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European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

bbc.com

101–110 of 407 posts

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#101

It was approved on in a committee of the European parliament (for legal matters), which means that now they will enter negotiations with the European Council and then after some time and processes laid out in Art. 293ff TFEU, it will be debated in the European Parliament at some point. So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather unfortunate policy. EDIT: For more info: http://www.europarl.eu…

Is there a list of who voted and how available anywhere?

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#102

This is what happens when those in control don't understand, know or care about the things they regulate. So I guess this is bad. --goes and reads article-- > Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved. What the fucking FUCK? Pay to send companies actual traffic? Pay to be allowed to use the basic building-block of the world wide web on the wor…

>> Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved. >What the fucking FUCK? This does not surprise me! If your site has for example 5 article titles from CNN, linking all of them to original CNN articles, probably you have more benefit from that than CNN. People this days like to skim through titles and not even bothering to read full articles, to c…

So then obviously CNN should never write an article again and isn't a profitable business...

That is complete and utter nonsense. Linking itself adds value - see the uproar with Facebook getting rid of news in the feed. If the publishers genuinely felt as you do, they would simply prevent content being linked to by Google News/etc. Instead they want to demand payment for it, and force the behavior instead of letting Google choose cheaper news sources to link to.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#103
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Exactly.

But it's just not link, it's show a snippet (and potentially a title) (or you can link and replace every snippet with 'censored by the EU' or something - might be a good strategy for raising awareness)

Showing the snippet makes people more likely to click through, not less. If you aren't a copyright maximalist, how is that not good for both aggregator and news site?

A better question is whether it's good for the user. Filter bubble, and all.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#104
post #56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law was basically made at the publisher’s behest to get Google to pay them. So far, it has spectularly backfired. In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law defeated. In Spain, they went a bit further and wrote into the law that Google had to list news sites in their index. So Google News shut down in Spain. Law…

So Google gets licenses to link to new sites for free, but smaller companies and private people's website cannot link to news sites?

Note the text 'and an inalienable right to obtain an fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses'

The idea is to make it impossible to give Google a free license.

The best outcome would be if Google would refuse to link to any content of European publishers.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too worried about this one. This will just mean platforms will not link to publishers. EVER It already failed in Spain and Germany, they will just shoot themselves in the foot again.

So does this mean *this HN post is illegal because it links to a news article?

Maybe this will improve the quality of HN submissions :P It's probably meant to make links to pirate torrents illegal though. If you have already made something publicly available eg availably for everyone for free, and you intent is to get as many readers as possible, then you can't really complain, and a sane judge would just laugh at anyone trying to sue for linking to it. What news sites used to complain about is that readers did not click on the article to go to the news site, as most of the article could be read on Google, with images and all.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#106
post #65
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. They will shoot themselves in the foot, yes. But at least in Germany, Google is the only entity which was granted a free "licence" by the collecting society. This puts Google in a better place than any other news aggregator.

Any lawsuit in progress with regards to that?

It's not illegal, so that would require a law change. Which is what this article is about.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#107
As a EU citizen I have always been (and still am) a strong advocate for the European Union. I think the founding of the European Union was one of the greatest things that could ever happen to European citizens. I full heartedly believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after World War 2. The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss.

But seeing the lawmakers fucking up more and more on these kind of laws makes it harder to build a reasonable argument against all the so called "EU critics" (most of the time just straight up racists).

It also makes me wonder if the laws they pass in other areas are as disconnected from reality as this is.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#108
I submitted this link to HN a week ago [1]:

https://savethelink.org/

The site highlights whats going on, and encourages people to write to their MEPs.

If I understand the bill correctly, it will become illegal for 3rd party sites to use all those 'graph' meta-tags that provide rich snippets/previews when you post a link to your status etc. If so, then the impact of this will be massive.

--

[1] but it failed to get any traction.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content, was also approved. >What the fucking FUCK? This does not surprise me! If your site has for example 5 article titles from CNN, linking all of them to original CNN articles, probably you have more benefit from that than CNN. People this days like to skim through titles and not even bothering to read full articles, to c…

So then obviously CNN should never write an article again and isn't a profitable business... That is complete and utter nonsense. Linking itself adds value - see the uproar with Facebook getting rid of news in the feed. If the publishers genuinely felt as you do, they would simply prevent content being linked to by Google News/etc. Instead they want to demand payment for it, and force the behavior instead of letting…

That's why we have so much clickbait.

Re: European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

#110
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but today's vote was just a committee. Next month it comes before the full Parliament. If sufficient awareness can be raised among MEPs before the vote next month that it becomes a toxic issue politically, my understanding is that voting it down at that stage would be an opportunity to effectively stop the whole process.

right, it would already by a good place to kill it, so yes, go call your MEPs! But there's still another chance afterwards, which might be more successful given the timing of the election and people now maybe more likely to argue that it can be "fixed" in negotiations.

Ah, yes, sorry. I realised my original comment was ambiguous. I meant that the vote next month will be by the entire Parliament rather than just a committee, not that next month's vote will necessarily be the final decision.
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