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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: 1, Insightful) by anubi on Monday April 09 2018, @06:30AM
I have no idea how we even THINK our system is free-enterprise. Its cronier than Al Capone and his moonshine bizness.
Any kid is free to offer his services mowing lawns, raking, whatever... and what this leads to is the services performed at the market price, where both providers and buyers of the service come to terms of what its worth.
But if one kid goes to his dad, and gets his dad to bully all the other kids to protect "his rights" to the neighborhood, now he's got the only lawn care business in the neighborhood and can charge whatever the market will bear. This is the American Congressional version of free enterprise.
Now, expand this concept to things like healthcare and manufacturing, and we have just made the means for a very few people to become exhorbitantly rich by "working with" the men who can tell other people to shoot guns at them if they don't comply with "cease and desist" orders to not compete.
Not only do we elect the people who do these kind of things, we even call them "honorable"
I think in a few years, the people will understand the situation, but at that time, it will be like a cat understanding he's in a bind AFTER the door latch to the trap has released. All this stuff we are doing is only the whining of cats that haven't been caught yet, and know a cat trap when they see one.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]