7 ms·

EU Council of Ministers Approves Copyright Directive

97 points by amima 7y ago

preommr 7y ago
I am 90% this means nothing and I disagree this won't affect big companies and will only affect small startups like some of the other comments here. The law basically says that the company has to try it's best to prevent copyrighted material. If you're a small company, you can put together some simple algorithm and claim that's all you can really do. Big shots like youtube have the capital to be proactive and pay for things like real people to monitor claims. They're at a bigger risk for not doing enough. Either way, the bar would be high enough that I don't think anyone is really going to be affected by this.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Indeed. And as with most laws of this sort, action will almost certainly be taken against large, abusive parties, rather than going after little guys who are being honest and doing their best. The Internet will survive, and perhaps even thrive in an environment where big companies are no longer able to run roughshod over everyone else's content.
- llaqb 7y ago
  That is very arbitrary. You can claim you're doing as much as you can. Who is going to determine how much you are really able to do? What if the judge decides you could've done more and decides to fine you anyway?
- yummybear 7y ago
  My hunch tells me this will be used as a tactical weapon by rights holders and PR companies to bury negative publicity in lawyer fees. You can argue that you are using some content fairly and you did your best to prevent it in court while paying 500$/hr to your layer, or you can simply remove it. But yeah, that won't be a problem for 95% of companies and startups - but it will be for some.
  - preommr 7y ago
    I wonder about that, because I don't think there are many european countries that follow the "American rule" system where each party pays it's own fees. In the "English rule" system the losing party pays for the legal fees so a rich person can't just arbitrarily spam law suits. But then again, I am making a lot of assumptions here (but then again it seems like so is everyone else here) so I don't know about the exact legal details that could change things.
- bengale 7y ago
  There is an exemption from any charges arising from the legislation for those who earn less than 5 million euros per annum.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mcv 7y ago
I fear this may end up being the end of full Youtube access for Europeans. Youtube must either have a license with all possible rights holders, which is everybody, or content uploaded by Europeans must be checked by impossible filters, and I suppose content uploaded from elsewhere must be checked by those same filters before it can be shown to Europeans. So basically we're only going to get corporate content from Youtube. A small consolation is that it may also kill Facebook in the EU, giving more room for smaller, open source, distributed social networks like Diaspora, Mastodon and Friendica. If it's true that this only holds for profit-driven sites, as someone claimed in an earlier discussion about this.
- nkkollaw 7y ago
  As you can see from Facebook's stock price, Facebook will not be killed by this directive. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/
- aequitas 7y ago
  > So basically we're only going to get corporate content from Youtube. Indeed, I foresee our current internet content supply to converge to what's currently available on television, ie: a very few good shows, but majorly common denominator low quality productions. I hate what television has turned into. Where channels like Discovery would have interesting content now it's only storage wars and other formulaic pulp. Especially the lasts years there has been an emergence of very good independent Youtube creators focusing on niche topics. I really enjoy those videos. But with this change, where will they go to get their audience and income?
  - raulgalera 7y ago
    Agreed. Even Netflix nowadays feels like just another traditional TV channel.
- onion2k 7y ago
  YouTube will be fine. It's big enough to implement enough tech that they can say they're doing what they can. In fact, they've probably had enough there for years. Most content hosting startups are likely to be too small to need to implement any tech at all, so they're fine as well for now. The problem is that now it's practically impossible for a startup to scale up. The route to an exit for any startup hosting content and serving the EU is effectively closed, which is going to make raising impossible, which in turn will make developing a solution impossible. This law cements YouTube as the market leader in a way that no one can really challenge. They've been handed a de facto monopoly. That's the problem.
rasengan 7y ago
My worry is that the directive will be used in unique ways to censor content.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
  More than that, I fear that it will be used to justify other filters. "It worked with copyright, so why not do the same with hate speech, terrorism, and wrongthink?" EDIT: "Oh, and if you don't like being censore, that means you endorse terrorism, because politics in 2019"
shapiro92 7y ago
but the question is how will they enforce this? let's say there are X units of content that based on the directive should not be available to Europeans through platform Y. How will they know? unless someone reports the content its impossible for any EU system to catch that.
- ccozan 7y ago
  the EU will not. The Directive must be implemented by member states, and they will detail the means and the lengths of how this directive is applied/enforced. Since every state has it's own version of Copyright office and what powers it has, it will not be 100% homogenous all over.
  - shapiro92 7y ago
    but then even more to the point. Will each country create its own "firewall" ? unlikely.. maybe a new business opportunity arises :P
rayiner 7y ago
This is a good illustration of EU legislative structure: > The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers just a few minutes ago, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. Nonetheless, those countries will have no choice but to implement national laws to comply with the EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy > Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union member states could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the member state's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law. Indeed, EU members lack the sovereignty even of U.S. states. The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws. The EU can do both (the former through regulations, the latter through directives). In the US, the inability of the federal government to hijack state legislative and enforcement machinery to its own ends is seen as an important measure of accountability—you can always blame state legislators for state laws. (You see this in the areas of drug and immigration law. Sanctuary cities can exist because the federal government cannot force state organs to enforce federal law. Likewise, legalized marijuana at the state level.)
- x38iq84n 7y ago
  This is called sovereignity ala EU. EU countries are sovereign - to pass laws they do not want or agree with, under the threat of sanctions by the EU.
  - duxup 7y ago
    It sounds like what the other person cited indicates that that your statement is not entirely accurate.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Juliate 7y ago
  Well, it's more like an illustration of a voting/decision group where majority, but not unanimity, is required for the decision to be taken. And where the decision taken is binding for everyone. The mechanism in question was and is known by all participant countries that joined the EU. Not perfect, but is there a better system at reach? There's a country I heard, overseas, where it can happen that someone is elected president although they didn't get the majority of the people's vote.
mrep 7y ago
The interesting bits of article 17 which was 13 from the actual document [0]: >If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have: >(a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and >(b) made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event >(c) acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b). [0]: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-271-271_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-A...
- Juliate 7y ago
  What about/if some right owners that pro-actively/easily grant authorisation for some uses that could increase their reach, and then their (related or not) revenue?
- scoutt 7y ago
  >> acted expeditiously (...) to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works Stupid question not being native English speaker (or writer): Shouldn't it be: "to disable access to, or to remove from their websites, the notified works" without a comma between from and their? Otherwise, could the sentence also mean to disable access (...) to their websites? That could be a different thing than just enforcing rights to remove some content. Or it could be at least, a sentence without much meaning.
kevin_b_er 7y ago
This marks the end of user generated content in Europe, as it is pretty much impossible to comply with the demand to filter all content at the behest of the copyright cartel.
- rum3 7y ago
  This might unintentionally end up being a good thing because it will give rise to more decentralized platforms.
- dingaling 7y ago
  I'll still be generating my own 'content' and uploading it to niche fora. Filtering can be done on such small scales by the usual moderation processes. "Pierre, please don't upload photos you didn't take. We've removed that attachment." Most focused-interest boards don't have members uploading rips of Hollywood movies and claiming it to be 'fair use' and the ones on which I.am active haven't raised any concerns about this legislation. GDPR was more tumultuous.
- pndy 7y ago
  Call me nuts, tinfoil, whatever but for last few years I'm having this hunch that politicians along with corporations are trying to "civilize" the Internet and ultimately turn it into cable tv-like controlled medium serving approved content because at this moment it's still running wild, because in their eyes it's too dangerous tool in hands of ordinary people who always can use it to discredit them and their actions.
duxup 7y ago
It will be interesting to see how this plays out legally. I wonder if from nation to nation if enforcement actually gets even more absurd than the actual law would indicate. It seems like the member states laws could leave lots of wiggle room / confusion.

97 points by amima 7y ago

I am 90% this means nothing and I disagree this won't affect big companies and will only affect small startups like some of the other comments here. The law basically says that the company has to try it's best to prevent copyrighted material. If you're a small company, you can put together some simple algorithm and claim that's all you can really do. Big shots like youtube have the capital to be proactive and pay for things like real people to monitor claims. They're at a bigger risk for not doing enough. Either way, the bar would be high enough that I don't think anyone is really going to be affected by this.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Indeed. And as with most laws of this sort, action will almost certainly be taken against large, abusive parties, rather than going after little guys who are being honest and doing their best. The Internet will survive, and perhaps even thrive in an environment where big companies are no longer able to run roughshod over everyone else's content.
llaqb 7y ago
That is very arbitrary. You can claim you're doing as much as you can. Who is going to determine how much you are really able to do? What if the judge decides you could've done more and decides to fine you anyway?
yummybear 7y ago
My hunch tells me this will be used as a tactical weapon by rights holders and PR companies to bury negative publicity in lawyer fees. You can argue that you are using some content fairly and you did your best to prevent it in court while paying 500$/hr to your layer, or you can simply remove it. But yeah, that won't be a problem for 95% of companies and startups - but it will be for some.
- preommr 7y ago
  I wonder about that, because I don't think there are many european countries that follow the "American rule" system where each party pays it's own fees. In the "English rule" system the losing party pays for the legal fees so a rich person can't just arbitrarily spam law suits. But then again, I am making a lot of assumptions here (but then again it seems like so is everyone else here) so I don't know about the exact legal details that could change things.
bengale 7y ago
There is an exemption from any charges arising from the legislation for those who earn less than 5 million euros per annum.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mcv 7y ago

I fear this may end up being the end of full Youtube access for Europeans. Youtube must either have a license with all possible rights holders, which is everybody, or content uploaded by Europeans must be checked by impossible filters, and I suppose content uploaded from elsewhere must be checked by those same filters before it can be shown to Europeans. So basically we're only going to get corporate content from Youtube. A small consolation is that it may also kill Facebook in the EU, giving more room for smaller, open source, distributed social networks like Diaspora, Mastodon and Friendica. If it's true that this only holds for profit-driven sites, as someone claimed in an earlier discussion about this.

nkkollaw 7y ago
As you can see from Facebook's stock price, Facebook will not be killed by this directive. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/
aequitas 7y ago
> So basically we're only going to get corporate content from Youtube. Indeed, I foresee our current internet content supply to converge to what's currently available on television, ie: a very few good shows, but majorly common denominator low quality productions. I hate what television has turned into. Where channels like Discovery would have interesting content now it's only storage wars and other formulaic pulp. Especially the lasts years there has been an emergence of very good independent Youtube creators focusing on niche topics. I really enjoy those videos. But with this change, where will they go to get their audience and income?
- raulgalera 7y ago
  Agreed. Even Netflix nowadays feels like just another traditional TV channel.
onion2k 7y ago
YouTube will be fine. It's big enough to implement enough tech that they can say they're doing what they can. In fact, they've probably had enough there for years. Most content hosting startups are likely to be too small to need to implement any tech at all, so they're fine as well for now. The problem is that now it's practically impossible for a startup to scale up. The route to an exit for any startup hosting content and serving the EU is effectively closed, which is going to make raising impossible, which in turn will make developing a solution impossible. This law cements YouTube as the market leader in a way that no one can really challenge. They've been handed a de facto monopoly. That's the problem.

rasengan 7y ago

My worry is that the directive will be used in unique ways to censor content.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
More than that, I fear that it will be used to justify other filters. "It worked with copyright, so why not do the same with hate speech, terrorism, and wrongthink?" EDIT: "Oh, and if you don't like being censore, that means you endorse terrorism, because politics in 2019"

shapiro92 7y ago

but the question is how will they enforce this? let's say there are X units of content that based on the directive should not be available to Europeans through platform Y. How will they know? unless someone reports the content its impossible for any EU system to catch that.

ccozan 7y ago
the EU will not. The Directive must be implemented by member states, and they will detail the means and the lengths of how this directive is applied/enforced. Since every state has it's own version of Copyright office and what powers it has, it will not be 100% homogenous all over.
- shapiro92 7y ago
  but then even more to the point. Will each country create its own "firewall" ? unlikely.. maybe a new business opportunity arises :P

rayiner 7y ago

This is a good illustration of EU legislative structure: > The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers just a few minutes ago, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. Nonetheless, those countries will have no choice but to implement national laws to comply with the EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy > Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union member states could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the member state's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law. Indeed, EU members lack the sovereignty even of U.S. states. The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws. The EU can do both (the former through regulations, the latter through directives). In the US, the inability of the federal government to hijack state legislative and enforcement machinery to its own ends is seen as an important measure of accountability—you can always blame state legislators for state laws. (You see this in the areas of drug and immigration law. Sanctuary cities can exist because the federal government cannot force state organs to enforce federal law. Likewise, legalized marijuana at the state level.)

x38iq84n 7y ago
This is called sovereignity ala EU. EU countries are sovereign - to pass laws they do not want or agree with, under the threat of sanctions by the EU.
- duxup 7y ago
  It sounds like what the other person cited indicates that that your statement is not entirely accurate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Juliate 7y ago
Well, it's more like an illustration of a voting/decision group where majority, but not unanimity, is required for the decision to be taken. And where the decision taken is binding for everyone. The mechanism in question was and is known by all participant countries that joined the EU. Not perfect, but is there a better system at reach? There's a country I heard, overseas, where it can happen that someone is elected president although they didn't get the majority of the people's vote.

mrep 7y ago

The interesting bits of article 17 which was 13 from the actual document [0]: >If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have: >(a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and >(b) made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event >(c) acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b). [0]: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-271-271_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-A...

Juliate 7y ago
What about/if some right owners that pro-actively/easily grant authorisation for some uses that could increase their reach, and then their (related or not) revenue?
scoutt 7y ago
>> acted expeditiously (...) to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works Stupid question not being native English speaker (or writer): Shouldn't it be: "to disable access to, or to remove from their websites, the notified works" without a comma between from and their? Otherwise, could the sentence also mean to disable access (...) to their websites? That could be a different thing than just enforcing rights to remove some content. Or it could be at least, a sentence without much meaning.

kevin_b_er 7y ago

This marks the end of user generated content in Europe, as it is pretty much impossible to comply with the demand to filter all content at the behest of the copyright cartel.

rum3 7y ago
This might unintentionally end up being a good thing because it will give rise to more decentralized platforms.
dingaling 7y ago
I'll still be generating my own 'content' and uploading it to niche fora. Filtering can be done on such small scales by the usual moderation processes. "Pierre, please don't upload photos you didn't take. We've removed that attachment." Most focused-interest boards don't have members uploading rips of Hollywood movies and claiming it to be 'fair use' and the ones on which I.am active haven't raised any concerns about this legislation. GDPR was more tumultuous.
pndy 7y ago
Call me nuts, tinfoil, whatever but for last few years I'm having this hunch that politicians along with corporations are trying to "civilize" the Internet and ultimately turn it into cable tv-like controlled medium serving approved content because at this moment it's still running wild, because in their eyes it's too dangerous tool in hands of ordinary people who always can use it to discredit them and their actions.

duxup 7y ago

It will be interesting to see how this plays out legally. I wonder if from nation to nation if enforcement actually gets even more absurd than the actual law would indicate. It seems like the member states laws could leave lots of wiggle room / confusion.