Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, Poland and Italy Oppose EU Copyright Directive

Why would we be against it? I know it’s an unpopular opinion on HN, but I don’t have a problem with Facebook and Google being made liable for the content on their platforms.

Here is why: if you produce content, like music, you can put it on YouTube and YouTube will pay you for the views. They’ll only pay you for the content in your channels though, while themselves earning money from both the legal and illegal copies.

I’m not personally too worried about the privacy, people will always find a way to share, but the fact that YouTube makes money of the illegal content legally, just doesn’t sit right with me.

What’s even worse is that YouTube won’t tell us the profit ratios on our own content. Sure they’ll pay a record company to put music videos on an official channel, but they’ll never disclose how much money YouTube earns from it. Maybe it’s a fair split, maybe it’s not, but you have no way of knowing and you kind of have to be on YouTube. I mean, this last bit is where it becomes obvious that viewers are the product, because we only upload stuff to YouTube because they have all the damn users.

I know the fear machine, wants us to believe that private citizens wouldn’t be able to upload a video we filmed with a song playing in the background. But that’s actually already illegal. Only in its current form, it’s the private citizen who is liable and not the platform. I have no problem with switching that around, and make the platform liable instead of the individual. Maybe that will lead to more closed platforms, but my pets bet is that someone out there is willing to build a platform that allows the content and simply pays the royalties, for the same reason we accept the godawful YouTube contract. The users are valuable.

In Denmark, Sweden and Estonia we prefer the government to Google or Facebook, so naturally we support laws that moves power from the companies to the people.

> Yes. And that includes the fact that the dumbfucks who think pi should equal three because bible says so also have more influence to the politicians at the level of Sweden than EU.

With that line of thinking democracy is a failed concept and we should just abolish voting anyway. Because then dumbfucks don't get any influence.

> I asked a question, why you think Sweden would be more optimal than EU and you basically replied "because I think so".

No, I said it's because it's easier to influence Swedish politicians to which you cite religious dumbfucks as a counter-argument.

Even if I convince all Swedish politicians that won't do. Now I need to convince many politicians of other countries, many who don't speak my language and none who care about my vote.

> But unfortunately this discussion is way too complicated to the people that like to discuss with arguments like "Let's fund NHS with the EU membership fee instead"

Yes that would be a nice discussion to have. None of this should be decided by the European Commission because we as ordinary citizens are powerless to replace or influence them in any way.

>> The pedestal contemporary people put national identity on is just that, contemporary.

> As opposed to the pedestal people put supra national institutions such as the EU? Rome? Napoleon's Empire? all failed eventually.

>> National identities didn't arise naturally.

> Neither did the European Union. All societies are man made constructs, what your point?

I never claimed large regional authorities were natural, good nor special in any way. But the OP implied that national identities deserved special status or were some how superior. I'm simply pointing out that they aren't special and were once viewed with just as much suspicion as people now view larger political structures.

>> It's only our contemporary bias that tells us that the subordination of the political will of the hamlet to the nation is good and that the subordination of the national will to a continental or regional will is bad.

> Well, the EU is more power concentrated in the hands of fewer people. By nature it will always be less democratic than governance at a smaller scale. And these structures tend to seek even more power as time goes, not less.

This is obviously incorrect. You can have large institutions which are fairly Democratic, (the U.S. House of Representatives) and small institutions which are utterly totalitarian like Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republic.

> What is better? more tyranny,bureaucracy or more democracy?

I prefer democracy to tyranny. But I contest the implication that centralized authority is inherently less democratic. And I'm not so sure we can assume bureuocracy is bad out of hand.

> Ignoring local cultures and socio-economics specificities by trying to impose arbitrary rules to an entire continent? In that case there will always be winners and losers.

That's pretty vague. There are always winners and losers. Competing nation states create winners and losers. Totalitarian regimes create winners and losers. As does free market capitalism.

You've read a lot into my comment. I do not really have an opinion about the quality of the EU as an institution. That's way beyond my knowledge. But I do contest the misunderstanding that the nation state has been ubiquitous throughout history and that it's some obviously superior socio-political construct.

The problem I have is that within these big countries, the policy doesn't have a majority. For me, that questions the democratic legitimacy for the european legislative process.

Because it can evidently be abused to push through "unpopular" laws that only serve special interests.

Not a racial paradise, but a relatively young place where there is less adherence to that stuff. LA riots were a long time ago. Largest white supremacist population? So what's that mean, a few thousand?

My high school had what was labeled as a race riot by some media. [1 for a link to the event] On the other hand, looking past a shitty week, that high school was incredibly diverse, and I'm thankful I got to hang out with a mix of people.

Maybe the subset of friends I had at the beach was sheltered, but that place was global. Friends from Iran, Russia, white, black, Asian, you name it. From millionaires to homeless.

So yea, I'm pretty thankful for California. There are still barriers, but I think they're a lot lower out here.

1. https://smmirror.com/2005/04/last-friday-at-samohi-it-was-a-...