What if Google reacts by showing ads, as the first 20 search results, instead of normal search hits? (in Europe.)
If "normal" search results, become expensive to Google.
EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
91–100 of 223 posts
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
> Regulations are tools. They’re not inherently good or bad. It depends on how you use them. It's not just that though. There are good and bad regulations in the sense that the law against murder is good and DMCA 1201 is bad, but there are also compliance costs for any regulation, even good ones. Economic transactions have a certain amount of surplus. The value of doing something is $100 and the cost of doing it is $…
> There comes a point when the compliance costs exceed the economic surplus available to cover them.
If something is not worth doing right maybe it shouldn't be done at all?
You are making the same point, opponents of minimum wage. "But I'll go out of business!!!" If your business is that bad, than maybe you should!
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#93This is blatant fear mongering. Furthermore, calling these directives 'link tax laws' is simply a cheap frame. You can link to articles freely. Including a snippet that has 'no independent economic significance' is allowed. Agreed, that is not very precise. But is that really such a big deal? Sure, you might get sued. That's life. You have to trust the reasonableness of the courts. And don't worry, they won't go afte…
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Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#94This is why EUParliament exists: to keep national elites, embodied in the Council and Commission, in check. This is one of those instances where MEPs can shine by holding the line against idiotic regulation. Call your MEPs and let them know this is a chance for them to get visibility by doing The Right Thing, voting down this crap. And if they reply with boilerplate, make sure you vote a different party next time - the proportional nature of EU elections makes it easy for smaller parties to benefit from small swings in numbers.
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is unnecessarily alarmist and hilarious. It's clear that personal information and other data was not properly respected by many startups and large companies. Data "breaches" and the various apology tours have shown a massive loophole in the law, and now the law is responding by closing the loophole. If your business was profiting specifically by exploiting personal information, this would be a sad day for you bu…
I’d be very interested in hearing the counterarguments to this comment instead of just seeing downvotes.
It's a lot more than a "small review", even for product focused sites not anywhere near the business of selling or monetizing personal data.
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#96As 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…
In an ideal world regulations would work like technological standards. By following web standards you benefit from a huge body of previous work and effort. You can deploy a website without needing to build a web browser or worry about designing a transfer protocol. You can concentrate on things that have real customer value. The same can apply to regulations. It can reduce competition in areas that damage the consumer and wider society. You don't have to invent your own safety rules (for example), you just have to adopt the existing standard.
The problem of course is that regulators can be heavy handed, sometimes innefficient and make it more difficult for small companies to compete. But that does not mean that regulations are intrinsically bad.
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#97I had not realized that this insane bit with an inalienable right to monetary remuneration had made it to the drafts. We already know from the past cases that if given the choices between paying for the privilege of linking vs. not linking at all, search engines and social networks will do the latter. The economic value of e.g. news searches must be miniscule. But maybe there is a little bit of value there, even if n…
Yeah, it's absurd. > Unless they're a top 2 media conglomerate of an European country, and would like for all their weaker competitors to be killed off. Maybe that's the idea, but I think it's shooting yourself in the foot, even then.
It's even worse. Everyone who you link to has the right to claim damages(in case they are press). So you will have to be careful who you link to since a single link could already fall into the new legislation depending on the member state.
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
> Regulations are tools. They’re not inherently good or bad. It depends on how you use them. It's not just that though. There are good and bad regulations in the sense that the law against murder is good and DMCA 1201 is bad, but there are also compliance costs for any regulation, even good ones. Economic transactions have a certain amount of surplus. The value of doing something is $100 and the cost of doing it is $…
But you make that argument like there's a fixed pot of money to go around. $25 to spend on regulation, but tough our ancestors already regulated speed limits and copyright so you can't have any more. Pity about the environment and data privacy but hey.
Thing is there's been a fair bit of growth since my childhood, or even since the widespread adoption of the www. Just compare the sheer amount of crap people have compared to a child of even the 90s. Plenty of slack left for some regulation and changes without even the cost of compliance of 20 years ago - there's so much more money in the system.
If a business is so marginal that it can't cope with a change in interest rates or a new regulation or tax rate then any number of other tiny events would have sunk it anyway.
Note: Not to say I in any way agree with this poorly thought out piece of proposed regulation - it needs a similar response to that given to ACTA.
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#99It would be great if all these new regulations only applied to companies of X size. Scrappy startups with no access to good lawyers and understanding of these regulations are more likely to suffer vs the big guys who were the cause of all of these changes in the first place.
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.
Can you go into more detail about the GDPR effect? How will they be annihilated by that? Are they collecting more user data than users are aware of, and anticipate that if they told users explicitly what they're doing the business would be annihilated?
Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
#100From 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…
> This is deliberately attempting to conflate re-publication with a hyperlink. Link previews are not needed, are not used for the vast majority of links on the web. Claiming that previews are "almost always" included is patently a lie.
To be fair, most social networks include some kind of link previews. Are you saying this is not a big deal because this will only affect links shared on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Slack, Discord and all other major social networks?