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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’

#871
post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This implies that you are going to have to go to court No it doesn't, it means that if you get dragged to court because you got the email at 1AM and you were asleep, then you're not guilty of anything. No judge will put up a fine for that.

You might still get a letter from some law office to tell you about the violation and a hefty bill for providing this service. I suggest familiarizing yourself with the concept of "abmahnung" in Germany. Quite a racket.

I'm quite familiar with this concept considering I have gotten a total of 2 Abmahnungen, one of which I paid because I did violate a rule and the other dropped after I threatened to take it to court. You'd be surprised how few of the senders are willing to actually go to court if the outcome is not 100% clear because any case could result in a ruling against them and shut down their business.

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

#872
post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stronger they push ridiculous laws like this the more it will force perfectly legitimate business to go underground. We will end up with all the problems of prohibition all over again. > is intended to give publishers and papers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories So Google should pay you when they send you more traffic? More traffic = more money. Most companies would be overjoyed…

Why should Google be able to profit off of others content without compensating them? Compulsory licenses are standard in the music industry, and in theory the same could work well for journalism. But the devil is in the details.

Why should Google continue to refer traffic to these sites for free without compensation?

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

#873
post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see part of your argument, but the internet in the US is by no means full of free speech and fair use. The government has their hands on every major service provider and ISP and has used their power to compel companies to give information or censor data. What's happening here is the EU is seeing every other major power lock down their internet, so why would they leave theirs open which would also allow foreign medd…

US has a huge surveillance (both govt and private) problem, but censorship? Can you give some examples?

FCC rules on network tv: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/fcc-rules-for-television-2...

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

#874
post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them. The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use". Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (f…

As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we?…

We do have free speech in the EU, claming otherwise would indicate that the European countries are no democracies. While the extent of free speech might vary from country to country, denying it is there goes way to far.

Sure, there are limitations to it, e.g. denying the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in Germany, and with regards to defamation. But otherwise just about any opinion can be voiced freely. Thid doesn't mean that thios particular EU law is any good, it just screams big media corporation lobbyism all over it. And yes, this implies some future potential limitations to free speech,l either by technically limiting the reech of smaller players (regardless of what the law states) and by giving governmants a tool to keep things of the internet. Especially the last part is troubling.

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

#875

As terrible as this is, I am actually even more shocked by this proposal: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/12/europe-to-push-for-one-hou... Having one hour to remove offending content, draconian fines and no, absolutely no exceptions for small content providers would, I think, end the internet as we know it in Europe. I see no way to host any kind of content under such jurisdiction and surely all non European content p…

>all non European content providers would just block the EU rather then take on a task that even giants like facebook and google can barely manage.

One way to ensure your citizen don't read them "foreign propaganda websites".

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

#877
post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them. The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use". Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (f…

As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we?…

German law is relevant here because this is a translation of a law that is already on the books in Germany and Spain onto the EU level. The legal restriction of linking without license and using very short text snippets has been part of German law since 2013, and in fact was an initiative by the same political parties that introduced this. It has been through the German courts numerous times and the courts cannot agree on a reasonable interpretation because of how the law is written. So in a sense this is Germany and Spain exporting their local legislation to the EU level. The way the law works in Germany is very much relevant as it informed this proposal. The core concept of Leistungsschutz is to create a new form of copyright, that applies specifically to short snippets that were legal to use under the "normal" Urheberrecht laws.

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

#878

>However, those backing these provisions say the arguments above are the result of scaremongering by big US tech companies, eager to keep control of the web’s biggest platforms. This is the most hilarious quote in the article. The only thing this will do is entrench massive players like Google and Facebook who already have these systems in place. I honestly cannot comprehend how anyone could support this law while ha…

> The only thing this will do is entrench massive players like Google and Facebook Incorrect. It will also speed up development of a new web which is impossible to regulate. So I rejoice. When they block entire services for days, I cry in joy. A 10 days blackout is what we need...

or a tiny js file that anyone can add to header, that upon document loaded replaces ALL images, videos, text in quotes and anchors with black stripes with red "451 unavailable for legal reasons" spans. Upon clicking this should open in a new tab a website with information on what is this about and what can be done about it.

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

#879
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Sufficient stupidity applied to contentious issues is a disaster. That's how we get measles outbreaks. Failing to present a coherent, workable programme for how we'd leave the EU and at what cost is leading us to a situation where the government is doing civil contingency planning as if we were going to be hit by a hurricane rather than a self-inflicted disastrous choice.

To be fair to UKIP that was the Tories job. UKIP had ?one? MP and have never been near to government. The Tories called the referendum. They were in government. The Tories should have been ready to govern. They should have had plans in place.

Disclaimer I am a remainer and dislike UKIP as much as anyone.

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

#880
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, of course the law applies to them too. But what happens in the instances that they don't comply? Laws are enforced by incentive structures, such as punishment. Who gets punished or otherwise incentivized to make PeerTube comply with the law, and what effect will that have on the functioning of PeerTube?

There are three main ways to do P2P content distribution. One is like BitTorrent, where you only host the content you yourself wanted. This has obvious privacy issues. Anyone can tell what you read/view based on what you host. The second is you distribute content to random hosts, who don't even know what it is (so they can't associate it with whoever is downloading it). This solves the privacy problem and has adequat…

If the solution were technical we would need a combination of 2 and 3. Distributed hidden services. Is this even possible?

The problem with technical solutions is basically Child Abuse Images. I am a big believer in freedom and privacy. I am also a big believer in protecting children. Many people understandably prefer protecting children to seemingly (to them) abstract concepts like freedom. Any technical solution needs a method to remove certain content - and as soon as such a method exists people will want to abuse it for political reasons.

The solution has to be political not technical - somehow we need a political situation where basic freedoms are respected. This can only exist as revisions to countrys' constitutions. Simple laws protecting freedom are too easy to overturn. And we can't carry on resisting re-heated versions of the same stupid law every two years.

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