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European Parliament Approves Controversial “Meme Ban”

17 points by sahin-boydas 8y ago

rolph 8y ago
ok lets suppose someone created a video of white noise in 1080p with a dolby 5 surround sound white noise hiss. these are natural phenomenon, thus not copyrightable so i am told. now suppose someone then interposes a slight bit shift on the binary representation of this data [read as steganographic encoding] so that a piece of media is now a whitenoise stream, and a key or semaphore modulus stream. Yes it makes it bigger and adds overhead, but lets also get the blockchain in on this so that when the stego key is disseminated it cant be taken back, similar to the direction that torrent tracking is going in? ill shut up for a while now, anybody else want to chime in?
- hyperman1 8y ago
  Copyright law covers this easily: there is a creative step, being the content, in the result, so the result is copyrighted. Besides, even reading the work creates a copy in RAM and that copying act is forbidden unless the author allows it.
  - rolph 8y ago
    the idea is not if copyright covers it the idea is the filter shouldnt be able to determine what it is. look at a very old school example : DEADBEEF becomes |)34|)13eeF That can be kluged out easily but in its time it was the way to circumvent text string filters. the creation step would not be in the server it would be on the users platform, after downloading. so the EU internet filter would not only have to look at uploads but would have to reach into a users machine and see what is in RAM or on the Hard drive. That isnt part of the article 13 text or the meme filter being proposed and i think that would be against GDPR
    - hyperman1 8y ago
      The core problem isn't the filter. The problem is how a lot of data with copyright status 'unknown' will get swept into the category 'copyrighted' even if most of it probably isn't. Thinking about how to defeat the filter, while an interesting technical challenge, is irrelevant. No technological measure has made any dent in piracy. This was never a technology problem, it is a legal, social and moral one. Solving it with technology simply makes you a criminal, which like smoking pot will be ignored by the law until the law has a reason to look deeper into you. To wit, there is plenty of stuff today where the filter can't determine what it is. E.g. people playing old classical music, but some bigcorp has CDs with that same music. The problem is the filter errs on the side of blocking too much. This will also happen with the white noise if your scheme gets popular. Most of the last paragraph is incorrect, BTW. A creative step is always done by a human, never by a server, BTW. If the filter fails, the publisher of your video is on the hook for copyright infringement. The GDPR explicitly allows companies to gather data if there is a law requiring them to, so please don't open that can of worms - You don't want the Internet filter block access unless you install a browser plugin that scans your hard drive, for example.
- stuaxo 8y ago
  People uploading white noise to youtube have already faced copyright claims.
  - rolph 8y ago
    i think those claims were dropped though. https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-copyright-notices https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-cop... https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidex/2018/01/22/the-aftermath-of-the-white-noise-youtube-copyright-claims-a-qa-with-dr-sebastian-tomczak/ https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidex/2018/01/22/the-after... {adde} in after the fact [of comment/replies] is this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/white-noise-youtube-copyright-infringement/9314858 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/white-noise-youtube-c... Can that sort of sound really be copyrighted? "It's actually a bit of a grey area," said Dr Kylie Pappalardo, a lecturer in intellectual property law at QUT. "Copyright protects expressions that are recorded in material form, but the expressions have to be original. "What the law means by original is that it has to originate from somebody. "There's a chance that [white noise is] not actually original enough to be copyrighted, and if it is original enough, then the protection would be quite a low-level protection."
gnode 8y ago
> This rule would force major platforms like YouTube to filter every single upload to prevent copyright infringement. Is this not the de facto practise of YouTube today?
- Konnstann 8y ago
  Youtube relies on Copyright holders to flag offending videos, which is in its own way a flawed system, whereas this legislation, to the best of my knowledge, would hold Youtube accountable for any infringement rather than the uploader themselves.

17 points by sahin-boydas 8y ago

ok lets suppose someone created a video of white noise in 1080p with a dolby 5 surround sound white noise hiss. these are natural phenomenon, thus not copyrightable so i am told. now suppose someone then interposes a slight bit shift on the binary representation of this data [read as steganographic encoding] so that a piece of media is now a whitenoise stream, and a key or semaphore modulus stream. Yes it makes it bigger and adds overhead, but lets also get the blockchain in on this so that when the stego key is disseminated it cant be taken back, similar to the direction that torrent tracking is going in? ill shut up for a while now, anybody else want to chime in?

hyperman1 8y ago
Copyright law covers this easily: there is a creative step, being the content, in the result, so the result is copyrighted. Besides, even reading the work creates a copy in RAM and that copying act is forbidden unless the author allows it.
- rolph 8y ago
  the idea is not if copyright covers it the idea is the filter shouldnt be able to determine what it is. look at a very old school example : DEADBEEF becomes |)34|)13eeF That can be kluged out easily but in its time it was the way to circumvent text string filters. the creation step would not be in the server it would be on the users platform, after downloading. so the EU internet filter would not only have to look at uploads but would have to reach into a users machine and see what is in RAM or on the Hard drive. That isnt part of the article 13 text or the meme filter being proposed and i think that would be against GDPR
  - hyperman1 8y ago
    The core problem isn't the filter. The problem is how a lot of data with copyright status 'unknown' will get swept into the category 'copyrighted' even if most of it probably isn't. Thinking about how to defeat the filter, while an interesting technical challenge, is irrelevant. No technological measure has made any dent in piracy. This was never a technology problem, it is a legal, social and moral one. Solving it with technology simply makes you a criminal, which like smoking pot will be ignored by the law until the law has a reason to look deeper into you. To wit, there is plenty of stuff today where the filter can't determine what it is. E.g. people playing old classical music, but some bigcorp has CDs with that same music. The problem is the filter errs on the side of blocking too much. This will also happen with the white noise if your scheme gets popular. Most of the last paragraph is incorrect, BTW. A creative step is always done by a human, never by a server, BTW. If the filter fails, the publisher of your video is on the hook for copyright infringement. The GDPR explicitly allows companies to gather data if there is a law requiring them to, so please don't open that can of worms - You don't want the Internet filter block access unless you install a browser plugin that scans your hard drive, for example.
stuaxo 8y ago
People uploading white noise to youtube have already faced copyright claims.
- rolph 8y ago
  i think those claims were dropped though. https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-copyright-notices https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-cop... https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidex/2018/01/22/the-aftermath-of-the-white-noise-youtube-copyright-claims-a-qa-with-dr-sebastian-tomczak/ https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidex/2018/01/22/the-after... {adde} in after the fact [of comment/replies] is this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/white-noise-youtube-copyright-infringement/9314858 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/white-noise-youtube-c... Can that sort of sound really be copyrighted? "It's actually a bit of a grey area," said Dr Kylie Pappalardo, a lecturer in intellectual property law at QUT. "Copyright protects expressions that are recorded in material form, but the expressions have to be original. "What the law means by original is that it has to originate from somebody. "There's a chance that [white noise is] not actually original enough to be copyrighted, and if it is original enough, then the protection would be quite a low-level protection."

gnode 8y ago

> This rule would force major platforms like YouTube to filter every single upload to prevent copyright infringement. Is this not the de facto practise of YouTube today?

Konnstann 8y ago
Youtube relies on Copyright holders to flag offending videos, which is in its own way a flawed system, whereas this legislation, to the best of my knowledge, would hold Youtube accountable for any infringement rather than the uploader themselves.