Everyone in this thread is asking the wrong question. It's not whether or not some rule the EU approves is good or bad, it's whether or not the EU is legitimate and has or should have the authority to dictate these types of things.
EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the European Parliament is democratic only in name It was representatives (MEPs) today that chose to vote in favour of this directive. They could have voted differently and rejected the proposal outright. Can you elaborate on how this is a "democratic only in name" institution?
It's democratic on paper, sure. But in reality, does anyone know who their MEP is? Five year terms? Total lack of responsiveness (according to comments on here today), lack of real democratic accountability. Sure, it looks democratic, but in reality it's not. Particularly when the EU Parliament doesn't even initiate legislation, the un-elected European Commission does.
The UK government is democratic on paper, sure. But in reality, does anyone know who their MP is? [0]
Five year terms? [1]
Total lack of responsiveness [2]
lack of real democratic accountability [3]
Sure, it looks democratic, but in reality it's not.[4] Particularly when the UK parliament doesn't even initiate (propose) legislation: ministers are appointed by the government, and are not elected to their position. And civil servants write the legislation before it goes to parliament.
[0] In 2013, 3/4 people could not name their MP. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22555659
[1] Five years unless there is a supermajority or the loss of a no confidence vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_201...
[2] Numerous examples of this: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-responsive-your-mp...; https://www.writetothem.com/stats/2015/mps
[3] There is an ability to recall MPs, but they need to have breached the parliamentary code bad enough to be suspended from sitting for a number of days or engaged in criminal behaviour and been duly sentenced. The current UK government is actively trying to strip people of voting rights who do not have the money for suitable photo ID (minimum £34)
[4] The UK's first-past-the-post electoral system means that the majority of votes do not matter.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#673I'm curious what all this means for a company like Reddit where links are shared and typically titles are copied 1 for 1 from the news website.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#674Does anyone have any resources saying what all impacts this legislation would bring and how it would change current online applications?
How can anyone think that while uploading a new set of content on a website, it would be an instant job to compare against all other legal content already uploaded?
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yeah, but wouldn't cutting 500 million of the wealthiest customers from your solution have a pretty significant business impact? It seems likely that large internet businesses will probably pay to comply with GDPR. Many small businesses, whose customers are often mostly regional anyhow, may decide that it's just not worth the cost of compliance.
> may decide that it's just not worth the cost of compliance. You cannot not comply with it though.
Where the hell did this ridiculous talking point come from? Do you actually know what "law" even is? Of course someone in another jurisdiction can blow off law from another polity if they feel like including when dealing with that polity's citizens, and in turn said polity can try to pursue action against them. But if they do not travel their and have no asset exposure there and their own country has a reasonable level of power and protectiveness of its citizens then the likely responses tend to be limited and passive in nature, such as internet censorship orders.
I mean, this should be utterly obvious given that most Westerners are not complying either laws around the world constantly. We can and do criticize the leadership and governments of any and every country as is our right in ways that are absolutely illegal according to those countries, just for one simple example. The EU is free to get some help from China and make a Great Firewall of their own and censor the net, but if an American blows off something of theirs that is legal in the US and they come demanding the US enforce their law they will get told to pound sand. I mean, this isn't even just normal discretion, in some cases Congress has even flat out made it illegal for the US to honor foreign judgements, such as the 2010 SPEECH Act which rendered all foreign libel judgements unenforceable, unless it's a country that has a direct equivalent to the First Amendment of equal enforcement (I'm aware of zero countries in the world where this is the case) or the defendant would be liable if tried in the US, which in practice means basically any enforcement faces a near insurmountable bar.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#676So 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…
A regulator that can give you everything you dream of, can also take away everything you value.
At the risk of sounding like a freshman libertarian.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#677A 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…
Thanks for this one. Reading about it for a while now and all I see is banning links and meme and link tax and other unreal things.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#678Youtube, Facebook, etc., should simply pull out of Europe and block all European users. I don't think it would take very long for this to sort itself out...
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#679Does anyone have any resources saying what all impacts this legislation would bring and how it would change current online applications? How can anyone think that while uploading a new set of content on a website, it would be an instant job to compare against all other legal content already uploaded?
You just have to build a copyright system before you can display it publicly.
Can't afford it? Too bad, that's the fun of this law and why it should be abolished.
Re: EU approves internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’
#680> They say that the campaign against the directive has been funded by US tech giants eager to retain their control over the web’s platforms. While I am not a particular fan of the dominance of Google and Facebook, I like it better how they handle the web than what we have seen from the 'creative' companies. It took years until they found a way to monetize their content properly (e.g. Spotify, Netflix) and even now af…
I very much prefer DRM over having everything I do on the internet to be monitored.
Well, I find it hard to compare those two. I mean, yes, if DRM works I have no issues with it either, but sadly it causes a lot of issues where none should be (e.g. Hardware DVD Players not being able to play certain DVDs, Spotify Web player having issues because it doesn't overcome its own protection, not being allowed to view 'your content' on your favorite device, not being able to save 'your music' to your old mp3 player) and one of the biggest issues is that you aren't allowed to do anything against it.
Tracking is a completely different beast. They take what they can get, but you can fight back. My biggest concern is that they (Google,Facebook) gain so much influence that they can change the political opinions via Ads. So yes, tracking and advertising can be a lot more harmful, but at least you can kinda opt-out (e.g. use curl to browser the internet ;-).