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European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill

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

#171
I once wrote a thesis on DMCA and Youtube during that huge Viacom vs Youtube litigation was going on. The copyright holders wanted to shift more of the burden of detecting and blocking copyright breach onto the web services by removing the DMCA safe harbor. Youtube ultimately won the case but they also implemented much of what Viacom wanted anyway - a fairly aggressive content filter that probably caught most of what Viacom wanted. However, the automated systems also prevented the posting of much fair use content since it can't really make the nuanced judgement call between blatant copying and fair uses. If Viacom had won that case, Youtube would have been forced to be much more restrictive in their automated filtering. Other video platforms would either have had to invest in the filtering tech or go out of business. The Coase theorem says that where there are two rational negotiating parties, the laws governing property rights don't really matter. The parties will generally negotiate their way to an optimal outcome. What does matter is the impact of those laws on the transaction costs. The transaction costs are higher for smaller parties and for parties where there is no significant financial interests at stake.

Thus in evaluating these new laws, it's not really Google or big European news that we need to consider - rather we should ask how small news aggregators, independent bloggers, small news outlets, and individual readers going to react to this. Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator and vice versa?

All laws that increase transaction costs will concentrate more market power in larger firms that have the scale to deal with the additional costs and undermine smaller players who do not. Lawmakers focus too much on the Google and the like. Google can look after itself.

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

#172
post #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 l…

Retaining the "piece"... WW2 ended in 1945. The EU came into being in 1993. Was it retaining it in previous guises as a trade federation - the EEC, and before that the European Coal and Steel Community? Or are you thinking of NATO? > The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss. In what context? "I don't have to show my passport on holidays - yay!" or "people can drive from…

The coal and steel union was set up to prevent another WW2 as it's main purpose. And I think that part is still important since when you trade you don't fight.. Usually :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

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

#173
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second it's hard not to notice that much of what the EU does is try to hurt US tech companies These are European laws designed to regulate industry inside the EU. If an American company decides to do business in the EU they're subject to the same rules as any business already operating inside the EU. So claiming this is designed to hurt US tech companies is quite a reach. If you feel American tech companies are bei…

That's a dishonest argument, yeah these laws theoretically apply to everyone but they were designed specifically for and disportionately affect US companies. As for the "gaming the system" argument that doesn't comport with really either since these laws were introduced after the fact.

No, they're not designed specifically for US companies. They're specifically designed to target the major players in the market. In some cases these companies have a de-facto monopoly which makes them basically the only ones the laws are targeting - because they are the only relevant players. The fact that these companies mostly are US companies is of less than zero relevance here. You can't export de-facto monopolies to other countries and then complain that regulations in other countries are only hitting the monopoly you're exporting.

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

#174
post #158

Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The old news publishers will never make it online. They see their financials problems as being cause by a moral failing in society: " People do not value quality, and won't pay for it " or somesuch. They see the solutions as lega…

>Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The internet isn't some hip new technology only the young people understand. You act as if old media companies must still use rotary phones and manual typewriters, but these companies have changed with the decades and have adapt…

I'm claiming that many/most news companies that formed their culture in the pre-internet days have failed to find stable business models, and they are looking to legislation for a fix.

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

#175

Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We have 20 years years of anecdata now. The old news publishers will never make it online. They see their financials problems as being cause by a moral failing in society: " People do not value quality, and won't pay for it " or somesuch. They see the solutions as lega…

The "old news publishers" employ actual journalists . They should not be allowed to die off.

.. decreasingly so.

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

#176
post #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 l…

Retaining the "piece"... WW2 ended in 1945. The EU came into being in 1993. Was it retaining it in previous guises as a trade federation - the EEC, and before that the European Coal and Steel Community? Or are you thinking of NATO? > The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never want to miss. In what context? "I don't have to show my passport on holidays - yay!" or "people can drive from…

The European Coal and Steel Community was explicitly started to stop war in Europe. As the original proposal of the community said directly: "The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible" [0].

Steel and coal (or more generally energy) are necessary in order to to wage war. Pooling these things in a super national organization makes war between the member states impossible.

[0] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day...

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

#178
post #128
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the UK. Conservative MEP did as you said, Labour one sent a bit of a boilerplate that they are considering it, UKIP are of course against it but thats par for the course with them, the green one sent a detailed response and is voting against both art 11 and 13 (the ones I raised issue with).

Hate them as most people in the UK do (I've never voted for them and wouldn't either), UKIP already resolved this (in a far more permanent way than the greens) by ensuring EU law does not apply to the UK in future.

What are you going to do next time the UK parliament passes a law you don't like? Dissolve the United Kingdom?

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

#179
post #156
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is just not a credible story. The current day EU simply did not exist for most of Post-WW, so it can absolutely not have been a reason why there was no war. I am in favor of things like free movement of goods and services. I also in favor working together on things like European Space Agency. However these sudo-democratic want-be centralized state is totally against the history of European has alre…

>However these sudo-democratic want-be centralized state is totally against the history of European has already caused a endless serious of disaster and mismanagement. How is the EU particularly undemocratic? I'm Austrian and most of the European branches map relatively well to our own federal structure. (Nationalrat -> European parliament, Government -> Commission, Bundesrat -> Council(although that one has more pow…

For me a democracy polity should be more then a structure and the ability to vote. I would wager that most people in the EU have never even heard about this fundamental change to their lives, or even speak the language to understand the debate.

Look at how the EU handled the economic crisis. Nothing democratic about the decision making. But many of the decisions still implemented under EU cover.

The European parliament should not easily be allowed to make laws for everybody. Many countries didn't even get to vote popularly if they wanted to join.

> And I don't see how being in Switzerland will save you from any of this since this law will almost certainly also apply to Switzerland if it comes into effect. Only difference being that you don't have any say on the matter.

I was not talking about this one law, but rather in general.

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

#180
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?

Simple really: "BigMedia" want me to pay to link to this, so here's the same topic on SmallMediaSite.

or

I wanted to link this, but "BigMedia" want me to pay, so now I'm not even mentioning their title of the topic.

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