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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’

#271
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Googles and Facebooks of the future will be affected the most. This is consolidation of power, finally locking down the Free Internet just as we've done with every other industry. Stripping the power to change from the small. And what are we doing about it?

While I agree that regulation favours big companies, potential competitors will base themselves offshore, or create distributed apps that have no jurisdiction.

Both strategies have been tried and are unlikely to hold up in court.

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

#272
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.

You aren't? This lae was handcrafted by big publishers. And it is obvious to see. Very obvious...

Any thoughts on how that relates to Axel Voss and his friends? We know about Ajit Pai's dodgy dealings, but is Voss in someone's pocket? He seems too young to be this dumb about tech.

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

#273
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing actually stopping them from using those alternatives, other than the fact that they're not as good.

Lack of users is stopping Google's customers from using those alternatives. Users themselves (or people) are not the customers.

That's obviously correct, but it seems weird to use a different metric for market share and lock-in. If you define Google's customers as ad buyers, then they're very much not a monopoly, have way less than 91% market share, and their competitiors don't have a lack of users.

If they have a monopoly on search because of their share of searches, then surely the relevant lock-in would be how easily users of search can move to competitors?

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

#274
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,…

Is the license fee really for a simple link? I'd think the other publishers would love for sites like Google to be linking content and driving traffic to their platforms. If it's about scraping content and presenting it in a separate feed or otherwise outside of the source platform, I can see why they would not want that.

I was wondering the same thing then read in the article that links with 'single word' descriptions are ok. So my guess is that it's aimed a "linkers" who quote a significant fraction of an article (I.e. eliminating the reason to click on the link)

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

#275
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?

Google News for Spain certainly closed in response to that law. I guess that Google News for other countries then also doesn’t link to spanish newspapers, since those could still somehow sue google as a company that operates in Spain.

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

#276
post #82

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…

> I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind

I disagree, no other utility is blamed for the actions of its users, if I use an electric drill to hurt some one I am at fault not my electricity provider, but if I do something illegal on the internet like piracy its some how my internet providers fault?

I also don't like making excuses for policy makers who "don't understand the internet", its not the 90s, ignorance is no longer an excuse, these people know what the internet is, and they know exactly what they are doing.

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

#277
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this law change anything? Are you distributing now via arXiv preprints despite not being legally allowed to do so?

Oh I replied to another comment. The answer is "no". Fact is that 1/3 (anyway a significant proportion which can be referenced) of the arXiv articles appear later in journals. So it is a totally credible concern. The arXiv has a system of copyrights which allow them either a perpetual non-exclusive dissemination right, or a CC-BY copyright.

Well in mathematics and physics the usual thing to do is to first post on arXiv and then submit to the journal. ArXiv references are totally allowed. I heard that the situation is different in other fields but as you say this is not relevant for this discussion.

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

#278
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

The point is that, overall, the requirements of the directive must be met

Your example is actually a good one: The Netherlands might have added that the document must be legalised but their law still matches the directive's requirement and the added restriction is neither unreasonable nor onerous and might keep in line with the country's practices.

The bottom line is that those who hope that transposition will change the directive in any meaningful way are going to be sorely disappointed.

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

#279

I don't think the link tax will have any real implications. Any individual party that starts charging for links will simply not be liked to. It would only work if an entire industry/sector would start charging for links to them, but then we are talking about collusion and price-fixing which is already illegal. It's hard to start demanding money for something that was free and costs you nothing. And the link tax has e…

How do you find who is charging and who is not? Why not the other way around - if you post a link, you give exposure - that's worth something no?

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

#280

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.

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