41–50 of 147 posts
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Turkey is not part of the EU yet. I don't see how exactly the power "sits with Erdoğan".
Turkey also won't be part of the EU. Both Merkel and her contestant for the current election stated on Sunday, that they have had enough and want to abort the negotiations about Turkey joining.
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Oh they could, and it might be easier since as far as I know, the general population has very little influence over who gets to sit in the EU government.
You mean aside from the fact that MEPs - the politicians sitting in the EU government - are elected by the general population?
Edit: Btw, the head of the comission is more like what the US would think of an actual president. The president, OP talks about is more like a representing nation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh they could, and it might be easier since as far as I know, the general population has very little influence over who gets to sit in the EU government.
You mean aside from the fact that MEPs - the politicians sitting in the EU government - are elected by the general population?
the head of the commission is chosen by the parliament, and the head of the commission then appoints commissioners
commissioners have a tendency to be disgraced former national politicians who have become unelectable at home (e.g. Jean-Claude Juncker, Peter Mandelson)
> the Presidency has worked hard in order to make the proposal for the new copyright Directive even more harmful than the Commission’s original proposal, I read that as "corporations can enforce copyright... I can't" See Youtube drama of a news organization using someone's video without attribution or payment... and then filing automated copyright claims against the original, because parts of the "copyrighted news br…
But in recent decades, as technology has made it easy for individuals to produce copies, this has shifted into a couple of large entities vs the individual.
The first few moves in that direction (copiers, analog tape recorders) were largely ignored or papered over by exceptions because policing them were a practical impossibility.
But with the net every home have a implacable snitch. And thus there is a policing potential emerging that may well make STASI look like keystone cops.
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For this reason the article seems at least a little alarmist. It wouldn't be news that Estonian politics is delving into censorship/surveillance; tacking on "EU Presidency" just ads faux-gravitas.
There are times i wonder if politicians use EU as a "trump card". This in the sense of getting it into a EU directive and then turning around to the nation, stating as it is part of an EU directive their hands are tied...
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It's the same thing all autocrats want which is to consolidate their power while protecting the little people from themselves. I can see where they are coming from though; I'm pretty sure the investigations of Internet usage that turn up on politicians desks contain pretty disconcerting information about the human condition.
This seems to be focused on copyright, not "protecting the little people from themselves." I find a financial reason more likely to be behind this push.
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Or Erdogan ?
Turkey is not part of the EU yet. I don't see how exactly the power "sits with Erdoğan".
Europe was always just a half hearted dream by its elites, who where not even enough into this vision, to share their power with the institutions they created. Now after the very same dream, has allowed for the life-standard growth of most of its citizens to disappear - they are in for a rude wake up with extremists devouring the corpse.
I sincerely hope that we will succeed in keeping the internet as democratic as possible and not let it be destroyed by corporate interests in the name 'terrorism prevention'. I'd like to give a shout-out to epicenter.works, an Austrian NGO, which I've been following the last 1.5 years or so. I think it's hard to get the public engaged in these topics, but they seem to be really determined. Here's a google translate l…
> keep[...] the internet as democratic as possible and not let it be destroyed by corporate interests in the name 'terrorism prevention'. Yups. Exactly this is what's going on in my opinion as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
China’s success has proven that countries can succeed without adopting western liberal freedoms. In fact, success adopting only a small subset of economic and personal freedoms, and none of the political freedoms. The economy is good, the state is stable..
Proof of concept for non-liberal systems.
This means freedoms need to be argued for on their own merits. Free speech for its own sake. No censorship for its own sake. etc.
Much harder. Much more prone to compromise and erosion.
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Anarchy might be a better description, and that too within reason and having been made less and less so over time via law enforcement and such. The dark web is more of that ideal, but you know where that ends up.
The Internet was built on a synergy between cooperation and competition between the players. As such, the state of disorder implied by "anarchy" does not fit either. Each new competing tech was based on a strong base/protocols/rules made in the previous iteration. To this extend, the Internet's core is very conservative.
It's more akin to American libertarianism, but approached from a leftist perspective.