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Julia Reda (a Member of the European Parliament from Germany) writes in her bog about upcoming censorship legislation in the European Union and a call to action for those most affected, specifically the Free Software community.
The starting point for this legislation was a fight between big corporations, the music industry and YouTube, over money. The music industry complained that they receive less each time one of their music videos is played on a video platform like YouTube than they do when their tracks are listened to on subscription services like Spotify, calling the difference the "value gap". They started a successful lobbying effort: The upload filter law is primarily intended to give them a bargaining chip to demand more money from Google in negotiations. Meanwhile, all other platforms are caught in the middle of that fight, including code sharing communities.
The lobbying has engrained in many legislators' minds the false idea that platforms which host uploads for profit are necessarily exploiting creators.
The fight affects both sides of the Atlantic because once bad rules are enacted on either side, it is not uncommon for calls for "harmonization" to come from the other.
Earlier on SN:
Mulled EU Copyright Shakeup Will Turn Us Into Robo-Censors
EU Parliament's Copyright Rapporteur Has Learned Nothing from Year-long Copyright Debate
European Commission Hides Copyright Evidence Again
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 09 2018, @04:59AM (2 children)
Well then, think of it as a live test of your unspoken hypotheses then :) if you're correct, these projects will eventually crumble under their own idiocy (clone and fork their shit now, just to be safe...). This is that liberty stuff in action, isn't it? They are at liberty to take the kind of action that will eventually result in a repeat of the Gnome disaster if they want.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @05:37AM
People that didn't agree forked some projects, like MATE, but there is a limit of what can be done. We would need also to fork toolkits, libs, whole organizations... and specially be able to push back. It's a huge task, even more so if projects are fattened and twisted instead of kept simple and well documented (= forkable and maintenable with low resources) as a power grab.
They kept important parts, no end of PR (or coorporate support... Linux Foundation is a joke with no community voice but GPL infringers), and played hardball instead of cooperating, because that is what they don't want, an even field based in merits and not weight/money. In some cases the method, if true FOSS, should have been "someone forks, demostrates the new thing is worth, and then the old part merges back the new (or gets replaced completly)" but they did the opposite.
Let's not forget systemd, kdbus or the newest "secure boot and kernel lock down must come as a whole" (IIRC FreeBSD had lockdown features over 15 years ago, before EUFI was created, see security(7) [freebsd.org], look for "system immutable") that get pushed by some people that should know better about FOSS spirit, yet they play the coorporate game without shame.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 09 2018, @05:56AM
Indeed but that example cost me a perfectly good DE. I feel a little bit of bitching is warranted.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.