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EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
451–460 of 1001 posts
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ne…
> This can have a chilling affect on content creation It in no way prevents anyone from creating content and publishing it on their own website. You make it sound like the youtubes of this world are necessary for content creation.
As many probably realize, the fact that "online videos" == Youtube for many members of the general public means that it is by far the number one source for both posting and watching videos online in a self-reinforcing loop. I think that it cannot be overstated how much the existence of platforms like that (e.g. video sharing websites, 2D art websites, music boards) drive non-professional creators to create, given the fact that for the first time, they can actually get an audience. So it is not so much that Youtube and similar platforms are necessary for content creation (which is a ridiculous claim that no one made), but that the absence of such platforms seems likely to result in the previous system where media was very rarely shared by the non-professionals.
If you are arguing that massive content consolidation platforms such as Youtube do not have a highly significant impact on content creators as a group though, then I do not know what to say to that.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would then be misuse of a monopoly.
That's funny. In a minute you'll be saying that one will be enforced in Europe. I mean perhaps they're racist enough to enforce it against Google , but they won't prevent monopolies. (Europe, where near everything is mono/oligopolized and the behavior of those companies is abhorrent. From beer in Belgium (they own the cafes or loan them money and force out competing beers from the menu), to cheese in France (import a…
Google is not a race.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crucial issue that I miss both in this directive and the current practice is that companies are encouraged to use automatic filters while actual copyright holder have almost no way of appealing against false copyright claims. I'd be fine with automatic content tagging if at the same time false copyright claims by someone who does not actually hold the copyright would lead to a hefty fine and/or be considered a cr…
This is a good point. False copyright claims should be penalized, enforcing companies to improve the accuracy of their claims.
The american DMCA includes provision to penalize false takedowns, but from what I've seen the provision isn't used too often.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#455This is a decision that will end up benefitting the big players on both sides, i.e. regulatory capture. Google, Facebook and the like already employ filtering and copyright techniques and they can afford it. So, this law lifts the barrier to entry for smaller internet companies. On the other side, it's also beneficial almost exclusively for the larger publications or copyright holders as the collected amount of licen…
I have the feeling that EU is intentionally doing it. Sooner or later only big tech will be able to comply with all regulations.
I sometimes have the same feeling,but I'm not sure it's true.
From an economical point of view it makes no sense to put legislation in place that will strengthen the market position of mostly US, non-EU companies.
Another reasoning could be to "prepare" a censorship infrastructure, but I can't find any hard evidences to this.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>> 2. Fair use almost definitely does not apply to most youtube content : if you use content other people made (video games or music immediately come to mind) you are infringing copyright holder rights. Have you read the YouTube terms for original content uploaded by individuals? I'm not so sure doing remixes isn't allowed. If you don't want people doing that to your stuff, keep it off YouTube. I could be wrong, it's…
I believe this is in reference to US "fair use" in a separate legal sense, not the YouTube Terms of Service.
Many times simply claiming "fair use" is the defense of the layman online in regards to virtually anything involving someone else's intellectual property, which in fact it's fairly well defined and limited.
YouTube does have a reasonable page (https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/copyright/fair-use/) on fair use in this context which I think essentially says that they're interested in following the law.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's looking more and more like your money isn't worth the compliance cost to companies to obtain your money.
Not that I agree with this copyright directive, it's horrible and I intend to find out which of my representatives supported it such that I can do something about it. But the EU, as a whole, is the world's biggest market and it is a common market in spite of legal and cultural differences between countries. So that's pretty naive. And if companies think the "compliance cost" is too big, that's fine, it means they are…
I too am an EU citizen, living in the Netherlands. I am also an American citizen and have lived there.
Although I generally prefer the Dutch set of laws to the American, Dutch laws stifle innovation. The difference in even simple things like setting up a business, hiring an employee, and ensuring compliance with local laws is insane.
Every time I go to America I get requests for random things that either don't exist in the Netherlands or are criminally expensive. Bengay cream here costs €16.20 for 57g, only available at special online shops. In America you can buy it everywhere, €5.84 for 113g. That's one example. You might criticize it for being too arcane, but there are hundreds of thousands. Each one of these things costs double the Amazon price or more for popular products: RAM, angle steel, many batteries, sanding belts, IEMs, pumps, permethrin, LEDs. That's just off the top of my head. Every time I need something it's a game: will I get lucky and pay 40% extra, or will it be only available for 200% the price? Or even worse, not available at all?
You want to sell those things above? Go ahead. A few of them are even triple (!!!) the American retail price, so you'll make bank, right? Start a business. But you won't, and nobody else will, because it's tremendously difficult to start a business here.
I can understand higher taxes make products more expensive - sure. Those taxes provide the benefits I enjoy in a country like the Netherlands. I can even deal with the cost of shipping from America. But I cannot deal with paying double or triple the cost for hundreds of thousands of various products. And laws like this just continue the movement in the wrong direction.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#458A 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…
(Disclosure -- I work on this for EFF)
You can read the recitals this commenter is describing here, including the latest amendments that were voted in the Parliamentary plenary. As you'd imagine, I disagree with his interpretation.
https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se...
Firstly, these are just recitals. They're not a binding part of the Directive, they just lay out the justifications for the law.
If you do read the listed recitals, they mention links once, and don't define the term at all. When they do, the context is that "the act of hyperlinking" is not protected (ie the new ancillary right does not explicitly cover the act of hyperlinking).
This is an attempt to refute an argument that no-one is making (though the language echoes a previous fight that rightsholders are still pursuing, which is links to infringing content should be punished as strongly as hosting content itself. That's what the "communication to the public" is about, and has been ongoing, but that's another story.)
The concern over Article 11 isn't that it would criminalise linking to a news item; it's that if you use any text of an article, including its title, you can be sued or made to sign a license. Such snippets of text are usually used when linking to a news article, especially when you're doing it automatically, so that's where the threat to linking to stories.
A couple of other things to note in these amendments. One of the earlier arguments as to why Article 11 isn't so bad we heard is that there are already exemptions in copyright for quotation and critical review. We argued that under EU law, these exemptions are entirely optional at the national level, and news publishers will lobby to limit the effect of them on this new IP right. If you look at the amendment for Recital 34, this is now being explicitly set up to happen: the Recital now says that member states can apply these exceptions, instead of should.
Just because the recitals aren't law, doesn't mean you can't use them to better understand the motives and justifications of the drafters.
As others have noted, the "banning memes" line is about Article 13. An amendment proposed by a Parliamentary committee to create a "fair use"-style exception for user-generated content, specifically to protect remixes and memes, was struck down in today's vote.
By contrast, an entirely new provision that gave organizers of sports events complete ownership of the IP rights to their games was voted in. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-sports-fans/
Basically, this directive remains an IP maximalists' dream. A bunch of new IP rights, some of which only apply online, with clear signals that they should be interpreted as broadly as possible.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#459From 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".
The conditions under-which something is fair-use are not features of the content. So there is nothing a system can do.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#460A 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…
The article itself reference the acts of linking and hyperlinking without any words about "significant portions of the text". I would like to see some support to the claim that "what is being protected is substantial or harmful copying of significant portions of the text".
In particular, the phrase "This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public." It is all over the text and amendments. What is the exact legal effect of that?