European Parliament approves copyright reform

In the UK legislative and executive power is normally merged by the government whips maintaining control, and the parliament has the power to (dis)approve. Parliament can attempt some amendments, but they must be in scope, and again under normal circumstances the amendment won't pass without support of the government.

MEPs can also amend bills coming from the commission, so very similar to the UK system.

Of course we live in interesting times, with a minority government, a fractured party, and parliament last night made a move that hasn't been done for over 100 years. Even last night all parliament did was gain control over it's own timetable.

Still parliament can't effectively pass any laws on it's own -- take the Voyeurism (Offences) #2 bill. An MP had attempted to introduce this, but 1 MP had objected, and thus it couldn't be passed. Instead the government introduced it.

That's why it is important that the 'will of the people' is bounded by a strong, hard to modify, constitution.

The Gendarmerie has a double status: it's a military force but it's mission is one of police.

Now, a state (democratic or not) _has to_ show force, because that's one of the definitions of a state: an entity that takes the monopoly on violence.

Given the violence that demonstrated itself in some very specific places by very specific groups of people (and disrupted things even worse for others), it has to be expected that the state reacts. The contrary would be a sign of weakness through which more chaos would pour.

Because the EU policy on energy is to promote diversification and not allow Russia to use their status as an indispensable supplier to impose their geopolitical will and monopolistic pricing.

That was the rationale when the EU killed South Stream - a proposed pipeline from Russia through the Black Sea and south Europe. Some of the countries involved had already made large investments and had great hopes for the pipeline which would have generated transit fees.

Germany's push for Nord Stream 2 - a more or less direct pipeline from Russia - today feels self-serving and hypocritical. It looks like Germany is abandoning its obligations while smaller and less wealthy countries had paid the price.

It does affect them, but differently:

"Member States shall provide that, in respect of new online content-sharing service providers the services of which have been available to the public in the Union for less than three years and which have an annual turnover below EUR 10 million, calculated in accordance with Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC 20 , the conditions under the liability regime set out in paragraph 4 are limited to compliance with point (a) of paragraph 4 and to acting expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice, to disable access to the notified works or other subject matter or to remove those works or other subject matter from their websites.

Where the average number of monthly unique visitors of such service providers exceeds 5 million, calculated on the basis of the previous calendar year, they shall also demonstrate that they have made best efforts to prevent further uploads of the notified works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided relevant and necessary information."

Paragraph 4 says this:

"4. If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have: (a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and (b) made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event (c) acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b)."

Sorry for the wall of text, but I think this is quite illustrative. Anyhow, do you have an example of a small content-sharing service provider that would be affected? I'm sincerely curious. This is a personal opinion, but I don't think any content-sharing platform should profit from copyright infringement; I don't think forums or other kind of communities the main goal of which isn't to profit from that activity would be affected.