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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’

#91

Post by sebst »

kzrdude wrote: post #19
mscasts wrote: post #9

This is so sad but kind of expected. EU is run by politicians and the public has very little to no insight. After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.

the European Parliament (here the body making a decision) is the EU institution that supposedly does not have the "democratic deficit", they are elected by the citizens. So in what way is this different from what we expect in democracies?

Two points:

1) You could argue whether the EU Parliament has democracy deficits or not. I assume it has (based on the legislation process itself with involvement of the Committee, but also based upon unequally weighted votes of citizens from different countries).

2) However, the most important point is that this law is considered as a "techie niche" by the vast majority of citizens. Also, EU topics as such suffer from a very narrow attention in the general public. Having said this, it is far easier for lobbyists to place such an initiative "under the radar" than it would be to lobby in 28 countries. In techie speak, a centralized entity like the EU is more or less a single point of failure for the unavoidable "bugs" of a democracy.

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

#92

Post by paganel »

This decision is one of the many reasons why Europe will never reach the likes of Silicon Valley, no matter how much money will they sink down the "technology" hole (not that the US doesn't have its fair share of dumb legislators, because it has). This continent is a mess in terms of IT, with a few exceptions (London, Berlin, Dublin, some spots in Eastern Europe).

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

#93

Post by bendavis381 »

It's worth noting that this is not a law in the commonly understood sense. It's an EU directive, which requires member states to achieve a required outcome, but leaves the legal implementation up to the individual state. It'll be interesting to see how the member states interpret the language and what legal framework will be used to enforce it.

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

#94

Post by pjc50 »

mscasts wrote: post #9

This is so sad but kind of expected. EU is run by politicians and the public has very little to no insight. After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU.

This is somewhat true, but are national legislatures really any better? There's nothing quite like Brexit to convince me that my local legislature is completely refusing to listen to me (or anyone with any sense) at all on even the most basic issues.

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

#95

Post by beaconstudios »

cyphar wrote: post #52
docdeek wrote: post #23

"Article 11 is intended to give publishers and newspapers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories…” Is there anything stopping a search engine like Google choosing not to link to a newspaper? Surely they can’t be required to link to a newspaper AND then pay that newspaper to do so? The trade-off if Google chose not to link to the newspaper would be a (slightly) less useful search engine,…

The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly, and so I think that there is a valid argument that it needs to be regulated and be forced to be impartial in the results shown. The fact that they show people's content without giving them page views (in a world where page views are how you get significant amounts of money, not to mention subscription opportunities) is a conscious decision to implement a feat…

the real problem is that newspapers have no idea how to monetise themselves in the age of the internet, with its near-free content duplication.

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

#96

Post by omnimus »

ElBarto wrote: post #46
zaarn wrote: post #7

>The legislation approved today still faces a final vote in the European Parliament in January (where it’s possible, though very unlikely, it will be rejected). After that, individual EU member states will still get to choose how to put the directive in law. In other words, each country will be able to interpret the directive as they see fit. It's not totally over yet, both the final vote and the implementation in me…

Individual countries cannot "interpret the directive as they see fit". Transposition has to match the directive, otherwise the whole excercise would be pointless.

Not true. Many of the directives differ in countries (even major ones - for example countries in EU that don't use Euro). EU wants people to believe it is USA but it is not. The directives are not enforceable directly but if you want to be good EU country (which has its benefits) then you need to behave :)

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

#97

Post by dtf »

gaius wrote: post #73
lorenzobr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it seems to me UKIP has good track record of things "getting rammed through without a public discussion" by now, like the 350 million for the NHS with Brexit.

Interestingly, Farage wasn’t actually a part of that, BoJo wouldn’t let him join the official Leave campaign. So you can blame UKIP for lots of things, but not the bus.

Correct. Boris owns the bus, Nigel owns the poster.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farag...

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

#98

Post by simias »

Shaddox wrote: post #82
ericdykstra wrote: post #6

UKIP and the Green Party joined forces to prevent Article 13 from getting rammed through without a public discussion. It was a good first step, but here we are, 2 months hence, and it was passed with virtually no amendments to the original text. This is an abhorrent decision by people who have no idea how the internet works. Markus Meechum (aka Count Dankula) was at the hearings, and reported that MEPs voting on the…

I may be naive in saying this, but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind. The real problem lies in the laws it relies on, namely the extremely stringent copyright laws and the weird fair use. > Much of YouTube content is (perfectly legal) remixes, responses, or criticisms of other YouTube content that embeds part of the referenced video in their own video. As weird as it sounds, you are wrong. In a s…

That's an interesting point. It's true that the issue wouldn't be quite as terrible if IP laws were more reasonable to begin with. We shouldn't have to wait for literal centuries before a work becomes public domain for instance.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

loa-in-backup wrote: post #51
buboard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they know how the internet works, but they want to change it

I think it's going to work like jaywalking - it's illegal, but I've done it, and it's fine as long as it doesn't cause a bigger issue, and as long as enforcer isn't overzealous. It's true though, that it's a weapon waiting to be used for political reasons, and the perspective of that happening is no good for anybody.

[deleted]
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