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European Parliament approves copyright reform

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Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#241
A big part of the problem is that there is no single entity that defends the citizens interest in this instance. You have the Disney's of the world heavily lobbying to pass reforms like these, but who protests against it?

- Online signatures? Gets laughed out of the room. They could be fake, they don't mean anything, they are paid, etc..

- Voting? Voting cycles are too long and voting decisions cannot be made on a single issue, so this is ineffective at best.

- Street Protests? It seems this is the only option. But as said in the article, even the credibility of these can be put into question.

So what do we do?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#243
The stunning bit of this for me has been the attitude of my MEPs when I emailed them.

One Labour MEP, both Conservatives - no response. Not even a form letter.

Other Labour MEP - "You are being brainwashed by Google. This is the best thing for the Internet ever! You'll see!" (paraphrased as I don't have the email to hand, but she did use the word "brainwashed"). Frankly the whole exchange struck me as extremely immature on her part!

Two UKIP MEPs - reply a few hours after I emailed them. "We'll be fighting this as much as we possibly can. It's a disaster. The Articles say one thing and say something contradictory a few sections later!"

Much of the fightback seems to have been from the populist far-right parties (with the obvious exception of the various Pirate parties). I wonder if the EU has realised it's just handed a massive win to them -- all they have to say now is "look, we tried to protect your Youtube but the EU stopped us!".

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#244
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is more likely to be hived off from rest of internet as most companies won't cater to such nonsense. Progress continues, just less so in Europe.

As long as their cashflow in Europe is in black, they will absolutely cater. But we'll see soon enough.

Doubt it.

It's very easy to implement GDPR compliance, and A LOT of websites opted for blocking their content in Europe instead of working to make their services compliant.

The requirements for being compliant with these directives are so difficult, than only major companies will have the resource to do it, and many will definitely not think it's worth the effort.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#245
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hungarians mostly voted for the current government. I don't like Orban, and his propaganda is shameful, but what he does is exactly what people want (and corruption on the side). The opposition does not have any shared platform that the majority of the people would want, other than "not orban".

> The opposition does not have any shared platform That's how it should be. 5-6 medium sized parties. Having only 2 choices is not democracy either.

absolutely, but Orban got 49% of the popular vote. Fidesz is what people actually want.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#246
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also affects small online communities, who pay for their servers by running a few ads. There are a lot of these platforms.

> small online communities, who pay for their servers by running a few ads if those communities are aiming for a break even at best, would those as well be considered "for profit", though?

Who will be able to afford the better lawyers in that fight to argue if they're for profit? MediaCorp(tm) or the small community that got a little too popular/spotlighted?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#247
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if there are people out there who deny climate change, geopolitics like this ought to convince everyone that distributed renewable energy is the way forward.

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…

> Germany did more than any other country to realize the modern renewable-energy industry and it's failed its climate goals.

Didn't California try equally hard with renewables as Germany? And failed equally hard.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#248
post #233

> France’s current batch of national politicians have consistently advocated for the worst parts of the Directive, and the Macron administration may seek to grab an early win for the country’s media establishment. Macron is a crook. If any other president from any other civilized country would have sent the military to guard against its citizens' street protests [1] then that president would have been (rightly) calle…

In Europe it's normal to use the military for a variety of reasons. Specially since military draft was made voluntary, in Italy the military are used to walk around at train stations, help out in case of protests, etc. Actually, in Italy we have two institutions that are seen as "police": Police and Carabinieri. Carabinieri are exactly the same, but they're part of the military. As for: > Macron is still seen by a la…

I checked with a French friend, in France (like in Germany) it is illegal to send military forces to do any kind of police like duties. However, under the "terror fighting" emergencies still active, military forces are on French streets.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Democracy is rule of the people. If the democratic process leads to the rule of a minority of powerful people, isnt it valid to say its actually undemocratic, or at least insufficiently democratic?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#250
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question even is if i can vote for the pirates in my region. So far i haven't even seen the slightest bit of voting information for the upcoming vote. Well nearly no information. I had a flyer for the SPD Senior Citizen Group in my mailbox...

I've been looking for a while for a good summary of how to vote that I could link to people, but not even on europa.eu do they have that, which really speaks for itself. If anyone knows of a good source, I'd love to know about it.

https://www.european-elections.eu/ is linked on europa.eu
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