Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive • Hacker News Board

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#171

Post by est31 » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #75

est31 wrote: post #6

The big websites participating in the blackout like Wikipedia or some porn sites do have vast access to eyeballs across europe, and would be affected directly and adversely by the new rules. As the lobbying fight has already been mostly won by the local publisher industry, they use their access to those eyeballs to fuel democratic protests of the rule. I hope they win and that Article 11 and 13 will be removed. I thi…

I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The whole thing feels terribly wrong - 10 million people, the 100% majority of this rather big geographical location that is even separated by mountains on all sides, are just overruled, while they don't even understand the language these politicians are talking i…

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

In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k.

If you add up the seats of the 6 countries with roughly 10 million people, you get 126. If you add up the seats of Germany and France, you get 175. So the small countries are definitely not irrelevant. Can a single country decide on a matter on their own? No. But with 28 (soon 27) states, requiring consent of every single country would render the EU unable to take actions on issues.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#172

Post by TomMarius » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #153

TomMarius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The whole thing feels terribly wrong - 10 million people, the 100% majority of this rather big geographical location that is even separated by mountains on all sides, are just overruled, while they don't even understand the language these politicians are talking i…

> Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? You didn't actually have that up until now either. > now the Germans and the French rule our country Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point. > and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us…

> You didn't actually have that up until now either.

Yes, and we liked it.

> Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point.

See how countries are represented in the EP.

> I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here.

You know what, I actually asked them. Our nation maintains a project called "memory of the nation" that collects inputs like this from as many important and ordinary people of past times as possible, from various sources such as chronicles, personal diaries, letters, books, court hearings etc as well as actual conversations with them.

It is exactly what I said it is, please don't try to school me on my own nation. Our grandfathers died because they wanted us to be sovereign. Please don't try to change their (well documented) message. The whole thing by itself has nothing to do with nationalism! It is the fact that the western nations have been the oppressors of our people and the (provably) 300+-year old understanding of the whole nation (and its literature, songs, art...) that in order to be free at our homes, the country has to be sovereign - because our ideas about politics and what freedom is are different than yours.

> Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.

It can not. The EU has just shown everyone that it will absolutely and purposefully destroy anyone that tries and severe all their international ties to a state roughly equivalent to the Cold War. On top of that, our country is economically tightly tied to Germany and France and their investors - whatever our citizens want, these foreign investors will work against it, and now their governments (that will naturally protect and help their citizens as much as possible) have the power to override our laws directly, the last thing they lacked.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#173

Post by mrep » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

furi wrote: post #49

dingaling wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is a dinosaur of an idea that belongs in the annals of history and out of the present. Then don't copyright the content you make, just release it out into the public domain. Be the change you want to see. But let's be honest, the people most vocal against Article 13 are those who want to leech other people's creations for free. Not those people actually creating the content.

> the people most vocal against Article 13 are those who want to leech other people's creations for free. Why would such people be at all concerned about Article 13? Torrent sites and swarms have been in flagrant disregard of the law since forever, one more law isn't going to change much. Likewise the other popular pirate mechanism, the old "upload an archive with the content to Mega or similar" technique, already fr…

Torrents aren't really good for small things that quickly change like news whereas websites like reddit are and I'm pretty sure the people who are pushing for articles 11 and 13 are news agencies. Here is my thought process:

News agencies know they are using dark patterns to skirt by GDPR while still using targeted advertising but since they know the fines will eventually start hitting, they want to move to paywalls. However, A paywall for a news company is practically useless as any major story one makes gets linked to and paraphrased by dozens of other news agencies within minutes. Users won't pay for a news website when they can get practically the same stories only slightly delayed at a free one that just paraphrases and links back to the original. Article 11 solves that problem and article 13 is to prevent 1 user who does pay for a website from copying the entire article and pasting it in a comment (I see that and archive/outline links all the time here and on reddit).

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#174

Post by jimmy1 » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #165

jimmy1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you are being down-voted. I know people have a distaste for political insights in general here, but it seems apt to have comments like these on an article about protesting a governing body. Why is German Wikipedia having to have a blackout? They are unhappy with the EU restricting their freedoms.

He is being downvoted because his comment was factually incorrect. That's not why the EU was started.

Sure, the historical reason was to end conflict between neighbors, piggybacking off the already formed connections between European Steel and Coal community.

But indeed, parent's comment was codified in the "four freedoms" explicitly laid out in the early 90s: movement of goods, services, people and money. But even as early as the 1960s, most union members stopped strictly enforcing custom laws with respect to trade, and it was well known border enforcement was extremely relaxed, especially when it came to labor movement. Only the '73 Oil crisis forced some members to crack down on migrant workers, but again, by the time that was resolved, the EU was back to the status quo.

I do not think calling his comment factually incorrect is warranted, but more fair to say it is a more modern take.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#175

Post by dorgo » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #6

The big websites participating in the blackout like Wikipedia or some porn sites do have vast access to eyeballs across europe, and would be affected directly and adversely by the new rules. As the lobbying fight has already been mostly won by the local publisher industry, they use their access to those eyeballs to fuel democratic protests of the rule. I hope they win and that Article 11 and 13 will be removed. I thi…

Just wrote some emails to politicians and demanded that they stop messing with Wikipedia and enable it again. I could do it myself (content is still there, just a css issue), but I'm too lazy.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#176

Post by clarry » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

golem14 wrote: post #21

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #7

As an EU citizen, I hope large portions of the internet will just block us. A couple of days without YouTube, Wikipedia and other services would create sufficient outrage to put pressure on the EU for introducing these idiotic laws. I mean, GDPR is bad enough for start ups, but Article 13?

my 2 cents: A few days of outrage will do absolutely nothing to stop or change the law. AFAICT, many the EU bureaucrats and politicians fervently believe that they are doing the right thing here, even if it's clearly bonkers. It's like Brexit that way. Also: as said elsewhere, article 13 is probably all good news for YouTube, so I doubt that they do anything deeply confrontational. Plus, even if they did, they would…

> my 2 cents: A few days of outrage will do absolutely nothing to stop or change the law.

Yep, it's going to be just another "oh lol there's a protest" and a week later nobody remembers it.

I'd be happy if wikimedia just completely blocked all of Europe for a 2-3 weeks.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#177

Post by mrep » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

jaifraic wrote: post #111

onli wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations. That's exactly the problem. Stuff of that is protected, and with good reason. But upload filter that would be mandated by article 13 can't detect that fair use. By enforcing them for all platforms like Youtube all of this will vanish from the european internet.

This is why A13 requires the platform to have an actual human being revise the decision if something is wrongfully blocked. I think it's in chapter 4 or 8 of the article IIRC.

Wow, so not only do you have to spend millions of dollars to create an automated filter (YouTube reportedly spent 60), you also have to spend $X on humans to review false positive claims and $Y on copyright infringement cases in which your automated filter wasn't good enough. Talk about barriers to entry.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#178

Post by ionised » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #174

ionised wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is being downvoted because his comment was factually incorrect. That's not why the EU was started.

Sure, the historical reason was to end conflict between neighbors, piggybacking off the already formed connections between European Steel and Coal community. But indeed, parent's comment was codified in the "four freedoms" explicitly laid out in the early 90s: movement of goods, services, people and money. But even as early as the 1960s, most union members stopped strictly enforcing custom laws with respect to trade,…

He said that's why the EU was started. Now you are talking about the EU in the 90's.

A modern take on the EU now or in the 90's doesn't change anything about how and why it was started.

He said something that was simply untrue.

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#179

Post by diffeomorphism » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #39

sametmax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gdpr doesn't prevent such thing. It just requires consent, care and empowerment.

The GDPR does not allow you to block people who do not consent. Well, it's never gone to court yet, so I guess you can't say for sure. But that's how it's widely interpreted.

Consent is meaningless if it is forced. Also, if the law allowed that, you would simply get a large banner saying

"To access this website you agree to all our privacy invasion and to sell us your soul. We are not asking you, just informing you."

Re: Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

#180

Post by jimmy1 » Thu, Mar 21, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #178

jimmy1 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the historical reason was to end conflict between neighbors, piggybacking off the already formed connections between European Steel and Coal community. But indeed, parent's comment was codified in the "four freedoms" explicitly laid out in the early 90s: movement of goods, services, people and money. But even as early as the 1960s, most union members stopped strictly enforcing custom laws with respect to trade,…

He said that's why the EU was started . Now you are talking about the EU in the 90's. A modern take on the EU now or in the 90's doesn't change anything about how and why it was started. He said something that was simply untrue.

> He said that's why the EU was started. Now you are talking about the EU in the 90's.

And in the 60s, and 70s...re-read my comment. It is clear you are being intellectually dishonest, and no point in continuing this discussion with you.