Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

juliareda.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 223 posts

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#61

Post by fanzhang »

I hope this dies just like many laws the US tries to pass on regulating the Internet in a way that promotes special interests versus that of the public good.

But as a thought experiment, if you were a lawyer tasked to argue this was publicly good, what could you even say? Content creators deserve money for creating content. Aggregators are stealing some of that value and that's inefficient but currently unenforceable? .... I just can't even think of another reason.

Maybe this is protectionism (both nationally and of existing enterprises). French publications are upset they can't get more of the pie from Google who is US based. EU publications in general are upset that aggregation theory ( https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ ) has taken hold and distributors like publishers are getting wiped out.

This will surely accelerate a trend that Google is already doing without monetary incentive: creating their own content and putting in on top.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#62

Post by mikeash »

nickpp wrote: post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

This seems like a greatly oversimplified view of things. Regulations are tools. They’re not inherently good or bad. It depends on how you use them.

If the bad regulations outweigh the good, the solution isn’t to give up on regulation, it’s to cut the bad ones.

It doesn’t make sense to lump together regulations on the acceptable amount of lead in drinking water, regulations on operations of a commercial airline, and regulations on customer data.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#63

Post by joejerryronnie »

forapurpose wrote: post #59
nickpp wrote: post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

> As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask ... Maybe it's time? That implies that this propaganda about regulations and regulators and this question haven't been talking points for the right and for libertarians for decades, and on HN probably for as long as it's existed. The current U.S. president and GOP go on…

I don't think this comment is adding value to the conversation. It is also riddled with the commentor's own political rhetoric.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#64

Post by xevb3k »

pacnard wrote: post #53
xevb3k wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no karma level that allows users to downvote articles according to the unofficial hackernews faq. It’s possible that the admins downweight the articles because politics in general is frowned upon? I don’t think you really have much proof on pro-EU state sponsored sock puppets... but a more detailed analysis would be interesting!

I am talking about comments. Of course I can be wrong about this situation since it's basically gut feeling and perceptions. Still, aside from the votes, there have been some really weird comments in this thread too, something that just doesn't feel it can align with how a programmer or entreprenur would express himself. Sorry if I'm sharing my emotions.

Comments in this thread seem to range from “measured” to very negative... I don’t really see any that I’d clearly identify as state sponsored.

Your comment got flagged/downvoted, but I think that’s likely because it wasn’t backed up with any evidence. A more systematic analysis would be interesting though.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#65

Post by kuschku »

pacnard wrote: post #53
xevb3k wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no karma level that allows users to downvote articles according to the unofficial hackernews faq. It’s possible that the admins downweight the articles because politics in general is frowned upon? I don’t think you really have much proof on pro-EU state sponsored sock puppets... but a more detailed analysis would be interesting!

I am talking about comments. Of course I can be wrong about this situation since it's basically gut feeling and perceptions. Still, aside from the votes, there have been some really weird comments in this thread too, something that just doesn't feel it can align with how a programmer or entreprenur would express himself. Sorry if I'm sharing my emotions.

A large part of the developer community are European open source developers with slightly left of center views.

The community of programmers, developers, and hackers/makers (in the original meaning) has historically always been left-liberal in general, that in recent years there are groups in it that are not is rather unusual.

So of course you'd expect opinions that go against this mainstream to be downvoted.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#66

Post by kuschku »

jpetso wrote: post #54
pdkl95 wrote: post #40

From the associated article about this supposed "link tax". > Anyone using snippets of journalistic online content must first get a license from the publisher. Re-publishing a portion of a published work is not a "link". A link is only a reference (address) where something (e.g. a published work) may be found, which not part of the work itself. Displaying a portion of work might be an allowed "fair use"? (I only know…

> Should it be necessary, this kind of feature is better implemented in the user agent. I'm fairly certain I saw link prefetch+preview extensions for Firefox ~10 years ago. I'd rather avoid that; sending fingerprintable information to random websites linked from e.g. a search result page or an article seems like a great way to unnecessarily expose myself to being tracked and abused in all kinds of ways.

Providing a wouldn't give any tracking capability that doesn't already give.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#67

Post by [deleted] »

nickpp wrote: post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

[deleted]

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#68

Post by sbov »

nickpp wrote: post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

The link tax is one thing, but I would say GDPR actually aids in price discovery, because without GDPR one side of the transaction has no idea what price they're paying.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#69

Post by jimmaswell »

sbov wrote: post #68
nickpp wrote: post #11

As public regulators all over the world are busy pushing regulations (what else? that is their sole job after all) maybe it is time to stop and ask: are we losing more than we are gaining? Everything has a price and free markets are the only mechanism for determining that price. But regulations overwrite that price with one determined by politics and lobby and populism. This new price is paid by all no matter if we w…

The link tax is one thing, but I would say GDPR actually aids in price discovery, because without GDPR one side of the transaction has no idea what price they're paying.

0. The price anyone paid when their data was used was 0. There are 0 real-world negative consequences on anybody's personal lives due to their information being used by advertisers. They benefited for free.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#70

Post by IronBacon »

pjc50 wrote: post #14
greglindahl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an advisor to several startup European search engines which are likely to be annihilated by the combination of these changes and the GDPR.

Who would start a new search engine in this day and age? You'd need some really unique features which Google can't duplicate, and the only one which seems to have made it is DDG with their privacy promise.

As someone has suggested, not a generalist search engines. In Europe I can remember at least a couple of "price comparators" that are way better than Goggle at finding local small online shops (i.e. shops smaller than the behemoth called Amazon).

Or for example the code search engine, but I don't think it's from an European startup.

Post reply on HN