EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’ • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by candiodari » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

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 EU was furious when the large internet firms chose to have a reduced EU version and informed their customers the EU had forced them to remove stuff.

So they will do their very best to make it affect the global internet.

Given that all major powers want that, it'll happen. Maybe not right now, but it's coming. It would have happened a long time ago if it wasn't for the stroke of luck that these companies are in the US and the US government is protecting them (for now succesfully).

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

#242

Post by oihoaihsfoiahsf » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

sebst wrote: post #206

TulliusCicero wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture implies Google and Facebook were in favor of this and made it happen, which I doubt is true.

They are in favor of this. Maybe it's worse for them than in the current legal situation. But when the law comes into effect they are better off than any of their smaller competitors.

Do you have any statements or signaling you can link to from either of these companies to suggest they are in favor of this law? I know Google, for example, has fought strongly against similar link tax and other laws related to Google News in the past. There is also a statement from them referenced in this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/plan-to-make-google-pay-for-...

> The Commission’s proposal “would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news — including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online,” Google said in a statement.

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

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Post by jaimex2 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

efdee wrote: post #142

jaimex2 wrote: post #38

Is there any reason now why Google shouldn't shutdown all their EU web services and remove its divisions like it did in China? If they did so they can conveniently also ignore that $5B anti-trust fine.

And drop out of the EU market? That sounds insane.

I could be wrong but wouldn't the global versions still be accessible and capable of selling ads?

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

#244

Post by phkahler » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

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…

>> If you want a quick example of why this is bad take a look at fair use and YouTube. Article 13 would make YouTube liable for copyrighted content on its service.

What exactly is wrong with that? Seriously.

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

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Post by remify » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

tartrate wrote: post #201

fabricexpert wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is TOTALLY different. If you can't run a business under GDPR legislation then what you're doing is almost certainly unethical or at worst mismanaged and irresponsible with customer data. On the other hand this legislation will completely change the internet as we know it.

For some companies, making the IT-related changes to accommodate for GDPR was simply too expensive.

I don't believe that. If a compagny has no idea where does their data goes and what their use is, they have shitty practices and / or are incompetent. Good riddance

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

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Post by megous » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #186

ericdykstra wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this is true. Every legitimate YouTube fair use case that I've seen go to court has gone in favor of the fair user. The biggest name one so far is the H3H3 trial.[1] One that looks to be settled soon is Akilah Hughes suing Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), where all that Benjamin does is edit together two of Hughes videos with the only original addition being a new title. This is almost certainly going…

Combining two videos in this way would be unlawful in the UK, where we have the very restricted "Fair Dealing" concessions, because downloading the videos in the first place is a tort[0]. Combining them is another, sharing them is another. We basically have no concept of personal use in our copyright. [0] if they were broadcast you can record but only for time-shifting, you can only watch once (alone!) and then are o…

Compare that to my country, where it's perfectly legal to download whatever music or movies you like from the internet for personal use, pirate websites or not. Also a western democracy. So it's not so bad everywhere.

Though a price for this is that we pay a special tax on every storage device we purchase.

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

#247

Post by ericdykstra » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

anotherevan wrote: post #70

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,…

Didn't Spain news media ram through some kind of link-tax laws to try and extricate money out of Google, and that's why we don't hear any news out of Spain any more?

Yes, Spain has been shut out of Google News since December, 2014. It's a good example of regulation that can actually go so far that even the biggest companies will stop doing business in your country.

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

#248

Post by pluma » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

As far as I can tell, this is the actual text that was voted on (A8-0245/2018):

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2F...

EDIT: The final text will apparently be published here eventually: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/texts-adopted.html

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

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Post by BlackFly » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

ElBarto wrote: post #46

zaarn wrote: post #7

>The legislation approved today still faces a final vote in the European Parliament in January (where it’s possible, though very unlikely, it will be rejected). After that, individual EU member states will still get to choose how to put the directive in law. In other words, each country will be able to interpret the directive as they see fit. It's not totally over yet, both the final vote and the implementation in me…

Individual countries cannot "interpret the directive as they see fit". Transposition has to match the directive, otherwise the whole excercise would be pointless.

They can interpret anything sufficiently vague as they see fit. For example Article 10 of Directive 2004/38/EC states that a government shall only require "a document attesting to the existence of a family relationship", which most people would consider to be a marriage certificate, it also states the residence permit will be granted within 6 months of presentation of the documens. Article 25 limits the cost of the issuance of the residence permit.

Unlike many EU countries, the Netherlands requires that the marriage certificate is "legalised" and charges for the process. They will not even accept the documentation before you go through this extra legal procedure thereby increasing the total time to over 6 months. Under some interpretation of article 10 and 25, this would be illegal, they have a different interpretation.

You can find various compliance studies for directive 2004/38/EC and other directives as well. It is just a fact in Europe that the transposition into local law leads to inconsistent application of the law. Applying for the same visa (from the European perspective) in the Netherlands and in Germany can be two wildly different experiences.

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

#250

Post by Tor3 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #154

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…

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.

>[..] a monopoly is not defined by the lack of competitors.[..]It is defined by it's marketshare.

No, I can't agree. I don't even consider Microsoft a monopoly, even though their product comes pre-installed on every PC you can buy in shops. If you can't get any alternative ISP (to e.g. AT&T) where you live, by any means, now that is a monopoly.