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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’

#931
post #869
post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often you hear about people being prosecuted for falsely flagging content as offensive online? How often you hear about prosecutions about false copyright infringement notifications? The latter happens only very rarely in cases of blatant abuse, usually coupled with massive fraud and other crimes (never happens to automatic systems big IP holders use, they just write it off as innocent error in 100% of the cases)…

That happens under the DMCA, prosecution under existing EU law and the new art11 and art13 wouldn't change much. Notice&Takedown does allow me to review any requests unlike the DMCA and Art13 requires human review in case of disputes. To my knowledge I can ignore entities that send me lots of useless Notices about third party content without legal consequence, I could even get a restraining order.

[deleted]

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

#932
post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same way as in the US, and I don't think campaign contributions are a thing, at least not at the same level as in the US. But there are many, many lobbyists active in the EU, and some of them have a surprising amount of influence over politicians. There has even been a case where two different parties, independently from each other, introduced the exact same bill, which had been written by a lobbyist.

What leverage do they use for lobbying, if campaign contributions are off the tables?

They are still (ostensibly) the subject matter experts so politicians defer to them. This in itself isn’t a problem: they should defer to experts on complex matters. And often these experts are organised in industry interest groups. The problem arises when opposing view-points are downplayed.

In the current case this is done because the industry interest groups backing the legislation are predominantly European content rights owners. Whereas the interest groups opposing the legislation appear mostly organised by non-EU groups, and therefore thus are less of a concern for EU legislators, and potentially don’t have the same kind of immediate access to them.

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

#933
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the license fee really for a simple link? I'd think the other publishers would love for sites like Google to be linking content and driving traffic to their platforms. If it's about scraping content and presenting it in a separate feed or otherwise outside of the source platform, I can see why they would not want that.

I was wondering the same thing then read in the article that links with 'single word' descriptions are ok. So my guess is that it's aimed a "linkers" who quote a significant fraction of an article (I.e. eliminating the reason to click on the link)

> I was wondering the same thing then read in the article that links with 'single word' descriptions are ok. So my guess is that it's aimed a "linkers" who quote a significant fraction of an article (I.e. eliminating the reason to click on the link)

Wouldn't that also preclude inclusion of the title? How would single word descriptions even be meaningful beyond being used as citation link anchors?

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

#934

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…

So if ISP's are required to install monitoring software, what does that mean for HTTPS, or other end-to-end encryption schemes, that prevent the ISP from doing packet inspection?

Probably nothing.

This is just a guess but I don't think ISPs are expected to do any form of DPI. The most likely question they will have to answer is "who is this IP address assigned to?" and possibly "who communicated with that IP?". Neither require any form of packet inspection that goes beyond what is needed to perform routing.

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

#935
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…

Ah yes, the ol "but China is building a digital dystopia so we should too" argument. A classic.

Ah the old, let's imply your racist/afraid so you let american companies do as they please argument.

It's easy to be trite, but it doesn't change the fact that foreign companies and governments were taking advantage of the EU while simultaneously having a different set of rules at home for EU companies. I think the EU overreacted her, hut it's hardly surprising that they had some sort of response

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

#937
post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meaning of free speech has changed dramatically over the past century. This is why things can seem so contradictory. Like so much of Anglo-American law, Free Speech and Freedom of the Press is an application of the fundamental concept of Due Process of law. One facet of Due Process says that the government cannot single out individuals, groups, or specific types of behaviors unless there's a compelling reason and…

I'm curious about "boots & suspenders", searching for that gives a lot of porn results! Is this really an idiom in the US, or should it be "belt & braces"? (braces are what you call suspenders, what we call suspenders is the waist garment that secures stockings for the ladies)

I think the US idiom is belt & suspenders, not boots.

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

#938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how long until companies outside of Europe decide it's easier just to block all traffic from Europe in protest. Exactly this. I already hit error 451 when trying to read some local news in US when browsing from Europe (I don't remember name of the page now). This happened after GPDR came into effect. I can totally relate with companies who don't want to deal with legal mess related with GPDR and other nons…

European here. I can't view some major newspapers in the US such as the LA Times. Smallers ones like the Virginia Gazette and Daily Press are also verboten for me. Many US newspapers now redirect to tronc.com for a standard disclaimer. For example, the LA Times redirects to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ , which says this. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are…

I just use outline.com/[url]. Also helps to circumvent paywalls.

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

#939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are the same politicians that brought us the law that forces every website to ask EU visitors permission to store cookies with a big fat modal dialog No it doesn't. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/ Does not have any such dialog

And to preempt the pointless but inevitable thread to follow: it also wouldn't need the dialog if it were based in the EU. How do I know? I don't. Maybe it does track users. But the website was used as a counter example to "forces every website", and a hypothetical news.ycombinator.eu which doesn't track users or keep any PII on them (conceivable by any reasonable person) is acceptable as a counter argument. The poin…

http://www.bogons.net/ -- a UK based ISP with no modal dialog.

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

#940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a form of control. "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

> There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. I guess it’s true that some people in positions of power view themselves as rules over others, but I always thought that most people here in the western world held the view that the government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. I…

> but I always thought that most people here in the western world held the view that the government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Is this not the case?

You can say that it exists to serve people but then you have to say which people exactly :) Because I think the willingness of the government to serve people is directly proportional to the depth of the pockets of the people in question.

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