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

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

#641

Post by archibaldJ »

ithkuil wrote: post #620
darpa_escapee wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just how Western societies are sold China-style censorship and surveillance.

Honest question: why can't China sell it's own surveillance in the same way?

That will be unnessary and inefficient for the Chinese government. The social operation system runs very differently in China. And you can still feel the impact the Cultural Revolution has on how the modern day population thinks in general when it comes to politics (e.g. when you ask people about their opinions on a certain lawmaking decision by the Communist Party).

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

#642

Post by dpwm »

antibes wrote: post #602
Milner08 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know the EU/EuroParl equivalents, but the UK still has a robust Judicial Review system. I would strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of independent judiciary, both capable of standing up to misguided legislation, as well as willing and enabled to do so, with the sense of purpose, clarity and finality, which [at least apparently, or perceptively] absent features are longstanding argument behind EU c…

In 2006, the Data Retention Directive got passed. [0]

In July 2006 a legal challenge started. By 2014 the directive was ruled incompatible with the EU charter of fundamental rights. It took a while, but that's due to having to go through your own country's courts first for a referral to the ECJ.

> I would strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of independent judiciary

Yes. I could equally strongly argue that the UK has a longer history of the judiciary delivering very favourable decisions that fly in the face of basic logic and rely on the privilege of the judicial classes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

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

#643

Post by groestl »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #640
groestl wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at the provisions of GDPR, for example. Do you think a two-person startup is going to have the resources to deal with all of its provisions? GDPR is a bad example, because yes, that's definitely possible. And it should be, if that startup handles personal data.

But what kind of startup doesn't handle personal data? All companies have that in the form of customer and supplier account information needed for billing purposes -- especially if they're not in the advertising business.

Absolutely, and that's kind of my point. Even a single person operation can comply with the GDPR, as most of the policies to do so should alreay be state-of-the-art for companies who handle personal data (in a non-malicous way). I agree there is some annoying administrative overhead, but it's definitely manageable (speaking from experience here).

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

#644

Post by overkalix »

sieabah wrote: post #635
Vektorweg wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only increased potential cost. It is absolutely unlikely that the EU will fine huge sums for small transgressions, or even fine at all.

Don't you think it is any bit concerning that they get to pick and choose who gets affected by a GDPR lawsuit?

It is insane. I see the same argument in every thread about GDPR and I just can't wrap my mind around it. I can't imagine how well represented or identified by nation-state politics these people must be that they are willing to concede such degrees of discretionality to a government.

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

#645

Post by adventured »

ithkuil wrote: post #620
darpa_escapee wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just how Western societies are sold China-style censorship and surveillance.

Honest question: why can't China sell it's own surveillance in the same way?

Speaking broadly, nobody is afraid of Finland or Denmark genociding its own population (or large sections of it) and moving to a Mao or Stalin style authoritarian model.

Liberal democracies are generally given more of a benefit of the doubt when it comes to their anti-liberal policies (eg Patriot Act), as it pertains to the seriousness of the threat they represent to the well-being and freedom of the population. That is, it's not anticipated or widely feared that those policies will next lead to vast gulags and the near total elimination of all human rights.

Human Rights Watch just put out a hundred page report on what's going on in Xinjiang. To paraphrase their findings, what's going on in China is the most repressive large-scale effort seen in the country since the cultural revolution days of mass murder and purge.

With China, given they're already an authoritarian dictatorship with few human rights, and they're regressing rapidly from the small gains they had made, there's a built-in legitimate fear of its surveillence programs being directly used for terrifying things. Indeed, it's happening right now.

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

#646

Post by rrix2 »

lossolo wrote: post #586
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…

> So bad is this legislation that it's almost enough to make me change my views on Brexit. I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Did you read the legislation? Which points of this legislation made you think that this is "enough to change view on Brexit" ? EDIT: Well, downvoting this comment will not make the discussion any better. I've read most of the legislation, that's why I am asking why OP is reacting li…

I believe the comment could be summed up as "maybe the UK should leave the EU after all" because of how overreaching the legislation looks to be.

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

#647

Post by h91wka »

lossolo wrote: post #628
h91wka wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia. The first bill was passed around 2012. There is one key difference, though. As Russian government generally lacks influence on Western tech companies, they chose to target ISPs, while the EU law in question goes after hosting providers. It is significant because while network-level filtering is potentially more destructive, the agency in charge of enforcement of the russian law (Roskomnadzor) stumbled upon cr…

Russian Federation was never like western democracies. It began long time before 2012 in Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, because he wanted to oppose current status-quo in politics. State media are propaganda machines for the state a lot longer too. You can't really compare EU bill to Russia situation, they are at totally different level. The bill you are mentioning was just introduced to keep up wi…

Western countries indeed have functional democracies, but freedom of speech is not sacred here either. Consider Britain for an extreme example. And you're only talking about the current situation, while I am making a pessimistic prediction based on the current attitude towards freedom of information exchange and some past experience.

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

#648

Post by zaarn »

dmix wrote: post #566
zaarn wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm not. No sane lawyer will even recommend dragging you to court for that because the judge will like fine the suer and find the sued party not guilty. No legal department I know would stand behind such a decision, it would be absolutely stupid to drag anyone to court. And most likely the Judge would even have the suing party pay for your expenses and damages incurred by such charges.

They don't need to drag you to court. They fine you using the new EU law, then you refuse to pay and you essentially decide to go to court instead of paying. Even if the company decides to drop the complaint in response either way you have to put a significant amount of effort to get to that point. Merely because you got an email at night. This could happen 100x (or even thousands) for any mid-sized content platform.…

>Merely because you got an email at night.

As mentioned multiple times, if they did this the judge would simply deny the entire fine and suit and they'd have to pay you damages and they'd likely receive a cease&desist order from the court.

You must inform parties of violations and allow for adequate time to react to them. Sending an email is already a nono for legal notices as there is no guarantee that the other party even received the mail properly.

The only way to properly and legally verifiably send them is to have a write-in mail which the receiver must sign with their signature before receiving. For everything else you might as well send money in an envelope ahead of time.

This is not a mere fact this is established procedure.

>Besides there's no guarantee the parties will automatically act rationally and drop the claims of infringement before threatening court, merely because you claim you were sleeping.

That's not what I've been saying, I've been saying that the infringement still needs to be dealt with but you can obviously not react when you are asleep.

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

#649

Post by zaarn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #571
zaarn wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the other party will be found guilty of disrupting your business by having you get into court for complaints without legal grounds.

> the other party will be found guilty of disrupting your business This all sounds quite lucrative for the lawyers and notaries. It remains disruptive, unsettling and expensive, not to mention unnecessary, for everyone else. Depending on which of the EU’s 28 member states’ courts one finds oneself dragged into, what you’re proposing could be years of distraction.

>It remains disruptive, unsettling and expensive, not to mention unnecessary

Nobody will do this, no sane legal department signs this off or approves of such behavior. Doing otherwise is a great way to incinerate their legal licenses. There are fines for behavior like that.

The best outcome for the suing party of such a scenario is a 5 minute court room appearance in which the judge slaps you with a restraining order and closes the case.

This has literally never been an escalating problem in european courtrooms to my experience because judges don't like that behavior and laws exist to prevent it.

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

#650

Post by lossolo »

h91wka wrote: post #647
lossolo wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian Federation was never like western democracies. It began long time before 2012 in Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, because he wanted to oppose current status-quo in politics. State media are propaganda machines for the state a lot longer too. You can't really compare EU bill to Russia situation, they are at totally different level. The bill you are mentioning was just introduced to keep up wi…

Western countries indeed have functional democracies, but freedom of speech is not sacred here either. Consider Britain for an extreme example. And you're only talking about the current situation, while I am making a pessimistic prediction based on the current attitude towards freedom of information exchange and some past experience.

> And you're only talking about the current situation, while I am making a pessimistic prediction based on the current attitude towards freedom of information exchange and some past experience.

It's indeed a pessimistic opinion but I understand where it's coming from based on where you live. I was born in authoritarian country also and lived in it when I was a kid, I am living now in western democracy in EU and based on my experience, knowledge and after reading most of the legislation myself I am more optimistic.

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