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

• kvgr 8y ago
  Time for VPN outside EU...
  • konart 8y ago
    This will be hilarious: Russians buying EU VPN while EU citizens buying Russian (well, not necessarily ofc). Both to bypass each states stupidity...
• duprat 8y ago
  So we now got our own SOPA to deal with. Important note: the bill now goes to trilogue before it's ready to face a plenary vote. Though I'm not holding my breath.
• deleted 8y ago
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• hackandtrip 8y ago
  I'm European but as many don't have a clear idea of how this will work. At my understanding, there will be discussions about the amendments and another vote, like the one we had two months ago. Is it right? There is still time to act, right? Also, is there a place to see who voted what? Elections are close and those choices could impact the vote of many. I knew Votewatch but I don't know if it still doing it, saw some excel file going around last time and wondering if they are being updated, to see who changed ideas.
  • daninet 8y ago
    > Any amendments approved on Wednesday will be subject to further negotiations between politicians and member states in a closed-door process known as “trilogues.” Whatever emerges from those debates will be subject to a final vote by the EU Parliament in January. After that, it will still be up to individual member states to interpret the directive and turn it into law. https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/11/17845394/eu-copyright-directive-reform-date-vote-article-11-13 https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/11/17845394/eu-copyright-dir...
  • ericdykstra 8y ago
    A couple of YouTubers from the UK went to EU Parliament to make the case against Article 13. Unfortunately, their pleas mostly fell on deaf ears. They discuss the (undemocratic) process here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHwaA3fMPgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHwaA3fMPgc
    • whostolemyhat 8y ago
      The youtuber who's claim to fame is making a video where he shouts 'Gas the Jews' repeatedly? I wonder why he wasn't listened to.
      • ericdykstra 8y ago
        Yes, the comedian who almost went to jail in the UK for making a joke. A joke about how Nazis are bad, at that.
  • yostrovs 8y ago
    I'm getting the impression that many Europeans don't seem to have a grasp on how their laws are passed. Is my impression correct? I'm baffled by the commission, Parliament, individual states, and how they interact to make laws. Is this topic teachable to 3rd graders in Europe?
    • sirwitti 8y ago
      One could say the same thing about americans and it would probably just as true/false. Me personally I'm not into that kind of generalisation.
    • baxtr 8y ago
      Yes, that is unfortunately the case. Exactly this is creating a feeling amongst many of us that something is fundamentally wrong with the EU as governing and legislative body. Of course, you could reverse that and say: People have to inform themselves properly. But that's just the situation were in right now.
      • candiodari 8y ago
        Most of those citizens don't speak any of the languages that the EU operates in. And the EU only translates the result of the legislative process, not the process, so participating in Polish or Greek ... or even French ... is almost impossible. Eventually the outcome of the whole process is translated, but that's it. And starting next year there will be exactly 0.9% [2] of the citizens that speak the language that the EU government conducts itself. Now it is 13.9% [1], which is not exactly a good number. As if it wasn't already a huge problem that the French and German governments essentially control the EU. Combine that with the fact that large blocks hate eachother. Like famously the French and German governments, for example, but those are hardly the only examples. Some blocks have actually recently had shooting conflicts with deaths (the Catalan and Spanish governments, if you're wondering, and yes, both have representation, even though the Catalan government gets no representation in the commission or council, the only institutions with real power in the EU). [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(british+population+%2B+irish+population)%2Feu+population http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(british+population+%2B... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(irish+population)%2Feu+population http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(irish+population)%2Feu...
  • Konryan 8y ago
    Here are more details on the process following this vote from the EDRi: https://edri.org/press-release-eu-parliament-flip-flops-backwards-on-copyright/ https://edri.org/press-release-eu-parliament-flip-flops-back...
• ericdykstra 8y ago
  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 issue could not, or refused to, explain why they supported the bill. You can see him discussing the result in the immediate aftermath here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISyiTcA6RIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISyiTcA6RIw If you want a quick example of why this is bad take a look at fair use and YouTube. Article 13 would make YouTube liable for copyrighted content on its service. 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. There is more content uploaded to YouTube than can possibly all be manually reviewed. Aggressive automated content filtering to comply with Article 13 would mean that these videos would straight get filtered out.
  • buboard 8y ago
    I think they know how the internet works, but they want to change it
    • loa-in-backup 8y ago
      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.
      • buboard 8y ago
        No individuals or companies can gain money from suing you for jaywalking. This is different.
        • laumars 8y ago
• zaarn 8y ago
  >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 member countries can disarm the worst parts of the directive.
  • ElBarto 8y ago
    Individual countries cannot "interpret the directive as they see fit". Transposition has to match the directive, otherwise the whole excercise would be pointless.
    • omnimus 8y ago
      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 :)
      • ElBarto 8y ago
        Directives have to be transposed but, again, transposition has to match the contents of the directive otherwise there is no point. It is possible to lodge a complaint with the Commission if transposition is deemed inadequate (and I'm sure copyright holders would do exactly that), and the Commission may bring a case against the country before the ECJ. See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/applying-eu-law/infringement-procedure_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/applying-eu...
    • BlackFly 8y ago
      They can interpret anything sufficiently vague as they see fit. For example Article 10 of Directive 2004/38/EC states that a government shall only require "a document attesting to the existence of a family relationship", which most people would consider to be a marriage certificate, it also states the residence permit will be granted within 6 months of presentation of the documens. Article 25 limits the cost of the issuance of the residence permit. Unlike many EU countries, the Netherlands requires that the marriage certificate is "legalised" and charges for the process. They will not even accept the documentation before you go through this extra legal procedure thereby increasing the total time to over 6 months. Under some interpretation of article 10 and 25, this would be illegal, they have a different interpretation. You can find various compliance studies for directive 2004/38/EC and other directives as well. It is just a fact in Europe that the transposition into local law leads to inconsistent application of the law. Applying for the same visa (from the European perspective) in the Netherlands and in Germany can be two wildly different experiences.
• dev_north_east 8y ago
  You see where this at national level, I have some access and ability to plead against it. But instead we've three MEPs serving a constituency of near 800,000 and they're never around. I hate the removal of substantive access to local politicians that the EU has.
  • fabricexpert 8y ago
    How is this a local issue though? It affects 500m people directly so should be debated at that level.
• mscasts 8y ago
  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.
  • akerro 8y ago
    >After this goes through I will become a single-issue voter, to leave the EU. This law will be introduced in Switzerland, Norway and UK. Most probably UK will have to keep it after Brexit.
    • graphenus 8y ago
      Why would Switzerland and Norway introduce this law?
      • Scarblac 8y ago
        They are bound by treaties to implement EU directives like this. Part of the single market.
        • Brede 8y ago
          Technically, we can say no. But our politicians never do. My guess is that they do not want to step on any toes, which could make getting a sweet job in Brussels after their term ends harder.
          • mscasts 8y ago
            If there is great resistance from the public after it becomes a disaster for all eu-countries it is much more likely to not go through than in an eu-country with resistance.
  • kzrdude 8y ago
    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?
• AllegedAlec 8y ago
  So how long will it take people to find a way around this? I mean, I cannot imagine that, for example, the Chans will take this kindly.
  • yasp 8y ago
    Most immediate way around this: block European traffic and/or don't do business in Europe.
  • sparkling 8y ago
    > implying chans give a damn about silly yuropoor laws either way
    • AllegedAlec 8y ago
      The users certainly don't, but I think that Hiroshimoot will be rather miffed if he starts getting shit from the EU for not complying with these insane rules.
  • raverbashing 8y ago
    > I cannot imagine that, for example, the Chans will take this kindly. That will be funny
    • AllegedAlec 8y ago
      Just imagine how easy it's going to be to screw over other websites, just by making an account, uploading material that could in some way be construed as violating copyright but passes the filter because it cannot be perfect, and then reporting the site to one of the bodies responsible for upholding this directive. Hell, just by doing that you could probably end any potential upholding of this system really fast.
      • raverbashing 8y ago
        Chans have much worse than copyright infringement going on
• sparkling 8y ago
  [ ] Remain [X] Leave
• da_murvel 8y ago
  Anyone in the EU who wants to create a new Internet?
  • nosjwshere 8y ago
    yes a webgl + wasm based one, build on top of zeronet
  • yasp 8y ago
    I wish the EU would, so that it stops damaging things for the rest of the planet. Eventually the costs of complying with the EU's decrees will get high enough where it will make more sense for companies to block European traffic than comply.
    • Keyframe 8y ago
      It's already happening. chicagotribune.com leads to http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/chicagotribune.com/ http://www.tronc.com/gdpr/chicagotribune.com/ for example. Not sure what to think about that.
      • JohnTHaller 8y ago
        If (cost of providing content to EU visitors) > (revenue generated from separate non-personalized ad network for EU visitors) { turn off EU visitor access }
      • bloak 8y ago
        Nor me, but I would guess that blocking EU traffic is neither necessary nor sufficient for avoiding compliance with EU law. Not doing any business in the EU would seem to be a more obvious general solution. For example, you may block EU traffic, but if you have a bank account in the EU, and if an EU citizen discovers somehow, perhaps while travelling abroad, that you are misusing their personal data...
      • aembleton 8y ago
        latimes.com does it too
• philpem 8y ago
  Can't say I didn't expect this, or the politicians' "I can't and don't have to tell you why I voted like that" attitude. (see ericdykstra's comment). Maybe this is the one single solitary positive to Brexit...
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    the EU's capability to be authoritarian (and from what I gather, propensity to use this authority) was one of the reasons I voted to leave. The central dictation of "how it shall be", reality be damned, reminds me of the Soviet Union. Obviously not to the same extent and severity, but the EU is making the same mistakes in thinking that broad-brush central planning of a huge geographic region isn't a fundamentally flawed concept.
    • dane-pgp 8y ago
      If you voted for Britain to leave the EU because of the EU's "capability to be authoritarian", then perhaps you should have already voted (with your feet) to leave Britain because of its much worse capability to be authoritarian. For example, it was Britain that introduced the Snoopers' Charter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016 without any encouragement from the EU, and indeed that Act has since been found incompatible with European law. Out of interest, can you name another example where the EU was authoritarian (acting in a way that the British government wouldn't have)?
      • beaconstudios 8y ago
        you're not wrong, I'm fairly anti-state-overreach so I'm also really unhappy with the Snoopers Charter and just so, so many things my government does. But hey, given two layers of authoritarian rule if I get an option to remove one of them you can be sure I'll take it. Especially if it's the one that I can't affect democratically. > Out of interest, can you name another example where the EU was authoritarian (acting in a way that the British government wouldn't have)? I can't really speak to things the EU would do that the British government wouldn't - as you've already said, the UK government is pretty bad too. But we have more democratic control over the UK government than we do the European, because it's more localised. I've heard many examples of overreaching EU directives through listening to parliamentary debates but my memory sucks, so I'll give you a couple of examples that I can remember without re-researching the topic: the EU national fishing quotas (famous for decimating the British fishing industry), and the EU's "enthusiasm" for collective bargaining at the WTO. Rather than negotiate directly, many of Britain's trade agreements are bundled up into the EU's and then the EU makes special concessions to Britain. We've actually been historically quite good at forcing the EU to give us trade concessions so as far as I am aware it's not been too harmful to our prospects (I welcome a correction from anyone more well-versed in the UK's international trade standing) but it's still an example of EU authoritarian practices.
• dalbasal 8y ago
  How can I see who voted what?
  • pwned1 8y ago
    Does it really matter? The EU is a supra-national, oligarchic institution that merely has the appearance of democratic mechanisms.
• scoom 8y ago
  Fuck they're mental.
• scoom 8y ago
  If GDPR didn't make you block the EU, this will.
  • pluma 8y ago
    I have no idea how you think those two are even remotely related or in the same category. Oh, and by the way, as long as you show something to EU visitors (even an error page telling them to GTFO), you need a privacy policy.
    • pwned1 8y ago
      Bureaucracy, compliance cost, uncertainty of enforcement... The category doesn't need to be the same, just the pile upon pile of anti-(small)business regulation.
      • pluma 8y ago
        You say "anti-business", I say "consumer rights" (and more importantly "human rights"). As a small business you can comply with the GDPR fairly easily unless you have no regard for anyone's privacy to begin with. And even if you're not 100% compliant you won't be insta-sued to bankruptcy, you'll only be reported and the relevant data protection agency will check on you. The GDPR encourages data protection agencies to help businesses fix their problems and only use fines as a last resort for gross violations and wilful negligence. Unless you're storing/processing information that has special protections (e.g. religion, sexual orientation, medical data) the bureaucracy is also fairly tame, especially for small businesses, especially for businesses that aren't at their core based on processing personal information (e.g. not online dating startups). Compare this with the "upload filter" as it has been interpreted in the media so far: allegedly every website that allows users to upload content would have to implement their own Content ID database and sign deals with publishing companies or license filtering services.
        • pwned1 8y ago
          It all adds up.
• docdeek 8y ago
  "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, but the cost to the newspapers would surely be higher in the long term…or am I missing something?
  • tehbeard 8y ago
    Google probably has the cash lying around to make its own news empire if needed. More likely? They drop anyone who doesn't give them a free or very generous rate.
    • erk__ 8y ago
      That would then be misuse of a monopoly.
      • candiodari 8y ago
        That's funny. In a minute you'll be saying that one will be enforced in Europe. I mean perhaps they're racist enough to enforce it against Google, but they won't prevent monopolies. (Europe, where near everything is mono/oligopolized and the behavior of those companies is abhorrent. From beer in Belgium (they own the cafes or loan them money and force out competing beers from the menu), to cheese in France (import and health regulations mean almost no non-French cheese and French producers are exempt from even most of those health regulations). To German cars (read how Dieselgate played out in Germany, ie. German manufacturers got exempted from ... car regulations ... not even joking ... or what keeps happening to startup car manufacturers in Germany and France, ...)
        • ionised 8y ago
          Google is not a race.
• ihatethem 8y ago
  I don't understand why any of this was necessary in the first place, the only reason I can think of is this being on the wishlist of a powerful lobbying bloc. There is something suspect about the EU's cavalier attitude in churning out internet regulations, they generally favor old industries and incumbents.
  • cyphar 8y ago
    Google being a monopoly that applies biases to the results it shows (in a way that has no public accountability) is a significant problem -- as well as the fact they implement features which effectively take away revenue from websites by showing their content without giving them page views. That is (ostensibly) the justification for these kinds of laws. I think that they are flawed because they focus on further copyright extensions that I find draconian, but the problem itself I think is pretty obviously a real problem.
    • candiodari 8y ago
      Yep, Google is causing harm by filtering what people see, and dammit, the EU commission wanted to do that harm themselves. Sarcastic joke perhaps, but very true.
      • cyphar 8y ago
        I don't agree with the legislation in question (the upload filter is an awful idea, and the link tax is a really bad way of attempting to solve a real problem because it clearly exists to make sure German publishing houses get even more money). But I don't see why this is relevant to my point that there is actually a real issue here, and ignoring it is going to cause even more laws like these to be passed because the narrative from publishers (that they are losing business because of internet companies that have a cavalier attitude about the people they are cutting off) is not entirely fictitious. When's the last time you saw Google telling large websites about changes in PageRank that will negatively impact them?
  • arendtio 8y ago
    Newspapers are dying and try to find a way to make money from their content. They find that the big user distributor Google doesn't give them their fair share and therefore try to make him pay. They get supported by other content producers and now we all are facing another absurd law. I am a big fan of the GDPR, because it protects the rights of the users. But this time they are building a law to ease the fight of large corporations, affecting everone else in the process... not cool.
• kzrdude 8y ago
  I overheard some discussion of the "upload filter" on the radio. It was very simplified, all about big rights-holders that have to ensure they get paid, and nothing about the power of consumers or even journalists or those acting like that (review/commentary).
• nialv7 8y ago
  This is pretty dumb.
• jaimex2 8y ago
  Is there any reason now why Google shouldn't shutdown all their EU web services and remove its divisions like it did in China? If they did so they can conveniently also ignore that $5B anti-trust fine.
  • efdee 8y ago
    And drop out of the EU market? That sounds insane.
    • jaimex2 8y ago
      I could be wrong but wouldn't the global versions still be accessible and capable of selling ads?
      • efdee 8y ago
        If you accept visitors from the EU, you have to abide by their laws. If you're exclusively based outside of the EU, you could just ignore the laws. But Google has offices inside the EU, so they can't.
  • TotempaaltJ 8y ago
    A lot of money. More than they'd lose by complying, probably.
    • jaimex2 8y ago
      Wouldn't they still get cash from advertisers? The sites are still accessible from the EU, it just means local businesses who want to advertise need to pay the US division?
      • stvswn 8y ago
        As a general rule, in most jurisdictions, you cannot do business across international borders in this way, no. As soon as someone from the EU pays Google while they are physically inside of the EU, that business is subject to the EU's laws.
• nautilus12 8y ago
  Do you think that after GDPR and the fact that everyone actually took it seriously the EU is trying to see if they can keep pulling the same string and making the world dance?
  • M2Ys4U 8y ago
    No, this is just lobbying by the copyright industry playing the "look how poor Bono is, he deserves more" card.
    • ionised 8y ago
      Yeah it's this. Just another in a long list of efforts by the copyright cartels to restrict access to information and culture.
• moneypizzle 8y ago
  Where is the blockchain in all of this?!
• buboard 8y ago
  If this directive is voted, it will be interesting to watch the aftermath. Copyright is a legacy concept that is incompatible with digital media. This will make the absurdity of owning an idea and profiting from it virtually forever (at least as a ratio of human life) stand out. I hope it leads to a changes in the mindset/laws regarding IP.
  • cft 8y ago
    I think it will change only when the world order changes, which may be soon. Many Western countries operate on untenable platforms in the long term that are designed to preserve existing order in the short term (uncontrolled creation of Fiat money, uncontrolled welfare programs). This just adds to the list and hastens the change.
• whyleyc 8y ago
  I emailed my 10 UK MEP "representatives" about this law, explaining why it was bad news and encouraging them to vote against it. I received one "pre-canned" email acknowledgement from UKIP, attempting to make the bill into an "EU bullying us" issue, and nothing from anyone else. One politician I tried to call had a published phone number that connected to a commercial money lending service. And mainstream political parties wonder why people feel disenfranchised. They have become a professional political class, completely disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The result is protest (Trump, Brexit et al).
  • candiodari 8y ago
    > And mainstream political parties wonder why people feel disenfranchised. They have become a professional political class, completely disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The result is protest (Trump, Brexit et al). Just wait until you walk around Brussels. EU politicians don't mix with the locals. They've got separate everything. They have reserved parking spaces, separate taxes, separate restaurants, separate social security, separate supermarkets, schools and swimming schools that the locals are excluded from. Needless to say, all are vastly superior to what the locals get. Compared to that, I would argue you're wrong. I don't know how UK politicians live, but I very much doubt it is half as "separate class" as the EU class in Brussels. In Brussels the politicians live like the politicians in Beijing live.
• chatmasta 8y ago
  Is there anything good about this law? Is there any logical, coherent argument for what benefit it might provide to anyone?
  • mocae 8y ago
    Well, look at Voss cheering there. I'm sure his bank account will benefit. Same goes for the right owners who will sue people. I mean, they need to get along in the 21st century and if you are to lazy or old, suing people is the only way left.
  • simias 8y ago
    I think the most "noble" angle you could have is that it's supposed to protect artists and help them benefit from their work instead of having it "stolen" by third parties. Of course in practice it seems like it will do nothing of the sort but if you only look at it on the surface to a casuals observer it might look like it would actually do some good. On one hand I'm sad that the EU fell for that crap, on the other copyright law is so fucked up already that it kind of feels like more crap in a bucket of crap. One day this whole thing will become completely unsustainable and will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
  • ionised 8y ago
    The same tired bullshit that publishers trot out every time they push copyright enforcement responsibilities onto companies, governments and the tax payer: "Won't somebody think of the creators!" And they have pushed this kind of crap on us relentlessly for decades. Neglecting to mention they absolute shafting these obsolete middlemen of cultural access give to the artists and creators they sign.
• amelius 8y ago
  I'm worried not so much about the outcome of this decision (which indeed is bad), but more about the whole decision-making process and how often we'll see such uninformed decisionmaking in the future.
  • sebst 8y ago
    I'd rather not call it "uninformed". We pay good amounts of money to parliamentarians, including their personal assistants. It's more like a "bug" in democracy as such. As long as a topic doesn't have widespread attention, it's the lobbyists who make the laws, not the citizens. I am pretty sure there are other bad laws in other very specific areas, we as techies don't have a clue about. As I've written in another comment here, this is obviously an unavoidable "bug", but the more centralized a legislation process is, the more it is prone to exactly this "bug".
    • hef19898 8y ago
      Unfortunately this bug, which is in my opinion most of the time caused by the people and not the system democracy itself, can be exploited by both lobbyists and populists.
    • amelius 8y ago
      > this is obviously an unavoidable "bug" Why unavoidable? For example, if a sufficient number of qualified people complain about any law, isn't it possible to hold MEPs accountable by openly questioning them about their reasoning? I'm sure there are journalists who can make good use of any suspicious argumentation.
      • sebst 8y ago
        That's shifting the problem a bit, but does not solve it. Which journalist would investigate a topic which is considered unimportant by most of the readers (and in this specific case the decision is also welcomed by most of the journalists employers). And who would read MEPs reasonings about something "uninteresting"? So, yes, there is plenty of room to improve democratic processes today, especially with the communication tools we have. However, I guess that laws which make things worse for the general public but are in too complex niche areas for people to actually realize the issues, will ever remain a problem. Try ask your non-tech social contacts if they consider it fair, that big internet companies like Google don't have to pay for other peoples' work. And this is the narrative of the supporters.
• throwawayperson 8y ago
  Typical US news webpages have tens of trackers, it does seem a bit out of control tho.
• scotty79 8y ago
  So now it's time, if you have news agregator or img/video upload site, to close it to Europe and if not, just ignore the new laws and see what happens next.
• Grumbledour 8y ago
  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-hour-takedown-law-for-terrorist-content/ 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 providers would just block the EU rather then take on a task that even giants like facebook and google can barely manage.
  • arendtio 8y ago
    Sounds like the web without user content... Web 1.0? So much for free speech.
    • rmrfrmrf 8y ago
      glances at Facebook timeline well... maybe that won't be so bad afterall.
    • sircastor 8y ago
      Wasn't Web 1.0 only user content?
      • Natanael_L 8y ago
        With a few exceptions, mostly self hosted
      • wrs 8y ago
        Indeed. Of course it was limited to a very small and weird collection of “users”.
        • strictnein 8y ago
          > it was limited to a very small and weird collection of “users” Agreed. It was a much better place.
• isthatart 8y ago
  As a EU researcher, reader and author, I ask: does this reform affect my use of arXiv or say figshare? Until now I don't have a clear answer.
  • kgwgk 8y ago
    What kind of effect do you think that these laws could have on your use of arXiv?
    • isthatart 8y ago
      Example: article in arXiv gets later published in a journal. Will the arXiv article version be still available for anybody? Only for non-EU people? Will be removed from arXiv? None of these?
      • zaarn 8y ago
        Why would any of that happen? I don't think the internet copyright proposal will affect things in a way you describe...
        • isthatart 8y ago
          I'd like to see a discussion around these aspects. I see only cries re big platforms and news outlets.I'm neither of these.
          • zaarn 8y ago
            Smaller platforms are exempted on the directive (ie, startups, single person corporations, etc.) as well as anything that doesn't do profit oriented content/active content moderation.
          • isthatart 8y ago
            But arXiv is not small, it has 1.4 million e-prints, is far bigger than most of other scientific platforms. It is non-commercial though.
• baxtr 8y ago
  The whole thing really makes me furious beyond words. I shouldn't be that aggravated, but unfortunately I am. I feel like this is really the opposite of progressive and will leave the EU even further behind the US and China. Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new.
  • davemp 8y ago
    > Meanwhile, people who don't understand how the internet works are deliberately breaking it to save their out-dated business models instead of embracing the new. The link tax is really absurd. Traditional news is now almost completely useless. Information distribution is near free in todays market and "journalist's" opinions don't add much value to the information either. A large amount of stories are almost pre-written and sent off to publications anyways. Quality curation is really the only aspect that I would consider valuable, but these establishments just spread click-bait and junk articles.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• cddotdotslash 8y ago
  Prepare to see another onslaught of "how to block your site in the EU" posts like there were right after GDPR.
  • hmd_imputer 8y ago
    rightfully so, don't you think?
• paganel 8y ago
  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).
  • yummybear 8y ago
    Why wouldn't Silicon Valley be affected by this? Most companies have european customers.
    • vorpalhex 8y ago
      "If you are in the EU, you are not allowed to use this website." Pretty much the same solution for kids under 13 years of age (which is to say, they of course still do use these sites, they simply lie about it which shifts the burden...)
      • sebst 8y ago
        Yes, I guess this type of behaviour is why they have called it "inter"net in the first place.
      • ahakki 8y ago
        If I’m not allowed to use your service you won’t get any of my money though. Unlike kids under the age of 13 I have disposable income.
        • pwned1 8y ago
          It's looking more and more like your money isn't worth the compliance cost to companies to obtain your money.
          • bad_user 8y ago
            Not that I agree with this copyright directive, it's horrible and I intend to find out which of my representatives supported it such that I can do something about it. But the EU, as a whole, is the world's biggest market and it is a common market in spite of legal and cultural differences between countries. So that's pretty naive. And if companies think the "compliance cost" is too big, that's fine, it means they are leaving money on the table for their competition to pick up. The best outcome is actually the EU getting some real alternatives to US services that are deemed to be indispensable. So personally, as an EU citizen, for companies no longer wanting to serve EU citizens, all I can say is don't let the door hit you on your way out.
• bendavis381 8y ago
  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.
  • kvgr 8y ago
    And also how giant fuckup will be, once every country will implement it differently. 27 different versions and levels of upload filter. How will you display content upload by someone in Italy to someone in Germany if Germany has stricter filtering policies? Will you need to recategorize it for display in different countries?
  • nothis 8y ago
    Member states can be even stupider. I get scared thinking of what a "reasonable interpretation" by some right-wing local government with poor understanding of digital markets would look like.
• graeme 8y ago
  Will this affect the global internet, or will big sites simply make a reduced "european version" where some filtered content isn't shown in the EU but is shown in North America?
  • dr_teh 8y ago
    The European version will be the same thing when I try to go on a non-gdpr US site, a big banner that tells me to *$#^ off.
  • candiodari 8y ago
    The EU was furious when the large internet firms chose to have a reduced EU version and informed their customers the EU had forced them to remove stuff. So they will do their very best to make it affect the global internet. Given that all major powers want that, it'll happen. Maybe not right now, but it's coming. It would have happened a long time ago if it wasn't for the stroke of luck that these companies are in the US and the US government is protecting them (for now succesfully).
• kvgr 8y ago
  And the publishers are in nice conflict of interest with this piece. I saw one online medium that I follow(It is relatively balanced), to publish only one article saying that we shall support this law. For 5 million country pretty sad. But not really surprising.
• liftbigweights 8y ago
  This shows you the power of old money vs new money ( tech companies ). I laugh when people say tech companies are powerful when you see even small newspapers bully them into submission. Of course what's best for the people and the internet is a non-consideration for these politicians who work for the moneyed-class rather than the people. The news companies ( especially the big ones like BBC, NYTimes and CNN ) already bullied google and facebook to give them exceptional preferential treatment. Now they want a link tax? We already have news companies' social media team bombarding the internet with their spam, now they will go into overdrive mode if news links are monetized. That's so ridiculous. What's to stop anyone from creating a "news" company and them spamming their own links everywhere to profit from this tax? As for the upload filter, all that's going to do is to impede or silence critics, artists, etc using materials protected as "fair use". People talk about china or russia all the time, but the biggest enemy of a free internet so far has been the EU since their legislation can be global while china and russia are pretty much confined to their own borders. And of course with EU behaving so erratically, this will just embolden china, russia and the rest of the world to act in bad faith as well.
• heavenlyhash 8y ago
  So since the majority of the voices here on HN seem to be pretty negative towards this, I think it's worth noting there are some creative voices who are in favor of some copyright law. For example, here's one fellow on the twitter machine who's a composer and seems pleased: https://twitter.com/Howard_Goodall/status/1039833762262134784 https://twitter.com/Howard_Goodall/status/103983376226213478... Simultaneously, I'm not campaigning in favor of the "link tax" component, here. I think it's widely agreed upon that that part of this proposal is pretty dire bunkum. But let's not be eager to discard the baby and bathwater together. The idea of some EU copyright policy consensus is not inherently evil. If HN wants to rally about the "link tax" issue, do so. Don't jump directly to "boo, the EU is undemocratic because they didn't do what I want". That's just bizarre and we should be above that.
  • raverbashing 8y ago
    I don't buy it that they understand exactly what it entail, they just think "nobody will pirate my work so good, right?" Until of course the filters take his legitimate content and claim it as somebody elses
  • interhero 8y ago
    Those "artists" believe that if their music disappears from pirate sites, they'll start to make money. They don't take into account the fact that likely nobody is downloading their stuff.
  • zaarn 8y ago
    I generally agree, living in a democracy means that sometimes you have things happen you don't agree with because a majority either doesn't agree with you or doesn't care enough to bother. In a few years the EU could be on it's way to undo the linktax again, who knows? Meanwhile there are other EU proposals on the way that are also interesting for tech people, not only the linktax and "delete terror in 1 hour or else"... And non-tech proposals too! I do believe that it'll be possible to work with the filters and link tax considering some edits during the initial phases did disarm the worst of the first proposal (it's still not a very nice one). Disclaimer: I operate a platform for user generated content in the EU as well as working for a platform for user generated content, HQ'd in the EU, my views may be biased.
• psidium 8y ago
  Oh yeah good luck trying to stop library genesis/scihub/PirateBay with that. Meanwhile everyone else doing business legally will have to suffer while the perpetrators go free. We already have lots of tools to block user access from the EU, time to upgrade them! The EU fail to understand that the internet is inherently free and you can’t regulate it well (unless you’re a dictatorship in China, but you have bigger issues there).
  • aikah 8y ago
    They are targeting Google and likes. And also making sure that Google and likes have no serious competition due to the financial burden these laws impose on new comers. Websites that distribute pirated content are already illegal.
  • remify 8y ago
    > Oh yeah good luck trying to stop library genesis/scihub/PirateBay with that. Meanwhile everyone else doing business legally will have to suffer while the perpetrators go free. That's not what this law purpose is. There's already copyright laws covering these cases.
  • nothis 8y ago
    This is the real bummer, IMO. It's not even like they're reaching the sites that truly, genuinely don't give a fuck about copyright. The big sites have long implemented all of this, anyway. It's basically just more bureaucracy if you're running a start-up or mid-sized company and want to do things by the book. Something to worry about, something to fear. I genuinely wonder if copyright holders will make a single cent off this.
    • josteink 8y ago
      > I genuinely wonder if copyright holders will make a single cent off this. What’s to wonder about? Of course they won’t. At best nothing will change. At worst people start removing links and contents driving them traffic in fear of link-taxes and fines. Not to mention large-scale exclusion/filtering for EU users and content platforms. They are almost certainly guaranteed loss.
• ams6110 8y ago
  I'm rather conflicted about this. Whenever big companies say a new regulation is going to be "disastrous" or use other similar hyperbole I'm immediately suspicious. On the other hand when the government wants to regulate something I'm also immediately suspicious.
• montenegrohugo 8y ago
  Sad. The public gave their opinion two months. It appears they haven't listened. What actions can the average citizen take against this?
• arendtio 8y ago
  > 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 after they pushed DRM down our throats, they kinda complicate things by not letting you watch the full HD version on certain platforms or restricting streaming rights on a per country basis.
  • davemp 8y ago
    Many companies are so out of it they don't even let you stream content to browsers running on Linux distros. Even Amazon owned Audible just fixed that issue a few months ago.
  • lazyman75 8y ago
    I very much prefer DRM over having everything I do on the internet to be monitored.
    • brainwad 8y ago
      What exactly do you mean by 'monitored'? Of course sites you visit on the internet know you visited them, just like shops you visit IRL know you visited them. But it's not anyone is actually monitoring you or any other user personally. The worst that happens is some algorithms change your ads.
    • arendtio 8y ago
      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 ;-).
• sebst 8y ago
  This is a decision that will end up benefitting the big players on both sides, i.e. regulatory capture. Google, Facebook and the like already employ filtering and copyright techniques and they can afford it. So, this law lifts the barrier to entry for smaller internet companies. On the other side, it's also beneficial almost exclusively for the larger publications or copyright holders as the collected amount of license payments would end up there. So, while I accept that the benevolent interpretation of this initiative is correct – big internet companies have an unhealthy market share and it's unfair to make money from other peoples' work – I suspect this might be another step towards more corporatism.
  • TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Regulatory capture implies Google and Facebook were in favor of this and made it happen, which I doubt is true.
    • sebst 8y ago
      They are in favor of this. Maybe it's worse for them than in the current legal situation. But when the law comes into effect they are better off than any of their smaller competitors.
      • oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago
        Do you have any statements or signaling you can link to from either of these companies to suggest they are in favor of this law? I know Google, for example, has fought strongly against similar link tax and other laws related to Google News in the past. There is also a statement from them referenced in this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/plan-to-make-google-pay-for-news-hits-rocks-copyright-reform-european-commission/ https://www.politico.eu/article/plan-to-make-google-pay-for-... > The Commission’s proposal “would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news — including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online,” Google said in a statement.
        • 8y ago
• imhoguy 8y ago
  Time to download some rare gems from YT.
• pwned1 8y ago
  Although the EU looks like a democracy, it is not.
• antpls 8y ago
  For the anecdote, Nils Torvalds, the father of Linus, is one of the many authors of this text law. I'm from EU, I had the time to look at the recent amendments about this law, in which they added precisions about the fair use of data, for non-profit and public research. They also precised that this law and the technical implementations should not go against already in-place freedom of speech rights. Hopefully, people will be able to easily defend themselves versus the big corporations in case of abusing take-down requests. The recent example of Twitch streamer Lirik being unrightfully suspended on a simple request from UEFA shows there will be an adjustment period for everyone involved. His case was quickly resolved and he was unsuspended in less than 24 hours after the take down request. However, he is one of the most famous streamer from the Twitch platform, he can easily use his social network to acquire visibility. For smaller and not well-known streamers, it may be more difficult to obtain justice...
  • interhero 8y ago
    What does it mean to a forum websites, where people post news, memes or just share their knowledge about stuff?
  • buboard 8y ago
    Do you have a link to the text of the directive? i found this text from 2016: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Also , the major issue is not so much with the process of takedown itself, but with the "terror" it inspires which will lead to the end of the "meme culture" upon which internet media rely on. It's not so much about the number of take-downs , but about the number of people that will quit before even trying.
    • antpls 8y ago
      Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your link is the latest version. It says 2016 because the procedure started in 2016, the linked document itself has been updated with the following amendments : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/report-details.html?reference=A8-0245-2018 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/report-details.html... On a side note, there are a lot of information on several EU websites about procedure, steps, people, etc, for example : - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil-mobile/fiche-procedure/2016/0280%28COD%29 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil-mobile/fiche-procedure/20... (mobile version, I'm on my phone) - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FTEXT%2BREPORT%2BA8-2018-0245%2B0%2BDOC%2BXML%2BV0%2F%2FEN&language=EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2F... Also, with a timeline : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=CELEX:52...
• sbradford26 8y ago
  "Exactly how the legislation will be interpreted will be up to individual nations, but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet." I feel like this is actually forcing the biggest tech companies to increase their grip on the internet.
  • candiodari 8y ago
    You say that as if that's an accident. You see, the politicians at the EU aren't just malevolent, they're also incompetent and lazy. You see that's why they're doing this: force everyone's opinions into a few companies, and foreign ones that Europeans won't care about at that. Next step is to sue those companies into submission. To give them the emails of everyone on their platforms. Their location. To make them pay for everything. To ... But if they had to do that against 10000 companies, they wouldn't be able to. So they're enforcing Google's monopoly on Europe, to then force them to abuse it on their behalf (and of course blame them for it all the way).
• the6threplicant 8y ago
  A comment from someone who has actually read the article: https://np.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ely8y/why_the_whole_world_should_be_up_in_arms_about/e5qndqn/ 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 portions of the text. They also make it clear what organisations this will affect - press organisations - with a fairly clear description of what a press organisation might constitute. (FWIW, memes are not covered, and anyone you hear talking about "banning memes" is getting their news from very poor sources.)
  • oihoaihsfoiahsf 8y ago
    I read the articles as well, and this commenter is right that, on their face, they don't seem like they would apply to a site like Google News. That said, everyone, including Google, seems to think they do. And as far as I am aware, nobody at the EC has said anything to the contrary, even though it would be easy to do so. So it seems most likely to me that the naive reading of the text is incorrect, and that both this reddit commenter and myself are missing something.
    • tumetab1 8y ago
      Both are missing the point of how this kind of "law" works. The wording is less relevant than the application of it. You can argue that something is outside of scope, according to the wording, and be correct while at the same time I can argue that the same is covered on how is expected to be applied. Given my understanding of the copyright lobbying-state officials work in the EU, Google News will be covered. Why? Because news organizations having being crying for long and have strong political connections.
      • quadcore 8y ago
        The thought of that happening in itself procures fears.
• interhero 8y ago
  Every socialist regime progress towards total control of every aspect of human life. This is just another step in that direction. They are always using sob stories or exploit social groups to progress their goal on the back of it. European Union needs fundamental change, it supposed to be a group of free trading nations and now has become a totalitarian regime. Together with brainwashing beginning at school through the television most of the EU citizens don't really mind, just like a cattle doesn't mind being locked up for their meat.
• fbn79 8y ago
  The copyright laws are totally wrong. If you produce an opera and don't want it to be reproduced or used in other works, don't share it. Keep it for yourself, don't show it to anyone. If an author spontainously share an opera making it public available (for free or selling it is not important) must accept the fact that the opera can be used and elaborated by anyone. If I see something I must have all the right to try to reproduce it, rielaborate it, use it to create something new, resell it, givit it free to other. If author don't want this, must keep it for himself. Sharing something (free or by fee) and asking to not reshare, re-elaborate, copy ecc. is an act of intellectual violence. Author thinks that is this violionce is necessary to grant him the right return for the work he have done. But this is totally false. The copyright law is useful only to aliment of an ecosystem of leeches that prolifer around the artist limiting his and his audience liberty and freedom. "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. (Mark Twain)"
• raxxorrax 8y ago
  This corrupt old farts. The brexit people were right ...
  • interhero 8y ago
    If this gets through in January, the UK would have to implement it too...
    • amyjess 8y ago
      "Have to" is an awfully loaded phrase. If they don't, who's going to enforce it? "Enforce this, or we'll kick you out." "Well, we are leaving anyway, so uh, fuckity-bye."
• black_puppydog 8y ago
  So no comments containing "decentralization" yet. These days, I'm really not sure any longer if decentralizing all the web to the point where this kind of legislation becomes completetly futile is harder or easier than fixing the politics... :|
  • sparkzilla 8y ago
    I just commented above. One solution to this kind of legislative overreach is decentralized apps that have no official jurisdiction.
• nothis 8y ago
  Holy fuck no...
• TomMarius 8y ago
  Hijacking the top comment: Can someone explain me why EU was considered knowledgable about the internet in case of GDPR, but isn't now? Have they lost their knowledge in the meantime?
  • tomatotomato37 8y ago
    I think they just shifted into the general direction of regulating the internet more and are listening to anyone who's complaining loudly and then just copypasting their ideas into legislation, instead of coming up with the specifics themselves. It just so happens that they heard the privacy guys first over the copyright guys first.
  • zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    The GDPR has nothing to do with the internet specifically.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean. GDPR has everything to do with Internet, the Internet has been the whole reason it was created. Without the internet, the previous laws were OK. During the discussions (on state-level politics as well) only the internet was mentioned that frequently along with internet companies such as Facebook and Google, except for the note that it of course affects everything else. Even if GDPR was merely touching the internet, it is touching the internet, which is my point - people said things like "the people in EU know what they're doing", why isn't it true now?
      • raverbashing 8y ago
        Parent is right, but you're right it was created because of it. But it applies to processing of personal data, this is independent of if it happens over the internet or not.
        • TomMarius 8y ago
          I know, thus the "except for the note that it of course affects everything else" part. However all discussions revolved around the internet and the internet was the sole reason why a change was made.
• zmmmmm 8y ago
  This is such a great outcome for Google, they could not have gotten such a good outcome if they had bribed the legislators directly. They've essentially enshrined the infrastructure Google has already as a legal requirement for the bare minimum threshold to host a web site now. Google can sit back and stop worrying about there ever being competition from Europe now.
  • kowdermeister 8y ago
    +1, they already comply, but if I were to launch something with UGC, I should probably host it in Afghanistan and back it by a company registered on the Moon. > Google can sit back and stop worrying Name one company from EU who have a slight potential to be a minor threat for (YouTube / Search)
    • jasonkostempski 8y ago
      Does it matter if that company is from EU? Even a new engine centralized in the US won't be able to operate in the EU without substantial cost. That's a pretty big market/data source to miss out on.
      • kowdermeister 8y ago
        I've seen the debate and some politician said that big platforms should be stopped. Which is why I thought that why not work on creating an environment that supports competition rise from the EU? But yeah, it shouldn't matter where new players come from, however I think a Chinese startup will laugh at GDPR and upload filters.
        • tormeh 8y ago
          They won't laugh at the lack of revenue from European advertisers. No one cares what people use for free. This is about money.
          • caf 8y ago
• pluma 8y ago
  As far as I can tell, this is the actual text that was voted on (A8-0245/2018): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FTEXT%2BREPORT%2BA8-2018-0245%2B0%2BDOC%2BXML%2BV0%2F%2FEN&language=EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2F... EDIT: The final text will apparently be published here eventually: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/texts-adopted.html http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/texts-adopted.html
  • pluma 8y ago
    As I understand it, Article 11 (the "link tax") is actually fairly tame. It only requires reimbursement for "use" and explicitly permits linking and citations. The term "use" is a bit ambiguous but it seems to be more directed at scraping and republishing rather than mere link aggregation. It's not a link tax. Article 13 however still sounds worrying. It describes automated image recognition (i.e. an upload filter) as a possible mechanism for preventing the upload and publishing of illegal content. However I can't find any language that explicitly requires the filtering, non-commercial platforms like Wikipedia are explicitly exempt and it's fairly directly aimed at companies that make money from publishing content users upload to make them liable for the content they're hosting. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like it will mostly be trouble for companies like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and file hosters (e.g. Mega). How dangerous it is to startups exactly depends on how "appropriate and proportionate measures leading to the non-availability on those services of works or other subject matter infringing copyright or related-rights, while non-infringing works and other subject matter shall remain available" is to be interpreted in practice. EDIT: To clarify: I'm skeptical of this and was extremely biased against this because of what the EFF and others have said about it. But the final text seems far less terrible than the first draft that everyone got up in arms over.
• hartator 8y ago
  I am currently visiting the EU, couple of sites are blocking access within the EU, I guess it’s gonna get worse.
  • Zenst 8y ago
    Sadly, I suspect you are right. It's as if the EU wants a firewall and wants to make every other country pay for it, even if that was not the intention, that will be the end result.
• wongarsu 8y ago
  I don't think the link tax will have any real implications. Any individual party that starts charging for links will simply not be liked to. It would only work if an entire industry/sector would start charging for links to them, but then we are talking about collusion and price-fixing which is already illegal. It's hard to start demanding money for something that was free and costs you nothing. And the link tax has excemptions for plain hyperlinks and the like, which prevents most distopian uses of such a provision. If google acts on this it will be because they know this was written with them in mind and if nothing happens stricter laws will follow. But for everyone else it will be a non-issue. Upload filters on the other hand are a much bigger problem, mostly because copyright law is way to strict to make them reasonable.
  • interhero 8y ago
    How do you find who is charging and who is not? Why not the other way around - if you post a link, you give exposure - that's worth something no?
  • jonathanstrange 8y ago
    Every sufficiently large publishing company on earth will demand a link tax, where "sufficiently large" means they can afford one or two lawyers. Why shouldn't they? It's money lost otherwise.
    • wongarsu 8y ago
      >Why shouldn't they? Say BBC decides they don't need the money and doesn't charge for links, but every other major outlet does. Now everyone will just link to BBC when they want to link an article on the topic, and Google News would essentially be BBC and a bunch of small independent outlets. Shortly thereafter the market share of all major news outlets that aren't BBC plumets as less and less people visit their online presences.
    • sjwright 8y ago
      > It's money lost otherwise. It's a choice between more money or less money, but the opposite way around to what you're implying—because nobody will pay for the privilege of gifting traffic to someone else. If you're a web publisher and you're not making more money as your traffic increases, you're doing it wrong. And if you can only make money by taxing all potential inbound sources of traffic, you'll quickly find yourself with no traffic—and no money.
• qaq 8y ago
  Hmm at this velocity even more sites will start blocking EU users.
• DINKDINK 8y ago
  Copyright is a contract between two groups where a copyright holder dictates the terms under which their material may be used or duplicated. If the receiving party to that material violates those terms (say they've received a movie screener for an unreleased film and leaked it), they are in violation of that contract and should pay the fees dictated in their contract. To argue that all parties everywhere should be forced subsidize the enforcement and policing of that contract is outrageous, economically unsound, and violates liberty.
  • Y_Y 8y ago
    I like your idea, but it's hardly the case currently. If you find a book on the ground, or read it in a library, or learn of its contents any number of ways without entering into even an implicit contract with the copyright holder, you are not then entitled to publish the contents without limit.
    • DINKDINK 8y ago
      >I like your idea It's the only peaceful way to govern copyright. >but it's hardly the case currently. You should advocate it to be the case or else you will suffer more and more socialized enforcement of a contract in which you are not a party.
  • petermcneeley 8y ago
    This is not the definition of Copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright Your definition is some alternative Libertarian definition of what copyright could be in an alternative society. Update: I cannot comprehend the reason for downvote without reply. You provided a false definition of Copyright and I provided a correct definition along with why your view might not be the reality.
  • apocalypstyx 8y ago
    >To argue that all parties everywhere should be forced subsidize the enforcement and policing of that contract is outrageous, economically unsound, and violates liberty. And if the contract is violated and the violator taken to court and the court rules against them and they refuse to pay restitution? Without the potential of government violence brought to bear, there is no point in contracts in the first place (except in the general sense of an agreement that includes 'go against me and I won't associate with you again'). But, however, if there is no government violence to be rendered applicable in any case, that does open the opportunity for the violated to employ violence directly. However, it also puts each individual in charge of insuring themselves against appropriation of their own property by means of said violence. So, at a minimum, such a position wants to establish the collective garnishment of funding for 'police services' to protect such rights, yet this is fundamentally in favor of those who have a greater quantity of property to protect, as the owners of such will (as history shows) that they should be required to reimburse no more than any other member of the collective, and if they do, then they are entitled to greater service, leading, again, to the same asymmetrical form of society, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others.
• enitihas 8y ago
  The only thing GDPR and this new law have in common is that both of them will make it very difficult for new internet companies to challenge incumbents (not that it was very easy currently). But if every video distributing company is going to need something like contentID, good luck to them.
• belorn 8y ago
  A bit less discussed aspect of the law is the recent addition that makes recording sport events illegal. While the intention looks clearly intended to be about large sport stadiums with explicit deals, the scope is not limited to those situations and simply cover any "sport event". It will be interesting to see what happens if they try to enforce it for marathons and bike races on public roads.
• IdontRememberIt 8y ago
  Great, we are turning into the Banking industry: stupid regulation to make big actors bigger and make it almost impossible for newcomers with great ideas. These regulation always started with good intentions, but turned out to just add cost for... no value added to the final customer. I can imagine their will be many opportunities for "middleman" services to support these regulations. The days of many free services are numbered.
• jtr_47 8y ago
  As an American, I can gladly say fuck the EU. Their laws do not and never shall be imposed on me or the work I do ever. I'm glad not to do business within the EU.
  • Jdam 8y ago
    As a European, I wish I could just say the same :/
• hmd_imputer 8y ago
  yet another stupid decision by the EU lawmakers who are obsessed with regulating anything they see as a grey area.
• mbrumlow 8y ago
  Both copyrights and patents are stupid in a digital age. If you don't want people to make copies of bits and bytes (large numbers) you found to be interesting or even arranged to be interesting don't upload them to the internet. Once those bits and bytes find their way into the digital world you might as well kiss them goodbye. When you try to control them it is like going to a public street and yelling "I am going to go get a burger from Bob's Burger" and then getting upset when a bunch of people also go to the same place and make it all crowded for you. Simply put, nobody should own any arrangement of numbers, sorry if that fucks your lucrative monopoly up.
• curtisblaine 8y ago
  This law is to prevent any non-mainstream news outlet to share content. From the UKIP site: "The great danger is that it will destroy the capacity for free speech on the internet and social media, which has exploded in recent years and is an invaluable alternative to the so-called mainstream media." https://www.ukip.org/national-ukip-news-item.php?id=18 https://www.ukip.org/national-ukip-news-item.php?id=18 The law is about the so-called "fake news", now that we're close to the 2019 European parliament elections.
• mpartel 8y ago
  Well this sucks a lot, but if I'm reading this right, they at least amended it to be _slightly_ less awful: https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Sept12_Voss.pdf https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Copyright_Se... It seems to contain a bunch of amendments that seem to make at least Article 13 a bit less draconian. In particular, 13.2b seems to require a human-reviewed and appealable complaints mechanism. All in all, it's still very shitty. I intend to save the list of those who voted for and set a reminder to dig it out when the next EU elections come up. I hope people with more social media presence than I do the same.
• mcintyre1994 8y ago
  From http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR12103/parliament-adopts-its-position-on-digital-copyright-rules http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180906IPR... > Any action taken by platforms to check that uploads do not breach copyright rules must be designed in such a way as to avoid catching “non-infringing works”. Utterly hilarious and scary that they think that's possible.
  • dcbadacd 8y ago
    If you read it more carefully, it says "designed to avoid catching" not "must not catch".
    • mjburgess 8y ago
      The conditions under-which something is fair-use are not features of the content. So there is nothing a system can do.
      • guitarbill 8y ago
        Because you need to catch infringing works, while only "avoiding" to catch non-infringing works, the result of that phrasing means those filters will have a high false-positive rate. Like content ID strikes on white noise...
  • tumetab1 8y ago
    They don't think whether it's possible or not. They are outsourcing any outrage of this system to whoever needs to implement it.
• bad_user 8y ago
  Oh shit. How can I find who voted for it?
• redm 8y ago
  I find it interesting that the conversation is mainly about fair use and not about false positives. I've been working with filtering and fingerprinting technology for some time, and while its "pretty good", false positives happen frequently. Its a case of continual disappointment, even from the largest tech companies with the "best" technology. I expect that widespread "filtering" will equate to widespread non-fair use related false positives. This law is going to work like the DMCA for many providers, carpet bomb everything and worry about the cleanup later.
• nailer 8y ago
  Quick reminder of a common misconception: contrary to what you may believe, MEPs do not propose laws. The EU Commission (that you don't vote for) propose laws.
• fourthark 8y ago
  > the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet. Huh? How does this follow?
• pedro1976 8y ago
  What a sad development. The two major implications of this law I see are - (even more) privatization of the jurisdiction and - inverted presumption of innocence
• visika 8y ago
  DecEntRalyZE EvritHyNg™
• kodablah 8y ago
  It is an unpopular opinion, but they were given the mandate by all those cheering the internet restrictions in the GDPR. Whether you still like that law or not is unrelated to the mandate given. You should have drawn your battle lines there instead of being so dismissive of those warning about government intervention.
  • mjburgess 8y ago
    The majority dissent here isn't that the EU do not have the right to regulate the internet in some way, it is that they are not doing it well. You can believe GDPR is a good law and this a bad one without hypocrisy. As much as you can believe murder ought be illegal but not cannabis.
• trumpeta 8y ago
  How do I write all my MEPs that they fucked up badly this time?
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• artilect 8y ago
  I am surprised how nobody in these comments mentioned images. The right-wing trolls are the ones that are able to create the most effective memes. This legislation therefore indirectly squashes political opposition to the EU's progressive liberal elites. Nationalism and the right is making a comeback in many European countries. As intended, this no doubt will slow that transition. Memes are some of the best ways to wake up to the damage the elites insane policies are doing to the EU. Without these, expect the acceleration of the decline of the EU. This is equivalent to cutting off the balls of their political opposition.
• tomjen3 8y ago
  Is there a complete list of those who voted in favour?
• elorant 8y ago
  Here's what I don't understand. How is Google/Facebook supposed to know which are news sites and which aren't? Apart from the known ones there are hundreds of thousands smaller ones which can start looking for royalties. How do you tell which is which?
• h91wka 8y ago
  This is wrong on more levels than it seems from the first glance: 1) I've witnessed creeping internet censorship starting just like this: first it's something as innocuous as "let's protect creators" or "let's protect children from harmful content", then 6 years later you can't criticize the government. They've just created a legal framework for massive automated censorship, and also Overton window was moved. I expect this to happen as soon as this law is backed up with the technical means. 2) People in power are uncomfortable with the current state of the internet, that is a true p2p platform for communication. Can't have that! We just got moved one step closer towards their vision of the Internet, that is nothing more than TV + storefront.
  • Tharkun 8y ago
    TV, storefront and voting. The latter can then be abused to pretend the public agrees.
    • DoctorOetker 8y ago
      I totally agree with both of you. "If you are using the internet to actually learn, you are using it wrong, that is why internet must be reduced to TV + storefront." Regarding voting too: just compare the number of bits per ballot (log2() of valid number of ways of filling in the ballot) with the number of bits of compressed text of all changes in law during a term. It's not a vote or voice, the information flows in the opposite direction. It just projects the law on our supposed desire. demokratia or demophimia (muzzling/gagging of the people)?
  • JoeSmithson 8y ago
    Where have you witnessed creeping internet censorship starting like this? (Not disputing, I'd just be interested to study it)
    • lossolo 8y ago
      I don't really understand why this comment is downvoted? OP wrote he is not disputing but want to study it. What's wrong with that? I am curious also and would like to know.
• mirimir 8y ago
  OK, so just don't host anywhere that EU enforcement can get to you. It sounds like a great opportunity for folks with requisite skills :)
• cbuq 8y ago
  Let's say I want to create a YouTube clone under these new laws, obviously I will need one of these upload filters. Where can I get the collection of all copyrighted content so I can build this filter?
• vhiremath4 8y ago
  Perhaps the most disastrous side effects of articles 11 and 13: 1. Access for EU residents is shut down on many sites. 2. GDPR is not taken seriously, even if 11 and 13 get repealed. 3. We once again do not have a legal body to look to as privacy thought leaders. 3. People will stop taking the EU seriously as a
• samgranieri 8y ago
  Can these laws be suspended or judicially reviewed if someone or government entity in the EU sues? I'm an American and unfamiliar with the lawmaking process in the EU.
• headmelted 8y ago
  So 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, encryption everywhere Internet we keep putting off building. At least this is a lot more compelling in terms of a call to action. It's been a death of a thousand cuts for the last twenty years, so at least it'll help motivate us all to get a move on.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • Milner08 8y ago
    I believe the EU would be the lesser of two evils here. If we leave it up to the UK Government and Mrs May we will have it far worse. She has tried several times to ban WhatsApp and encryption in general. I wouldn't put anything like this past her.
    • a_tractor 8y ago
      You have much more control over Mrs. May than you do the EU. Very short-sighted thinking, imo.
    • TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
      The UK is currently (it's law!) going to impose mandatory online age verification for “adult content”, including IIRC the ability to block non-compliant foreign sites (will they block twitter, tumblr?)
      • sieabah 8y ago
        Twitter, tumblr, and reddit all host adult content. I think Facebook and Instagram are the only that disallow it in any form. Guess history truly does repeat itself.
• EastSmith 8y ago
  This is obviously bad. I am hoping that more decentralization / p2p tech is born out of it.
• nickpp 8y ago
  And this, together with the idiotic cookie and GDPR laws ensure the future Internet startups will have no home and no audience in Europe. Like always here, death by regulation. The way governments grant monopolies to established players and kill competition.
  • madspindel 8y ago
    Maybe it's a good thing? The real world of atoms is heavy regulated. I prefer flying german cars instead of 140 characters.
• exabrial 8y ago
  Business's who depend on the livelihood of free speech: Google, Facebook, Apple, Cloudflare, Netflix, Salesforce, et all need to get together and say "No, or we'll stop doing business in the EU". This is beyond ridiculous.
  • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Business's who depend on the livelihood of free speech: Google, Facebook Given this legislation virtually guarantees their hegemony over European content distribution, I don't expect too much complaining.
    • exabrial 8y ago
      That's a good point. I guess I rescind my comment.
  • zavi 8y ago
    This is fantastic for Google in Europe - they aren't making money from hobbyist publishing remixes and can easily filter it out with the infrastructure and training data they already have. They make money off Despacito and the likes with whom they already have a revshare in place.
• icegore 8y ago
  What about Dark Net? How is it going to be controlled?
• newswhere 8y ago
  I'm not surprised that people that believed GDPR was good legislation would approve this law. The EU is simply not that important, internet businesses should simply not do business there.
• jimmaswell 8y ago
  How long until the EU ruins the internet so much that the rest of the world just cuts off completely from it, and the EU is left with their own little hyper-legislated enclave net?
• linuxftw 8y ago
  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.
• chrshawkes 8y ago
  I'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.
• mauliknshah 8y ago
  Does 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?
  • sieabahlpark 8y ago
    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.
• mindcrime 8y ago
  Youtube, 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...
  • fermienrico 8y ago
    Comments like this are extremely naive given the fact that Google/Facebook cannot do anything at whim without Board/Investors backlash. Stock price would crash, future projections would collapse and it would create a havoc for bailing out of a major market. It happens, but rarely (Google China exit).
    • mindcrime 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's still the case that Zuck can effectively do whatever he wants with FB due to his stock ownership position. But that isn't really the point... nobody said anything about anybody doing anything "on a whim". And if these companies were to get serious about playing the long-game, instead of fixating on short-term fluctuations in their stock price, I believe it is the case that what I propose is actually in their best interest.
• vidann 8y ago
  America please save us
• auganov 8y ago
  This sort of stuff is exactly what many GDPR opponents were warning about. Once the floodgate of aggressive regulating is open you don't get to pick the ones you like. At the end of the day there are going to be very few winners.
• nkkollaw 8y ago
  Can someone do an ELI5? There is so much confusion and speculation that I can't figure out what the hell is going on.
• 0x5f3759df-i 8y ago
  >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 having any understanding of how the internet works. Do these politicians really not understand the awful implications of these filtering systems for free speech and fair use? Just look at the abuses that already happen with the existing systems and now we have to spread this across the entire web, absolutely insane. A truly sad day for the future of a free internet in Europe.
  • sieabah 8y ago
    It's simple, the EU wants it's own internet like China. No more filthy US internet with talk about free speech and fair use.
    • lovich 8y ago
      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 meddling? Additionally the tech megacorps are trying to claim that they are open platforms and so shouldn't be responsible for user posted data while censoring and removing user posted data when it suits their economic means. I'm a proponent of free speech, but the internet stopped being a bastion of free speech year ago. It's crazy to think that the EU was going to sit their and let companies do what they please, when those same companies we're already preventing users/EU citizens from doing so
      • int_19h 8y ago
        US has a huge surveillance (both govt and private) problem, but censorship? Can you give some examples?
• messit 8y ago
  This feels just as stupid as the war on drugs. Another step back, especially for the poor as usual.
• jimnotgym 8y ago
  The headline is rather misleading. The EU parliament has approved it, the EU as a whole has not. The parliament is one step on the legislative process. National governments carry much more weight. Time to lobby your local politicians.
• kriscius 8y ago
  https://imgur.com/a/TOLHJKw https://imgur.com/a/TOLHJKw
• reaperducer 8y ago
  So now all the content aggregators can link exclusively to non-EU web sites, further spreading a non-European point of view globally. Problem solved.
• ericb 8y ago
  I've seen many posts on HN questioning whether there is any value in a permissionless uncensorable internet of the type some cryptocurrency platforms are building toward. Will the concept get less mockery now?
• oldandtired 8y ago
  Let's take a look at some background here. Freedoms are in the eye of the beholder and what is considered a "right" by one can be and often is quite different to what is considered a "right" by another. The changes going on at such governmental levels should not be unexpected. These kinds of changes have been happening over many decades. Very few, if any, governments (I am not talking about politicians here) want to give the citizens of itself the freedoms that could threaten the well-being and growing control of that government. Politicians may have agendas (obviously they do) and can in some way direct how the relevant government will operate. They have less control than they think and they are there only fo relatively short periods of time. Most of the legislation that citizens end up suffering under is dictated not by the politicians but by other control structures. Policy changes made by the various political representatives will be warped by those who are in charge of bringing these policies into reality. The changes being discussed here for the EU are in line with the premise that government will gain more control over its citizens and the ones who have pushed for this will find out quickly enough that there are very large unintended side-effects that will come back and haunt them. The fundamental concept driving all this movement towards control of what citizens can and can't do is to ensure that when needed those same citizens will follow whatever directives are given. This is just repeating what has happened in the past many times. Does that mean we lie down and just take it or is there something that we can do? If you are going to actively do something, you must start out first realising that there are going to be consequences. You have to make up your mind as to whether or not you are willing to face those consequences. Then you need to look at what action you can take and take without the destruction of others. Peaceful civil disobedience can be a strong motivator of change in some cases.
• anonytrary 8y ago
  F
• snr 8y ago
  Am I wrong in seeing merit in the argument for blocking people/entities from re-posting copyrighted content and simultaneously holding the platforms accountable? Of course, they should exempt businesses valued below a fair figure like $50M so as to not bother startups with compliance expenses.
• anonytrary 8y ago
  > Article 13 requires certain platforms like YouTube and Facebook stop users sharing unlicensed copyrighted material. How is this different than making gunmakers responsible for shootings? Continuing with the analogy, the only option the gunmaker has is to essentially close up shop. Seems like an impossible law to follow. "Develop better algorithms for filtering inappropriate material or you're gonna be sorry" sounds like tyranny.
• kermittd 8y ago
  Whoa. Sounds like a paradoy of what foolish bureaucrats would do.
• tomelders 8y ago
  As bonkers as this may seem, I suspect it will fall flat on it's face the second it's put before a court. For example, someone defends their right to use the title or quote from an article from some other news gathering organisation. Someone will need to convince a judge that it's OK for The Sunday Times, or Der Spiegel to do that, but it's not OK for Reddit or Hacker News to do that. And eventually, someone will need to convince a court that it's OK for Charlie Booker to broadcast a Cassetteboy video mash up on the UK's Channel 4, but it's not OK for Cassetteboy to upload that same video to youtube. It is true that the CJEU doesn't hold case law and precedent in the same high regard as other courts, but neither does it ignore them. The ECJ and CJEU serves as a check on government in the same way the courts do in most other countries. I think it is unfortunate that the EU parliament has approved this law. But I struggle to see how it will stand up in court. That said, it will take a very brave person or organisation with deep pockets and a steel will to challenge this law. However, if this law is upheld in court, then I think we can consider the EU a failed experiment. So abhorrent is this legislation that I, an ardent "Remaniac", would rather see the EU fail and take my chances with whatever comes next, than let the EU stifle free speech and the free flow of information and ideas in this way.
  • gnusci 8y ago
    My 5c here. Maybe they just don't have much to do, so they need to justify their salaries, and they need to have some presence in the WWW to let us know that they are out there.
    • tomelders 8y ago
      Hmmm. I'm not so sure. The EU parliament is usually pretty savvy on civil rights and freedom issues like this. I'm genuinely surprised that this law passed. However, it's hard to fathom the EU parliament sometimes because it's such a broad and diverse bunch of people and interests forced into such a small political space. If someone asked me to play devils advocate for this decision, I'd probably appeal to people's fear of foreign disinformation campaigns and the impact they're having on western democracies. I could probably cobble together a semi-compelling argument about how Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, have inadvertently handed the enemies of the west the most powerful propaganda tool in all of human history, and those enemies are using it to great effect. Or how marketing companies have convinced millions of parents worldwide to not vaccinate their children through the internet. Or how organisations like Monsanto astroturf the web and misquote or misrepresent scientific reports or news articles to make it seem like Greenpeace promote and advocate using DDT. I'd then go on to argue that information can and must be free to share, but nefarious misinformation should not be free from punishment nor protected by law. And so, the age of anonymous and unaccountable publishing platforms must come to an end. If they don't want to be held accountable for the content they publish, then that's fine. But that just means we restrict the type of content they're allowed to publish. After all, we have advertising standards that the press and broadcasters adhere to. We have rules around when and how "traditional" media can report on politics. So the Youtubes, Twitters, Reddits, and Facebooks of the world can either fall in line with those rules, or carry on as they are but simply refrain from anything that could be perceived as advertising or political reporting... which is pretty much everything except dick picks I think. Now, I'm pretending to defend this law. Don't assume I believe any of what I just said. I actually think this law abhorrent. And while I do have concerns about the unrestrained power and influence of the web, I don't think this law is the answer to my concerns. But if I put my mind to selling this law to people who don't know as much about the web as I do, I think this kind of argument would be effective. On some people at least. And MEP's aren't technical people. They're political people. And I think it would be pretty easy to scare them into backing this law whilst appealing to their sense of justice, fairness, and honesty.
• brod 8y ago
  In 2016 I stopped accepting freelance work with an internet explorer or edge requirement. In 2018 I'm considering rejecting clients with an Eu requirement.
• dbg31415 8y ago
  * Honest Government Ad | Article 13 (Internet Censorship Bill) - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ZkydX0FPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89ZkydX0FPw
• eruci 8y ago
  Yet, another thing that's wrong with Europe these days.
• aldoushuxley001 8y ago
  What a catastrophe. Can't wait until the EU is disbanded and that dysfunctional union is laid to rest in the history books for good. All I can say is I hope Europeans enjoy their new walled garden, because I sure as hell won't be complying with these rules.
• em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  > "Exactly how the legislation will be interpreted will be up to individual nations, but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet." I don't see it very clear that the biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet with these new laws. They will be able to weather this and even profit just fine.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• asdasdqweqwe 8y ago
  asd
• mar77i 8y ago
  > but the shift in the balance of power is clear: the web’s biggest tech companies are losing their grip on the internet. What? Where? How? Is the author of this article somehow confused? The article doesn't make clear in any way how the new law would threaten any tech giants' grips on anything. Tech giants are the first to jump regulatory bullets that would kill anything on a tighter budget in its way.
• Dowwie 8y ago
  I cant imagine a proposal such as this one being approved without a study to back it. I really am curious what that study presented.
• i6mi6 8y ago
  Please just stop justifying those politicians by saying that "they have no idea how the internet works". They understand it perfectly fine. EU is going into an iron curtain and this law is just for conveniently putting people into jail whenever they decide. They won't of course chase after every "offensive" content, but only the one that poses a threat to them. For reference Tommy Robinson.
• kerrsclyde 8y ago
  Does this mean self-hosting content on our own web sites will become a more realistic option for content creators? No upload filter to tackle?
• ultim8k 8y ago
  Laws are there to be ignored. The only laws that apply implicitly are the laws of physics. As engineers we owe to trust only physics and science.