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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’

#221

Post by zaarn »

heavenlyhash wrote: post #116

So since the majority of the voices here on HN seem to be pretty negative towards this, I think it's worth noting there are some creative voices who are in favor of some copyright law. For example, here's one fellow on the twitter machine who's a composer and seems pleased: https://twitter.com/Howard_Goodall/status/103983376226213478... Simultaneously, I'm not campaigning in favor of the "link tax" component, here. I…

I generally agree, living in a democracy means that sometimes you have things happen you don't agree with because a majority either doesn't agree with you or doesn't care enough to bother.

In a few years the EU could be on it's way to undo the linktax again, who knows? Meanwhile there are other EU proposals on the way that are also interesting for tech people, not only the linktax and "delete terror in 1 hour or else"... And non-tech proposals too!

I do believe that it'll be possible to work with the filters and link tax considering some edits during the initial phases did disarm the worst of the first proposal (it's still not a very nice one).

Disclaimer: I operate a platform for user generated content in the EU as well as working for a platform for user generated content, HQ'd in the EU, my views may be biased.

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

#222

Post by dane-pgp »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #86
raverbashing wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot imagine that, for example, the Chans will take this kindly. That will be funny

Just imagine how easy it's going to be to screw over other websites, just by making an account, uploading material that could in some way be construed as violating copyright but passes the filter because it cannot be perfect, and then reporting the site to one of the bodies responsible for upholding this directive. Hell, just by doing that you could probably end any potential upholding of this system really fast.

Maybe someone (with a big following on Twitter, let's say) needs to start compiling a list of national government and EU websites that publish user generated content, for example petition sites. If the law goes through, people can go to those sites and post "unexpectedly copyright infringing" content, such as a paragraph from a book (perhaps a self-published one that consists of just seemingly contextless paragraphs).

(Inb4 the national laws end up including huge exemptions for site run by the government or political parties).

A more technical campaign would be reverse engineering the filtering algorithms (censorship machines) that sites end up forced to install, and finding a way of generating new copyrighted content that has the equivalent of a "hash collision" against already popular (or political) content hosted on websites using the filter.

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

#224

Post by candiodari »

sbradford26 wrote: post #182

"Exactly how the legislation will be interpreted will be up to individual nations, but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet." I feel like this is actually forcing the biggest tech companies to increase their grip on the internet.

You say that as if that's an accident. You see, the politicians at the EU aren't just malevolent, they're also incompetent and lazy. You see that's why they're doing this: force everyone's opinions into a few companies, and foreign ones that Europeans won't care about at that.

Next step is to sue those companies into submission. To give them the emails of everyone on their platforms. Their location. To make them pay for everything. To ...

But if they had to do that against 10000 companies, they wouldn't be able to. So they're enforcing Google's monopoly on Europe, to then force them to abuse it on their behalf (and of course blame them for it all the way).

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

#225

Post by rimliu »

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).

I am not even sure why I would want to reach the likes of the Silicon Valley.

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

#226

Post by pliny »

cyphar wrote: post #52
docdeek wrote: post #23

"Article 11 is intended to give publishers and newspapers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories…” Is there anything stopping a search engine like Google choosing not to link to a newspaper? Surely they can’t be required to link to a newspaper AND then pay that newspaper to do so? The trade-off if Google chose not to link to the newspaper would be a (slightly) less useful search engine,…

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 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 feature that arguably impacts revenue

Think about how grossly afflicted with clickbait the news ecosystem is today, and then imagine how much worse it could get if Google were legally prevented from even attaching a blurb to the links that it shows users.

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

#227

Post by buboard »

antpls wrote: post #181

For the anecdote, Nils Torvalds, the father of Linus, is one of the many authors of this text law. I'm from EU, I had the time to look at the recent amendments about this law, in which they added precisions about the fair use of data, for non-profit and public research. They also precised that this law and the technical implementations should not go against already in-place freedom of speech rights. Hopefully, people…

Do you have a link to the text of the directive? i found this text from 2016: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Also , the major issue is not so much with the process of takedown itself, but with the "terror" it inspires which will lead to the end of the "meme culture" upon which internet media rely on. It's not so much about the number of take-downs , but about the number of people that will quit before even trying.

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

#228

Post by dnate »

village-idiot wrote: post #84
dalbasal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10 years ago, newspapers got together to try and get Google to give them some money, for the content Google was indexing to populate their news search results. Google's response was to give them better ways of de-indexing content. IE, a way to opt out. Take it or leave it. Naturally, few newspaper took leave it, preferring to get readers & no revenue than no readers and no revenue. Since then, efforts have focu…

I think the newspapers forgot that Google doesn’t need them .

The issue is that we as a society need diverse and independent newspapers.

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

#229

Post by pbhjpbhj »

beaconstudios wrote: post #173
pjc50 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient stupidity applied to contentious issues is a disaster. That's how we get measles outbreaks. Failing to present a coherent, workable programme for how we'd leave the EU and at what cost is leading us to a situation where the government is doing civil contingency planning as if we were going to be hit by a hurricane rather than a self-inflicted disastrous choice.

I'm in complete agreement, but I don't think the desire to leave is particularly contentious if it's backed by reasonable arguments (and Farage was always very keen on talking about why he didn't like the EU). The real problem comes in when we get to the point of "OK, we want to leave the EU" but immediately trigger the process without planning a strategy first. Especially with reluctant and un-aligned (May was a rem…

[flagged]

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

#230

Post by aembleton »

Keyframe wrote: post #64
yasp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the EU would, so that it stops damaging things for the rest of the planet. Eventually the costs of complying with the EU's decrees will get high enough where it will make more sense for companies to block European traffic than comply.

It's already happening. chicagotribune.com leads to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/chicagotribune.com/ for example. Not sure what to think about that.

latimes.com does it too
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