Following a number of important amendments being made to the Copyright Directive since July, the proposal was put to a plenary vote in September, which over 60% of MEPs supported. During further negotiations between Parliament, the Council (EU Member States) and the European Commission, any remaining shortcomings can be addressed. I am in favour of a balanced Copyright Directive that allows for a free and fair internet, and also ensures the fair remuneration of creators, artists, publishers and journalists who create important jobs, growth and innovation in the EU. With regard to a stronger right for press publishers, Article 11 allows for: • Fair remuneration for journalists and press publishers for the use of their articles. • Financially independent press (independent from platforms). • Quality journalism. • Journalists to get a share of the press publishers' remuneration. Private use of press articles is allowed. Hyperlinking is allowed. With regard to the value gap, Article 13 allows for: • Platforms to take more responsibility for the content on their websites. • Fair remuneration for European right holders (artists, musicians, authors etc.) from the platforms that use their works. • Platforms to conclude licenses with the right holders. • Right holders and platforms to find a practical solution to bring copyright and liability in a better balance. The scope of Article 13 has been limited to those platforms which infringe the most copyright. Platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Netflix, eBay, Wikipedia, dating-platforms, software developing platforms, blogs, private homepages, dropbox etc. do not fall under Article 13. Copyright rules need to reflect the new realities and business models of the 21st century, particularly the rise of digital media. Press publishers and other content producers should receive a fair share for the use of their content on the internet. Currently, most generated revenue goes to the platforms and aggregators, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube. It is of course a priority that the Internet remains a platform where free speech prevails. The rules will only affect platforms that explicitly make profit from copyrighted works. Private individuals can continue to share content on the internet for non-commercial purpose. Platforms such as universities, scientific databases and online encyclopaedias, which are not dealing with copyright content as their primary purpose, will all be exempt from the new rules. _________________
  • tomp 8y ago
    Thanks, that's actually a reasonable and balance view. Let's just hope that's what actually gets implemented in the law as well...
• h0mEDw 8y ago
  As much as I like GDPR, I have no idea why would this law be any good. Perhaps I'm not seeing something here - can anyone explain how this law is good for society?
  • pas 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18883114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18883114
• GuB-42 8y ago
  It looks surprisingly reasonable. "internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of copyright-protected works uploaded by their users in order to make a profit" That's actually a lot of limitation. From my understanding: "organise and promote" means it is not simple hosting, and "in order to make a profit" excludes organizations like Wikimedia Commons and "large amounts" most likely excludes smaller websites like fan sites, and "uploaded by their users" exclude search engines. It is clearly meant to target a form of abuse that is much too common in the "internet as we know it". It is mostly apparent in sites like PornHub. They live by monetizing content they don't have the rights for, and they use their status as a platform as a way to stay legal. I think YouTube admitted that in the early days, they voluntarily turned a blind eye to copyright infringement as a way to grow ahead of their competition. It is unfair to legitimate companies who do their best to make sure their content really is original or properly licensed. And if it changes the internet as we know it today, is it that bad? It will push people to self publish instead of relying on "platforms", like the old internet. As for the potential for abuse, remember that the article isn't finished, it has yet to be completed, ratified, and tried. Public debate is important and we shall not let everything pass, but IMHO, the spirit is good.
  • tzfld 8y ago
    >From my understanding: "organise and promote" means it is not simple hosting, and "in order to make a profit" excludes organizations like Wikimedia Commons and "large amounts" most likely excludes smaller websites like fan sites, and "uploaded by their users" exclude search engines. All these things are very interpretable and can be the root to abuse and mistakes.
  • hyperman1 8y ago
    For your info: Hacker news is: - an Internet platform - that organizes and promotes large amounts of posts - which are copyright-protected works uploaded by their users - in order to make a profit as it is an advertisement for y combinator. So hacker news needs a filter lest you quote a sentence from some movie. What is 'meant' is irrelevant. Important is the letter of the law. Besides, 'meant' is a very dangerous word when used by politicians as jaded as the EU folks. It is a way to whitewash unpopular laws, and make them look reasonable when they are in fact the complete opposite.
• gdsdfe 8y ago
  Hmmm This might make the dark net more mainstream
• humanetech 8y ago
  > Licenses that platforms take out cover uploads by their users, as long as they act non-commercially or “don’t generate significant revenues” Am I reading correctly that when you have a forum (e.g. Discourse) which is non-commercial i.e. for an open community, that any users uploading stuff or quoting article sections are exempt from this regulation (even though the forum is hosted on Discourse servers on a paid plan)?
• zimbatm 8y ago
  This might be a good thing actually. If huge content distribution platforms like YouTube and Facebook are not viable anymore, it might put a renewed wind in the sails of self-hosting systems. Getting the Internet back to it's distributed nature would make it more resilient.
  • buboard 8y ago
    youtube does not rely on infringing content anymore. at least, 100% of the channels i follow are by makers who try to make fair use of copyrighted stuff or using public domain of historic stuff . > the sails of self-hosting systems Self-hosted content is pointless if there are no watercoolers to chat about it.
• rdlecler1 8y ago
  The EU is going to regulate themeselves to the dark ages by simply creating an environment that is too antagonistic and costly to capitalism compared to other parts of the world. The regulations around capital raising for a fund in the EU is aweful. You’re better off being based in the US and simply invest in EU startups.
  • briandear 8y ago
    > antagonistic and costly to capitalism That’s their point. The EU could be accurately considered an association of aspiring soviets.
• vectorEQ 8y ago
  what if they post from outside of the EU, or the platform is not in the EU? that would mean these laws don't apply? seems a bit useless law considering what the internet is... besides that it's prone to trolls getting companies fined. stupid idea for on the internet if you ask me.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• ouid 8y ago
  Ah yes, a private police force for the copyright holders. What on earth is wrong with just letting them sue?
• nopacience 8y ago
  That will screw the life of big platforms under theirdomain.com its time for users to go back to the roots of the internet and have your stuff under yourdomain.com that way you will be liable for your stuff in yourdomain.com back to the roots we go
• nopacience 8y ago
  yes
• mempko 8y ago
  This will either be really good by forcing people to run their own sites (the web is a giant social network naturally) or will kill the meme culture.
• kerng 8y ago
  What strikes me as odd is that most of these efforts are driven by the EU. Are other unions and nations not seeing the need for these things? It reminded me of GDPR.