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Europe's Controversial Overhaul of Online Copyright Receives Final Approval:
Articles 11 and 13 both approved by European politicians.
The European Union has given its final approval to the Copyright Directive, a controversial package of legislation designed to update copyright law in Europe for the online age.
Members of the European Parliament voted 348 in favor of the law, 274 against.
For advocates of the legislation, the directive will balance the playing field between US tech giants and European content creators, giving copyright holders more power over how big internet platforms distribute their content. But critics say the law is vague and poorly thought-out, and will restrict how content is shared online, stifling free speech in the process.
Politicians have been debating the legislation for more than two years now, with fierce lobbying from both tech giants and copyright holders pushing the argument back and forth. Despite some setbacks, though, the most controversial clauses of the Copyright Directive have remained intact, and were approved today with only minor changes.
Julia Reda, an MEP from Germany's Pirate Party, said the passing of the law marked "a dark day for internet freedom."
What changes, if any, will this cause where you work?
Previously: EU Copyright Directive Vote Set for Tuesday
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:14PM
That's the human beings who make art. Their budgets are rarely affected by the greedy fucks this law benefits getting a slightly longer tail on sales.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:32PM
Gotta defeat the censorship! Help us make the ISP obsolete! They only serve the tyrant
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:34PM
A "link tax free" http header (and meta element) and a GPML (General Public Meme License) that may be retroactively applied to existing content.
Any articles without the link tax free header should not ever be linked anywhere. A GPML could be retroactively applied by major rights holders without further negotiation under the banner of publicity materials. Fuck the EU!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by exaeta on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:38PM (13 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:57PM (3 children)
Clearly you missed that many US news sites block access from the EU (and soon the UK separately) due to GDPR requirements and restrictions.
So, no boon.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:10PM (2 children)
They probably have assets in the EU that they can't afford to lose. That problem can be corrected in some cases.
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(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:26PM (1 child)
that may be true in the short term - but I'll wager that there are some very smart folks writing a pile of $SCRIPTS to basically isolate country by country.
Having said that, imagine having to get your news (i.e. $MEDIA) from a torrent or TOR?
The idiots in govt don't understand technology.
They do understand that controlling the means of communication and dissemination of information - controls the population.
That's why the 1776 Declaration of independence is such a pivotal event, and creation of the US constitution.
Every day the government's of the world (*including* the US govt!!!) show why the USC remains an amazing document.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:50PM
USC? I heard was quite a scandal with those guys. Something about desperate Bedford wives and their sprouts...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheFool on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:31PM (1 child)
I think it's more likely that the brits end up with a hosting boom, honestly. They shouldn't be paying link tax either if they go through with Brexit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:51PM
Probably not, they will still want some kind of trade deal etc with Europe and just like other European countries that are not also EU-members tend to follow a lot of the rules anyway just so there won't be any trade issues. They are super-bitchy about that down in Brussels. If that was to be the case tho why wouldn't they just move all the server farms to say Norway or Switzerland, they probably both have more suitable climate for large amount of server-farms the the UK; after all COLD > RAIN and DAMP. Nor will they have all them future BREXIT problems as they already have their deals in place.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:46PM (5 children)
Anonymous Euro-Politicians that reconsider and fix their previous mistakes? Are you new to this planet? That sort of thing just never happen.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:31PM (3 children)
Anonymous Euro-Politicians that reconsider and fix their previous mistakes? Are you new to this planet? That sort of thing just never happen.
It did with software patents back in the early naughts. Poland saved the day by casting the deciding vote to ixnay software patents in the EU, very late in the process.
Of course, that was before fascism started infecting places like Poland, Hungary, Italy, etc., so it's anyone's guess as to whether or not that can be repeated (and the corporate cabal pushing this has probably learned from that experience, or their lobbyists have).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:58PM (1 child)
Fascism is corporatism - you're contradicting yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:36AM
Scoring 0 in the comprehension test, I see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:30PM
oh yes, it's "fascist" to want to continue to exist by not allowing the purposeful importing of hordes of other races.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:40PM
Anonymous? I think Axel Voss is quite well known now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:18AM
At the end of the day, the flow (or non-flow) of dollars/euros will determine the final outcome. It may take a little while to get the legislators to understand, but hard economics usually works pretty quickly. So whichever way this develops will be interesting.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:40PM (1 child)
It's a foot in the door for the exact same bullshit "remove under an hour, forced to use GAFAM filters" law except this one will be for censorship of hate speech and terrorist apology.
Not only that, but it'll remove the need for a go ahead from judges. So the police can and will issue censorship orders on its own. There will not be judiciary approval, instead we'll have judiciary control. Which is to say decisions can be appealed (failure to comply is still a crime until the appeal is resolved however).
The organism that will be handling this in France is an absolute joke. It took six months to get an abusive state censorship order out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:52PM
France will let an organism handle that? What type of organism? A lizard, maybe? :-)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:48PM (1 child)
I personally will do my best to avoid any service, that complies with this shit, be that an EU or non-EU company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:52PM
Or should i say EU hostage?
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:31PM (10 children)
My decision to block Europe from my few websites when the GDPR landed last year was the correct correct call.
Goodbye, Europe.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:57PM (1 child)
What exactly does this block of your accomplish? Are you afraid of being punished by the EU, trying to teach EU citizens a lesson, or something else?
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(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:41AM
He's principled, see? Gotta respect that. ⁽ᵍʳᶦⁿ⁾
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:58PM (1 child)
GDPR was a good thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:33PM
no it wasn't, you groveling slave. you can't make your own decisions? you need your fucking nanny state to do it for you? what a piece of shit.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:37PM (1 child)
Ok, fuck off. We don't want your tracking and "monetizations" anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:35PM
so b/c they don't want to suck up to a foreign un-elected, "government" they must be tracking and monetizing people? pitiful, dhimmi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:50PM
I didn't give a single fuck about the GDPR, because I live in the land of the free. It was a good call.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:34AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:20AM (1 child)
How the heck would one even start to block out "Europe"?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:44PM
whitelist or blacklist ip address ranges in your firewall or in nginx config. there's info on line. you must use the search!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:36PM
None? My work is all GPL/BSD anyway.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday March 26 2019, @08:53PM (2 children)
IIRC, parts of Europe already tried this by ruling that search engines had to pay news agencies to link to them. News agencies cheered. Google and friends decided they didn't want to pay so they deleted them from their indices. The news agencies then moaned and whined bitterly that nobody was visiting their websites anymore.
Looks like it's time to polish the cluebat.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stretch611 on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:59PM
This did happen... https://www.zdnet.com/article/spains-google-link-tax-clearly-insane-law-may-hurt-the-news-companies-it-seeks-to-protect/ [zdnet.com]
While the linked article was dated right before the law took effect, all the Spainish newspapers cried afterword because the traffic on their websites dropped precipitously. They ended up with even less revenue and cried about it.
May it happen again to teach the greedy a lesson.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:44AM
Got one even better for you, try to russian it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:00PM (1 child)
We only operate in North America, and we blocked Europeans already when the GDPR came into effect. This isn't even to say that I think GDPR is a bad idea, there was just no reason to allow Europeans to visit the website any more since they can't really do anything with it anyway.
The real question is how much damage will this cause to the rest of the world? As an American visiting American websites, I still have to click away noxious cookie popups 90% of the time. How much will non-European websites restrict speech to comply with European mandatory prior restraint censorship?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:11PM
The stated intent is all well and good but as written, it's a staggering shitpile of legislative overreach. Not only does it unfairly penalize sites that did not engage in tracking, the EU claims jurisprudence for companies that are not even operating in the EU. The same shit with ecommerce sales where international sellers are obligated to collect VAT (a purchase tax) when selling into the EU.
Blocking the EUSSR is the only sane choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:20PM
EU directives are "binding" in that the member nations need to make laws to "match them". But only the national laws will be actual real laws with penalties and enforcement. Their wording and application will make all the difference.
Yet this is a sad day. Having said that I do hope that go-ogle and failbook die soon and painfully.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:45PM
They’ve been looking for it for many, many years. To protect the intellectual property and creative genius of America’s -- and the World's -- incredible movie makers, TV studios and musicians. "Streaming" has made our majestic culture more accessible than ever, yet laws have not kept up with the pace of technology. As such, artists of all varieties, all degrees of talent, and all career stages are losing out on revenue that they have rightly earned. I signed, very proudly, our Music Modernization Act in October. Very big upgrade to our laws. And our economy is roaring like it hasn't roared in 90 years. That one has been hugely positive for our Music Industry. Very pleased that our foe the European Union has made this very strong, and smart move. We'll be "streaming" in so many places in Europe, very soon. And if they keep this up, they may not be our foe much longer. Who knows? U.S.A.!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:08AM
The US often gets (justifiably) shit on because politicians are de facto bribed by the rich and corporations. From this, it seems that Europe is only marginally better at best, which I wouldn't expect to be the case given people's smug attitudes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:39PM
I can't just copy their articles, got it. I can still link to it, ok. However I assume my god given right to quote people still exist. How MUCH can quote? This is not a law it is pure garbage, there is no way to know if I comply or if I don't.
I'm not worried about the "must be effective at removing copyrighted material" law for big content sharing platforms. Seems like no change there.