EU Countries Back Copyright Reforms Aimed at Google, Facebook

> makes it horribly expensive to compete with Google and Facebook

there is no serious competition to Google or Facebook, in Europe. (or really the US either for that matter). How is this a shot in the foot if the industry is absent anyway?

In fact if Europe wanted to compete they would need to go the Chinese route. Double/Triple down on the regulation to the point where you make operation impossible and rebuild a national IT sector.

This is a common refrain of big tech: That regulation and consumer protection designed to reign in their abuses won't be a problem for them, and will hurt the little guy. It's interesting how loud they plead that they won't be hurt by regulation aimed at them. (Or that they're still opposed to it, if it will actually eliminate the competition.)

The answer is that that line of argument is bull---- and always has been. Small outfits using reasonable moderation practices will never have a problem with any sort of copyright regulation. The issue crops up when massive companies have made copyright abuse a major component of their largely automated platform, and done everything possible to avoid moderating content because legitimate, quality moderation does not scale. And as tech giants, they want to avoid things that don't scale.

The interesting thing is that the so-called "upload filter" law, that everyone says YouTube will already be fine with because of Content ID, will not be satisfied with Content ID. Because a real, human person must be handling appeals, rather than the little automatic deny that Google currently does. It will cost YouTube a massive amount of money to adopt this on it's scale, but will cost small websites or platforms nothing: They already have humans that read their email.

It’s complicated. The border options are “none”, “NI/RoI border customs checks etc”, and “Irish Sea custons checks etc” (given nobody even suggested “customs checks etc on Sinn Fein/DUP constituency borders” AFAIK).

“None” was ruled out by making it a red line to leave the customs union and single market even though that was originally something quite of leave campaigners thought was a silly idea. And it was ruled in by the WA backstop if the UK couldn’t figure out how to leave the Single Market without violating the Good Friday Agreement.

NI/RoI seems to violate the Good Friday Agreement. People argue about if it really does, but ultimately what matters is if the situation no longer satisfies the parties involved, and Sinn Fein says it doesn’t.

Irish Sea enrages the DUP because they want to be identical to the UK mainland (except for abortion laws and gay marriage etc).

It’s a mess.

> Not really. The legislature had to pass a law creating slavery, the executive had to sign it, the courts had to uphold it

Um, no. They didn't have to do that under the system established by the US Constitution. Because slavery predated that system, and was protected by it.

What would have taken positive action under the Constitution was abolishing slavery. But not only were there explicit protections for slavery in the Constitution (the first clause of Article I, Section 9; the next to last clause of Article V), but indirect protection against abolition was also provided by the mechanism the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives (where having slaves gave extra representation), by the allocation of seats in the Senate (equal per State representation gave disproportionate power to the enfranchised citizens of slave states (who chose the government that chose the Senators, prior to direct election of Senators), and the electoral college (which as well enfranchised citizens in any state that disenfranchised any people through indirect election, blended the apportionment systems of the Senate and House, both of which favored slave states.)

> Lincoln unilaterally ended slavery

No, he didn't; slavery was ended (as a matter of law, and aside from penal slavery) by the 13th Amendment, which not only wasn't a unilateral Presidential act, but it wasn't even an act in which the President has a formal role.

And the abolition of slavery didn't abolish all of the structural injustices put in place to protect it.

> What you're left with is the things with 50%+1 support but not e.g. 67% support. But that's what checks and balances are supposed to do -- prevent you from passing laws against things nearly half the country doesn't support having a law against. If

The system the US has allows control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency without majority support of the voting population, especially easily if the geographic distribution of your support favors small states. So not only does it not require supermajority and not prevent laws which have a mere majority support, it actually facilitates laws with minority support as long as it is the structurally favored minority. And it creates a very high bar which requires broad active support by the strucurally favored minority to reverse that arrangements, as it requires a Constitutional Amendment, a process in which the disapprobation of citizens of smaller states is even stronger than their disproportionate power in choosing the political branches of the federal government, and thus setting federal legislation.