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Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

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Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#101

Post by cr0sh »

icebraining wrote: post #59
deltron3030 wrote: post #49

Device pixels (resolution) or viewport pixels (like in CSS)? I mean OS manufacturers could just change the way viewport pixels are calculated in their viewport rendering, which makes the law redundant. And relying on device resolution doesn't make any sense for modern devices with hidpi displays.

I'm guessing they are only thinking of raster images, like excerpts of photos or videos.

> I'm guessing they are only thinking of raster images

Someone somewhere will come up with a JPG to SVG or CSS converter for images, if it doesn't already exist.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#102

Post by Fjolsvith »

sli wrote: post #99
Fjolsvith wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more worried about the lack of certain laws in the US - like worker protection, OSHA, workman comp > minimum wage, Present > working hours kinda laws. Overtime/holiday pay. What's lacking again?

> Overtime/holiday pay You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law. Also missing from US law: parental leave and sick days. None of these things are mandated, they are purely up to individual companies to optionally provide, which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

> Also missing from US law: parental leave. which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

So, I checked, and out of the 193 countries in the world, only 41 mandate parental leave. [1]

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-m...

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#103

Post by karmakaze »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #58
kamakazizuru wrote: post #32

there's a bizarre trend in Germany in the last few months for legistlating completely unneccesary things. This is a great example. Additionally today they announced that while profits on stock trading (specifically derivatives) can be taxed fully, losses can only be accounted for upto 10.000€ Berlin is trying to freeze rents for the next 5 years and make it possible to retroactively lower rents to the level of 2013.…

Compared to the US, Germany is more regulation heavy in general. Many of those regulations seem fine or even great, there are definitely ones that weird me out a bit as an American living here though, like legally enforced quiet hours on Sunday, days where it's illegal to dance, and really just the large amount of government-religion interaction.

I don't necessarily think there's an agenda to most of these laws. It's Germans doing what they do best, overengineer in this case, laws.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#104

Post by Mirioron »

krona wrote: post #46
Mirioron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure this is just a consequence of that EU copyright reform that passed some months ago (article 11&13/15&17). At least the linked article talks about it (in German). The EU can't make laws themselves. The way they work is by requiring member states to make laws and this is Germany's.

> The EU can't make laws themselves. They can. It's called a regulation. Directives are what you're referring to. A regulation is a legal act of the European Union that becomes immediately enforceable as law in all member states simultaneously.

You're right! I was thinking about directives here since this was about the copyright directive.

Another point is that even when it comes to regulations it generally falls onto the member states themselves to enforce those regulations.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#105

Post by Mirioron »

Mindwipe wrote: post #87
dredmorbius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memes would almost always seem to fall well into Fair Use protections, under both US and wider Berne law.

I would say that's highly questionnable under Berne, and are fairly untested under US Fair Use protections. As most of them are stills, and use the entire still, there's no defence of a partial use of the work. Under Berne the key test would be if it was prejudicial to the copyright owner's economic rights, and it would be hard to argue the image had no economic value if it was being used in a popular meme. I do thin…

>Under Berne the key test would be if it was prejudicial to the copyright owner's economic rights, and it would be hard to argue the image had no economic value if it was being used in a popular meme.

Isn't that backwards though? Doesn't the Berne Convention say that exemptions to reproduction of copyrighted works can't be prejudiced against the economic interests of the original author?

Memes don't really infringe on the original works. Seeing an image of Peter Parker with some text on it doesn't really compete with the Spiderman movie, does it?

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#106

Post by Mirioron »

dahart wrote: post #69

I don’t understand all the mock outrage; memes are already illegal in most cases at any size and copyrights are currently being enforced with takedowns in some cases. It seem like the title & text is trying to be intentionally inflammatory. It’s already illegal to use someone else’s image without permission, unless you’re covered by fair use (which memes are not automatically). Memes just happen to not be very enforc…

The reason people are outraged is because in practice memes were permitted. These new rules create more enforcement, which means that in practice people will likely have less freedom.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#107

Post by dang »

Proposed bills rarely go anywhere, and so do not count as on-topic for HN unless there is something intellectually interesting about them—which there rarely is, since the reason they get picked up and broadcast is always sensational. This one is described as a "discussion draft", so it isn't even a bill.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#108

Post by ginko »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #102
sli wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overtime/holiday pay You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law. Also missing from US law: parental leave and sick days. None of these things are mandated, they are purely up to individual companies to optionally provide, which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

> Also missing from US law: parental leave. which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world. So, I checked, and out of the 193 countries in the world, only 41 mandate parental leave. [1] 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-m...

You're misreading the article. This is out of a 41 country sample by the OECD. A lot more countries actually implement parental leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#By_country

And even so. Do you want the US to be ranked together with developed nations or places like Papua New Guinea and ... Huh, turns out that's the only other country listed besides the US that has no paid maternity leave.

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#109

Post by CyanBird »

gmueckl wrote: post #94
diamondo25 wrote: post #13

What a meme. Maybe they can just cut up the meme in chunks of 128x128 and display that instead. Its not a full image but a lot of tiny ones

The small chunks won't matter to a judge because the intended result is to have the resulting ensemble displayed as a single, larger image again. The intermediate steps of breaking it up and reassembling it are irrelevant technical details that will be abstracted away.

Ah, so then you would need to make every little 128^2 square be a meme of its own, which could then be part of a broader picture at the same time

Re: Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels

#110

Post by viklove »

sli wrote: post #99
Fjolsvith wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more worried about the lack of certain laws in the US - like worker protection, OSHA, workman comp > minimum wage, Present > working hours kinda laws. Overtime/holiday pay. What's lacking again?

> Overtime/holiday pay You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law. Also missing from US law: parental leave and sick days. None of these things are mandated, they are purely up to individual companies to optionally provide, which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

What's this then?

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

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