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European Parliament approves copyright reform

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Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh, nice one. That's an even better example than Beethoven. Even better still: there's a song which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. That's it - silence. "Your latest video upload contains 5 seconds of stunned silence, which has been identified as an extract of 4'33". This extract is copyrighted. Your video has been deleted."

The creative elements of Cage's work are that it's performed as a piece by an orchestra, and presented as a work (eg a specific length, sold as other works are). Your any-[other]-length-of-silence doesn't infringe. If it did then Cage's piece would lack the artistic distinctiveness needed to make it a work for copyright purposes. Just having a urinal doesn't infringe on Duchamp's "Fountain", not even if it's the same…

You know that, the lawyers know that, but how do you expect the content filtering mechanism to know that???

True, for 4'33'' there is a simple rule that they probably follow - ignore silence :). But for Fountain (if it ever came up) it's hard to imagine that the difference between a protected copy and a non-protected similar image could really be automatically discovered.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, when one of my users uploads copyrighted material, I can take it down when I see it. Or when I get a complaint (DMCA takedown). We're taking about teenagers here, so it's not always clear to them that they cannot use ripped sprites from other games, or music, or whatever. Basically I can make the uploader responsible for what they upload. The secondary problem is that my biggest competitor also has a lot o…

Your platform needs to make at least x million a year and have userbase of x million and exist for at least x years. Only then the filtering is mandatory...

That is exactly the whole vibe I get from EU regarding startups: "Think small"

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#543

As someone about to use Hetzner for vps hosting. If my company is based elsewhere, but my product is hosted by a provider within the EU, am I still subjected to this utter nonsense? How about if I use OVH on their Canadian datacenter? It's a French based company but the product would be hosted outside EU.

If I host my content on an american conpany’s European data centre am i subject to silly laws like patriot act?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#544

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 si…

Why would you want to do that? We have already established in the discussion around GDPR that EU regulators are omnipotent, perfectly represent the will of the people in every case, and can be trusted to wield unlimited and arbitrary power in reasonable ways.

Could it be that EU regulatory bodies are normal government functions that run the risk of normal governance-related dysfunction and require the usual controls like limited power, rule of law, oversight, and less-than-worldwide jurisdiction?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#545
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A big part of the problem is that there is no single entity that defends the citizens interest in this instance. Isn't the European Parliament supposed to be this entity ? The real problem is that if you have a single entity, then that entity can easily be corrupted by those who have the means to (read: money). This problem is unsolvable because those who have or profit from this power are also the people who get t…

There is really no way for them to "spin" this into something positive for the people, because everyone can clearly see their ignorance and contempt for common people through legislation like this. It is fundamentally corrupt and should be abolished asap

> no way for them to "spin" this into something positive for the people

I guess traditional content producers are not people, then.

It's a complex world.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#546
post #534

The misconception that somehow the old internet is gone is so widespread mainly due to big brands pushing their content in everyone's face, the old internet is alive and well it's just that the people who operate at that level can't be bothered to market what they do. Want to hack on Linux kernel? There is more vibrancy in that community than there has ever been. Want to find CVE and learn how to hack binaries? There…

> There is more vibrancy in that community than there has ever been

This is going to sound weird, but this _is_ why it feels like the old internet is gone: everything is moving way too fast.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#547
post #239
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 true at all; they are: A) Elected (though, indirectly, through the elected officials that you elect to be MEPs) and B) A body of law drafters and implementors with no powers to ascend anything to law by themselves. The EC requires the EU parliament to vote on laws that it drafts, the EU parliament can require that laws be redrafted or amended. But the EU parliament is the only place a proposal can become l…

Commissioners are not elected, that stretches the meaning of the word past breaking point. By that definition literally any government employee right down to sewage workers are 'elected'.

Realistically the Commission are in charge. Because the so-called Parliament can't do anything except (at most) slow down the EU project a little bit, most people who run for election are just EU fanboys/girls who want to be close to the action. In the cases where they send new legislation back to the Commission for more work, it's usually to demand the EU award itself even more power than it was already doing. It doesn't act as any real check on the Commissions power. Even in the rare case of dispute, nothing stops the Commission just making minor changes and telling the Parliament to vote again, which they do. In fact "vote again" is the modus operandi of the entire EU project, whenever anything the Commission and related institutions wants gets rejected.

This setup is unique in the world and exists primarily to obfuscate the reality, as far as I can tell. Europhiles use it to claim the EU is "democratic" although the word Parliament means "the body of government that makes law" in English, and the EU Parliament doesn't meet that definition. There are free elections but they can't change anything meaningful, and as a result turnout has been falling steadily for decades, polls show the population don't trust the EU and see it as "out of touch" although fixing out of touch lawmakers is the entire point of elections. The whole thing is theatre intended to distract from the real power brokers: men like Selmayr and Juncker.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't because you won't be allowed to upload anything that doesn't pass the content filter, or anything at all for that matter.

Are you saying every single EU website will have a filter for all uploads?

Yep, unless they are non-profit, and less than 3 years old, and have less than 10€ in revenue, and have less than 5 million unique visitors.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#549

As someone about to use Hetzner for vps hosting. If my company is based elsewhere, but my product is hosted by a provider within the EU, am I still subjected to this utter nonsense? How about if I use OVH on their Canadian datacenter? It's a French based company but the product would be hosted outside EU.

If I host my content on an american conpany’s European data centre am i subject to silly laws like patriot act?

Yes.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With structures such as EU, the distance between the voter and decision-making center gets longer, and voter's influence smaller. Exiting these structures, just as limiting the power of any central or federal government in favour of moving this power to lower-level elected authorities (such as states in US or Russia) decreases this distance.

This is fine in theory, with a big caveat. Our lives are increasingly dominated by big entities, and the political ones are often small fish compared to giant international corporations that can play smaller political entities off against each other (example: Amazon headquarters). The idea of limiting the size of political entities has merit, but it will backfire unless you also limit the size of economic entities. (…

This argument has solid logic, but I don't agree with underlying view of the world. The governments of the world can, and do force tech companies to do whatever they want in terms of privacy, security and other stuff. GDPR and Article 13, Net Neutrality, censorship and privacy issues in Russia and China... The only pushback I've seen by corporations is by PR and lobbying, and in the end, politicians seem to do whatever they want. Yes, company may be even wealthier than the government - but as long as government has monopoly on violence and can enforce it laws, corporations would only be comparable to banana republics and african failed states.
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