Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, Poland and Italy Oppose EU Copyright Directive • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by jaabe » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #145

jaabe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thinking this law only affects Google and Facebook is the problem. Google and Facebook can afford to build those content recognition systems and pay those royalties. Can your local non-profit photo sharing community? Can a new video hosting service that makes less money because it doesn't surveil its users?

My local non-profit sharing community is already liable. That’s my point.

You couldn’t write a blog and share music a record company produced without permission. As soon as it was found, it would be taken down and you’d get fined.

Why should YouTube or Facebook have that advantage over you?

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

#152

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #149

raxxorrax wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A majority of what? A poll among the general population? support of local parliamentarians in those countries? In either case, that doesn't per-se call the democratic legitimacy into question. The entire point of a representative democracy is that you elect competent people to make decisions for you, which by definition means that a lot of the time they'll decide to do X even though Y would be the outcome if the issu…

No, you are correct. This is not the only example that I would suggest questions their mandate and democratic processes. But there a quite a few topics that add up.

This law is a very plain case of trying to enact a law serving special interests. Just look at how it came to be and who is responsible for that. It is a form of nepotism that does indeed question legislative processes.

The mandate of any democratic government is only valid as long as enough people believe in it. And stunts like these create doubt.

You should remember that for the next time you point the finger towards euro-critical movements.

Shit like this isn't necessary, doesn't solve any problem and is certainly not in the general interest of the population. Because it just servers special interests.

edit: And just to add: enacting laws via the EU to evade domestic criticism is a widely known and often employed political tactic. There are countless examples of this.

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

#153

Post by icebraining » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

jaabe wrote: post #151

icebraining wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking this law only affects Google and Facebook is the problem. Google and Facebook can afford to build those content recognition systems and pay those royalties. Can your local non-profit photo sharing community? Can a new video hosting service that makes less money because it doesn't surveil its users?

My local non-profit sharing community is already liable. That’s my point. You couldn’t write a blog and share music a record company produced without permission. As soon as it was found, it would be taken down and you’d get fined. Why should YouTube or Facebook have that advantage over you?

No, that's not true; a community that runs a photo hosting service is certainly protected if some user uploads protected content, just like YouTube (under the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC).

They would only not have protection if the copyright holder could prove the hosting community itself purposefully hosted such content. But neither would YouTube if they did the same.

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

#154

Post by isostatic » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #119

isostatic wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large countries are split into chunks - the UK comprises about 9 constituencies IIRC.

It's up to each country.

Sure, in general larger countries split (UK, France, Italy, Poland etc). Germany I think is the only >20m country that doesn't split.

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

#155

Post by isostatic » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #150

isostatic wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're also the only institution with the power to propose new EU laws Same as the UK. While in theory backbenchers can propose new laws, in reality Christopher Chope exists. > and there's essentially nothing we, as ordinary citizens, can do to replace the current members with people who might actually care about our interests The commission president stood as the candidate for the largest grouping in 2014. Person…

No, it really isn't the same as the UK. For a start, the ability for backbenchers to propose laws isn't merely theoretical - they actually do it, and occasionally some of them become laws. This isn't possible even in theory in the EU. Also, our ministers are all elected politicians who can be voted out, and they have to defend their proposed laws on the record in the Commons just like the lowliest backbencher. > The…

> No, it really isn't the same as the UK. For a start, the ability for backbenchers to propose laws isn't merely theoretical - they actually do it, and occasionally some of them become laws.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/christopher-chope-wrong-object-fgm...

In practice backbenchers can't get laws past because of MPs like Chope.

> Also, our ministers are all elected politicians who can be voted out

Not by me, my MP is a backbench tory who's never been in government. Other people can vote ministers out - which has pros and cons. The U.S., which tends to be accepted as a "democracy", does not have the ability for the general population to boot out "ministers".

In 2017, 25 out of the total 118 (21%) ministers in the UK government were in the House of Lords in any case.

> The US electoral college can only select a president if a majority of the electors support him

And the EU MEPs can only select an EU commission president if a majority of the electors support him. And that's exactly what happened in 2014, when about 56% of MEPs backed him. This is similar to the UK in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017 when the Queen's Speech was passed by MPs of more than one party. In fact in the last 10 years it's only been 2009 and 2016 where the speech was passed by a single party.

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

#156

Post by nec4b » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #136

nec4b wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all speak the same language and have the same culture and not at all similar to the EU.

Language in the EU is of course a problem, but I think you overestimate the cultural similarity between a Prussian and a Bavarian, or you underestimate the similarity between a German and a Frenchman.

Any German person has an order of magnitude more in common with an another German person than it has with any other person from a different EU country. It has nothing to do with overestimating or underestimating similarities when the effects are an order of magnitude apart. I encourage you to travel around Europe and interact with locals to see the difference yourself.

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

#157

Post by DubiousPusher » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

factsaresacred wrote: post #84

Sammi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent comment is trying to make the point that nation state identity is equally as arbitrary and artificial as a continent identity. People like identifying with a group. It seems like an innate craving of humanity. I think we should learn to be careful not to be exploited for this craving. Whether it is a nation, the EU, a religion or a soccer team, one should be very very careful.

> nation state identity is equally as arbitrary and artificial as a continent identity. It's not though. A person in Stockholm has lot more in common with a person in Malmo than he does with a person in Sofia. Nation-states spring from a collection of ethnically similar tribes in proximity. In most cases the tribes volunteer to be a part of a nation (those that don't end up creating new nations or separatist movement…

They can be fairly arbitrary. There are many places in this world where peoples separated by a border, even a very old border, look more like each other than either looks like the people in their respective national capitals.

Sure, a modern resident of Stockholm will fit in better with a group from Malmo than Sofia. But what about a city like St. Petersburg which was long thought too Russian by Europeans and too European by Muscovites. What of cities that have long sat across a border from each other or which have been long divided? Are their residents less similar to each other than they are to cities hundreds of miles away?

Now unwind the clock a bit. Go back to 1500 when in most places, people 100 miles apart didn't speak the same language, before national campaigns to settle the language, the grammar, the history, the traditions (many traditions we hold dear come from pro nationalist propaganda campaigns). You're looking at people after 200-300 years of shaping with a nationalist's chisel.

Again, my point is not that nations are bad or that multi-national powers are good, it is only that many of the criticism thrown around about multi-national governments were also employed against nationalism in another time. National identity isn't totally arbitrary, in some places it has alonger history than others but the strident form we know of it today is invented and lots of people didn't think in terms of it before or during its emergence.

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

#158

Post by makomk » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #155

makomk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't the same as the UK. For a start, the ability for backbenchers to propose laws isn't merely theoretical - they actually do it, and occasionally some of them become laws. This isn't possible even in theory in the EU. Also, our ministers are all elected politicians who can be voted out, and they have to defend their proposed laws on the record in the Commons just like the lowliest backbencher. > The…

> No, it really isn't the same as the UK. For a start, the ability for backbenchers to propose laws isn't merely theoretical - they actually do it, and occasionally some of them become laws. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/christopher-chope-wrong-object-fgm... In practice backbenchers can't get laws past because of MPs like Chope. > Also, our ministers are all elected politicians who can be voted out Not by me, my MP is a…

You know why 56% of MEPs voted for him, right? It wasn't because they necessarily supported him - before the elections, the major parties entered into an agreement where they'd vote for the candidate backed by whichever party got the most seats from now on and only that person, essentially meaning that party's candidate was guaranteed the job despite having a minority of less than 30%.

Again, this is nothing like how coalitions work in the UK and other democratic countries. The Prime Minister has to convince her coalition partners that her government is worth their support, generally by bringing its policies more in line with what their voters care about and giving them roles in government. As far as I know, we've never had a deal like this where two minority parties each agree to help the other gain power just for the reward of getting the same help themselves next time, wiping out the influence of all the smaller parties in the process.

The closest I've seen to this is the (failed) attempts to turn the US presidency into a popular vote by committing a majority of electors into choosing whoever wins the popular vote, though the EU shenanigans are even more of a shady end-run around the intended process than that.

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

#159

Post by mstade » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #147

mstade wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, yes. Wales too I suppose. I wonder – do people from Northern Ireland root for Ireland or England? I'm only half referring to soccer with that question. ;o)

Yeah, let's not open that can of worms. It's tricky. :p

Haha fair enough. Thanks for the laughs buddy!

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

#160

Post by adrianN » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

nec4b wrote: post #156

adrianN wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language in the EU is of course a problem, but I think you overestimate the cultural similarity between a Prussian and a Bavarian, or you underestimate the similarity between a German and a Frenchman.

Any German person has an order of magnitude more in common with an another German person than it has with any other person from a different EU country. It has nothing to do with overestimating or underestimating similarities when the effects are an order of magnitude apart. I encourage you to travel around Europe and interact with locals to see the difference yourself.

I have traveled and interacted with the locals, which is where I got my opinion from. Travel and interaction is so much easier now than when Germany was split into different states that cultural similarity in Europe is much greater now than it has ever been.