Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

European Parliament approves copyright reform

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 840 posts

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#231

Post by paganel »

Juliate wrote: post #185
paganel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also said it in the other thread about this, Macron is basically a crook, he has just sent the military to guard against some of France's citizens street protests [1], that's not at all democratic. Unfortunately, with the Brexit situation, with Angela Merkel who's on her way out and with Italy which is partly run by a comedian's party France has gained an unrivaled influence over EU affairs and in one way or ano…

There's a bit of nuance to bring here. Moving militaries to replace police on some institutions' security is and was stupid, as it's not their core mission. But calling "citizens street protests" the guerilla-like behaviours that triggered this clumsy response from the government is a bit naive and misleading as well. If you study France's Fifth Republic rules (Constitution), you'll see the president has some discret…

> If you study France's Fifth Republic rules (Constitution), you'll see the president has some discretionary power that are not democratic, in order to be able to take on decisions to safeguard the republic

I'd say that the republic was not put in danger by these protests and that this kind of move creates a very dangerous precedent. I also had thought that "La Révolution française est terminée", to quote Francois Furet, and that's why I think that "de facto" no-one was expecting any French president to send the troops. Did De Gaulle send the troops in May '68?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#232

Post by swebs »

ralala wrote: post #182
Funes- wrote: post #76

This will be an unpopular perspective on the matter, so you have been warned: Article 13 only affects for-profit platforms that host and share copyrighted material. These platforms are run by big corporations that turn a huge profit by way of selling your personal data, violating your privacy, and having a persuasive (addictive) design in order to glue you to the screen so they can maximize their ad revenue, dismissi…

This also affects small online communities, who pay for their servers by running a few ads. There are a lot of these platforms.

How small are we talking here? They could switch to a donation model to bypass it. A Linode 1GB is only $5 a month.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#233

Post by nicc »

paganel wrote: post #130

> France’s current batch of national politicians have consistently advocated for the worst parts of the Directive, and the Macron administration may seek to grab an early win for the country’s media establishment. Macron is a crook. If any other president from any other civilized country would have sent the military to guard against its citizens' street protests [1] then that president would have been (rightly) calle…

In Europe it's normal to use the military for a variety of reasons.

Specially since military draft was made voluntary, in Italy the military are used to walk around at train stations, help out in case of protests, etc.

Actually, in Italy we have two institutions that are seen as "police": Police and Carabinieri. Carabinieri are exactly the same, but they're part of the military.

As for:

> Macron is still seen by a large part of the mainstream media as this savior of European civilization and democracy

The media is usually biased towards left-wing ideology, with a globalist spin. Since Macron embodies both those ideals, it's easy to see why he gets helped by the media.

I have no idea why the French would think that a banker who married his high-school teacher would be one of them. He definitely turned out NOT to be on the side of the average French citizen.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#234

Post by anoncake »

sprash wrote: post #199
Tomte wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland's high standard of living is almost entirely due to their smartness. They kept out of wars and as a result could incrementally (and exponentially) build wealth instead of rebuilding their country from ruins every few decades.

It kept out of wars because it is a direct democracy. People almost never vote in favor of war.

Switzerland kept out of wars because it wasnt invaded. Poland didnt decide to join WW2.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#235

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nkkollaw wrote: post #224
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If any other president from any other civilized country would have sent the military to guard against its citizens' street protests [1] then that president would have been (rightly) called out the worst names Burning cars and breaking windows isn’t peaceful protest. If that happened in New York and the mayor and governor didn’t deploy armed guards, up to and including the National Guard, many people would be rightf…

> Burning cars and breaking windows isn’t peaceful protest. A few people doing that doesn't invalidate a peaceful protest that has lasted months now without doing any major damage (if you exclude Macron's approval ratings, of course). Of course, when you have a lot of upset people it's easy to have a few problems--specially after months of protesting without the government doing anything major to address people's con…

> that doesn't invalidate a peaceful protest

I agree. Peaceful protest with violent elements, and the government deploying force to deter the violent elements, isn’t an oxymoron. The violent elements don’t invalidate the peaceful ones. And the armed response shouldn’t besmudge the government per se.

> It's also a common tactic from governments to infiltrate into peaceful protests and cause damage and disorders on purpose

Need a citation on this being “common.” Would also need some proof of this happening in Paris. Otherwise, we’re going into conspiracy theory land.

Given the violence made France look more inept than any of the demands did, given Paris gave into many of the policy demands, and given France’s fourth estate is reasonably competitive and competent, I’m sceptical of the claim that the looting was a false flag operation.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#236

Post by I_am_tiberius »

skrebbel wrote: post #193
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "It's poorly democratic" and not "It's purely democratic", right?

I'm seriously baffled about the amount of HN commenters, who I'd assume are highly educated, who think that democracy doesn't work if they don't agree with every law produced by it.

If you're referring to me, I don't think like you described. However, I think representative democracy like we have it now is not suitable for a law like the one we're discussing. I want to be represented by experts and not by people who are ~50 years old and who are barely using the Internet.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#237

Post by sampo »

Konryan wrote: post #202
makomk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing we can do, by design. The European Commission has the exclusive ability to create new laws, and they're almost totally isolated from any kind of democratic control.

That's not exactly true. Parliament can petition the Commission to legislate on something, and citizens can put forward proposal through the ECI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens'_Initiative

> Parliament can petition the Commission to legislate on something

Has this ever happened in practice?

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#238

Post by _ph_ »

aldoushuxley001 wrote: post #217
varjag wrote: post #208

A wild guess: nothing changes, or things even improve somewhat. Not very invested into content distribution. If it has chilling effect on social networks, so be it. And memes can die for all I care.

Europe is more likely to be hived off from rest of internet as most companies won't cater to such nonsense. Progress continues, just less so in Europe.

Even hacker news could decide to block EU IPs, so they don't get slapped with some lawsuits, should one commenter ever put some copyrighted content into the comments.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#239

Post by dijit »

makomk wrote: post #178
IanSanders wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I will now start my move out of the EU While good for you, EU will have one less citizen opposing internet restriction. We need a better way to deal with this but I cannot think of one. >Politicians felt like your regular corrupt banana republic representatives this time. That's what it converges to. Good ones don't survive.

There is nothing we can do, by design. The European Commission has the exclusive ability to create new laws, and they're almost totally isolated from any kind of democratic control.

That's not true at all; they are:

A) Elected (though, indirectly, through the elected officials that you elect to be MEPs)

and

B) A body of law drafters and implementors with no powers to ascend anything to law by themselves.

The EC requires the EU parliament to vote on laws that it drafts, the EU parliament can require that laws be redrafted or amended. But the EU parliament is the only place a proposal can become law and those are our elected representatives voting.

Re: European Parliament approves copyright reform

#240

Post by makomk »

isostatic wrote: post #96
sprash wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is not democratic at all. Especially because the unelected European Commission has executive and legislative power. The parliament only has veto rights and even at that it spectacularly fails as Art. 17 shows. The whole thing was a backroom deal between Germany (which wants gas from Russia) and France (which apparently really likes ultra restrictive Copyright). We would have the same result without this fake t…

European Commissioners are selected by natioanl governments. The president of the commission is voted for by the people (Juncker received the most votes in 2014) Does America vote for the secretary of transportation? In theory under say a westminster system MPs can take control. This is almost unprecedented until last night. Even when they do push non-controversial laws (Private Member bills, like the upskirting one…

It might be illuminating to talk about what it meant for Juncker to receive the most votes in 2014. First up, there are no EU-wide political parties, just shifting alliances of local national parties, none of which have more than 30% of the MEPs. For the 2014 elections, they came to a deal where the alliance with the most MEPs got their choice as President of the European Commission. (Which is not how it's supposed to work, but let's put that aside for a moment.)

Now, pretty much no-one voted for MEPs based on which alliance they were part of - they voted based on party, because it's the parties that decide what platform their MEPs are running on and that are the ballot. Not only that, which alliance was bigger was pretty arbitrary and depended almost entirely on how the backroom deals between the various parties had gone. Oh, and there's some justified suspicion that this was all specifically set up to get Juncker in: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/eu-democratic-... (He then rewarded one of the guys who helped him manage this with an extremely shady permanent appointment as the head of the EU civil service.)

This is very different from the UK system, where each party and its leader agrees on their platform for the next election, publishes it as a manifesto, and runs collectively on the promise of enacting those policies if they win. Partly because, unlike the UK Prime Minister, the European Commission isn't meant to represent the people at all - it's meant to represent the EU's interests as an institution.

Post reply on HN