Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

Article 13 is terrible not because it’s terrible for start-ups, it’s terrible because it’s terrible for people.

I’m pretty close to the rough-end of GDPR in my current job, but it represents real benefits for millions of people. If you asked them what’s a reasonable way to treat their data, I believe the GDPR is close-ish to what a lot of Europeans would want. Or, at least a shift in the right direction.

Article 13 on the other hand is what you get if you ask rights-holders groups what they want, and poses a direct threat to freedom of expression for millions of Europeans.

Regarding being labelled a right winger: not necessarily the case. The most left-wing political party in Sweden are against the EU, the Euro, and have a long term goal for Sweden to exit the EU. They "criticize EU for prioritizing the European single market's interest over the environment, public health, worker and consumer interests" [0]

[0]https://www.vansterpartiet.se/politik/eu/

" It's not the (debatable) "oversized bureaucracy" that has drafted and works on passing Article 13: "

Article 13 is 100% an EU law.

Pointing to the fact that maybe it's really just in the interest of specific French and German entities really only serves to highlight possible existential issues of legitimacy of that body politic.

Also, the fact that Wikipedia and other entities have to take such drastic action, never before seen, leaves no doubt as to how out of touch and unrealistic this legislation is.

Together with the $1.5B in fines today, and of course recent special French taxation legislation intended to get around the fact they view Ireland/Ducth systems as 'havens' ... well it would seem there are indeed some existential problems.

A 'winning' position would be to have something like Google based and operated on the Continent somewhere, generating real returns and exports as well.

All of this is good for discussion, but ultimately they're moves of players with a weak hand.

If long term conditions were set appropriately, the tables would be turned and the problem would be Trump threats on imports (as he does with Volkswagen). Those are 'good problems' to have.

It is interesting to me that only four of them are protesting—German, Czech, Danish, and Slovak—by blacking out their sites on 21 March 2019 in opposition to the proposed EU Copyright Directive.

Why is it that other EU Wikipedia language editions like French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish not joining in the protests? Did they come up with a different conclusion on the potential impact of the new copyright directive? Can people who know about the politics of other EU language Wikipedia comment whether they had discussed of joining this black out?

GDPR regulates companies processing personal identifiable information, if your startup can't comply with that it shouldn't exist for the same reasons that a food startup that can't comply with food safety regulations shouldn't exist.

Article 13 is straight up impossible to implement.