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’

#511

Post by dmix » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #235

This is such a great outcome for Google, they could not have gotten such a good outcome if they had bribed the legislators directly. They've essentially enshrined the infrastructure Google has already as a legal requirement for the bare minimum threshold to host a web site now. Google can sit back and stop worrying about there ever being competition from Europe now.

It's funny how many laws meant to punish the mega-corps, as they get designed with mega-corps entirely in mind, end up hurting small/medium businesses (and future mega-crops) and further solidifying the mega-corps position in the market.

I don't think it's surprising the global economy is littered with long-standing monopoly with little competition. It's not merely economies of scale, vertical integration, and other benefits of size, but because the business environment perpetually gets harder and harder for entrepreneurs to operate in.

The growth in the size of modern state-capitalist nation-states naturally coincides with the growth in monopolistic mega corporations - at the expense of things that have made capitalism so powerful and effective (competition checking abuse of customers, rapid innovation, etc).

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

#512

Post by guitarbill » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #459

dcbadacd wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because you need to catch infringing works, while only "avoiding" to catch non-infringing works, the result of that phrasing means those filters will have a high false-positive rate. Like content ID strikes on white noise...

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

#513

Post by Tharkun » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

sputr wrote: post #369

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…

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.

Next thing you'll have to pay publishers because you read their RSS feed in a self hosted aggregator.

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

#514

Post by paulddraper » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #441

throwawayjava wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators and than, should they force google to pay instead of cutting these publishers off? in no way would that be legal. you can't force somebody to pay something, by forcing them to obey.

Yes, you'd like to think it's a free market.

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

#515

Post by samgranieri » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

Can these laws be suspended or judicially reviewed if someone or government entity in the EU sues? I'm an American and unfamiliar with the lawmaking process in the EU.

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

#516

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #496

arendtio wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the web without user content... Web 1.0? So much for free speech.

Wasn't Web 1.0 only user content?

With a few exceptions, mostly self hosted

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

#517

Post by mrep » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #381

pwned1 wrote: post #196

Earlier 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…

> But the EU, as a whole, is the world's biggest market

What metric are you using because the EUs GDP is about 700 billion less than the US and going to drop even more when the UK leaves.

US GDP: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata/weor...

EU GDP: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata/weor...

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

#518

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #497

dnautics wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think this will eventually come to screw the little guy?

Who is the little guy, and why are we optimizing for him, instead of making the world better for everyone? I mean, I think the link tax is backwards, but a vague emotional appeal to the health of... a mom and pop internet news site...(?) is not the argument I'd use.

The little guy is duckduckgo, small forums and blogs. You think it's fine to erase them from the web if they try to comment on the news?

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

#519

Post by headmelted » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit.

It's ludicrous to me that the same body that approved something so user-centric as GDPR could come up with legislation so incredibly hostile to small players as to effectively abolish the open internet by financial attrition.

Once this comes in, we'll collectively need to finally start work on that peer-to-peer, onion-layered, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building.

At least this is a lot more compelling in terms of a call to action. It's been a death of a thousand cuts for the last twenty years, so at least it'll help motivate us all to get a move on.

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

#520

Post by syn0byte » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:48 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #497

dnautics wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think this will eventually come to screw the little guy?

Who is the little guy, and why are we optimizing for him, instead of making the world better for everyone? I mean, I think the link tax is backwards, but a vague emotional appeal to the health of... a mom and pop internet news site...(?) is not the argument I'd use.

Optimize for the little guy so there can be growth. "Better for everyone" is stasis because "everyone" includes all the people that already have disproportional slices of pie.