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European Parliament approves copyright reform

• busterarm 8y ago
  So long, and thanks for all the fish.
• lgrebe 8y ago
  „German newspaper FAZ reports its investigation found strong indications that Germany traded its support for the #copyright deal for French concessions on Russian gas #northstream2„ https://edition.faz.net/faz-edition/wirtschaft/2019-03-26/f30a5870c08cc1e1b4524c1be19d1faf/?GEPC=s3 https://edition.faz.net/faz-edition/wirtschaft/2019-03-26/f3... Via https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110278976654794753?s=20 https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110278976654794753?s=20
  • fgheorghe 8y ago
    Yet again, Germany and France dictate for the rest of the EU. And the EU parliament submits.
  • DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
    Maybe someone can explain to me why the hell France (or the rest of the EU) even cares about where Germany gets their gas from in the first place?
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      And then someone could explain why should I, a citizen of another country that's very far away from France, need to care about that
      • DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
        Luckily for you, there's no EU regulation (yet) saying you do ;)
    • 1337biz 8y ago
      Because one of the hidden games played in the EU is 'keep the Germans in check'. Some might even say this was one of the original intentions behind the foundation of the EU as a 'peace upholding structure' across Europe.
    • maxmunzel 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream See #Controvery
      • swebs 8y ago
        I don't see anything about France. Just that Eastern European countries don't like that the pipeline allows them to be bypassed.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Who says they do? What matters is that their vote is power they can leverage to push the stuff they do care about.
    • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > why the hell France (or the rest of the EU) even cares about where Germany gets their gas from in the first place? For the same reasons New York might care how Alaska gets its energy. Climate change concerns. Concerns that a fellow voting union member is building critical economic and energy ties with an authoritarian regime. (More selfishly, perhaps, because New York wants to sell them its own energy.)
      • DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
        > Climate change concerns. For Germany, the alternative currently seems to be coal, which is one of the reasons I find this somewhat annoying. If it was a matter of "Nord Stream 2 or wind energy" I'd say "fuck that Russian gas, let's go green!" But alas, that's not what this is about.
    • activis 8y ago
      Nord Stream 2 would make gas system in Ukraine vurnable and allows further military escalation from Russia side, as it would be possible to transport gas via Nord Stream 2. This would make peace in EU under question also since aggression won't be in Ukraine only in case it escalates. Also Nord Stream 2 would make Germany more dependent on Russia gas. At the same time US wants to have EU and Germany on their side in fight agains China + sell resources to EU. Germany on the other side does not like "being controlled" and has some attraction to Russia. There are thoughts that Germany may want to make an allience with Russia to weaken US influence on EU. I belive it is just a surface of what is happenning. And it is all related to "peace/war" questions, who are allies to whom, global market shares, etc. It is not just some "stupid decision", there are lots of issues hidden under the hood. And more such decisions to come in the nearest future I belive.
      • DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
        > Germany on the other side does not like "being controlled" and has some attraction to Russia. Being German myself, I don't think it has so much to do with being controlled or not, but the difference between several powers having some degree of influence vs. one having it all. Russia and the USA are certainly two very big players in world politics, and Germany already seems to have plenty of co-dependence with the United States. I don't mean to say Nord Stream 2 is necessarily a good thing, but I do believe that some of the powers involved don't seek this balance as much as just to isolate Russia.
        • activis 8y ago
          Sure. I agree. I used "controlled" word as some kind of abstraction. It is more about influence. From ukrainian point of view Germany seems to forget about risks of not isolating Russia after Russia annexed territories and invaded several countries. WW2 did begin some kind of similarly as I understand: countries were seeking for "balance" and didn not want to make any rough decisions which could influence their economics in a "bad" way. The result was not very good. I understand that every country has interests. But in this very case we see that Germany is already buying russian gas through ukrainian gas system without any issues besides risks intriduced by Russia itself. So Nord Stream 2 is more about relationships and not the gas or economics alone. At the moment we see Article 11 and 13 approved as a consequence. And it is just the beginning.
    • blago 8y ago
      Because the EU policy on energy is to promote diversification and not allow Russia to use their status as an indispensable supplier to impose their geopolitical will and monopolistic pricing. That was the rationale when the EU killed South Stream - a proposed pipeline from Russia through the Black Sea and south Europe. Some of the countries involved had already made large investments and had great hopes for the pipeline which would have generated transit fees. Germany's push for Nord Stream 2 - a more or less direct pipeline from Russia - today feels self-serving and hypocritical. It looks like Germany is abandoning its obligations while smaller and less wealthy countries had paid the price.
  • mcv 8y ago
    Trying to make a right out of two wrongs.
  • kalleboo 8y ago
    Even if there are people out there who deny climate change, geopolitics like this ought to convince everyone that distributed renewable energy is the way forward.
    • nabla9 8y ago
      Climate change denial is large problem only in Anglosphere. Germany did more than any other country to realize the modern renewable-energy industry and it's failed its climate goals. The lesson should be that you have to try every tool in the toolbox, including nuclear energy. Fukushima accident revealed the irrationality of the public. Fukushima-scale accident every decade somewhere in the world would be low cost to pay for replacing coal. It's only the drama behind the accident that makes people to lose their minds.
      • andy_ppp 8y ago
        I think the problem of nuclear proliferation shouldn't be underestimated in this grand idea to replace fossil fuels. A few extra nuclear bombs going off per year in cities would soon change the desire for this I suspect.
        • nabla9 8y ago
          Nuclear proliferation has relatively little to do with nuclear power in developed countries.
        • stale2002 8y ago
          I think that you underestimate how many people coal kills. According to the world health organization, the number of premature deaths caused by coal and Particulate Matter is on the order of literally millions per year. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(outdoor)-air-quality-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-... This means that if we switch to nuclear and this caused us to have a chernobyl scale disaster every single year, that it would still be massively safer than coal. And even if we use your ridiculous example of a nuke going off in a city every year, guess what, that's still safer than coal. (This is, of course, not how nuclear works) So yes. Give me the bomb going off in a city every single single year. It would still kill less people than coal, according to the World Health Organization. Yes, really. This is not an exaggeration.
  • i6tjvo 8y ago
    France and Germany, the rulers of the EU. The rest of countries are nothing but pawns. Honestly sad.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • pndy 8y ago
    This is the first example of French-German "leadership" about which Marcon and Merkel were talking in the end of 2018. EU just enter hegemony phase of these two countries and I believe nothing good will come out of it for European structures and the continent.
• geff82 8y ago
  I will now start my move out of the EU. I know how heavily restricted Internet feels like from my frequent Iran travels, and I will move out of any country that moves 2 inches in that direction, whatever the "good reason" might be. Politicians felt like your regular corrupt banana republic representatives this time. And now they know how to get away with this, they will try it with something different again soon.
  • stuaxo 8y ago
    Where are you moving to ?
    • geff82 8y ago
      Switzerland is the current plan. It will enable me to keep my business in Germany while not living in CrazyLand myself. I also considered USA and Canada, yet this would mean more problems (at least at the beginning). I am quite familiar with Switzerland and I appreciate their special political system a lot.
      • morsch 8y ago
        That special political system is well on its way to restricting Internet access: https://steigerlegal.ch/2018/06/10/netzsperren-schweiz-zensur/ https://steigerlegal.ch/2018/06/10/netzsperren-schweiz-zensu...
      • mweibel 8y ago
        Please note that there might be similar things happening in Switzerland, too: https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/2019/03/23/demonstration-gegen-urheberrechtsreform-in-zuerich-leistungsschutzrecht/ https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/2019/03/23/demonstratio... (german only, sorry) It's all a bit different than in the EU because people may be able to vote against that at some point.. Whether that happens is another question entirely, though.
        • geff82 8y ago
• trkh0 8y ago
  Wonder how everyone here who keep praising and extolling everything the EU does has to say about this. Edit: being downvoted to oblivion suggests either that they are in denial or there are many paid shills around or both, either way I rest my case.
  • turbinerneiter 8y ago
    Literally nobody is doing that. Young EU supporters, like me, are the very people who were demonstrating against this. We are caught between reckless Brexiteering nationalists and a lobby-bought EU parliament.
    • Chris2048 8y ago
      Perhaps if you see EU parliament as "lobby-bought", you can accept there is good reason to oppose the EU, and stop calling brexiteers "nationalists".
      • barrkel 8y ago
        There are no polls left showing support for Leave, and still parliament is pursuing it. Good reason to leave UK.
        • Chris2048 8y ago
          There was a referendum, who cares what the polls say.
          • cr1895 8y ago
            What was the referendum beyond a large-scale poll? It wasn't binding in nature.
            • Chris2048 8y ago
              Very well: There was a large-scale poll, who cares what the small-scale polls say. Of course, referendums aren't really polls. Polls have no official effect, you can freely refuse them and lose nothing.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• cotelletta 8y ago
  Clueless twats. I will look up all who voted for this farce and let them know individually it will haunt them for the rest of their political career. No forgiveness for kneecapping free expression in return for some lobbyist euros and pretending it protects artists. And to the artists who were dumb enough to believe it: if your art wasn't mediocre you wouldn't have any trouble drawing the attention of the copyright industry, as they are always looking for something new to milk. So you traded off a big break that won't happen anyway for the collective right to free expression of the entire Union. Good job, you utter tossers.
  • tomtompl 8y ago
    Just keep in mind that EU bodies which have the legislative power don't really have constituents, not really been elected by anyone.
    • rcxdude 8y ago
      The parliament definitely does have constituents, and they needed to approve this for it to get through (the rest of the bodies are either controlled by the parliament or by the individual governments of the EU members).
    • anoncake 8y ago
      Which EU body is not elected? The European Parliament is directly elected by the people. The Council consists of each member states elected governments. The Commission could be considered not elected, but everyone involved in choosing it is ultimately elected, either directly or indirectly. It also cant make laws without the approval of the unambiguously elected bodies.
    • lagadu 8y ago
      Legislative power is co-held by the parliament and the council: the parliament is directly elected by the people and the council is elected by the governments that were elected by the people.
  • romanovcode 8y ago
    Do you know a website where there are people listed who voted for what in this case?
• DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
  Am I the only one who kinda feels like I'm not living in a democratic system anymore? Not saying this is the first such thing that happens, but it's probably the one that will make me stop using the word to refer to the society I live in.
  • cbg0 8y ago
    Which part of this was not democratic?
    • pmlnr 8y ago
      The oil lobby in the background part?
    • rvense 8y ago
      I think there is a feeling that this law was largely authored by/for narrow (commercial) interests in the entertainment industry, with little to no regard for its consequences for other parts of the web like open discussion forums and projects such as Wikipedia.
      • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        The tech industry are also major lobbyists, who often spend more on influencing politicians in their favor than the entertainment industry does. Commercial interests were on both sides, as much as they'd like you to believe it was a valiant fight of the little guys to save the Internet.
        • black_puppydog 8y ago
          hard to argue that, given the actual in-person turnout at protests, and the role that EDRI and other NGOs played. Those involved there have been very active, and very public, for a long time. Julia Reda is one of them, but maybe also google Thomas Lohninger. Of course google/fb etc had a stake in this and were lobbying. They're not the ones who stand to lose from this outcome though, even if that's what the Axel Voss & team would like to believe.
• cbg0 8y ago
  A bunch of people are about to lose their seats in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May.
  • aembleton 8y ago
    Doubt it. I don't think many people know or care about this.
    • bashwizard 8y ago
      Just wait until they eventually are greeted with a notice "Sorry, we've blocked all users from Europe due to the new copyright reform" on every major social media site/app.
      • phatfish 8y ago
        I though this was supposed to happen after the GDPR was made law... still waiting.
        • bashwizard 8y ago
          I didn't. I expected to be greeted with "We care about your privacy" and then have to opt in or not being able to access the content. I was right.
          • phatfish 8y ago
            Fair enough. Although I remember plenty of comments on HN about how Facebook et al. would be blocking EU users because it would be too expensive for them to comply with GDPR. One or two US based newspaper websites were all I noticed blocking access because of compliance reasons. I expect a similar impact due to Article 13.
            • kaitnieks 8y ago
              The big ones will be fine. They are already using filters. It's all the forums and such that have no way to implement the technology that the upcoming directive calls for, and they will have no choice but to block EU. Regarding news sites - usually it's the comments section that's the user created content, so I guess they could simply remove that for EU visitors, or, if that feels like a hassle, just block EU.
• paule89 8y ago
  Are we able to see, who voted how? I would like to have a website showing you which persons not to vote, in your location for the upcoming eu votes in may.
  • citeguised 8y ago
    Not yet but you can follow the twitter-account from the link. She will certainly be posting it once it's available.
  • zirror 8y ago
    The information is not yet published, however Julia Reda (https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110514210176462850 https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110514210176462850) is working on it. Also, I would suggest voting on a party-bases i.e. voting for Pirates in your region.
    • paule89 8y ago
      The question even is if i can vote for the pirates in my region. So far i haven't even seen the slightest bit of voting information for the upcoming vote. Well nearly no information. I had a flyer for the SPD Senior Citizen Group in my mailbox...
      • isostatic 8y ago
        Last time there was a UK election I had 2 flyers. Nobody came knocking. Fortunatly in this day and age you can do your own research
      • DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
        I've been looking for a while for a good summary of how to vote that I could link to people, but not even on europa.eu do they have that, which really speaks for itself. If anyone knows of a good source, I'd love to know about it.
        • yorwba 8y ago
• trkh0 8y ago
  If you supported and celebrated every fine and law targeted at US tech companies know that this law is part of that pattern.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    What if one only supported and celebrated some of the fines and laws targeted at US tech companies?
• piokoch 8y ago
  I am curious how this will affect Brexit. At some point it looked like public opinion in UK leaned against it. Right now it seems that EU is ready to pass any law which is pushed by a powerful lobby, even if this law is not the most well-thought idea like Article 11 and 13. This does not make EU better place to be in. In fact if Germany and France agree on something, this going to happen. I don't think that UK will accept that, even if they risk "hard brexit" (which is largely demonized, I can't believe that any bigger EU economy would just give up trading with UK, especially when World economy will start slowing down and every eurocent will count).
  • yulaow 8y ago
    If I remember correctly UK was actually a strong proposer for this kind of legislation
    • fock 8y ago
      And there were still British MEPs speaking for it, because it's the "future". I wonder why they can't even abstain or just stay away (like about 13% of the parliament did anyway...) after they engaged in Brexit for decisions which won't affect them (implementation of this directive is still about ~2 years off), but apparently paychecks are stronger than decency and common sense...
    • omnimus 8y ago
      Exactly let's not forget it's the UK who is part of five eyes and is generaly on the antiprivacy opinion side in europe.
  • phatfish 8y ago
    Please, play damaging economic games with your own country not mine. No one cares about this in the UK right now, we are far more worried about the meltdown of our government and their attempts make us all poorer with the Brexit madness. It is immeasurably more complicated than "I'm sure everyone will want to trade with the UK!". This is exactly the sort of line is expect to hear from the fanatics here.
  • 8y ago
• JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  To what degree has Britain's waning influence contributed to this? London was historically Europe's most competent commercially-minded city. I'm hopeful to see a counterbalance emerge in Frankfurt or Paris, but the writing on the wall indicates that's unlikely.
  • DanBC 8y ago
    What makes you think the UK is against stupid copyright measures? It's currently unlawful to format-shift (eg, rip CD to MP3) in England, so it's unlikely we'd have put up much argument against this.
    • jackweirdy 8y ago
      That's not quite true: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29448058 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29448058
      • madjam002 8y ago
        That’s an outdated article, it has since been made illegal again.
        • cift 8y ago
          Not quite true > Under the new regulations, only the individual who purchased the original copy of the work, and not others such as a friend or family, is legally allowed to copy it. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-quashes-regulations-copy-cds-musicians https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-q...
          • DanBC 8y ago
            Those are the new regulations that were stopped by this court case. The government said that this type of copying would have minimal impact on the rights-holders. Those rights holders disagreed, went to court, and won, and so now format shifting is not legal. The court case is here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/1723.html https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/1723.html It's long and complex. The first few paras are a good introduction. EDIT:Genuinely baffled that this link to a primary source has been downvoted. Currently, because of this case it's not lawful to format shift. I'm not saying that I think this is a good thing; I'm describing the law as it is in England. Using the Guardian sources linked above: > The high court has quashed regulations introduced by the government to allow members of the public to lawfully copy CDs and other copyright material bought for their own private use. [...] > On Friday, in a further decision, he said: “It is clear that I should quash the regulations. I make clear this covers the entirety of the regulations and all the rights and obligations contained therein.” [...] > The changes had come into force last October under the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014. Prior to 1 October, it was unlawful, for example, to “rip” or copy the contents of a CD on to a laptop, smartphone or MP3 player for personal use, although the format-shifting activity had become commonplace. The regulations introduced an exception into UK copyright law permitting the making of personal copies, as long as they were only for private use. The law said format shifting was unlawful. The government introduced regulations to make format shifting lawful, but they didn't include mechanism to pay the rights holders. The judge ruled against the government, those new regulations were quashed, and format shifting became unlawful again. Here's what the judge said: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/2041.html https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/2041.html
• stiangrindvoll 8y ago
  Could this directive speed the creation and adaptation of distributed technologies? If the topic of uploading to centralized cloud entities is just removed or ignored all together.
  • tsukurimashou 8y ago
    That was my hope, I guess time will tell
  • haywirez 8y ago
    Sure, maybe now that there's not a lot of fish left in the oceans anyways, you could start convincing the almighty VCs to pay for an army of solar powered submarine drone servers that host IPFS nodes with Starlink satellite uplinks randomly scattered in international waters...good luck engineering the < 1 second time-to-play on those videos!
  • adrianN 8y ago
    Somebody has to own the computers. You can sue those people if they don't comply with the law.
    • goblin89 8y ago
      With well-implemented and sufficiently widespread P2P there’d be too many people to sue. (I can’t name a strong contender in the wild currently, but I would also hope that this regulation, if successfully implemented, catalyzes some progress in this direction as a side effect.)
      • adrianN 8y ago
        You just sue the early adopters and write some articles about how the new system is used for criminal activity only and then completely ban it. You can't have technological solutions to political problems.
  • yxhuvud 8y ago
    No, technology is not a solution to regulatory issues.
• haywirez 8y ago
  A good thread explaining the next steps: https://twitter.com/why0hy/status/1110514962366189568 https://twitter.com/why0hy/status/1110514962366189568 TL;DR summary: The directive will have to be implemented in national legislations, a ~2 year long process. There are a bunch of contradictory laws and regulations to be reconciled. Your app or platform can probably ignore the new rules as they're too unclear and unenforceable - but do join trade associations that can provide good, reliable legal support. [Edit] here's another article from EFF explaining the next steps: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-disastrous-internet-law-what-happens-next https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-d...
• Funes- 8y ago
  This will be an unpopular perspective on the matter, so you have been warned: Article 13 only affects for-profit platforms that host and share copyrighted material. These platforms are run by big corporations that turn a huge profit by way of selling your personal data, violating your privacy, and having a persuasive (addictive) design in order to glue you to the screen so they can maximize their ad revenue, dismissing any human cost those practices entail. You want to regain your freedom? Use not-for-profit, decentralized platforms instead. You can use Mastodon [0] instead of Twitter, PeerTube [1] instead of YouTube, Aether [2] instead of reddit, etcetera. Other interesting P2P projects are DAT's Beaker Browser [3], and ZeroNet [4]. None of those will have problems with Article 13. [0] https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social [1] https://joinpeertube.org https://joinpeertube.org [2] https://getaether.net https://getaether.net [3] https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/ [4] https://zeronet.io/ https://zeronet.io/ EDIT: "Such [content-sharing] services should not include services that have a main purpose other than that of enabling users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit from that activity." This is from page 62 of the document wherein Article 13/17 is to be found.
  • ralala 8y ago
    This also affects small online communities, who pay for their servers by running a few ads. There are a lot of these platforms.
    • marcodave 8y ago
      > small online communities, who pay for their servers by running a few ads if those communities are aiming for a break even at best, would those as well be considered "for profit", though?
      • tehbeard 8y ago
        Who will be able to afford the better lawyers in that fight to argue if they're for profit? MediaCorp(tm) or the small community that got a little too popular/spotlighted?
      • 8y ago
• trkh0 8y ago
  Remember that newspapers reported on this vote in passing if at all because they supported it, they are not innocent observers especially with everything concerning tech companies.
• hektorrr 8y ago
  This is also huge blow in the artist community, because if they will have no license or contract with big media entities their work will not be shared. And I hope Google, MS and Wiki will stick together in blocking any content from entities requiring any sort of pay. Of course this would not solve all issues featured with these reforms. Smallest are always loosing when it comes to laws like that.
  • fock 8y ago
    You can still share on your personal site (even your commercial one, as you won't violate copyright I guess and so can't be sued effectively (if local legislation would get their shit together even not in the typical extortion form))... Random, unaccounted internet fame by the magic of some proprietary algorithm might be harder too achieve though, but I see no censorship in this (and indeed today, censorship is possible with this algorithms). I'm not sure, how the blocking you propose should work (your comment shows as much ignorance as most MEPs speaking for the reform do), as the directive basically enables any rightholder to enforce claims against the platform as soon as they publish any copyright violating material. The whole point is that rightholders should not have to rely on takedown notices anymore, which imho is not necessarily bad – this does also not in any way stand of overdue policy which limits the outrageous fees on copyright violations (for example, why not sign bills which make you pay the (standard) license fee+30% if you're violating copyright, when you are using the protected works in your own work (for blatant theft, like reuploading a music video, fines could still be like they are today...)?).
    • marcodave 8y ago
      > Random, unaccounted internet fame by the magic of some proprietary algorithm I'm wondering how much of the current user-created content on those platform is driven by that
• artiscode 8y ago
  Sad, sad day. I remember having discussions with my 14 year old son regarding articles 11 and 13. He said it would be impossible for these articles to come through, as people are clearly against it. He then called me a pessimist and naysayer. I wish he was right.
  • Raphael 8y ago
    I was also once an optimist.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    > people are clearly against it Which people? People in his peer group on youtube sure. The world is a big place. I can see 5 people from my seat here on this train, I suspect not a single one has any idea what article 11 or 13 are, not would they care. Now it's possible pressure groups could argue that they should vote one way or another in a vote on the subject -- i.e. google could turn people against it, or murdoch could turn people for it, but your statement that "people are clearly against it" is quite simply false.
• LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
  Good things the brits found the ejection seat lever for this before it was too late. Will vote for any party thats want to get out of this next vote.
  • rcxdude 8y ago
    The UK will likely not go in a better direction. non-UKIP UK MEPs were in general in favour of this legislation (UKIP only against because they are against anything the EU does, not because they are in any way more informed on the issue).
• I_am_tiberius 8y ago
  Humanity did not change since WW2. The one big difference is/was the Internet. Without a free Internet, who knows what happens. It is unbelievable.
  • swebs 8y ago
    >Without a free Internet, who knows what happens. You don't even need to speculate. Just look at China
  • anoncake 8y ago
    TIL World War II ended in 1969, at the earliest.
    • I_am_tiberius 8y ago
      Maybe I did not explain myself enough. What I'm saying is that if a free Internet existed during WW2, resistance would have been able to communicate and collaborate. Moreover, people would have had access to both, propaganda news and real news.
      • anoncake 8y ago
        There is no way a free Internet would have existed in Germany and the German-occupied territories during WW2. The resistance could in theory have organized one clandestinely. But setting up a secret computer network isnt really easier than setting up a secret telephone or telegraph network, which is good enough. People actually did have access to real news, via radio. Listening to the Allies broadcasts was illegal, but possible.
  • dingaling 8y ago
    You can still communicate freely with your European colleagues. Take a photo, send it in an IM. Chat about politics. What you can't do is claim that uploading a rip of Generic Marvel Action Movie VIII is 'communication'.
    • 8y ago
• paganel 8y ago
  > France’s current batch of national politicians have consistently advocated for the worst parts of the Directive, and the Macron administration may seek to grab an early win for the country’s media establishment. Macron is a crook. If any other president from any other civilized country would have sent the military to guard against its citizens' street protests [1] then that president would have been (rightly) called out the worst names, instead Macron is still seen by a large part of the mainstream media as this savior of European civilization and democracy. [1] http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190320-military-be-deployed-saturdays-french-yellow-vests-protests http://en.rfi.fr/france/20190320-military-be-deployed-saturd...
  • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > If any other president from any other civilized country would have sent the military to guard against its citizens' street protests [1] then that president would have been (rightly) called out the worst names Burning cars and breaking windows isn’t peaceful protest. If that happened in New York and the mayor and governor didn’t deploy armed guards, up to and including the National Guard, many people would be rightfully furious. The difference is America, being a federation, has many layers of armed police, from the NYPD to NYPD special ops to the National Guard to the FBI and Marshalls to the Army. France, being more unitary (departments don’t have National Guard analogues), escalates more quickly to deploying its military.
    • nkkollaw 8y ago
      > Burning cars and breaking windows isn’t peaceful protest. A few people doing that doesn't invalidate a peaceful protest that has lasted months now without doing any major damage (if you exclude Macron's approval ratings, of course). Of course, when you have a lot of upset people it's easy to have a few problems--specially after months of protesting without the government doing anything major to address people's concerns. It's also a common tactic from governments to infiltrate into peaceful protests and cause damage and disorders on purpose, to have an excuse to use force against protesters. In Italy it's common practice to send the secret service to attack the Police, and then reply with beating everyone up. Some politicians have even confirmed this practice in the open (Cossiga, for example).
• pard68 8y ago
  I recognize the irony of my statement, the majority of the world has been dealing with the US interfering with their nations' laws for nearly three quarters of a century. Nonetheless, it irks me that laws in other nations, like the EU, can have such an adverse impact on me.
  • duxup 8y ago
    I think it is less irony and just a matter of human nature. We're always more critical / resistant when "someone else" imposes something, less so if we get to do it. I think the take away is to understand the values about what you don't like about whatever is going on... and apply them to yourself as best you can. Otherwise it is just finger wagging and finger wagging is so easy and fun that we often miss the fact that if push came to shove, we might do the same thing, or worse.
• bashwizard 8y ago
  Time for a swexit.
• varjag 8y ago
  A wild guess: nothing changes, or things even improve somewhat. Not very invested into content distribution. If it has chilling effect on social networks, so be it. And memes can die for all I care.
  • aldoushuxley001 8y ago
    Europe is more likely to be hived off from rest of internet as most companies won't cater to such nonsense. Progress continues, just less so in Europe.
    • varjag 8y ago
      As long as their cashflow in Europe is in black, they will absolutely cater. But we'll see soon enough.
      • nkkollaw 8y ago
        Doubt it. It's very easy to implement GDPR compliance, and A LOT of websites opted for blocking their content in Europe instead of working to make their services compliant. The requirements for being compliant with these directives are so difficult, than only major companies will have the resource to do it, and many will definitely not think it's worth the effort.
        • varjag 8y ago
          Businesses historically catered to a lot more expensive to implement laws. Personal data territorial hosting, years worth of logging for law enforcement, content filtering compliance, and it was barely on anyone's radar. Reddit and other social networks rally users against this law however as it's contrarian to their bottom line and growth curves. It is important to pause and consider if the law (certainly promoted by large copyright holders) harms these networks, individuals, or society at large.
          • nkkollaw 8y ago
• brador 8y ago
  Will this affect news aggregators with just links (no text snapshots) like https://skimfeed.com https://skimfeed.com ?
• philpem 8y ago
  As I said on one of the other threads... 26 March 2019. The day the Internet died. (at least in Europe) But of course -- "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" -- so what we're likely to see is a massive spike in people streaming video over encrypted tunnels into other countries. That'd be interesting. It'd render GeoIP rather moot, among other things. I suspect the EU and Member States' response would be either "VPNs are banned" or "no service catering for EU users may talk through a VPN endpoint".
  • dingaling 8y ago
    > The day the Internet died. No. The day the ”Upload Other People's Work" Internet died. > what we're likely to see is a massive spike in people streaming video over encrypted tunnels Or just creating their own content. Wouldn't that be awesome?
    • Hamuko 8y ago
      You sure about that? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523
      • philpem 8y ago
        Ooh, nice one. That's an even better example than Beethoven. Even better still: there's a song which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. That's it - silence. "Your latest video upload contains 5 seconds of stunned silence, which has been identified as an extract of 4'33". This extract is copyrighted. Your video has been deleted."
        • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
          The creative elements of Cage's work are that it's performed as a piece by an orchestra, and presented as a work (eg a specific length, sold as other works are). Your any-[other]-length-of-silence doesn't infringe. If it did then Cage's piece would lack the artistic distinctiveness needed to make it a work for copyright purposes. Just having a urinal doesn't infringe on Duchamp's "Fountain", not even if it's the same model, only if it is presented as artwork does it become a copy of Duchamp's "work".
• laacz 8y ago
  Individual votes are in: https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/copyrightvote.pdf https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/copyrightvot...
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • mcjiggerlog 8y ago
    Can we get votes per national-level party (e.g. Labour, Conservatives etc.)? EDIT - at least here's how the parliament groupings voted - https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110552457682264065 https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110552457682264065
    • laacz 8y ago
      With some manual labor that's easily doable. There is opendata available for Council[1], but Parliament vote dataset is yet to be found... 1: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/general-secretariat/corporate-policies/transparency/open-data/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/general-secretariat/corpo...
    • vince14 8y ago
      Germany: https://twitter.com/MartinSonneborn/status/1110541162371272704 https://twitter.com/MartinSonneborn/status/11105411623712727...
• montenegrohugo 8y ago
  A big part of the problem is that there is no single entity that defends the citizens interest in this instance. You have the Disney's of the world heavily lobbying to pass reforms like these, but who protests against it? - Online signatures? Gets laughed out of the room. They could be fake, they don't mean anything, they are paid, etc.. - Voting? Voting cycles are too long and voting decisions cannot be made on a single issue, so this is ineffective at best. - Street Protests? It seems this is the only option. But as said in the article, even the credibility of these can be put into question. So what do we do?
  • zaarn 8y ago
    EU Elections are coming up. Vote for the pirate faction in your country or check who voted what and only vote for those parties that voted against A13 or if there are none, parties that are vocal against A13. Same goes for your countries own election cycle.
    • Shivetya 8y ago
      American here. Now I know some nations within the EU have proportional voting but I have to ask, how difficult is it to unseat a politician? How difficult is it to do so within their party, are there the equivalent of the US primary system? For the US, unless they are not running the chance of reelection is very high so without some sort of political shift not governed by one of our two parties is near impossible.
      • nickcotter 8y ago
        Just to clarify - all European Parliament elections (not member state elections) have to use proportional representation. What exact type they use varies.
      • zaarn 8y ago
        Depends on the memberstate, in germany the politicians are seated by the parties with longer lists on which you can vote.
      • 8y ago
• bufferoverflow 8y ago
  So anybody can now shut down any website in the EU that allows uploading of images or text or video or audio?
  • aequitas 8y ago
    They can't because you won't be allowed to upload anything that doesn't pass the content filter, or anything at all for that matter.
    • bufferoverflow 8y ago
      Are you saying every single EU website will have a filter for all uploads?
      • aequitas 8y ago
        That or they won't allow uploads at all/cease to exist in the EU. The rules approved now are to unclear on what sites are and aren't affected. So what will you do as site owner? Take the risk of going to court or just avoid the situation entirely?
      • feanaro 8y ago
        Yep, unless they are non-profit, and less than 3 years old, and have less than 10€ in revenue, and have less than 5 million unique visitors.
• philpem 8y ago
  The stunning bit of this for me has been the attitude of my MEPs when I emailed them. One Labour MEP, both Conservatives - no response. Not even a form letter. Other Labour MEP - "You are being brainwashed by Google. This is the best thing for the Internet ever! You'll see!" (paraphrased as I don't have the email to hand, but she did use the word "brainwashed"). Frankly the whole exchange struck me as extremely immature on her part! Two UKIP MEPs - reply a few hours after I emailed them. "We'll be fighting this as much as we possibly can. It's a disaster. The Articles say one thing and say something contradictory a few sections later!" Much of the fightback seems to have been from the populist far-right parties (with the obvious exception of the various Pirate parties). I wonder if the EU has realised it's just handed a massive win to them -- all they have to say now is "look, we tried to protect your Youtube but the EU stopped us!".
• buboard 8y ago
  This is a great day for creators in the EU. We are finally going to be able to upload our creations safely, in a platform that nobody will ever pay for. https://www.article13.org/best-of https://www.article13.org/best-of
  • philpem 8y ago
    "About us We are EUROPE FOR CREATORS. A gathering of professional organisations of writers, musicians, producers, comedians, films makers coming from all over Europe.... [snip]" Translation: "We are GEMA, BPI, ...., and we make our money from creators' work. And we want more! More!"
    • glenndebacker 8y ago
      One of those organisations is the Belgian Sabam and are really crooks. In the past they were sued for fraud, bribing, tampering with the books... They are notorious for asking licenses for everything music related even if the artist does not exists. A Belgian satirical program created a concert with the artists Kenwood (mixer), Suzy Wan (jar of Chinese food) , Mister cocktail and the party mix (pack of nuts) and they still managed to send a bill of a couple of hundred euros for these artists they represented...
  • koonsolo 8y ago
    I have a hard time understanding whether this is a parody site or not. I'm sure the automated filters will do a better job than me to make the distinction between parody or original. Maybe we should let such a filter run on that website, so we know it's a parody or not.
  • mcv 8y ago
    If it is indeed true that platforms that don't allow monetisation are still allowed, then yes, you can upload your creations safely. You'll just be unable to make money from it.
• sidibe 8y ago
  This'll give the EU few more years of solid Google funding
• rv-de 8y ago
  most content based on copyrighted material is bland and low brow entertainment. this regulation will force creators to think a bit deeper about what they are actually putting out there. and i don't mind if 50% of YouTubers are forced to actually find a real job. having said that, it's still a stupid regulation which shows EU parliament's incompetence in this regard.
• random878 8y ago
  As someone who grew up alongside the internet, I wonder if this is just part of the bigger picture of where the internet has always been heading... The bigger, more popular, and ubiquitous it became the more corporate and political powers were going to seek to rule it. Now were are at an age of internet giants with the GDP of small countries, and political elections being swayed by the bovine herds of Facebook and Twitter users (or useds as Stallman calls them!). The internet has come so far from my happy memories of the late 90s. My prediction is that we will see multiple 'internets'. Whether for political reasons (e.g. China), or commercial (someone like Facebook or Google providing their version of internet to a 3rd world country). Then of course we have things like dark web. I think many will stop seeing the darkweb as a place of CP and drug dealing, and more of an internet free from regulation. It's an interesting point in history. . . . (I'm a bookwork so please share any recommendations on this topic!)
  • naveen99 8y ago
    The internet is already by definition a collection of separate networks...
    • random878 8y ago
      I'm speaking more about the publics perception, rather than a technical definition that most on HN know.
  • _bxg1 8y ago
    Other than VPNs and Tor (which can be blocked), how would people circumvent the fact that the pipes are still owned by the same players? We can't physically lay out "another internet". Maybe there's potential in radio mesh networking, but the wires we have are the wires we get. As depressing as it feels right now, I think the only real option is to continue pushing in the democratic channels we have. Governments can stop anything if they care to; we have to work with them.
    • gpm 8y ago
      Even if some trillionaire decided to lay out all the wires for a new internet it wouldn't matter with respect to things like this. It would still be subject to the same laws. The same applies to radio mesh networking.
• Xelbair 8y ago
  Brexit might not be such a stupid idea after all..
• jaabe 8y ago
  I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion, but I’m actually fine with more equality in copyright legislation. These “disastrous” copyright laws already apply to you and me, and if you think they don’t, then just try hosting a top 1 music video on your personal domain. Where the laws don’t apply is if your service is to host user content and you have the size to circumvent justice. YouTube makes a lot of money off legal content, how much is unknown because they literally won’t tell you how much they earn from your content, but they also earn money from illegal content. They avoid responsibility by being large, and these copyright laws is going to combat exactly that. It’s not perfect, but how else do you suggest that we make the laws that apply to you and me also apply to big tech companies?
  • mbell 8y ago
    This a false analogy. If a company places copyrighted material on their servers they would be equally culpable. Many companies have been sued / shutdown over this just as an individual would. This issue is about a third party (a user), not the company itself, placing copyrighted material on the companies servers.
    • riskable 8y ago
      Anything that's uploadable is copyrighted by someone. How do you prove the uploader owns the copyright? There's no big database of all copyrighted works and if it existed it would be the biggest violator of them all. It is technically impossible to verify the owner of a copyright using anything other than the courts.
  • godzillabrennus 8y ago
    If you host a video that you don’t own you facilitate copyright theft. Expect a takedown notice and it goes away. These big companies let people upload their own videos. Now they are liable for what their users share. Expect them to disable letting users share videos.
    • wolco 8y ago
      So youtube would stop allowing uploading? That would shut down youtube quickly
• speeq 8y ago
  Who wants to work with me on a new startup? "EU Upload-Filter as a Service"...
  • rorykoehler 8y ago
    Tbh this should be an open sourced non profit tool by eff or similar
    • ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
      EFF wouldn't want to dignify this law by creating a tool like that. They are fully against it.
      • rorykoehler 8y ago
        It's a poor plan b but possibly the best one.
    • speeq 8y ago
      It was meant as a joke tbh. It's sad that this is now a requirement for EU startups. Might as well incorporate in the US and launch US-first / ignore the EU market until you have the resources to deal with these laws.
  • rurban 8y ago
    Good luck with that. You'll get no funding, and you would need bigger resources than Google or Facebook. Europe once tried to implement a much simpler problem, search. They failed. Upload-Filtering is impossible if done right. You could implement 30%, but this will not help you as you are still liable on any miss.
  • ralala 8y ago
    that's just a one-liner: return random()>0.5
• ddebernardy 8y ago
  The saddest part is how Brexit and the Mueller Report will eclipse this story before it even makes headlines.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jostmey 8y ago
  Here's what will probably happen. A handful of websites and news outlets will create blanket legal agreements allowing anyone to freely link to their content. There may be some online paperwork that flies back and forth between the content provider and the person wanting to create the link. Websites offering these blanket agreements will flourish. Websites that do not provide their content for free will go unnoticed and undiscovered by the internet. Eventually, all websites in Europe will offer blanket agreements for anyone to freely link to their content. The net result of this proposed law will be more paperwork and more lawyers. In the long run, it will not accomplish its stated goals. It will simply slow down digital innovation in Europe and destroy any European dreams of becoming the next silicon valley
  • z0mbie42 8y ago
    Agree. EU and France is buried under too much bureaucracy to innovate. And instead of solving this technical debt, our politicians add even more laws and bureaucracy :(
  • _bxg1 8y ago
    I think the law precludes such agreements; i.e., publishers are forced to claim license fees for their work whether they want to or not.
    • jostmey 8y ago
      That doesn't make any sense. Who sets the price?
      • _bxg1 8y ago
        It makes sense as a way of preventing exactly the kind of thing the parent comment describes. If you don't even have the option of giving your stuff away for free, nobody can pressure you into doing so.
      • riskable 8y ago
        Each country now has to implement their own version of this directive. That includes pricing.
• doh 8y ago
  The law will have a very negative impact on the society and it's very unfortunate that it passed. I was really hoping to the last second, that it will not. As much as I can't do anything about the law itself, I can make sure that it will not wipe out startups and small companies that are trying to compete with the internet behemoths. We at Pex are making our Attribution Engine free of charge to all content creators, rights holders and platforms [0]. We will publicly announce it within next couple of days. I know it's far cry from the law not being enacted at all, but we hope it's something. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsyYJbEv6hGI64-ptGgQB0/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsy...
• olivermarks 8y ago
  I'm trying to get my head around how CDA 230 will work with these new EU regulations... https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
  • coldacid 8y ago
    My guess is that anyone in the USA who doesn't do business in Europe will be able to get away with saying "F you" to the EU.
    • adventured 8y ago
      You shouldn't be getting downvoted for that, you're entirely correct. My new company in the US can safely ignore the EU when it comes to both Article 13 and GDPR. There is nothing they can do about it. I can take on EU users, who can freely upload content, and I do not need to comply with the EU filter laws. There is merely one primary requirement: all of my business and infrastructure must remain outside of the EU. So long as I do that, I get to avoid those laws. This of course isn't unique to the US, the same is true of most other non-EU nations.
• circlefavshape 8y ago
  FWIW all the musicians rights societies in Ireland have been pushing FOR this change, presenting it as protection for 'content creators'. If A13 affects digital distributors like CDBaby and distrokid then independent musicians are going to be effectively shut out of the modern music market
  • jandrese 8y ago
    If it forces musicians to sign with big labels (and their notoriously unfair contracts), then the law is working as intended. More money for big business means more money for politicians re-election campaign.
• clarkmoody 8y ago
  It's called counter-revolution. Many revolutionary movements are eventually co-opted by elites (often the elites of the overthrown system) for their own purposes. Sometimes the new system put in place after the counter-revolution is worse than the system the original revolution sought to overthrow. The cypherpunks foresaw the dystopian surveillance state decades before the reality and tried to get out in front of it via cryptography. But the raw economics of central service network effects completely destroyed a distributed, control-your-own-keys world. Going forward there are always proposals for a state-controlled "third-key" on all encryption. Likewise, the gatekeepers of the old system (record labels, Disney, etc), have always used the state to enrich themselves. The Internet caught them off guard and they tried to fight it in the early 2000s with lawsuits for file sharing, which hurt their public image greatly. But centralized services came to dominate distribution once again. And now we're seeing obvious self-enrichment with these "reforms."
  • DCKing 8y ago
    I think it politicizes the early internet too much to call it a revolution in the political sense. The early internet was a place of experimentation with new communication, but I think it goes way too far to call it a 'movement'. By its nature it attracted a bunch of people with particular political persuasions. But it wasn't only people of those persuasions, and neither was the entire thing an instrument for those people and their persuasions. Technology allowed for newer and richer forms of communication, and things just happened from there. And this is where we are now, sadly.
    • clarkmoody 8y ago
      Not political, no. A technological revolution, in the disruptive sense. We can look to other disruptive technologies over time to see how the entrenched / favored industries handled the change. The story is mostly the same, but the players are different. The mercatilist impulse is to freeze economics to ensure current levels of profit via state fiat. Even companies that start out revolutionary/scrappy/innovative become conservative after they acquire large market share. It's more important to maintain profit levels, quarterly earnings, and share price than it is to make a risky attempt at another disruptive innovation. Unfortunately, that impulse too often leads them to lobby the legislature or crown.
• lisper 8y ago
  This is just one skirmish in an on-going war between democracy and capitalism. Right now capitalism is winning, in no small measure because very few people seem to realize that this war is even happening. Most people, especially in the U.S., think that democracy and capitalism are inherently compatible with each other, as if the principles of "one person one vote" and "one dollar one vote" are not mutually antagonistic or can somehow be reconciled. Corporations, of course, are only too happy to allow this misconception to flourish.
• jgowdy 8y ago
  What amazes me is with GDPR, so many people were cheerleaders of Europe being the regulator of the internet. Regardless of what you think of GDPR, once we get a political body comfortable with the idea of regulating the internet, this is what we get. The next wall they're working on knocking down is the national sovereignty boundaries of the reach of laws. It's already in progress and soon we will have European nations enforcing their perspectives including limits on free speech, worldwide. We have started sliding down the slippery slope my friends.
  • tyfon 8y ago
    GDPR isn't internet specific, it applies to private data in all companies also "offline" ones. I've had to fill in a GDPR concent form on paper for my local car dealership and I put no to all forms of marketing.
  • growlist 8y ago
    Not to mention, national sovereignty being overridden if a country has the temerity to dissent from the globalist consensus: 'what, you have concerns about the arrival of tens of thousands of undocumented migrants from countries with cultures vastly different to your own? NAZI!'
• zelon88 8y ago
  I haven't made up my mind yet. Just thinking out loud for those who don't know what to think yet..... An upload filter would be good for the internet because..... -It prevents copyright holders from being infringed upon and having to produce paperwork to enforce their copyright. -It could possible prevent harmful material from being uploaded before it can be reviewed. -It puts liability on the tech companies to account for their platforms. -It protects content creators. An upload filter would be bad for the internet because..... -It raises the bar for entry into the tech market. -It increases the amount of work a new-comer in the market must do before launching a product. -It adds a lot of localized complexity to the internet. -The internet was not made to satisfy the requirements of sovereign nations each imposing their own arbitrary laws. -The internet was supposed too/has the potential to be a globalist resource that transcended political borders. An upload filter would be good for my business because..... -It requires me to perform some due diligence on user-submitted data that I otherwise would probably overlook. -It reduces the likelihood that I'll receive a DCMA takedown request. -It will increase public trust and perceived security. -People like to see compliance with regulations, even the ones they don't agree with. -I could roll out the filter to all users and market it as an added layer of protection. An upload filter would be bad for my business because..... -It greatly increases the amount of time I must spend processing simple uploads. -The user must wait for the file to be processed before they can continue using my service (assuming they want to use their file right away). -It will cost time and resources to design, test, and deploy a filter. -It adds complexity. -I will need some frame of reference before I can determine if a file is original or copyrighted. -I cannot trust the user to tell me if they own the rights to an uploaded file. -I could try and geo-fence Europe so I don't have to filter non-European files but what if the copyright holder being infringed is in Europe? -What if a file I filtered out has a copyright holder in the US who has no rights in Europe? -Technically OSS is copyrighted. A file licensed under MIT might not be infringing anything although a file licensed under GPLv3 might be infringing.
• shmerl 8y ago
  Now other regions should resist spreading of this trash, through "harmonization efforts".
• napsterbr 8y ago
  As someone about to use Hetzner for vps hosting. If my company is based elsewhere, but my product is hosted by a provider within the EU, am I still subjected to this utter nonsense? How about if I use OVH on their Canadian datacenter? It's a French based company but the product would be hosted outside EU.
  • isostatic 8y ago
    If I host my content on an american conpany’s European data centre am i subject to silly laws like patriot act?
    • napsterbr 8y ago
      Yes.
• Funes- 8y ago
  Don't fret; memes are safe: "The Copyright Directive protects freedom of expression, a core value of the European Union. It sets strong safeguards for users, making clear that everywhere in Europe the use of existing works for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature as well as parody are explicitly allowed. This means that memes and similar parody creations can be used freely. The interests of the users are also preserved through effective mechanisms to swiftly contest any unjustified removal of their content by the platforms."[0] [0] From the final press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-19-1839_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-19-1839_en.ht....
• soheil 8y ago
  The misconception that somehow the old internet is gone is so widespread mainly due to big brands pushing their content in everyone's face, the old internet is alive and well it's just that the people who operate at that level can't be bothered to market what they do. Want to hack on Linux kernel? There is more vibrancy in that community than there has ever been. Want to find CVE and learn how to hack binaries? There are fascinating tools to do that today that no one dreamt of just a decade ago. Want to build a robot? Now we have open source robot operating systems like Ros that you can just write your python modules in and have a computer vision model tell where your robot should go. There are millions of other examples of how internet has gotten richer and more internet-y than ever! I don't buy the argument that the old internet is gone for a second, it's here alive and well, you just have to stop watching youtube videos, listen to idealogical podcasts, refresh HN/FB and not get distracted by reading random blogs to see the good stuff again:)
  • pmlnr 8y ago
    > There is more vibrancy in that community than there has ever been This is going to sound weird, but this _is_ why it feels like the old internet is gone: everything is moving way too fast.
• sparkling 8y ago
  They pass all these silly laws like the cookie consent nag screen, the data retention directive, GDPR and now this. Then a few years later they wonder why there are basically 0 big digital players from the EU. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ time to sue the big US companies again. Whatever, the faster this EU fails, the better.
• C14L 8y ago
  Wow! Never thought they'd actually pass this terrible "law". Terrible. But maybe not a complete surprise. Pandora's Box was opened two years ago when Germany privatized censorship. Maybe, back then we did it for all the "right reasons". But in politics, that's all too often just the beginning of a slippery slope. And many of those who today protest this new censorship where in favor of it the last time. Because that time it was supposed to censor "the other side".
• Giorgi 8y ago
  If FB, Google or Yt gave a single damn shit, they could simply add message to their frontpages regarding this upcoming legislation. Not doing so means they all have something to gain from this.
  • thirdsun 8y ago
    They have. They are in a position to actually comply with these new requirements - a potential upcoming competitor isn't.
• mk89 8y ago
  According to [0]: > The likes of Google News would have to pay publishers for press snippets shown in search results. I don't really understand the rationale behind this. Really, I am trying to put myself in the shoes of a policy maker, why would I do this law? It's the publisher's role to ask for money, isn't it? Why should a country force a company to pay for sharing content from another company? I don't understand... [0]:https://m.dw.com/en/eu-parliament-approves-controversial-copyright-reform/a-48062142 https://m.dw.com/en/eu-parliament-approves-controversial-cop...
• montzark 8y ago
  I'm wondering if VPN providers are also lobbying for more territorial censorship. They have only to gain from this.
• yannovitch 8y ago
  Wow. Europe shot itself a massive bullet in the foot for the next EU elections.
• gbtw 8y ago
  Time to abolish copyright then :)
• blacklight86 8y ago
  Those who backed the new copyright law claimed that it will guarantee a fair share of revenue to flow from the IT companies to the authors of intellectual property. What they haven't realized is that paying authors a fair revenue when a copyrighted content is shared is still a problem below the horizon. Or, to be more precise, it's also a problem, and it requires a good degree of innovation (see micro-payments, content consumption tracking, Blockchain+smart contracts etc.) in order to be tackled. But we haven't gotten there yet because the real problem is upstream: HOW do we recognize that some uploaded content is copyrighted in the first place, and who's the right copyright holder for that content? How do we do it in a scalable way on platforms where thousands or millions of videos, images or posts are shared per day? How to pinpoint the right copyright holders for a certain content, taking into account that the current situation is extremely fragmented to say the least, that there are multiple national societies for authors that have barely progressed technologically in the last decades (nor have been pushed to do so), that many of them haven't even digitized their own records, let alone provide a unique database where the information about their intellectual property can be publicly accessed? And finally, how to find the right balance between blocking the unauthorized publication of copyrighted content and avoiding an over-zealous approach where companies start blocking legit content as well? (Hint: it's not by putting strict time constraints on taking content down and threatening huge fines on companies). YouTube has already had for some years some content filtering algorithms that automatically block the upload of copyrighted material. It has taken years to build to a company with the size of Google. It required billions of videos to be collected and labelled, massive investments in manual reviewers and engineers, and it's still an algorithm that makes lots of mistakes. How do we expect a smaller start-up to successfully implement a better solution? How could the EU regulators fail to see that this law will create more entrance barriers than those it promises to take down? Google, Facebook etc. have been fighting against this law because it's really bad for the internet in general, but they'll be the ones to benefit most from it. Sure, they'll have to pay a higher toll to make business in Europe, but it's guaranteed that they won't have many competitors. Because, unless the EU pushed for a more distributed and open access to intellectual property, they will be the only ones who can afford to build an infrastructure that really complies with the new regulation. It's really a shame because the law could have been written in a way that would have really solved the problem without creating new ones. Even people like Tim-Berners Lee (the dude who created the web) and people at MIT, Stanford and Berkeley have raised their voice: the EU had the moral obligation to sit with them and listen to their concerns before going down its path, and it failed to do so. There were tons of better ideas. Pushing the associations of authors and artists to digitize their information and make it available in open format. Make a shared database of copyrighted content. Expose an API that businesses can use, where you provide a snippet of some content or its hash digest and the system will tell you whether it contains any copyrighted material, and who are the authors. Set up a continental infrastructure for micro-payments to make sure that authors receive their fair share for each play or view, regardless of where the content is consumed. These are big things to build and no company is really incentivised to do it alone: that's when politics should step in and remove the blockers on the way. Unfortunately the EU this time has chosen the "we set the bar, we don't know if it's too high, and actually we don't even care, good luck you guys" approach without listening to anyone. And that's a huge shame on them.
• bemmu 8y ago
  Question to someone more familiar with how these votes work. Is this the page for this vote? https://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-copyright-in-the-digital-single-market-draft-legislative-resolution-procedural-vote-ordinary-legisla.html https://www.votewatch.eu/en/term8-copyright-in-the-digital-s... If it is, it says 312 voted for it, 317 against it, 24 abstained. But it passed? Why?
  • rkul 8y ago
    There were two votes: (1) Amendments to the Directive, (2) vote on the whole directive. Amendments did not pass 312-317 and Directive passed 3xx-247 (cant recall the exact numbers)
• jakeogh 8y ago
  More xEXIT I bet. POLEXIT next maybe?
• dang 8y ago
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-disastrous-internet-law-what-happens-next https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-d... is related.
• AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
  Time for things like tor, i2p, and freenode to become more popular!
• themagician 8y ago
  I don't know why this has so much hate. It doesn't seem like the best piece of legislation, but it does address a serious issue that has gone ignored for far too long. YouTube really built an empire on copyrighted content, and still continues to profit from it, as a result of liability shield that the DMCA provides. It has never sat well with me. Today YouTube no longer relies on copyrighted content to be relevant. User generated content is now the primary source of views and ad revenue, but that wasn't always so. I remember when YouTube was the place to go to watch The Daily Show, SouthPark, SNL, and a host of other things. That's how YouTube became popular. This, "It's okay to break the law as long as the end result does more good than harm," is a weird line of thinking that seems to permeate a host of tech startups these days. And in the case of YouTube, while it's true that copyrighted content infringement is no longer their business driver, there's still a large portion of content that is copyrighted and YouTube shouldn't be profiting from that for no reason. If YouTube was a public utility, as many people—particularly "creators"—seem to want to treat it things might be different. But YouTube isn't a public utility. Letting users hide behind anonymous accounts shouldn't magically absolve you of liability. I think letting things develop the way they have probably did more good than harm at the end of the day, but I'm not sure that justifies it—and I don't think it should just be allowed to continue.
  • AsyncAwait 8y ago
    > YouTube really built an empire on copyrighted content The current content gatekeepers built their studios by violating Edison's patents. In fact many innovators got started by subverting copyright restrictions in some form. Perhaps that tells you something. Also, it's not a one-way street. YT is a platform where artists can effectively reach a worldwide audience for free, something their publishers would have to pay handsomely for before, in the form of prime-time ad spots on multiple TV networks.
• patwilison 8y ago
  This is good for democracy. The EU is a fine institution that has prevented google from selling our search history to the government. I applaud this decision and hope that it is part of broader anti-piracy campaign that would create minimum sentencing for pirates caught and if necessary the use of capital punishment would be deemed legal under EU law. This should help prevent fake news and foster a more balanced online discussion.
• shmerl 8y ago
  Rather they approve censorship machine.
• 75dvtwin 8y ago
  Assuming that Brexit will happen. Will this make companies headquartered anywhere in UK, in more advantageous position, than a company serving user-created content, with HQ in European Union?
• danielscrubs 8y ago
  It's interesting, usually, there are two sides, but in this issue, I've never met anyone standing on the pro-side. Yet it got approved. 60% more people vote for the normal parliament than the EU-parliament and in the EU-parliament we get around 20 people to represent our whole country. The countries with high corruption get more voting rights than the ones with less corruption. Wouldn't be so bad if they focused on just trading deficiencies, but no, they want to have their own culture budget ffs.
• pugwash 8y ago
  Someone remind me: did the Internet survive the introduction of the DMCA?
• neop1x 8y ago
  Now they only have to force us install some kind of proprietary filtering binary to the every server. It's starting to be like a chinese firewall on the source side.