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’

#401

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:58 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.

> Though the word implies otherwise a monopoly is not defined by the lack of competitors. At least not in a legal sense anymore.

Yes, it is, though in practice that's based on complex factual analysis of whether there is real competition not whether there are other players in the same descriptive market.

> It is defined by it's marketshare.

No, marketshare is a “same descriptive market” test that people casually talking about competition use; legally, the more relevant tests are things like pricing power—can the alleged monopolist raise prices in some range without losing sales to a competitor. You can have a very large marketshare in a descriptive market but lack pricing power, or have small marketshare in a descriptive market and have pricing power because the market described is really multiple segregated markets in practice.

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

#402

Post by candiodari » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

gnomewascool wrote: post #281

candiodari wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this proposal was a commission proposal, so the democratic deficit here is that this proposal could have gone through, EVEN IF it was voted out. So that's one, in my opinion very big problem. Second, people are just not aware of what power the EU has. And the politicians I speak to actually see this as an advantage. One told me specifically that without power like this we would still have the insanity of dri…

> Actually this proposal was a commission proposal, so the democratic deficit here is that this proposal could have gone through, EVEN IF it was voted out. No! If the parliament had rejected the proposal, then the "ball" would have come back to the Commission, which would have had to amend their proposal, pass it through the Council again, and if successful, returned it to the Parliament, which would be again given t…

Yes !

Now, granted the situation is more complex than just that the commission can push through whatever it wants, but the following statements are true:

1) the commission can block whatever it wants (ie. it has a monopoly on legislative initiative). So it has a negative veto, and can prevent (and does prevent) anything it wants.

2) the commission can, in cooperation with the EU council, create and adopt legislation, without anything more than getting the Parliament's position (but not approval) [1]

3) they can even use other procedures to get what they want [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_legislative_pro...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_legislative_pro...

In practice the commission and council requiring each other is essentially the commission doing what it wants because it's mostly the same people, and even when not, they're necessarily from the same country and party (well, everyone in one has a counterpart in the other that's from the same country and party).

So no. The EU is a dictatorship. The commission has the only lawgiving power, and can block anyone else's initiative. The parliament ... is better paid but no more powerful than my cat ... (plus the politicians in there couldn't organize their way out of a paper bag whereas my cat has claws).

(and let's ignore the fact that the commission also controls the EU court of justice)

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

#403

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

loa-in-backup wrote: post #51

buboard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they know how the internet works, but they want to change it

I think it's going to work like jaywalking - it's illegal, but I've done it, and it's fine as long as it doesn't cause a bigger issue, and as long as enforcer isn't overzealous. It's true though, that it's a weapon waiting to be used for political reasons, and the perspective of that happening is no good for anybody.

And as long as you aren't of the wrong demographic. Laws that are selectively enforced allow racism and sexism to flourish among the police. In consistent enforcement of a law should be a valid defense of violating the law, and a very cheap one to employ.

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

#404

Post by sjwright » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #331

wongarsu wrote: post #262

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…

Every sufficiently large publishing company on earth will demand a link tax, where "sufficiently large" means they can afford one or two lawyers. Why shouldn't they? It's money lost otherwise.

> It's money lost otherwise.

It's a choice between more money or less money, but the opposite way around to what you're implying—because nobody will pay for the privilege of gifting traffic to someone else.

If you're a web publisher and you're not making more money as your traffic increases, you're doing it wrong. And if you can only make money by taxing all potential inbound sources of traffic, you'll quickly find yourself with no traffic—and no money.

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

#405

Post by zaarn » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #382

zaarn wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>because a majority either doesn't agree with you or doesn't care enough to bother. // That's why we've not moved on from representative democracy. The problem is the representatives are supposed to represent the people - and the people think they do (or try) - but in practice the representatives often don't. In the UK we very rarely get chance to influence decisions, instead we get to choose the people who will deci…

I think the easily solution (for the EU) would be the better advertise the fact they have MEPs and that you vote for them.

EU elections have a rather disappointingly low participation, it's no wonder that things get lobbied into existence.

Representative democracy is IMO the most effective form of democracy for large scale hierarchies of authority, at least if you want something democratic. (There is always the option of a benevolent, immortal god-princess but we lack candidates with qualities in the categories benevolent, immortal and god-, not for a lack of belief or trying)

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

#406

Post by throwawayjava » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #399

sputr wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter you are quoting has not realized there are two problematic articles (11. and 13.) and that the "memes" story is for article 13 not 11. The entire point of art. 11 is to transfer money from Google News (and other aggregators, like Facebook) to publishers. This also covers search.

Why whould Google not just delist problematic sites like they did in Germany, as they tried to implement something similar there AFAIK?

The last time I read about these regulations, it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators (i.e., news sites aren't allowed to agree to those terms). I don't have time to check right now, but that may be the case.

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

#407

Post by virmundi » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #244

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.

This can have a chilling affect on content creation, and thus the dissemination of ideas. YouTube will have to create a filter that covers their liability. They might be able to automate, but it depends on the jurisdiction. For example, the US has fair use laws. A person may copy a segment of a copyrighted work to comment on it. There are territories in the EU where they can't. How does YouTube filter this?

If the new product was produced in the US and references material from the EU, should YouTube allow the content to go public? According this and GDPR, the EU has the ability to cross territorial boundaries. So YouTube now has to ban such a work in the US even though our legal system allows it.

Essentially, YouTube will have to create a new process where by all content must go past the censors, who are probably people and not machines. Otherwise YouTube will quickly die due to death by a thousand fines. So much for a free and open exchange of ideas.

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

#408

Post by dcbadacd » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #366

From http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR... > Any action taken by platforms to check that uploads do not breach copyright rules must be designed in such a way as to avoid catching “non-infringing works”. Utterly hilarious and scary that they think that's possible.

If you read it more carefully, it says "designed to avoid catching" not "must not catch".

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

#409

Post by isthatart » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

isthatart wrote: post #187

zaarn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any of that happen? I don't think the internet copyright proposal will affect things in a way you describe...

I'd like to see a discussion around these aspects. I see only cries re big platforms and news outlets.I'm neither of these.

But arXiv is not small, it has 1.4 million e-prints, is far bigger than most of other scientific platforms. It is non-commercial though.

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

#410

Post by tumetab1 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

oihoaihsfoiahsf wrote: post #336

the6threplicant wrote: post #188

A comment from someone who has actually read the article: https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_w... For example: ...the EFF argue that the idea of what constitutes a link is not fully defined. I'm not sure what they're talking about. Recitals 31-36 set out the concepts in article 11, fairly clearly. They make it clear that what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant…

I read the articles as well, and this commenter is right that, on their face, they don't seem like they would apply to a site like Google News. That said, everyone, including Google, seems to think they do. And as far as I am aware, nobody at the EC has said anything to the contrary, even though it would be easy to do so. So it seems most likely to me that the naive reading of the text is incorrect, and that both thi…

Both are missing the point of how this kind of "law" works.

The wording is less relevant than the application of it. You can argue that something is outside of scope, according to the wording, and be correct while at the same time I can argue that the same is covered on how is expected to be applied.

Given my understanding of the copyright lobbying-state officials work in the EU, Google News will be covered. Why? Because news organizations having being crying for long and have strong political connections.