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Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

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Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#81

Post by ace_of_spades »

TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

Thank you for sharing your opinion!

While I agree that the „move fast and break things“ mindset seems to work for general entrepenuership and innovation in the markets, I really hope that we won‘t follow this approach in developing AGI (artifical general intelligence). As we move up in our AI capabilities it will become increasingly important to coordinate and control further expansion as opposed to fall into an arms race which may have dire consequences for humanity. I would recommend „Superintelligence“ by Nick Bostrom as a great resource and argument for the dangers that are inherent to this dynamic. So „bureaucracy first, product later“ does have place in the tech sector... especially in the future.

Having said that, the current legislation seems to be a bad thing for the web and Europe. There is obviously still the problem of enacting the right kind of bureaucracy, which we still don‘t seem to have figured out, yet...

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#82

Post by ben_w »

dgut wrote: post #36
StavrosK wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Laws that put Europe behind the rest of the world in how easy it is to build online services It is, indeed, inconvenient to consider the rights of the users when building a service, especially when they aren't the ones who pay you for it. Still, I'm not sure it's such a bad idea.

Have you considered that users can think for themselves, that we might not have to spoon-feed them? :-)

Some users have time and inclination. But, by analogy, I don’t have time or inclination to become an expert in pharmacology in order to decide for myself which medicine I should take — I just go to a doctor and assume the law requires them to be completent, private, and not-corrupted-by-gifts-from-drug-companies.

(Flawed analogy, because the website malicious JavaScript analogy would be, what, also having to assume their nerves haven’t been spliced with wires leading to a remote control?)

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#83

Post by Flimm »

adilmoujahid wrote: post #79
gregorygoc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single company you named targets for European markets, thus Europeans use them.

I got that, but the previous comment argues that the heterogeneity of the European market is the main reason for the difficulty of launching successful companies rather than European lawmakers. This argument doesn't explain the success of American companies in Europe.

I suppose the argument would be that those companies launched in the USA first, were successful there, and then had enough capital and resources to launch in the tougher more fragmented European markets.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

I don't think all of your last paragraph belongs together. The Internet works better without the proposed (or recent) regulations, because they're all about securing wealthy corporations' money-making ability at the expense of society. But the rest?

> Now that we lost the web, how will we avoid the same with AI? (...) How will we avoid losing biotech? Will the same happen to our bodies that happened to our data? Will they be owned by a handful of US companies?

AI and biotech are two areas where we really need close regulatory oversight, to keep all the "move fast and break things" startup superstars at bay. Companies like Uber or AirBnB that show total disregard for society at large are somewhat fine as long as their impact is limited. But I fear the day we'll get Uber for biotech. I don't want to see people taking liberties with safety of poisonous and potentially self-replicating substances.

Similarly, general-level/self-improving AI is something we'll get one shot at doing right. Again, not something I'd like to see coming from a startup seeking quick market domination or early exit.

> How will we avoid losing crypto? In the age of crypto, people might freely chose what currency to use. Do we want the worlds currency to be owned by a US company?

I have mixed feelings about this one. More freedom is great, but I feel some level of control over currency is necessary for proper functioning of a state. Moreover, cryptocurrencies in the present form are something that should IMO be unmade. As implemented these days, they're absolutely ridiculous waste of electricity that primarily fuels scams.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#85

Post by dogma1138 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #35
TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

It's easy to blame European lawmakers. However, Europe is a much harder market to operate in with our without laws that add bureaucratic overhead. Europe is really several much smaller markets. If you want to launch your startup in Europe you are likely only going to initially launch in let's say the French or German market. To get to the other markets you have not only to translate your product, but redo marketing,…

Don’t overestimate the effect of mentality, and the fact that startups in the EU pay less, much less and offer basically no equity even to single digit employees.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#86

Post by edanm »

Flimm wrote: post #83
adilmoujahid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got that, but the previous comment argues that the heterogeneity of the European market is the main reason for the difficulty of launching successful companies rather than European lawmakers. This argument doesn't explain the success of American companies in Europe.

I suppose the argument would be that those companies launched in the USA first, were successful there, and then had enough capital and resources to launch in the tougher more fragmented European markets.

That argument is probably correct.

Here in Israel, which is often considered one of the closest "startup capitals" to Silicon Valley, what almost any new company will do is just lunch in the US, since it's an easy market. Most wouldn't launch in Israel, since it's such a small market (8 million people).

A few will launch in Europe, but because of all the issues mentioned above (different laws, languages, cultures, etc), the US is a much more attractive first target.

Once they get big, they might then move to Europe.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#87

Post by krfsm »

pmontra wrote: post #17
ivan_gammel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... Not all services popular in Europe are US-based. Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1, Takeaway.com are just some of the big names, that lots of people in Europe are using on daily basis. Here in Berlin there are lots of…

As a single European datapoint: I know Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB and used all of them except AirBnB. I never used any of Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1. I know Flixbus and Spotify. I probably heard about Zalando. Asos, Xing, Klarna, Auto1 are totally new to me. I googled them and actually I knew Xing and forgot it, it's hard to compete with LinkedIn. Klarna moved to Columbu…

Klarna Inc. is a subsidiary. The parent company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#88

Post by urlwolf »

riffraff wrote: post #69
rasz wrote: post #3

Same for Polish one ( pl.wikipedia.org )

This is a very important comment, as it means the initiative is "snowballing". It's a shame it's buried behind pointless discussion on whether the EU has internet giants.

I'm European, and pro-EU. Yet, everyone I respect in my inner circle is crystal-clear about one thing: EU has lost. There's US, there's CN... and a big hole where EU should be. In technology, EU is not a contender, and will never be. Demographics and culture prevent it. I've worked extremely hard to change this for four years, but I have given up.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#89

Post by fwdpropaganda »

TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

> This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product later".

Are you just mindlessly repeating the usual right-wing nonsense that you read somewhere on the internet, or can you back this up with facts?

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