41–50 of 76 posts
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I think the majority don't have a clue what laws come out of the EU versus their own parliament. The EU has about 33 thousand employees, this is hardly tons of bureaucracy, just UK local government has 2.3 million employees.
A lot of local government are not strictly bureaucrats but are people providing services.
Seizing on the opportunity to use this supranational directive to overturn a democratically-enacted law The directive exists pursuant to action of the European Parliament* which is also a democratic institution, as someone with Jeremy Malcolm's outstanding education is surely aware. * http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:... I'm not expressing an opinion on the merits of European copyright law;…
The European Parliament is pretty f-ing far from a democratic institution. Just because it has an election attached to it (for which the turn out is so ridiculously low they might as well not bother) doesn't make it a democratic institution. Any power the EP has or doesn't have (mostly the latter) didn't come about through democratic process. Imposing a faux parliament on people, especially one that operates without…
Seizing on the opportunity to use this supranational directive to overturn a democratically-enacted law The directive exists pursuant to action of the European Parliament* which is also a democratic institution, as someone with Jeremy Malcolm's outstanding education is surely aware. * http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:... I'm not expressing an opinion on the merits of European copyright law;…
Well, I'm from Europe and I don't like most of the things that come out of Brussels. In fact, when polls are made it would seem majority share my view. Maybe then 'undemocratic' is not such a bad name for it? It's tons of bureaucracy with very little democracy.
A recent poll in the US shows that 65% of likely U.S voters think that their country is going in the wrong direction (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood...). And that doesn't even speak of the almost 50% of people who don't vote.
What is special about the EU is that national politicians and tabloid media love to use it as a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with our modern globalised world. That is especially true for the UK.
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A lot of local government are not strictly bureaucrats but are people providing services.
Bureaucracy services, mostly.
Most of that isn't what people think when they hear bureaucracy.
This is just UK. I dont think it will fly in Spain, Czech rep or other parts of EU. For start there is author tax to compensate authors for fair use, it is collected as VAT on empty mediums and printers. With this law many powerful people would loose money. I would welcome it, since it means cheaper hardware. And secondly: YES! More stupid laws like this, more DRM and people will turn to free music under Creative-Com…
Minor correction, the authors tax charged on printers and copy mediums is in addition to VAT, not the same as VAT.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'm from Europe and I don't like most of the things that come out of Brussels. In fact, when polls are made it would seem majority share my view. Maybe then 'undemocratic' is not such a bad name for it? It's tons of bureaucracy with very little democracy.
You are misinformed, according to the regularly performed Eurobarometer polls ( http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb82/eb82_en.... ), there is not a single poll since 2006 where more people had a negative view than a positive view of the EU.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'm from Europe and I don't like most of the things that come out of Brussels. In fact, when polls are made it would seem majority share my view. Maybe then 'undemocratic' is not such a bad name for it? It's tons of bureaucracy with very little democracy.
Do you even know most things that come out of Brussels? Your sentiment is shared by many people all over the world with regard to their own national governments as well. That doesn't make all these countries undemocratic. A recent poll in the US shows that 65% of likely U.S voters think that their country is going in the wrong direction ( http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood... ). And that doe…
A few examples do show a blatant lack of democracy, though. In France, we had a referendum regarding the new European constitution. We refused it at 60% (not counting abstention, which by the way was relatively low). Then a dozen months later, the same constitution came back (sections were shuffled around, but it was mostly a copy-paste job). No referendum this time. It was submitted to the parliament instead. They said yes, despite indisputable evidence that the people did not want this. This is as undemocratic as it gets.
Elections don't make a country democratic. We need much stronger guarantees.
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Minor correction, the authors tax charged on printers and copy mediums is in addition to VAT, not the same as VAT.
Minor correction, depends on the eu countries, but in France, the authors tax charged on copy mediums is in addition to the product price without VAT, and then VAT is applied to the whole. So you pay VAT on the authors tax. To be clear you pay tax on tax, a french speciality.
European Copyright legislative is an inconsistent mess. Right now, in Austria, the government is up to demand 6% of the price of any digital storage device, to compensate copyright holders when the legit consumers of their work execute their right to make a private copy . So the European Court apparently just has settled that in one country of the EU, consumers do not have the right to make private copies, while in o…
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I hear this argument very often but I don't see any strong evidence that it is happening in the majority case, nor will happen. The music/entertainment industries have been relatively slow to react to digitisation, the internet and technological advances, but their lobbying prowess is frightening. Just look at their power and handywork at the national level instigating ridiculous and oppressive laws and at the intern…
"In early 2015, Bandcamp released an announcement that artists using the website had officially gotten $100 million in total from music sale" Total music industry is 15B (afaik). It is 1/150th of the entire music industry and that is just one site. I think the artist make more on Bandcamp and other music distribution platforms than on big labels, that might be the reason why Bandcamp is greatly successful.
From that article I get the impression that the $100 million refers to all money paid during the existance of Bandcamp, while I suppose the 15B is annual? The article says that Bandcamp has revenue of $3.5 million a month (= $42 million a year), most of which goes to artists.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2015/03/10/direct-t...
