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I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The

I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The whole thing feels terribly wrong - 10 million people, the 100% majority of this rather big geographical location that is even separated by mountains on all sides, are just overruled, while they don't even understand the language these politicians are talking in...? Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? Democracy doesn't just mean that there is some voting, it means that the people rule. In my country, our people no longer rule, now the Germans and the French rule our country (because we have less than 2% of votes in the EU parliament) and there is absolutely nothing democratic about that, the polar opposite actually. We're no longer a country, we've been reduced to a lowly region, and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign and have a say in our matters. It feels sickening. I truly hope this law passes and it significantly reduces everyone's high opinion of the EU so we can finally talk about fixing this. The funny/sad thing is that my people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today. The Soviets at least accepted bribes. BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative. And we had no idea this is what we're joining back in 2004, and no one asked us when it changed - in fact, significant pressure that I deem absolutely unethical was made on our politicians to not let our people decide in a referendum.

hnra 8y ago
Obviously a political and economic union will impose laws on its member states. Your country, holding 2% of the votes, being able to overrule the entire union wouldn't be very democratic either. It sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of the union but be able to refuse the laws it imposes. If the EU decides on a law, that the majority of the union agrees on but your country doesn't, then your country has the option to leave the union. Your country might not agree with these laws, other countries might not agree with laws regarding the environment, or human rights, etc. But the union as a whole agrees on them and if you want to benefit from the union then you have to follow.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I absolutely don't think an economic union (our citizens did not vote in a referendum to join a political union, that was forced on us) needs to impose such laws (environment, human rights) not regarding international trade between member states and third state policies. It should impose treaties regarding export and import between member states, and maybe provide a civil court. Whatever the EU is, it's not an "economic union" for at least a decade. We don't want any of that cake, as you say - you forced that upon us, I was talking about that in my previous comment. And no, our country doesn't have an option to leave. Germans bought key state corporations from the corrupt post-revolution government and they won't let us (the people) do it, on top of that it has been proved that the EU will try to take revenge by all means and not wanting to be in the EU means they will destroy you. So much for the "friendship among nations" goal - paid friendship is not friendship.
  - pimmen 8y ago
    You can elect a government that can trigger article 50. There is no exception, any country can do it.
- honestoHeminway 8y ago
  Why does it have to regulate everything? why not leave some space for local regulation and souvereignity?
- makomk 8y ago
  Do they really have the option to leave, though? I mean, have you seen how much success Britain has had trying to leave the EU?
barrkel 8y ago
I don't think the Art 13 legislation will last in its current form. But whatever form it does take, if your country was "independent", I wouldn't be surprised if it signed up to harmonize anyway as part of a trade deal. Your real enemy is globalization and modern conveniences of globally cheap goods, and globally high quality goods being available for you to purchase and manufacture and export. The alternatives are somewhere on a sliding scale between Norway / Switzerland to North Korea. The closer you are geographically to Europe, the more you'd need to be like North Korea to maintain the kind of independence you think you want, because the game theoretics of inter-nation competition demand that competitors follow international rules.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Hmm, I'd like to see future where most [high quality] goods are produced locally - thanks to robots and AI. That's why I'd like the country to stay independent and of course automation and IT/tech/knowledge-based export economy is the only way it'd work in the long term for such country. For that we need our citizens to be as free in doing business as possible, and for the whole thing to be as easy as possible. The EU is directly influencing our economical growth and technological and societal progression in this way.
craigsmansion 8y ago
> Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? You didn't actually have that up until now either. > now the Germans and the French rule our country Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point. > and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here. > BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative. Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  > You didn't actually have that up until now either. Yes, and we liked it. > Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point. See how countries are represented in the EP. > I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here. You know what, I actually asked them. Our nation maintains a project called "memory of the nation" that collects inputs like this from as many important and ordinary people of past times as possible, from various sources such as chronicles, personal diaries, letters, books, court hearings etc as well as actual conversations with them. It is exactly what I said it is, please don't try to school me on my own nation. Our grandfathers died because they wanted us to be sovereign. Please don't try to change their (well documented) message. The whole thing by itself has nothing to do with nationalism! It is the fact that the western nations have been the oppressors of our people and the (provably) 300+-year old understanding of the whole nation (and its literature, songs, art...) that in order to be free at our homes, the country has to be sovereign - because our ideas about politics and what freedom is are different than yours. > Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out. It can not. The EU has just shown everyone that it will absolutely and purposefully destroy anyone that tries and severe all their international ties to a state roughly equivalent to the Cold War. On top of that, our country is economically tightly tied to Germany and France and their investors - whatever our citizens want, these foreign investors will work against it, and now their governments (that will naturally protect and help their citizens as much as possible) have the power to override our laws directly, the last thing they lacked.
honzzz 8y ago
Coincidentally, I am also from a 10 million country surrounded by mountains... and I feel the need to say a few words. What sovereignty are you talking about? The one we had before WW2, right before we were occupied by Germans? Or after WW2, that brief moment before we were controlled and later even occupied by Russians? That sovereignty is an illusion, especially in today's interconnected world. We can either be small and be controlled by the big ones or be a small part of a big one. Is EU perfect? Certainly not. We can talk about reforms. But despite all shortcomings, I would still say that being part of the EU is the best era of our history. And saying that people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today... that contradicts my experience and this is the sentiment I would like to express in the strongest possible terms. And I would not be so sure about what "most people here would rather..." - if I might share my position on this: I voted yes to join the EU in order to get roughly what I got and I would not change my vote. Just my $0.02 - article 13 is not about what Germans and French want, it is about what powerful lobbies want - being outside of EU would not save us from something like that despite what majority of the country wants - the fact is that we were not overruled; check the stances of our representatives (https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz) - unless there is some other mountains-surrounded country I do not know about, most of our MEPs voted for the article 13.
est31 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_Parliament#2019_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_... In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k. If you add up the seats of the 6 countries with roughly 10 million people, you get 126. If you add up the seats of Germany and France, you get 175. So the small countries are definitely not irrelevant. Can a single country decide on a matter on their own? No. But with 28 (soon 27) states, requiring consent of every single country would render the EU unable to take actions on issues.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  This is fair representation in matters that an economical union should decide, but it is not fair representation when the EU became a political union - almost no German lives in the country and yet German citizens have more control over it than Czech citizens do. The EU does not need to regulate everything, or even most things. The Czech Republic tries to promote distributed multi-level government (so only people living in a given area have say over it) and the EU goes directly against it.
  - est31 8y ago
    The copryight directive is about unifying copyright law and rules in the EU. It's about making it easier to offer services to all EU citizens. If the EU doesn't regulate some area, naturally countries will have different rules, making inner EU trade in that matter difficult. The countries of the EU, including Germany, can't survive on their own in a world where there's the USA, China and India. We need a strong entity that protects european values world-wide. Also, this isn't a new thing either. Think of Charles IV. a czech ruler of the HRE which included both today's Germany and today's Czech republic.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      Charles IV. provided Bohemia with multi-hundred year long significant power over the HRE and sovereignty in everything but name inside the HRE, while making Bohemia a large and major power (but we're not expandish anymore today, so that "large" part is usually not even commonly known). That is the major reason why we universally think of him as "The Father of the homeland" (Otec vlasti) in the Czech Republic. Then the Habsburgs gradually took that away from us and that made us angry in a poetic way in the 1770's, which has caused the Czech National Revival and has formed all of contemporary Czech culture.

hnra 8y ago

Obviously a political and economic union will impose laws on its member states. Your country, holding 2% of the votes, being able to overrule the entire union wouldn't be very democratic either. It sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of the union but be able to refuse the laws it imposes. If the EU decides on a law, that the majority of the union agrees on but your country doesn't, then your country has the option to leave the union. Your country might not agree with these laws, other countries might not agree with laws regarding the environment, or human rights, etc. But the union as a whole agrees on them and if you want to benefit from the union then you have to follow.

TomMarius 8y ago
I absolutely don't think an economic union (our citizens did not vote in a referendum to join a political union, that was forced on us) needs to impose such laws (environment, human rights) not regarding international trade between member states and third state policies. It should impose treaties regarding export and import between member states, and maybe provide a civil court. Whatever the EU is, it's not an "economic union" for at least a decade. We don't want any of that cake, as you say - you forced that upon us, I was talking about that in my previous comment. And no, our country doesn't have an option to leave. Germans bought key state corporations from the corrupt post-revolution government and they won't let us (the people) do it, on top of that it has been proved that the EU will try to take revenge by all means and not wanting to be in the EU means they will destroy you. So much for the "friendship among nations" goal - paid friendship is not friendship.
- pimmen 8y ago
  You can elect a government that can trigger article 50. There is no exception, any country can do it.
honestoHeminway 8y ago
Why does it have to regulate everything? why not leave some space for local regulation and souvereignity?
makomk 8y ago
Do they really have the option to leave, though? I mean, have you seen how much success Britain has had trying to leave the EU?

barrkel 8y ago

I don't think the Art 13 legislation will last in its current form. But whatever form it does take, if your country was "independent", I wouldn't be surprised if it signed up to harmonize anyway as part of a trade deal. Your real enemy is globalization and modern conveniences of globally cheap goods, and globally high quality goods being available for you to purchase and manufacture and export. The alternatives are somewhere on a sliding scale between Norway / Switzerland to North Korea. The closer you are geographically to Europe, the more you'd need to be like North Korea to maintain the kind of independence you think you want, because the game theoretics of inter-nation competition demand that competitors follow international rules.

TomMarius 8y ago
Hmm, I'd like to see future where most [high quality] goods are produced locally - thanks to robots and AI. That's why I'd like the country to stay independent and of course automation and IT/tech/knowledge-based export economy is the only way it'd work in the long term for such country. For that we need our citizens to be as free in doing business as possible, and for the whole thing to be as easy as possible. The EU is directly influencing our economical growth and technological and societal progression in this way.

craigsmansion 8y ago

> Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? You didn't actually have that up until now either. > now the Germans and the French rule our country Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point. > and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here. > BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative. Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.

TomMarius 8y ago
> You didn't actually have that up until now either. Yes, and we liked it. > Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point. See how countries are represented in the EP. > I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here. You know what, I actually asked them. Our nation maintains a project called "memory of the nation" that collects inputs like this from as many important and ordinary people of past times as possible, from various sources such as chronicles, personal diaries, letters, books, court hearings etc as well as actual conversations with them. It is exactly what I said it is, please don't try to school me on my own nation. Our grandfathers died because they wanted us to be sovereign. Please don't try to change their (well documented) message. The whole thing by itself has nothing to do with nationalism! It is the fact that the western nations have been the oppressors of our people and the (provably) 300+-year old understanding of the whole nation (and its literature, songs, art...) that in order to be free at our homes, the country has to be sovereign - because our ideas about politics and what freedom is are different than yours. > Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out. It can not. The EU has just shown everyone that it will absolutely and purposefully destroy anyone that tries and severe all their international ties to a state roughly equivalent to the Cold War. On top of that, our country is economically tightly tied to Germany and France and their investors - whatever our citizens want, these foreign investors will work against it, and now their governments (that will naturally protect and help their citizens as much as possible) have the power to override our laws directly, the last thing they lacked.

honzzz 8y ago

Coincidentally, I am also from a 10 million country surrounded by mountains... and I feel the need to say a few words. What sovereignty are you talking about? The one we had before WW2, right before we were occupied by Germans? Or after WW2, that brief moment before we were controlled and later even occupied by Russians? That sovereignty is an illusion, especially in today's interconnected world. We can either be small and be controlled by the big ones or be a small part of a big one. Is EU perfect? Certainly not. We can talk about reforms. But despite all shortcomings, I would still say that being part of the EU is the best era of our history. And saying that people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today... that contradicts my experience and this is the sentiment I would like to express in the strongest possible terms. And I would not be so sure about what "most people here would rather..." - if I might share my position on this: I voted yes to join the EU in order to get roughly what I got and I would not change my vote. Just my $0.02 - article 13 is not about what Germans and French want, it is about what powerful lobbies want - being outside of EU would not save us from something like that despite what majority of the country wants - the fact is that we were not overruled; check the stances of our representatives (https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz) - unless there is some other mountains-surrounded country I do not know about, most of our MEPs voted for the article 13.

est31 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_Parliament#2019_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_... In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k. If you add up the seats of the 6 countries with roughly 10 million people, you get 126. If you add up the seats of Germany and France, you get 175. So the small countries are definitely not irrelevant. Can a single country decide on a matter on their own? No. But with 28 (soon 27) states, requiring consent of every single country would render the EU unable to take actions on issues.

TomMarius 8y ago
This is fair representation in matters that an economical union should decide, but it is not fair representation when the EU became a political union - almost no German lives in the country and yet German citizens have more control over it than Czech citizens do. The EU does not need to regulate everything, or even most things. The Czech Republic tries to promote distributed multi-level government (so only people living in a given area have say over it) and the EU goes directly against it.
- est31 8y ago
  The copryight directive is about unifying copyright law and rules in the EU. It's about making it easier to offer services to all EU citizens. If the EU doesn't regulate some area, naturally countries will have different rules, making inner EU trade in that matter difficult. The countries of the EU, including Germany, can't survive on their own in a world where there's the USA, China and India. We need a strong entity that protects european values world-wide. Also, this isn't a new thing either. Think of Charles IV. a czech ruler of the HRE which included both today's Germany and today's Czech republic.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Charles IV. provided Bohemia with multi-hundred year long significant power over the HRE and sovereignty in everything but name inside the HRE, while making Bohemia a large and major power (but we're not expandish anymore today, so that "large" part is usually not even commonly known). That is the major reason why we universally think of him as "The Father of the homeland" (Otec vlasti) in the Czech Republic. Then the Habsburgs gradually took that away from us and that made us angry in a poetic way in the 1770's, which has caused the Czech National Revival and has formed all of contemporary Czech culture.