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EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

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Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#151

Post by theandrewbailey »

paganel wrote: post #92

This decision is one of the many reasons why Europe will never reach the likes of Silicon Valley, no matter how much money will they sink down the "technology" hole (not that the US doesn't have its fair share of dumb legislators, because it has). This continent is a mess in terms of IT, with a few exceptions (London, Berlin, Dublin, some spots in Eastern Europe).

Exactly. I thought that the EU wanted a thriving tech sector, but it doesn't have any social media platforms with the reach that American ones do. And after this mess of legislation, the barriers to entry into the market will get far more expensive. Nothing will ever be able to clear it.

Sometimes, when companies climb the ladder to the top of the market, they kick the ladder down. This time, big copyright (and their political friends) kicked it down.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#152

Post by arendtio »

Grumbledour wrote: post #78

As terrible as this is, I am actually even more shocked by this proposal: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/europe-to-push-for-one-hou... Having one hour to remove offending content, draconian fines and no, absolutely no exceptions for small content providers would, I think, end the internet as we know it in Europe. I see no way to host any kind of content under such jurisdiction and surely all non European content p…

Sounds like the web without user content... Web 1.0? So much for free speech.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#153

Post by pjc50 »

contravariant wrote: post #138
kzrdude wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the European Parliament (here the body making a decision) is the EU institution that supposedly does not have the "democratic deficit", they are elected by the citizens. So in what way is this different from what we expect in democracies?

Well, first of all I have yet to hear about this vote from any of my local news sources. If I didn't browse hackernews I likely wouldn't know about it. Secondly I don't recall voting for any MEPs, as far as I can tell it's similarly not reported on. Besides given the lack of news about what any of the parties are up to it's hard to say anything about who you should even vote for. Thirdly just because somewhere at the…

> first of all I have yet to hear about this vote from any of my local news sources

This is definitely a deficiency of your local press.

> I don't recall voting for any MEPs

Elections are held every 5 years and organised by your local electoral authorities? Which country are you in and are you a national or a resident?

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#154

Post by Illniyar »

mrunkel wrote: post #89
cyphar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly, and so I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown. The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feat…

> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly This is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists.... > The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views.. This is just false. Google shows at most an excerpt (that is defined by the publisher) or a headline (on news.google.com). Unless you're talking about AMP, but that's a decision made by the publis…

Though the word implies otherwise a monopoly is not defined by the lack of competitors. At least not in a legal sense anymore.

It is defined by it's marketshare. And google search is by and large a monopoly in this regard having ~90% market share in virtually all segments of the market.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#155

Post by Scarblac »

Shaddox wrote: post #82
ericdykstra wrote: post #6

UKIP and the Green Party joined forces to prevent Article 13 from getting rammed through without a public discussion. It was a good first step, but here we are, 2 months hence, and it was passed with virtually no amendments to the original text. This is an abhorrent decision by people who have no idea how the internet works. Markus Meechum (aka Count Dankula) was at the hearings, and reported that MEPs voting on the…

I may be naive in saying this, but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind. The real problem lies in the laws it relies on, namely the extremely stringent copyright laws and the weird fair use. > Much of YouTube content is (perfectly legal) remixes, responses, or criticisms of other YouTube content that embeds part of the referenced video in their own video. As weird as it sounds, you are wrong. In a s…

Are you basing this on law in the EU? Because as far as I know, "fair use" is purely a US thing that doesn't even exist in the EU -- although specific countries may have laws that do somewhat similar things.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#156

Post by amelius »

sebst wrote: post #109
amelius wrote: post #60

I'm worried not so much about the outcome of this decision (which indeed is bad), but more about the whole decision-making process and how often we'll see such uninformed decisionmaking in the future.

I'd rather not call it "uninformed". We pay good amounts of money to parliamentarians, including their personal assistants. It's more like a "bug" in democracy as such. As long as a topic doesn't have widespread attention, it's the lobbyists who make the laws, not the citizens. I am pretty sure there are other bad laws in other very specific areas, we as techies don't have a clue about. As I've written in another com…

> this is obviously an unavoidable "bug"

Why unavoidable? For example, if a sufficient number of qualified people complain about any law, isn't it possible to hold MEPs accountable by openly questioning them about their reasoning? I'm sure there are journalists who can make good use of any suspicious argumentation.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#157

Post by davemp »

baxtr wrote: post #85

The whole thing really makes me furious beyond words. I shouldn't be that aggravated, but unfortunately I am. I feel like this is really the opposite of progressive and will leave the EU even further behind the US and China. Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new.

> Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new.

The link tax is really absurd. Traditional news is now almost completely useless. Information distribution is near free in todays market and "journalist's" opinions don't add much value to the information either. A large amount of stories are almost pre-written and sent off to publications anyways. Quality curation is really the only aspect that I would consider valuable, but these establishments just spread click-bait and junk articles.

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#158

Post by zaarn »

Grumbledour wrote: post #78

As terrible as this is, I am actually even more shocked by this proposal: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/europe-to-push-for-one-hou... Having one hour to remove offending content, draconian fines and no, absolutely no exceptions for small content providers would, I think, end the internet as we know it in Europe. I see no way to host any kind of content under such jurisdiction and surely all non European content p…

From what I read on this specific proposal, it's not entirely draconian and has some benefits to the user, since the process also implements transparency requirements and complaint mechanisms.

As far as the one-hour-rule goes; if I get an email about taking down content at 01:00AM, then I will naturally be unable to respond for atleast another 5 hours, German courts atleast agree that for such things, it counts when you are first aware of the illegal/infringing content, even if it's weeks after (though you already have an obligation to operate a contact through which you can be quickly reached when you operate in germany atleast, IIRC this proposal will introduce that EU-wide which is good IMO).

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#159

Post by rascul »

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #124
mrunkel wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly This is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists.... > The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views.. This is just false. Google shows at most an excerpt (that is defined by the publisher) or a headline (on news.google.com). Unless you're talking about AMP, but that's a decision made by the publis…

Just because there are other websites on the internet does not mean that Google doesn't have a monopoly. They have 91% search engine market share.

Stats seem to vary, it's not clear that 91% is correct. Even if it was 91%, that doesn't necessarily make it a monopoly.

http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share

https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-s...

https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.as...

Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’

#160

Post by dr_teh »

graeme wrote: post #100

Will this affect the global internet, or will big sites simply make a reduced "european version" where some filtered content isn't shown in the EU but is shown in North America?

The European version will be the same thing when I try to go on a non-gdpr US site, a big banner that tells me to *$#^ off.
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