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’

#541

Post by Milner08 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #519

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, en…

I believe the EU would be the lesser of two evils here. If we leave it up to the UK Government and Mrs May we will have it far worse. She has tried several times to ban WhatsApp and encryption in general. I wouldn't put anything like this past her.

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

#542

Post by rrcaptain » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #102

gaius wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Farage wasn’t actually a part of that, BoJo wouldn’t let him join the official Leave campaign. So you can blame UKIP for lots of things, but not the bus.

> So you can blame UKIP for lots of things Such as what? I hear UKIP demonised a lot, but I genuinely don't know of anything they've done that is bad that wasn't simply political disagreement (wanting to leave the EU) or talking about contentious issues in a clumsy and ham-fisted way (immigration).

"Clumsy and ham-fisted way" is a weird way to say "white supremacists".

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

#543

Post by cyphar » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

plandis wrote: post #463

cyphar wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Google being a monopoly] is just false. bing.com exists. news.ycombinator.com exists. reddit.com exists.... I don't think the existence of other websites on the internet is not really an argument against Google being a monopoly. Without question, the vast majority of the population (outside China) uses Google. This means that the majority of people who use the internet are using Google as their method of accessing…

If there are viable competitors then can’t consumers simply move to different platforms? I primarily use DuckDuckGo, so how is Google search a monopoly? If you’re going to base it solely off number of users then you’re effectively punishing businesses for being successful and NOT from harming consumers.

Google can (and has) changed large things about their platform that may negatively impact their users (~90% of the internet population which is ~3 billion people -- larger than the population of any single country) and their users don't really have much of a choice.

For instance, changes to PageRank have negatively impacted websites and business consistently in the past (so much that there's an industry around making pages cater to the whims of an unauditable algorithm -- SEO). I think the fact that websites obviously cannot just switch to a competitor (unless they want to stop catering to a potential market of 3 billion people) rules that as being monopolistic behaviour.

That's what I mean when I refer to a monopoly. If you have exclusive control over an algorithm that affects more people than any government body on earth, then you are a monopoly. Same argument goes for quite a few of their other products (if your personal mail server isn't effectively "blessed" by GMail you cannot communicate with the majority of internet users), but Search is the most obvious one.

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

#544

Post by pwned1 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #383

pwned1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bureaucracy, compliance cost, uncertainty of enforcement... The category doesn't need to be the same, just the pile upon pile of anti-(small)business regulation.

You say "anti-business", I say "consumer rights" (and more importantly "human rights"). As a small business you can comply with the GDPR fairly easily unless you have no regard for anyone's privacy to begin with. And even if you're not 100% compliant you won't be insta-sued to bankruptcy, you'll only be reported and the relevant data protection agency will check on you. The GDPR encourages data protection agencies to…

It all adds up.

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

#545

Post by stefano » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #503

lexs wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complying with the GDPR is not really a cost thing, unless you count loss of revenue from not squeezing everything you can out of user data.

I think the fear is that troll law firms will sprout up that get really good and nailing smaller companies for a minor, relatively harmless infraction.

What would they gain? The company would get a warning from an officer telling them they're not compliant and to address it. If the company fixes the issue, all good. If it doesn't, it gets fined. The troll law firm won't see any money from that fine.

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

#546

Post by donatj » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #519

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, en…

> 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

GDPR arguably hurts small players most. Mismanagement of a single users data could cost the farm. It greatly increased the cost for small businesses to do business in Europe.

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

#547

Post by pwned1 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

arnvald wrote: post #397

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.

Any examples, beyond news sites where 95% of users come from US anyway?

I'm an attorney and I've gotten lots of small business owners asking me about GDPR compliance. It's simple in theory -- just disclose your policies, let people delete their data, etc. The mechanics of compliance aren't really the issue. It's concern about enforcement and the uncertainty of it. After I explain jurisdictional issues and the fact that enforcement of GDPR against a purely US-based company is completely untested (and probably not even possible), most just reply "fuck it, we'll just not sell to anyone in Europe."

I agree with the basic concept of GDPR, but the uncertainty around it, the seemingly unclear nature of what exactly it means, and the fact that it will be enforced by each individual EU member potentially differently, all adds up. It's just not worth it.

This just adds to the pile, in a BIG way

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

#548

Post by woolvalley » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

headmelted wrote: post #519

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, en…

Snort, the GDPR is fairly hostile to small players by pretending they don't exist when they wrote the law. It's like signing a contract with employee hostile clauses that the employer pinky swears they will never use.

There is probably a similar pattern of ignore the small players in other new EU laws, but since it's not my industry I don't hear about them.

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

#549

Post by stefano » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

brainwad wrote: post #374

dnate wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that we as a society need diverse and independent newspapers.

No we don't. I get my news from public broadcasters. They have the bonus of not pushing the owner's political agenda and being subject to public oversight.

Public broadcasters are always very soft on the party currently in power, since that's basically their boss. You need both public and private news.

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

#550

Post by adventured » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

rrcaptain wrote: post #537

gnulinux wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet is supposed to be THE free platform a mom and pop internet news site can prosper. You are, at this very moment, here in HN, in a mom and pop internet news site.

Are you joking? HN is owned by YCombinator, one of the most powerful companies in the Valley. If it's Mom and Pop, than so is Mitt Romney's hedgefund.

Nothing fundamentally has changed about HN as Y Combinator has become more successful over time. Your premise pretends that both HN's long-term and initial success rests on the present riches of Y Combinator - that's false.

HN runs on one server and is moderated by just a couple of people typically. It is in fact the definition of a mom & pop operation. It does not have a zillion dollar budget, either for operations or promoting itself. It doesn't need it, the value proposition is the content, community and standards.

I can semi-trivially set up an HN clone for any given industry or concept. It'll be up to me to promote it and garner attention to it, however the point is that it's extremely inexpensive and easy (few regulations, hurdles, compliance issues, etc) to open up that type of expression platform. That's what the parent is referring to.