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European Parliament approves copyright reform

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Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#201
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change denial is large problem only in Anglosphere. Germany did more than any other country to realize the modern renewable-energy industry and it's failed its climate goals. The lesson should be that you have to try every tool in the toolbox, including nuclear energy. Fukushima accident revealed the irrationality of the public. Fukushima-scale accident every decade somewhere in the world would be low cost to…

Nuclear isn't built because it isn't financially viable. I'd love to see more nuclear, but it just isn't going to happen anytime soon. Maybe if we added a carbon tax that was reasonable considering the climate emergency it might be.

Prematurely closing the existing plants is insane however.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#202
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I will now start my move out of the EU While good for you, EU will have one less citizen opposing internet restriction. We need a better way to deal with this but I cannot think of one. >Politicians felt like your regular corrupt banana republic representatives this time. That's what it converges to. Good ones don't survive.

There is nothing we can do, by design. The European Commission has the exclusive ability to create new laws, and they're almost totally isolated from any kind of democratic control.

That's not exactly true. Parliament can petition the Commission to legislate on something, and citizens can put forward proposal through the ECI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#203
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except local parliaments are also lobby-bought, so that doesn't solve the problem. Brexit is the politician's fallacy in action.

This is an interesting problem to me. I sometimes think that having multiple locally bought lobbies with individual priorities is preferred to a single giant lobby doing winner take all on large scales. It’s pessimistic as it assumes always corruption. But pragmatic as it minimizes corruption by maximiing the inefficiency and cost necessary for lobbies to spread cash more thinly and come into conflict with lobby arbi…

But you have giant lobbies anyway, because companies and cartels are multinational, even if the parliaments aren't.

We already have three major international copyright treaties (Berne, UCC and TRIPS), two of which actually predate the EU, and the other was not primarily pushed by it, which set strict rules on how "independent" parliaments can legislate. So not having the EU doesn't seem to have helped.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#205

Clueless twats. I will look up all who voted for this farce and let them know individually it will haunt them for the rest of their political career. No forgiveness for kneecapping free expression in return for some lobbyist euros and pretending it protects artists. And to the artists who were dumb enough to believe it: if your art wasn't mediocre you wouldn't have any trouble drawing the attention of the copyright i…

Just keep in mind that EU bodies which have the legislative power don't really have constituents, not really been elected by anyone.

The parliament definitely does have constituents, and they needed to approve this for it to get through (the rest of the bodies are either controlled by the parliament or by the individual governments of the EU members).

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#206

Clueless twats. I will look up all who voted for this farce and let them know individually it will haunt them for the rest of their political career. No forgiveness for kneecapping free expression in return for some lobbyist euros and pretending it protects artists. And to the artists who were dumb enough to believe it: if your art wasn't mediocre you wouldn't have any trouble drawing the attention of the copyright i…

Just keep in mind that EU bodies which have the legislative power don't really have constituents, not really been elected by anyone.

Which EU body is not elected? The European Parliament is directly elected by the people. The Council consists of each member states elected governments. The Commission could be considered not elected, but everyone involved in choosing it is ultimately elected, either directly or indirectly. It also cant make laws without the approval of the unambiguously elected bodies.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#207
post #3

„German newspaper FAZ reports its investigation found strong indications that Germany traded its support for the #copyright deal for French concessions on Russian gas #northstream2„ https://edition.faz.net/faz-edition/wirtschaft/2019-03-26/f3... Via https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110278976654794753?s=20

Maybe someone can explain to me why the hell France (or the rest of the EU) even cares about where Germany gets their gas from in the first place?

Nord Stream 2 would make gas system in Ukraine vurnable and allows further military escalation from Russia side, as it would be possible to transport gas via Nord Stream 2. This would make peace in EU under question also since aggression won't be in Ukraine only in case it escalates.

Also Nord Stream 2 would make Germany more dependent on Russia gas.

At the same time US wants to have EU and Germany on their side in fight agains China + sell resources to EU. Germany on the other side does not like "being controlled" and has some attraction to Russia. There are thoughts that Germany may want to make an allience with Russia to weaken US influence on EU.

I belive it is just a surface of what is happenning. And it is all related to "peace/war" questions, who are allies to whom, global market shares, etc.

It is not just some "stupid decision", there are lots of issues hidden under the hood. And more such decisions to come in the nearest future I belive.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#209
post #180
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally did not see this. Thank you for the warning. As I am not totally into politics, I thought that the stupidity of the EU would not be repeated by Switzerland. Honestly, if they do this, I can stay where I am and take some time to investigate the situation in the US or Canada again. Of course, only it Switzerland, there can be referendums, while in the EU we totally do not have them.

If a single law makes you switch countries you should overthink that decision. It's a bad law for sure, I even joined a demonstration against it, but it's like totally on a different scale than censorship in the Iran. Please inform yourself before making such statements.

I did not mean that the EU copies the brutally censored web of Iran, but that I heavily oppose any legislation that takes away any part of "free speech".

Indeed having any meaningful restriction of free speech or the possibility to express it (which this legislation is about) would make me switch countries. I think that close to limitless free speech is a total base of everything. Even if other laws are really bad, like let's say death penalty, I have to have the possibility to freely speak about it to make it go away. But I can not distribute my opinion about some bad law and maybe make it go away as long as the speech itself is restricted.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "It's poorly democratic" and not "It's purely democratic", right?

I'm seriously baffled about the amount of HN commenters, who I'd assume are highly educated, who think that democracy doesn't work if they don't agree with every law produced by it.

Education and intelligence don’t imply any particular insight into our motivations or feelings. It’s also true that an education focused on programming and tech in general is an extremely limited focus unrelated to politics. Then there’s just the reality that people understand on some level that “undemocrstic” is more emotive than “I don’t like this outcome and wish it hadn’t happened.” Finally a lot of people seem to hav a very warped idea about how the systems they live in really work, and when they find themselves on the wrong side of that system they assume the system isn’t working as intended.

Now I hate this new law, I think it needs to die, but I recognize that a democratic process created it. I also recognize that “democratic process” includes cronyism, special interests, ignorant and venal politicians, and the rule of a minority of powerful people. What I find many times here is a belief in pure systems ruled by logic and strict interpretations of language (again, programmer logic), while real life and politics are nothing like that.

In short, people here should be given a free copy of The Dictator’s Handbook when they sign up, and s quiz on the contents before they’re allowed to comment on political threads.

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