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EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

juliareda.eu

21–30 of 223 posts

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#21
post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

It is worth it for those that do it. This is thousands of hours of paid meetings, presentations, lunches, conferences. They just get themselves busy and collect tax payers hard earned money. If it is good for the society? Bureaucrats don't care, as they are winning.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would start a new search engine in this day and age? You'd need some really unique features which Google can't duplicate, and the only one which seems to have made it is DDG with their privacy promise.

So that the access to information is more democratic? What stops Google from suppressing certain information at the request of bureaucrats or corporations? When you have a choice you are more likely to see information from different sides. Of course most people won't bother, but suppressing choice can only end up sad.

What stops Google from suppressing certain information at the request of bureaucrats or corporations?

Or at the request of certain well meaning but ultimately flawed and over reaching laws?

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#25
post #12

I had not realized that this insane bit with an inalienable right to monetary remuneration had made it to the drafts. We already know from the past cases that if given the choices between paying for the privilege of linking vs. not linking at all, search engines and social networks will do the latter. The economic value of e.g. news searches must be miniscule. But maybe there is a little bit of value there, even if n…

[flagged]

Bingo.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR and the proposed copyright laws will break the internet irrecoverably. Yeah but there's nothing wrong with that per se. It's the EU's choice to return to the stone age. There are Amish communities in the US where nobody has computers and their primary form of transportation is horses and buggies [1]. The rest of the world will simply move on, and like Amish communities, those in the EU that wish to participate i…

You actually think that censoring the internet causes technological collapse? Have you heard of China?

[deleted]

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#27
post #12

I had not realized that this insane bit with an inalienable right to monetary remuneration had made it to the drafts. We already know from the past cases that if given the choices between paying for the privilege of linking vs. not linking at all, search engines and social networks will do the latter. The economic value of e.g. news searches must be miniscule. But maybe there is a little bit of value there, even if n…

[flagged]

At least China is upfront and honest about their push toward techno-totalitarianism.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#28
post #3

Playing devil’s advocate: What if the link tax will replace advertising as the main source or revenue for publishers? Wouldn’t that be a Good Thing (TM)?

Coming up next: European publishers discover that search engines preferentially link non-European publishers due to the link tax. Coming up after that: More unexpected effects.

Coming up after that: More unexpected effects.

Which presumably most of us in Europe won't hear about, if all the sites with a link/discussion format like HN and Reddit will be faced with paying huge fees or stopping/geoblocking/etc...

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#29
post #23

[deleted]

This seems a highly unusual approach. Does it achieve anything at all? At least in the UK, our convention is normally that representatives only deal with their own constituents, and we have a set of MEPs for each geographical region. If you're in the UK, you can identify and contact yours via WriteToThem:

https://www.writetothem.com/

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#30
post #12

I had not realized that this insane bit with an inalienable right to monetary remuneration had made it to the drafts. We already know from the past cases that if given the choices between paying for the privilege of linking vs. not linking at all, search engines and social networks will do the latter. The economic value of e.g. news searches must be miniscule. But maybe there is a little bit of value there, even if n…

It's absolutely insane that freebooting [1] on Facebook was allowed to persist for so long. It's easy to see the right to monetary remuneration as a method of addressing a massive loophole exploited by Facebook and certain users for years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA

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