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Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

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Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#101

Post by repolfx »

lovich wrote: post #96
nnash wrote: post #42

Can we just agree to silo off the EU? Why should foreign companies have to comply with these policies anyway? GDPR compliance has already had a negative impact on web UX.

Welcome to what the rest of the world has been experiencing under the US hegemony for the past 3 decades. Since we are not all operating under the same authority, and so we don't have anyone to appeal to for a final answer when we disagree, relations between nation's and their companies have been a matter of practicality rather than ethics. If you can silo off the EU feel free, but most companies won't voluntarily gi…

How does that follow?

The US does regulate domestic internet firms from time to time like with COPPA. But my daily internet experience is by and large left alone by Congress.

Whereas I have to dismiss annoying cookie popups every few hours thanks to the EU. Somehow I prefer Congress.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#102

Post by repolfx »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #58
friedman23 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they want revenue from EU citizens? First of all not all websites make money. Secondly, monetizing the EU is a step that usually occurs very late into the life of a startup. Startups almost always monetize the US first. So if you are a company that owns a website that doesn't make money from the EU and the EU comes up with regulations that adds thousands of dollars in costs and hundreds of thousands of doll…

>Secondly, monetizing the EU is a step that usually occurs very late into the life of a startup. Startups almost always monetize the US first. It's not a matter of what the founder/CEO of a startup chooses here. I will often open links from e.g. New York Times or other US news sites because something happened in New York or there's an interesting opinion piece that I want to read. These sites are profiting from my cl…

Or - they could just make money off you, and ignore what the EU wants!

Ultimately the EU's only recourse in things like this is to either convince the USA to act as its enforcer, or to set up a Great Firewall to stop you browsing to the NYT.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#103

Post by zaarn »

colemannugent wrote: post #80
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly curious what definition of "free" you're using here? Are you saying that anything moving away from uncontrolled anarchy is cutting away freedom and we therefore shouldn't do that? The government forbids you to make a company spying in people bathrooms and sell the pictures, would you say that's interference in your free life as well?

I don't want to put words in openbasic's mouth, but here I go anyway: > what definition of "free" you're using here Free as in relatively unencumbered by government regulation. I think it's fair to say based off his "GDPR was just the first step" comment that he views increased government control of the internet as the axis along which the freedom he is referring to is measured. > Are you saying that anything moving…

>Free as in relatively unencumbered by government regulation. I think it's fair to say based off his "GDPR was just the first step" comment that he views increased government control of the internet as the axis along which the freedom he is referring to is measured.

Freedom in the US and Freedom in the EU are differently defined, in part because of history and culture.

The GDPR takes away some "freedoms to", but, for example, it gives me "freedom from tracking without consent" and "freedom from having my data eternally stored by a third party"/"freedom from having my data owned by a third party", which I think of as valuable freedoms to have.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#104

Post by repolfx »

chatmasta wrote: post #20
adventured wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit. Which costs $69 million per year to operate, has 300+ employees and requires six million donations. Your example also isn't free. > Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium Medium is less than 1% the size of Wordpress, both in terms of traffic and amount of content. The majority of all content on Wordpress sites is ad fr…

There should be a better mechanism for funding sites like Wikipedia that provide what is effectively a global, common, public good. Perhaps a budget from the UN or something should be set aside for funding projects like Wikimedia, Archive.org, etc. It’s a bit ridiculous that something so important to so many people relies on donations from individuals.

Why is it ridiculous? Wikipedia really isn't that expensive to run and clearly they have no problem raising the money. Funding based on volunteer donations seems a very equitable and reasonable way to fund something like Wikipedia - if it were to become totally useless for some reason people would stop donating, and that's good. If it was funded by the UN it'd become a zombie organisation that could never die even if it became irrelevant.

If anything Wikipedia is an example of the opposite problem - a charity that is too successful. Do you really think 300 people are needed to maintain the Wikipedia servers and software? No, of course not, the Wikimedia organisation has grown massively over time and almost all of those staff are working on things the average Wikipedia donator wouldn't even recognise.

I stopped donating to Wikipedia a long time ago, because it was clear that their fund-raising drives had stopped being connected to what the organisation actually needed to perform its mission and simply become a way to channel people's love for the work they had themselves produced together into a giant and very expensive party for a self-important management class.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#105

Post by zaarn »

qubax wrote: post #55
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real? I was with you until you started trying to sell me the US a good example - if your freedom is so exceptional why... ...do you have an abyssimal rate of reintegration of ex-prisoners to literally every other Western country? ...do you have a president who actively recommends violence against journalists? ...is an absolute majority of your news stations owned by one mega-corp? But we don't even have to go the…

You read a lot into my comment that simply wasn't there. By freedom I was talking about freedom of speech. > ...do you have an abyssimal rate of reintegration of ex-prisoners to literally every other Western country? What does this have to do with freedom of speech and censorship online? > ...do you have a president who actively recommends violence against journalists? Criticism isn't violence. Stop it. > ...is an ab…

>The US has freedom of speech like no other in the world.

The fundamental communication issue there is that the EU is not the US, not culturally or in history. Freedom, and as a consequence, Freedom of Speech, are defined different here. Or in some cases you have Freedom of Opinion not Freedom of Speech.

People in Europe have simply agreed that in polite and free society, certain speech is not desirable and corrodes the fundamentals of our democratic process and values.

People in the US think that all speed is allowed or else you corrode the fundamentals of their democratic process and values.

Both opinions are valid. But people in the EU will think that the US isn't doing free speech well and people in the US will think the EU isn't doing free speech well. Ultimately, neither of those is the objectively right way to do freedom because there is none.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#106

Post by dexen »

lovich wrote: post #95
pjc50 wrote: post #9

Article 13 is the key one, mandating upload filtering. This has all sorts of side effects - suddenly you can't make a Dropbox style file sharing site without implementing pre-emptive filtering. You can't rely on notify-and-takedown. Article 11 potentially has huge implications for social media sites; suddenly a user posting a news article link with a quote becomes a copyright liability. All the worry that was focused…

I think copyright reform has come about the same way GPDR has. Large tech corporations have been ignoring the concerns of governments, steamrolling those governments citizens, and then when given a few choices on how to act the companies argue out of both sides of their mouth. In this case corporations like Facebook, Google, et al have stated that they are platforms and can't be responsible for what people post on th…

> Large tech corporations have been ignoring the concerns of governments, steamrolling those governments citizens

Quite the opposite; in case of copyright expansion the large companies you mention are the copyright holders, which are about to be given governmental mandate to steamroll over the citizens even more. Quite the opposite of GDPR which went to protect the interests of individual citizens.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#107

Post by krageon »

doh wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #9

Article 13 is the key one, mandating upload filtering. This has all sorts of side effects - suddenly you can't make a Dropbox style file sharing site without implementing pre-emptive filtering. You can't rely on notify-and-takedown. Article 11 potentially has huge implications for social media sites; suddenly a user posting a news article link with a quote becomes a copyright liability. All the worry that was focused…

Absolutely agree. Both articles are a huge mistake for EU and will have incredibly negative impact on users and DSPs while favoring rights holders. The status quo favors DSPs (and indirectly users) but damages rights holders. A solution is badly needed, however it should be one balancing needs of all 3 groups instead of favoring one (or two).

The GDPR was a huge blessing for everyone who was tired of large companies, many of them from the States (which wouldn't matter except the attitude of "you can go fuck yourself" is much stronger in US companies) trampling all over their right to privacy. It has made the privacy situation in the EU a lot better. If that doesn't help you, it sucks for you - but saying it's a mistake is denying the nuances that are present in the situation.

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#108

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

int_19h wrote: post #64
HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of the ip is hard to decode? If you don't like how a country's laws are shaped, then stop selling there. You can't have your pie and eat it too. Either you obey the market laws and sell or you don't. If someone is using a VPN to get around your geo ban, then I think that's the user's implicit choice.

Why should the onus of blocking content in some faraway country be on the company publishing it? If you don't want your country's citizens to have access to something, well then, time for a Great Firewall.

>If you don't want your country's citizens to have access to something, well then, time for a Great Firewall.

It's not the EU who wants to ban access to something. It's the provider who wants to benefit financially from selling that product( targeted ads) without having to comply to the laws of the country that the selling happens. There is no other market that you get to do that. Why should your web page be different?

Re: Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the ‘vibrant free web’

#109

Post by zaarn »

repolfx wrote: post #102
HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Secondly, monetizing the EU is a step that usually occurs very late into the life of a startup. Startups almost always monetize the US first. It's not a matter of what the founder/CEO of a startup chooses here. I will often open links from e.g. New York Times or other US news sites because something happened in New York or there's an interesting opinion piece that I want to read. These sites are profiting from my cl…

Or - they could just make money off you, and ignore what the EU wants! Ultimately the EU's only recourse in things like this is to either convince the USA to act as its enforcer, or to set up a Great Firewall to stop you browsing to the NYT.

Or the EU could declare that business with NYT means you can't do business in the EU. Which would probably hurt a bit if ad networks jump off (I doubt Google wants to deal with this).

There are more than two options there, many more.

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