8 ms·

France proposes upload filter law, “forgets” user rights

277 points by gnomewascool 7y ago

gnomewascool 7y ago
The title is a bit click-baity, but I'm not sure whether it's sufficiently bad to "editorialise"[0] the title. The context is the French implementation of the EU copyright directive (the one that contained Articles "11" and "13" (though the numbering was later changed)). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  The title is like a headline that I would expect from a professional left-wing publisher, though; it doesn't seem unreasonable at all, and I'm not sure what it could be changed to since the author is a politician and this is basically a political speech that focuses on the topics brought up by the title.
deogeo 7y ago
Every time you buy media legally, you fund these kinds of laws. Not only are media conglomerates not our friends, they are openly hostile to the rights the growing IP laws have not yet robbed us of.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  Hear hear! They call you a consumer because your job is to shut up and buy the shit they shovel out and keep a grin on your face as you buy buy buy.
- briandear 7y ago
  Every time you steal media, you defund the creators.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jMyles 7y ago
    I don't need this particular ideological defense. I will be able to create better content, and do it more easily, with fewer restrictions.
  - virmundi 7y ago
    Perhaps they should be defunded. A period of darkness in the arts might reset it to being innovative and independent.
  - sgc 7y ago
    When many people copy media (not take it away from someone), they do it because it is not worth 100x-1000x the amount the creator receives to them. Many, if not most or virtually all those people would be willing to pay a more reasonable price without the draconian war enacted by "publishers", who now, in the age of the internet, bring little more than a gate rather than actual distribution. It is certainly more complex than "pay any price, accept any consequence, or you are evil". A strong correlate to this is the fact that many content creators, despite entering into agreements with publishing houses, really could not care less about piracy. The modern history of piracy, legislative creep, and enforcement has been a battle between consumers and publishers, not artists.
  - arpa 7y ago
    Cry me a river.
- s1k3b8 7y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. The biggest backers of the ridiculous copyright and IP laws are media companies - Disney, News Corp, etc being the most egregious examples. And these companies are only getting bigger as they consolidate and merge and it gives them even greater power and leverage within governments around the world. These media conglomerates are some of the largest ad sellers and buyers and have too much influence over everything. There is so much talk about how bad and powerful social media companies are. Disney, News Corp, etc are even more powerful and in my opinion, more destructive to human beings, than social media. It's time to break up, not just the biggest social media companies, but all major media conglomerates. Lets get some diversity in the media space - social and traditional.
- rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Three things come to mind : Most of the Disney stories are actually based on public domain works. Snow White is an obvious example from the Grimm stories but is even older than their collection. You'd definitely want a legal team's support if you were to release a Snow White story these days. This is an indicator of how far corporations have proceeded in "owning" the public domain. Companies like to feed from the public domain but not so much the other way. No surprise there. Mickey Mouse would likely be public domain soon or already if not for constant intervention from Disney to move the date each time it gets even remotely nearby. All that said, I'm not sure illegal downloads are the answer. Heavy political pressure / people power is more likely beneficial. Reining in copyright laws in general is still something on the overall worlds "todo" list but there are a few other issues with higher priority. General awareness of how copyright/IP laws and agreements impact cost of medicines and health might be part of the way forward.
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    > Companies like to feed from the public domain but not so much the other way. > Mickey Mouse would likely be public domain soon or already if not for constant intervention from Disney to move the date each time it gets even remotely nearby. Yeah. They're probably going to try and extend copyright duration once more in the 2020s. It's infuriating. The social contract behind copyright was "we'll pretend you have exclusive access to your work for some time so that you can make your money and when the time is up the work will belong to public". Copyright holders obviously have no intention to fulfill their part of the contract: they employ lobbyists to extend copyright duration to infinity, weaken fair use by mandating automated and indiscriminate blocking and generally erode the rights and freedoms of citizens. So why should people recognize copyright as legitimate? It's a phony, artificial concept that should be abolished before the billion dollar copyright industry abuses it any further. People who infringe copyright are guilty of nothing but civil disobedience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
- fierarul 7y ago
  Often the media is free. But have you looked at the prices for toys?
derefr 7y ago
> The title of the proposed law gives a glimpse into the mindset of French legislators, presenting the enforcement of copyright laws in the interest of private entertainment companies as a matter of asserting France’s “cultural sovereignty”. It frames Article 17 as a means to support the European entertainment industry in its conflicts with American tech companies. Users’ interests are at best an afterthought in this struggle for “cultural sovereignty”. I would imagine that the legislators of France and other EU countries are fairly accustomed to seeing through the lens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t... protections, and tend to apply that mindset to other "trade protection" issues. In a sense, someone sharing a French-copyrighted work on Facebook with the source+watermarks stripped, is doing something kind of similar to an American winemaker who labels a sparkling wine they've produced as e.g. "Napa Champagne".... but in another sense, no, that's an awful analogy.
- bonzini 7y ago
  It's awful indeed. As a European citizen I am very much in favor of geographical marking of specialties (and I don't see why that wouldn't be beneficial to US agriculture either), but certainly do not extend that opinion to upload filters. Or dropping daylight savings time for that matter.
dane-pgp 7y ago
"Rightsholders, unlike what the directive says, do not have to justify their initial requests to block content, but only have to respond once a user challenges the blocking of one of their uploads." I wonder if the law will allow for any penalties or restrictions against a rightsholder who "mistakenly" claims that every piece of user-uploaded media on a website is infringing their copyright. Presumably a rightsholder could be a company (or individual) based anywhere in the world, and therefore would face no legal risk in making such "mistakes". (A creative lawyer might attempt to use fraud or "hacking" laws against such a rightsholder, but might have difficulty bringing them to court). Some of the rightsholder's claims may even be completely valid, meaning that the hosting website couldn't afford to just disregard all their claims.
- progval 7y ago
  > I wonder if the law will allow for any penalties or restrictions against a rightsholder who "mistakenly" claims that every piece of user-uploaded media on a website is infringing their copyright. It does not mention any. (ref: mostly page 31 of https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/content/download/16062/162304/version/1/file/plf_mice1927829L_cm_5.12.2019.pdf https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/content/download/16062/162304... , and also other relevant sections found by looking for the words "téléversé"/"téléverser", which mean "upload")
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    Then, couldn't you pose as a copyright owner and submit a takedown request on these legislators' personal or official content? Let them have a taste of their own medecine. I wonder how a politician that supported the initiative would react if they had their campaign videos systematically taken offline?
    - pferde 7y ago
      You would just be adding headaches to the PR drones working for that politician. I doubt the politician himself would ever know about it happening. These people are usually behind several layers of separation from real world.
doh 7y ago
This is an unfortunate law that was passed quite hastily and will bring a lot of challenges to the market. Even my company operates in this space, we were trying to convince politicians not to adopt it. We failed, as you can see. We built a product [0] that introduces a balanced approach to the legislation where it actually considers all 3 sides (creators/uploader, rightsholders and platforms) and made it free of charge to all (we make money through licensing revenue carried through the system). We still wish that the legislation didn't pass, but at least we are hoping to level the playing field for everyone. [0] https://pex.com/attribution-engine.html https://pex.com/attribution-engine.html
bcheung 7y ago
I couldn't really find the core arguments of the article. I wasn't really sure what it is was arguing for or against or what the exact laws are that we should be concerned about. Can someone elaborate?
- tehabe 7y ago
  the European Union (EU) enacted a copyright directive this year, this directive has to be implemented in national law by the EU member states. Part of this copyright directive is that platforms are liable for copyright infringement of their users unless they take measures to prevent those. they are also provisions in the directive which were supposed to keep user's right in check. Now the French government put forward a bill in the French Parliament to implement this directive. It seems to be a bill which favors the rightsholders above else, which was to be expected because France was one of the biggest proponents of this part of the directive.
user5994461 7y ago
It's not quite as bad as she makes it look like. France already has laws covering exceptions like caricatures and quotations. That's why it's not detailed in the new article, it already exists. The most interesting part of the PDF might be the article 17, section 4. In summary, platforms MUST provide a way for both users and copyright holders to handle complaints and -the important part- they MUST be reviewed by a human. This is gonna be fun for Google and co that want to automate everything with machine learning.
- wnoise 7y ago
  > France already has laws covering exceptions like caricatures and quotations. That's why it's not detailed in the new article, it already exists. Why and how would the provided exceptions to other laws do anything to this law?
- rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Review by a human might not help if the human is being scripted like a bot. Line 5 of script: Look at reply. Count the number of vowels on first line. Line 6 of script: now say, "we have reviewed your reply."
  - user5994461 7y ago
    Humans introduce entropy in the system and might actually review cases once in a while, unlike a bot. Outside of script, rejected claims that had "azertyuiop" as copyright owner, although it had the right amount of vowels.
    - rs23296008n1 7y ago
      To expand: Plenty of call centers operate scripts that respond not much better than how I outlined it. The trick is to get out of the script as soon as you can find and trigger the escape clause. My concern with companies like Google is that you can easily get yourself into a bizarre situation. Whereas with other systems you just need to escape the script to get to a human review, Google and similar structures mean you often need to find the escape from the escape from the escape. This is why people appeal on twitter rather than through google's own systems. (Yes there are exceptions) The hope with putting humans into the loop is valid but I'm not convinced its the full answer. The overall attitude/culture of the environment they operate in is still important. At least with putting people into the process those people can add their own attitude/culture. This is the saving grace however slim. I'm hopeful but not convinced.
cft 7y ago
If the EU firewalls itself, it will make it easier for the rest of the world. To many aggressive laws claiming foreign jurisdictions.
ronilan 7y ago
Copyright is not as important to society as Silicon Valley wants everyone to believe. It a property issue and not even a critical one. Most of the problems around it can be solved with money. The collateral damage caused by this lawyer infused, never ending “copyright war”, though is real. Not worth one good man. Edit: I’m a “creator”. Never been “corporate”. I had my work “cloned”.
- youeseh 7y ago
  Copyright is pretty important to the artists, academic publishing, and the entertainment industry, no?
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Yes, but mostly in a negative way. All of these industries would havea lot more freedom to innovate if there were significantly shorter copyright periods.
  - jMyles 7y ago
    Insofar as it being one of the primary handcuffs preventing us from creating more compelling content, yes, it is important. Ending it (or at least returning it to a role more similar to a century ago) will be awesome for content creators.
  - lidHanteyk 7y ago
    Yes. However, of the artists, the publishers, and the producers, only the artists are entitled to copyright, no? The Constitution limits copyright to artists and scientists [0], and in practical terms the Constitution is understood to refer to the artists who create works of art, and the scientists who describe physical inventions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
  - jachee 7y ago
    Only if they care about money. Banksy isn't likely to sue anyone.
tomaszs 7y ago
The "block and ask later" method seems valid for copyright owners. But for users it is essencially just "block". Not only because relevancy will be lower after some days pass. But mostly because algorythms will not show such content to people. Because it didn't receive any signals for several days makes it to be considered uninteresting. For funny memes it is not a big deal, but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. And it is already known copyright laws are used by media companies to control the narrative. For example when a politician says something people can find not right. Should a media company sympathasing with him, be able to wipe out the very existance of the situation? Because this is actually what media companies will be to do. Wipe out parts of reality they dont like people to remember or know. Actually it looks like politics made a deal with business. And it is something to oppose against.
- zabana 7y ago
  > For funny memes it is not a big deal, but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. I'm afraid that's the point. Western governments, while pointing fingers at china, russia or <insert brown country>, have been hard at work trying to find creative ways to implement soft censorship (ie: don't outright ban the content or shutdown the website, but considerably limit their potential reach on dubious grounds such as copyright infringement). Totalitarianism is slowly creeping up on us.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  > but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. Sounds good. Just copyright strike the content of the party proposing this
  - hrktb 7y ago
    Most “serious” parties and companies want this. They want power, and that’s sheer power, as long as they get to control it. It’s like the poor guy encouraging tax cuts because one day he’ll be rich and don’t want to keep his money when he’ll finally make it out.
    - 7y ago
mirimir 7y ago
This is all so depressing. If we had sites where content couldn't be blocked, all this angst about blocking would just be lulz. And it's not even hard. Torrenting and streaming through VPN services still work well enough. We just need implementations at mass market scale. Some of those cryptocurrency whales ought to get on it.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Belated edit: I recall in the mid-late 90s that the internet was headed toward P2P, mix networks, and other noncommercial stuff. We got Usenet newsgroups, Cypherpunk/Mixmaster remailers, Freenet, Tor, Napster, BitTorrent, etc. But now we've gone commercial/centralized again. Like AOL/Prodigy reborn. And worse than that, we have smartphones designed to neutralize privacy and foster dependency on commercial bullshit. More like game systems than PCs. Sure, there's cool stuff like IPFS and Signal. But mostly it's all so depressing.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (knightcolumbia.org)" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Thanks, interesting stuff. > I've said this 1000 times, but garbage like Facebook or Twitter could be replaced overnight by a protocol. There is really zero reason it couldn't be built from existing distributed tooling, be secure and just as useful without lizard people getting in the way. -- scottlocklin But there's nothing about privacy, and the only comment that mentions "censor" is in favor.
      - BlueTemplar 7y ago
        RTFA ? (I linked the HN discussion because criticism is always good to have.)
PeterStuer 7y ago
As an example of what can happen under regimes where 'right holders' are disproportional advantaged over content creators: A third party rights management provider just copyright claimed seemingly any Youtube video that contained any soundparts that were also found in one of their client's videos. Now their clients are often very small content creators such as people posting videos of their Twitch game playing streams to YouTube as a VoD archive. Now imagine that this one gamestreamer client of theirs plays a game that contains a cutscene (as most games do). Now every other gamestreamer with YouTube archives will find every video that had them playing that game copyright striked, as the cutscenes from the game played where ofc identical to those cutscenes in the other guys video. This really happened [1], and resulting in those types of channels now having to manually dispute the demonetization on each and every one of their videos in their (sometimes very extensive) catalogues. The very small company in question, Illustrated Sound Music, claims it was just a 'mistake', and yes, in most cases they will not gain more than a few pennies per video as apparently most of the stuff they hit has just a handful of views, but pennies per video from millions and millions of videos add up to a nice sum. [1] https://gamingph.com/2019/12/youtubers-hit-by-false-copyright-claim-by-illustrated-sound-music/ https://gamingph.com/2019/12/youtubers-hit-by-false-copyrigh...
Mirioron 7y ago
Remember when EU politicians said that Article 17 (was known as article 13) won't result in upload filters? I remember. This is yet another example of EU politicians lying to the voters.

277 points by gnomewascool 7y ago

The title is a bit click-baity, but I'm not sure whether it's sufficiently bad to "editorialise"[0] the title. The context is the French implementation of the EU copyright directive (the one that contained Articles "11" and "13" (though the numbering was later changed)). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lidHanteyk 7y ago
The title is like a headline that I would expect from a professional left-wing publisher, though; it doesn't seem unreasonable at all, and I'm not sure what it could be changed to since the author is a politician and this is basically a political speech that focuses on the topics brought up by the title.

deogeo 7y ago

Every time you buy media legally, you fund these kinds of laws. Not only are media conglomerates not our friends, they are openly hostile to the rights the growing IP laws have not yet robbed us of.

ohithereyou 7y ago
Hear hear! They call you a consumer because your job is to shut up and buy the shit they shovel out and keep a grin on your face as you buy buy buy.
briandear 7y ago
Every time you steal media, you defund the creators.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jMyles 7y ago
  I don't need this particular ideological defense. I will be able to create better content, and do it more easily, with fewer restrictions.
- virmundi 7y ago
  Perhaps they should be defunded. A period of darkness in the arts might reset it to being innovative and independent.
- sgc 7y ago
  When many people copy media (not take it away from someone), they do it because it is not worth 100x-1000x the amount the creator receives to them. Many, if not most or virtually all those people would be willing to pay a more reasonable price without the draconian war enacted by "publishers", who now, in the age of the internet, bring little more than a gate rather than actual distribution. It is certainly more complex than "pay any price, accept any consequence, or you are evil". A strong correlate to this is the fact that many content creators, despite entering into agreements with publishing houses, really could not care less about piracy. The modern history of piracy, legislative creep, and enforcement has been a battle between consumers and publishers, not artists.
- arpa 7y ago
  Cry me a river.
s1k3b8 7y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. The biggest backers of the ridiculous copyright and IP laws are media companies - Disney, News Corp, etc being the most egregious examples. And these companies are only getting bigger as they consolidate and merge and it gives them even greater power and leverage within governments around the world. These media conglomerates are some of the largest ad sellers and buyers and have too much influence over everything. There is so much talk about how bad and powerful social media companies are. Disney, News Corp, etc are even more powerful and in my opinion, more destructive to human beings, than social media. It's time to break up, not just the biggest social media companies, but all major media conglomerates. Lets get some diversity in the media space - social and traditional.
rs23296008n1 7y ago
Three things come to mind : Most of the Disney stories are actually based on public domain works. Snow White is an obvious example from the Grimm stories but is even older than their collection. You'd definitely want a legal team's support if you were to release a Snow White story these days. This is an indicator of how far corporations have proceeded in "owning" the public domain. Companies like to feed from the public domain but not so much the other way. No surprise there. Mickey Mouse would likely be public domain soon or already if not for constant intervention from Disney to move the date each time it gets even remotely nearby. All that said, I'm not sure illegal downloads are the answer. Heavy political pressure / people power is more likely beneficial. Reining in copyright laws in general is still something on the overall worlds "todo" list but there are a few other issues with higher priority. General awareness of how copyright/IP laws and agreements impact cost of medicines and health might be part of the way forward.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  > Companies like to feed from the public domain but not so much the other way. > Mickey Mouse would likely be public domain soon or already if not for constant intervention from Disney to move the date each time it gets even remotely nearby. Yeah. They're probably going to try and extend copyright duration once more in the 2020s. It's infuriating. The social contract behind copyright was "we'll pretend you have exclusive access to your work for some time so that you can make your money and when the time is up the work will belong to public". Copyright holders obviously have no intention to fulfill their part of the contract: they employ lobbyists to extend copyright duration to infinity, weaken fair use by mandating automated and indiscriminate blocking and generally erode the rights and freedoms of citizens. So why should people recognize copyright as legitimate? It's a phony, artificial concept that should be abolished before the billion dollar copyright industry abuses it any further. People who infringe copyright are guilty of nothing but civil disobedience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
fierarul 7y ago
Often the media is free. But have you looked at the prices for toys?

derefr 7y ago

> The title of the proposed law gives a glimpse into the mindset of French legislators, presenting the enforcement of copyright laws in the interest of private entertainment companies as a matter of asserting France’s “cultural sovereignty”. It frames Article 17 as a means to support the European entertainment industry in its conflicts with American tech companies. Users’ interests are at best an afterthought in this struggle for “cultural sovereignty”. I would imagine that the legislators of France and other EU countries are fairly accustomed to seeing through the lens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t... protections, and tend to apply that mindset to other "trade protection" issues. In a sense, someone sharing a French-copyrighted work on Facebook with the source+watermarks stripped, is doing something kind of similar to an American winemaker who labels a sparkling wine they've produced as e.g. "Napa Champagne".... but in another sense, no, that's an awful analogy.

bonzini 7y ago
It's awful indeed. As a European citizen I am very much in favor of geographical marking of specialties (and I don't see why that wouldn't be beneficial to US agriculture either), but certainly do not extend that opinion to upload filters. Or dropping daylight savings time for that matter.

dane-pgp 7y ago

"Rightsholders, unlike what the directive says, do not have to justify their initial requests to block content, but only have to respond once a user challenges the blocking of one of their uploads." I wonder if the law will allow for any penalties or restrictions against a rightsholder who "mistakenly" claims that every piece of user-uploaded media on a website is infringing their copyright. Presumably a rightsholder could be a company (or individual) based anywhere in the world, and therefore would face no legal risk in making such "mistakes". (A creative lawyer might attempt to use fraud or "hacking" laws against such a rightsholder, but might have difficulty bringing them to court). Some of the rightsholder's claims may even be completely valid, meaning that the hosting website couldn't afford to just disregard all their claims.

progval 7y ago
> I wonder if the law will allow for any penalties or restrictions against a rightsholder who "mistakenly" claims that every piece of user-uploaded media on a website is infringing their copyright. It does not mention any. (ref: mostly page 31 of https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/content/download/16062/162304/version/1/file/plf_mice1927829L_cm_5.12.2019.pdf https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/content/download/16062/162304... , and also other relevant sections found by looking for the words "téléversé"/"téléverser", which mean "upload")
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Then, couldn't you pose as a copyright owner and submit a takedown request on these legislators' personal or official content? Let them have a taste of their own medecine. I wonder how a politician that supported the initiative would react if they had their campaign videos systematically taken offline?
  - pferde 7y ago
    You would just be adding headaches to the PR drones working for that politician. I doubt the politician himself would ever know about it happening. These people are usually behind several layers of separation from real world.

doh 7y ago

This is an unfortunate law that was passed quite hastily and will bring a lot of challenges to the market. Even my company operates in this space, we were trying to convince politicians not to adopt it. We failed, as you can see. We built a product [0] that introduces a balanced approach to the legislation where it actually considers all 3 sides (creators/uploader, rightsholders and platforms) and made it free of charge to all (we make money through licensing revenue carried through the system). We still wish that the legislation didn't pass, but at least we are hoping to level the playing field for everyone. [0] https://pex.com/attribution-engine.html https://pex.com/attribution-engine.html

bcheung 7y ago

I couldn't really find the core arguments of the article. I wasn't really sure what it is was arguing for or against or what the exact laws are that we should be concerned about. Can someone elaborate?

tehabe 7y ago
the European Union (EU) enacted a copyright directive this year, this directive has to be implemented in national law by the EU member states. Part of this copyright directive is that platforms are liable for copyright infringement of their users unless they take measures to prevent those. they are also provisions in the directive which were supposed to keep user's right in check. Now the French government put forward a bill in the French Parliament to implement this directive. It seems to be a bill which favors the rightsholders above else, which was to be expected because France was one of the biggest proponents of this part of the directive.

user5994461 7y ago

It's not quite as bad as she makes it look like. France already has laws covering exceptions like caricatures and quotations. That's why it's not detailed in the new article, it already exists. The most interesting part of the PDF might be the article 17, section 4. In summary, platforms MUST provide a way for both users and copyright holders to handle complaints and -the important part- they MUST be reviewed by a human. This is gonna be fun for Google and co that want to automate everything with machine learning.

wnoise 7y ago
> France already has laws covering exceptions like caricatures and quotations. That's why it's not detailed in the new article, it already exists. Why and how would the provided exceptions to other laws do anything to this law?
rs23296008n1 7y ago
Review by a human might not help if the human is being scripted like a bot. Line 5 of script: Look at reply. Count the number of vowels on first line. Line 6 of script: now say, "we have reviewed your reply."
- user5994461 7y ago
  Humans introduce entropy in the system and might actually review cases once in a while, unlike a bot. Outside of script, rejected claims that had "azertyuiop" as copyright owner, although it had the right amount of vowels.
  - rs23296008n1 7y ago
    To expand: Plenty of call centers operate scripts that respond not much better than how I outlined it. The trick is to get out of the script as soon as you can find and trigger the escape clause. My concern with companies like Google is that you can easily get yourself into a bizarre situation. Whereas with other systems you just need to escape the script to get to a human review, Google and similar structures mean you often need to find the escape from the escape from the escape. This is why people appeal on twitter rather than through google's own systems. (Yes there are exceptions) The hope with putting humans into the loop is valid but I'm not convinced its the full answer. The overall attitude/culture of the environment they operate in is still important. At least with putting people into the process those people can add their own attitude/culture. This is the saving grace however slim. I'm hopeful but not convinced.

cft 7y ago

If the EU firewalls itself, it will make it easier for the rest of the world. To many aggressive laws claiming foreign jurisdictions.

ronilan 7y ago

Copyright is not as important to society as Silicon Valley wants everyone to believe. It a property issue and not even a critical one. Most of the problems around it can be solved with money. The collateral damage caused by this lawyer infused, never ending “copyright war”, though is real. Not worth one good man. Edit: I’m a “creator”. Never been “corporate”. I had my work “cloned”.

youeseh 7y ago
Copyright is pretty important to the artists, academic publishing, and the entertainment industry, no?
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Yes, but mostly in a negative way. All of these industries would havea lot more freedom to innovate if there were significantly shorter copyright periods.
- jMyles 7y ago
  Insofar as it being one of the primary handcuffs preventing us from creating more compelling content, yes, it is important. Ending it (or at least returning it to a role more similar to a century ago) will be awesome for content creators.
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  Yes. However, of the artists, the publishers, and the producers, only the artists are entitled to copyright, no? The Constitution limits copyright to artists and scientists [0], and in practical terms the Constitution is understood to refer to the artists who create works of art, and the scientists who describe physical inventions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
- jachee 7y ago
  Only if they care about money. Banksy isn't likely to sue anyone.

tomaszs 7y ago

The "block and ask later" method seems valid for copyright owners. But for users it is essencially just "block". Not only because relevancy will be lower after some days pass. But mostly because algorythms will not show such content to people. Because it didn't receive any signals for several days makes it to be considered uninteresting. For funny memes it is not a big deal, but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. And it is already known copyright laws are used by media companies to control the narrative. For example when a politician says something people can find not right. Should a media company sympathasing with him, be able to wipe out the very existance of the situation? Because this is actually what media companies will be to do. Wipe out parts of reality they dont like people to remember or know. Actually it looks like politics made a deal with business. And it is something to oppose against.

zabana 7y ago
> For funny memes it is not a big deal, but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. I'm afraid that's the point. Western governments, while pointing fingers at china, russia or <insert brown country>, have been hard at work trying to find creative ways to implement soft censorship (ie: don't outright ban the content or shutdown the website, but considerably limit their potential reach on dubious grounds such as copyright infringement). Totalitarianism is slowly creeping up on us.
raverbashing 7y ago
> but for social and political discourse it is devaststing. Sounds good. Just copyright strike the content of the party proposing this
- hrktb 7y ago
  Most “serious” parties and companies want this. They want power, and that’s sheer power, as long as they get to control it. It’s like the poor guy encouraging tax cuts because one day he’ll be rich and don’t want to keep his money when he’ll finally make it out.
  - 7y ago

mirimir 7y ago

This is all so depressing. If we had sites where content couldn't be blocked, all this angst about blocking would just be lulz. And it's not even hard. Torrenting and streaming through VPN services still work well enough. We just need implementations at mass market scale. Some of those cryptocurrency whales ought to get on it.

mirimir 7y ago
Belated edit: I recall in the mid-late 90s that the internet was headed toward P2P, mix networks, and other noncommercial stuff. We got Usenet newsgroups, Cypherpunk/Mixmaster remailers, Freenet, Tor, Napster, BitTorrent, etc. But now we've gone commercial/centralized again. Like AOL/Prodigy reborn. And worse than that, we have smartphones designed to neutralize privacy and foster dependency on commercial bullshit. More like game systems than PCs. Sure, there's cool stuff like IPFS and Signal. But mostly it's all so depressing.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (knightcolumbia.org)" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20841059
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Thanks, interesting stuff. > I've said this 1000 times, but garbage like Facebook or Twitter could be replaced overnight by a protocol. There is really zero reason it couldn't be built from existing distributed tooling, be secure and just as useful without lizard people getting in the way. -- scottlocklin But there's nothing about privacy, and the only comment that mentions "censor" is in favor.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      RTFA ? (I linked the HN discussion because criticism is always good to have.)

PeterStuer 7y ago

As an example of what can happen under regimes where 'right holders' are disproportional advantaged over content creators: A third party rights management provider just copyright claimed seemingly any Youtube video that contained any soundparts that were also found in one of their client's videos. Now their clients are often very small content creators such as people posting videos of their Twitch game playing streams to YouTube as a VoD archive. Now imagine that this one gamestreamer client of theirs plays a game that contains a cutscene (as most games do). Now every other gamestreamer with YouTube archives will find every video that had them playing that game copyright striked, as the cutscenes from the game played where ofc identical to those cutscenes in the other guys video. This really happened [1], and resulting in those types of channels now having to manually dispute the demonetization on each and every one of their videos in their (sometimes very extensive) catalogues. The very small company in question, Illustrated Sound Music, claims it was just a 'mistake', and yes, in most cases they will not gain more than a few pennies per video as apparently most of the stuff they hit has just a handful of views, but pennies per video from millions and millions of videos add up to a nice sum. [1] https://gamingph.com/2019/12/youtubers-hit-by-false-copyright-claim-by-illustrated-sound-music/ https://gamingph.com/2019/12/youtubers-hit-by-false-copyrigh...

Mirioron 7y ago

Remember when EU politicians said that Article 17 (was known as article 13) won't result in upload filters? I remember. This is yet another example of EU politicians lying to the voters.