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European Parliament backs copyright changes
Controversial new copyright laws have been approved by members of the European Parliament. The legislation had been changed since July when the first version of the copyright directive was voted down. Critics say it remains problematic. Many musicians and creators claim the reforms are necessary to fairly compensate artists. But opponents fear that the plans could destroy user-generated content, memes and parodies.
Are EU citizens ready for the link tax and upload filter?
Also at Polygon.
[Ed addition] Since this story was submitted, Ars Technica posted a story that delves into some of the implications of the new legislation; What's in the sweeping copyright bill just passed by the European Parliament:
The legislation makes online platforms like Google and Facebook directly liable for content uploaded by their users and mandates greater "cooperation" with copyright holders to police the uploading of infringing works. It also gives news publishers a new, special right to restrict how their stories are featured by news aggregators such as Google News. And it creates a new right for sports teams that could limit the ability of fans to share images and videos online.
Today's vote was not the end of Europe's copyright fight. Under the European Union's convoluted process for approving legislation, the proposal will now become the subject of a three-way negotiation involving the European Parliament, the Council of the Europe Union (representing national governments), and the European Commission (the EU's executive branch). If those three bodies agree to a final directive, then it will be sent to each of the 28 EU member countries (or more likely 27 thanks to Brexit) for implementation in national laws.
That means that European voters who are concerned—or excited—about this legislation still have a few more months to contact their representatives, both within their national governments and in the European Parliament.
[...] The legislation avoids mentioning any specific technological approach to policing online infringement, allowing supporters to plausibly claim that this is not a filtering mandate. Yet it seems pretty clear what this will mean in practice. Big content producers want to see YouTube beef up its Content ID filtering technology—and for other online platforms to adopt similar strategies. Shifting liability for infringement from users to the platforms themselves will give content companies a lot of leverage to get what they want here.
[...] Balancing fairness to content creators against fairness to users is inherently tricky. Rather than trying to address the issue directly, the European Parliament is simply pushing the issue down to the national level, letting governments in Germany, France, Poland, and other European governments figure out the messy details.
[...] In addition to approving new rights for news publishers, the legislation also narrowly approved a new copyright for the organizers of sports teams. Copyright law already gives teams the ability to sell television rights for their games, but fans have traditionally been free to take pictures or personal videos and share them online. The new legislation could give sports teams ownership of all images and video from their games, regardless of who took them and how they are shared.
Antiterrorist Censorship: The EU Commission Wants to Kill the Decentralized Internet
This morning, as everybody was looking at the Copyright Directive adoption, the EU Commission released a proposal for a Regulation on the censorship of terrorist propaganda.
This proposal would impose new obligations to hosting service providers, including the removal in less than an hour of the reported content. This proposal trivializes police and private censorship as well as the circumvention of justice. Automated filters, which play a crucial role in the debate for the Copyright Directive, are being held as a key component for the censorship in the digital era.
I thought this article from The Register was interesting; making out that the opposition to Article 13 is dominated by astroturfing led principally by Google.
Article 13 pits Big Tech and bots against European creatives by Andrew Orlowski
Today's vote on Article 13 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market in European Parliament has turned into a knife-edge referendum on whether European institutions can deal with Californian exceptionalism.
[...] The tweaks to copyright liability in Article 13 before MEPs this week have narrowed after months of horsetrading in Brussels – and they don't name names, but they're really about one company and the unique legal benefits it enjoys. That company is Google, and the perks arise from the special conditions attached to UGC [User Generated Comments] that YouTube hosts, which were originally designed for services such as cloud storage.
[...] The battle of Article 13 is remarkable for revealing two things: the extent of US technology lobbying networks in Europe, and the use of tools of automated consensus generation [...] Around 60,000 emails were received by each MEP in the build up to the June vote, while Twitter engagement appeared to be high. [...] But "What looked like grassroots movement from the outside was in fact a classic form of astroturfing – designed to create the appearance of a popular movement," [German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Volker] Reick said.
Previously: How The EU May Be About To Kill The Public Domain: Copyright Filters Takedown Beethoven
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:04PM (38 children)
This seems to be escalating quickly.
1) Publishers want to milk Google for money somehow
2) Lawmakers say Google isn't allowed to link to people unless they pay said people money
3) Google: "Okay, then we won't link to you. Enjoy your massive drop in exposure."
4) Lawmakers: "We want to force you to pay us anyway, even if you don't want to. Do that for everybody in the EU."
5) Google: "It would take an unreasonable amount of time and money to blacklist the entire EU."
6) Lawmakers: "Tough."
7) Google shrugs and just ignores the ruling.
8) Lawmakers ban Google from doing business in Europe.
9) All European citizens suddenly lose access to all of Google's many services like their search engine, Google Docs, etc. etc. (Android...?)
10) Massive outcry from European citizens that lawmakers may or may not attempt to ignore
???
12) Profit
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:38PM (1 child)
This is why I wish I had mod points. It will go down exactly thusly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 13 2018, @01:06AM
Agreed. I hearken back to the outcry that hit Washington, DC, when Wikipedia, Google, and others went black to protest SOPA. SOPA was really a done deal. The *AA's had paid good money for it, and all their creatures in Congress were lined up to pass it without debate. Then when everyone's favorite websites went black, it was the end of the world. The reports that day said the switchboards in DC practically melted from the popular anger. SOPA died in a single day.
So let Google and others de-list all the European outlets. Let them learn exactly how entirely that continent has left the age of print behind (they're further ahead of the US in that respect). Let them experience the sudden, total isolation and irrelevance of being summarily dumped by the Internet.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:52PM (14 children)
Look, that step 7 you proposed?
You're forgetting the thing that makes a government a government and not "a bunch of people standing around saying things that people pay attention to for no reason"
Which is the whole "having the most guns and getting final say on who owns what" thing.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:15PM (11 children)
Hence step 8...? Did you really just stop reading at 7 to post this reply?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:31PM (5 children)
Yeah "not allowed to operate in the EU" is a vastly inferior solution to the "reach into your fucking accounts and take out whatever fine they want" thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @07:26AM (1 child)
"Yeah "not allowed to operate in the EU" is a vastly inferior solution to the "reach into your fucking accounts and take out whatever fine they want" thing."
Fairly certain governments hate it when foreign governments force their banks to hand over large amounts of cash to the foreign government. This is why as soon as google says "ok we're not playing ball" they'll make sure all their assets are not in the EU or in any country the EU has power over. That includes employees - who will be out of a job thanks to the EU's infantile rational and they'll remember.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:45PM
There's lots of assets that are not that easy to do that with: copyrights, physical land, contracts, datacenter equipment.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 13 2018, @05:59PM (1 child)
Because I'm sure the EU just bending Google over a table won't make any other corporations think twice about doing business in the EU
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Troll) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:20PM
I'd sure as hell think twice before flagrantly violating the law in the EU to wank off some e-libertarians.
Man. What a waste that would be.
(The new law sucks, but libertarians suck more)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:38PM
Operating in the EU may not be worth paying a fine. EU citizens can access foreign hosted websites, unless an EU court goes the extra mile and tries to block the website from being accessed in the EU. Sufficiently motivated citizens could continue to access blocked sites.
If Google needs talent from the EU, they can convince them to relocate. They could go to the Google London HQ. Servers for EU customers and users could also be located in the UK.
EU has already threatened Google with multi-billion Euro fines over Android antitrust violations. Google might not lose 100% of the revenue from the EU by pulling out, possibly not even 10% if the EU doesn't try to completely block access to Google services. At some point, it may be worth it to avoid the EU if "whatever fine they want" means billions of Euros.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:04PM (4 children)
Step 8 is a good outcome.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:54PM (3 children)
> Step 8 is a good outcome.
And Step 9 would be an even better outcome. So much so I hope it does go down this way. Sure, there will be disruption as all those Google addicts go into withdrawl, but it will also open up the market to smaller companies who have been unable to compete so far due to economies scale and the network effect.
From Mobile OSes like Sailfish, to custom Androids, to even having new social media and search engines, possibly even ones that are more privacy orientated. I think it would be a net benefit to the world. More competition is better for the end user than one massive dominating corp.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
Are draconian copyright laws a good outcome? Because that's what the EU Copyright Directive brings, and more. Google is a horrible company and it's fine to bash it, but let's not support terrible legislation just because it might harm Google.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday September 14 2018, @12:21PM
I would say it is a double edged sword. The stronger they make copyright, the stronger copyleft licences like GPL/BSD/Creative commons become. This is because the copyleft licenses run on the same system as copyright licences do.
It is what makes copyleft so clever. It uses the system against itself. They want to use IP Laws to deny information and rights to people. We can use the copyleft licences to ensure information and rights of people.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday September 14 2018, @01:14AM
My bad - I actually meant to say "step 9". For the reasons you gave.
I need an "edit" button.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:54PM
Most likely outcome I can see would be that EU residents will be seeing a *lot* more of those "In response to complaints under $legislation we have removed $number results from this page. If you wish to get a cool list of alternative sites for your content, then you can browse all the complaints here. *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*" messages.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:15PM
Enforcement actions by governments against huge corporations tend not to be such a quick and simple thing.
7) Google says "OK, we'll get right on that"
6 months later. EU: "Are you in compliance yet?" Google: "Uh huh, yep, almost, we just need a little more time."
6 months later. EU: "OK, you've had plenty of time, surely you are in compliance now?" Google: "Yes sir! Everything is great, sir!"
3 months later. EU: "The law said ABC, and you are doing XYZ, you're not in compliance." Google: "Oops, we thought we were. Sorry about that. We'll investigate and fix the problem."
6 months later. EU: "When are you going to the fix the problem like you said?" Google: "We did fix it. It's all taken care of. Have a nice day."
3 months later. EU: "We have a funny idea that you may not be acting in good faith and we are going to start imposing fines." Google: *sends an army of lawyers*
5 years later. Google: "This fine is totally unjust and we're going to appeal!"
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:44PM (16 children)
11) An EU service is created, like Google, and despite its shortcomings it is instantly accepted because no other service complies. This service will comply partially, "on paper," - but in practice who cares, as long as important people are sitting on the board of directors.
In other words, a simple way to replace Google and conduct their own policies. You can do that on the state level.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:03PM (10 children)
Not that the EU is really a "state level," but rather a confederation of independent states. But yeah.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:00AM (9 children)
For the present. But it's been making steady progress towards the state level for the past half century.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday September 13 2018, @04:40PM (8 children)
Details, please.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 14 2018, @01:21AM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday September 14 2018, @03:17PM (6 children)
Can a supranational organisation be a confederacy at the same time, in your view?
As to Greece and Cyprus, should the eurogroup and the ECB not have lent them money?
You might argue that leaving the euro would have decreased their economic suffering. It surely would have resulted in a national default, and a subsequent freezing out of the international debt markets for them. That's the Argentina scenario [wikipedia.org]. It's only about one year and a half ago that Argentina could go back out for a loan on the international debt market -- i.e. twenty years later -- and conditions are now so that the central bank currently [theguardian.com] has raised interest rates to 60 percent, and the government has introduced even more extreme austerity measures: you think that would have been better?
As for Irish taxation laws -- where you can create a virtual company which is located in Ireland, hires people in Ireland, but does not really exist [for the taxman] in Ireland -- would they've gone down well in the United States, you think? If one thing, that ruling showed how weak the European Union was in the past and, specifically, how jealously national governments guard their sovereignty.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 15 2018, @01:16AM (4 children)
The EU is, so yes.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:41AM (3 children)
Interesting -- we have, or might have, a subtle difference in understanding here.
I've always interpreted confederalism like the US system, basically: with States being in a clearly inferior position vis-à-vis the federal government.
In a supranational union (in my interpretation) on the other hand, nations (states) only subsume a restricted set of powers in mutual agreement: the power balance remains with the national governments.
In that vision [wikipedia.org], the European Union is a kind of a hybrid between the US(¥) and the UN. No direct taxation -- a pooling of budget donations -- yet agreement to negotiate international trade agreements only through the Union. Open borders, yet policing and the military only fall under national authority. Common environmental standards, yet controlling and fining remain the discretion of the nation state.
(¥) Interestingly, the United States always has been the example [goodreads.com] to look up to for those proponents of a confederal Europe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 15 2018, @10:53AM
A confederacy is just a group of such confederate states.
There are several treaties/agreements defining the EU and the resulting relationships between its member states. Hence, it fits the definition of a confederacy.
Historically, a number of confederacies have been subverted by the more powerful members. For example, a key cause of the Peloponnesian War of ancient Greece was the takeover of the Delian League, a military alliance originally intended to drive off a huge invasion by the Persian Empire, by Athens, the most powerful member of the alliance.
We see that as well in some of the internal conflicts I mentioned. German banks in particular benefited from the austerity measures mentioned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:53PM (1 child)
I think you're using nonstandard nomenclature here. It doesn't help that in English, federation and confederation are antonyms.
--
Federation - group of states that cede some-to-much power for a central authority to make decisions for them. May also include states where there isn't even really "state-level" (as we understand them in the US; most other countries call them provinces etc.), but *only* a federal government (e.g. France).
Confederation - group of states that mostly continue doing their own thing, while there is a central authority that handles diplomacy and war, and a couple other things as necessary (see also Switzerland).
--
Federation tends to be more efficient, while confederation emphasizes rights more (of the province, of the individual). Recall in the civil war, the south was the Confederate States of America.
Not really sure whether they're using the term "The Federation" correctly in Star Trek.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:59PM
Or in a more succinct statement:
- https://www.diffen.com/difference/Confederation_vs_Federation [diffen.com]
The United Kingdom is being allowed to secede from the the EU; the southern states in the U.S. Civil War definitely were not.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:16AM
What would be the point aside from someone thinking they could profit from it? There certainly is no moral imperative to lend money to Greece, especially when one can't expect them to pay back without stressing their society a great deal.
And what would be the problem with that? Make poor decisions, get poor outcomes. Even if Greece never fixes itself, it's not a problem for anyone else who wasn't foolish enough to lend them a lot of money.
Certainly. Because it's all Argentina's problem. And no one forces them to borrow money at such rates.
It's peculiar that you're even discussing the borrowing of money as if it were a thing that countries need.
Depends who you are in the US and Europe. Business is obviously doing fine by the arrangement.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:44PM (4 children)
Google, Facebook, and Twitter are quickly becoming integrated with the CIA. Now that the UK is no longer (well, won't be much longer) in the EU, maybe the EU wants the Five Eyes completely gone.
It amazes me how quickly the illusion of an international space shatters. The internet as we know it is probably something the ruling class was content to humor for a time, but now that it's proven to be a tool of working class organization, it won't last much longer. Might wind up with Five Eyes net, BRICS net, EU net, and Sharia net. Africa maybe carved up among those. I also just wanted to say "Sharia net." Those countries will probably use BRICS net. Maybe FidoNet will come back for us technical types as a way of getting information between networks.
Strictly illegal of course. Good people only use the official forums provided by the state. Good people only have needs like finding a babysitter or selling some old furniture or a car, and certainly most people don't have any reason to communicate with people too far away from where they live, certainly not farther than a few hours' drive. Academics may have a need, but we'll keep them under a tight watch to make sure no wrongthink gets through.
I used to think the future was shiny and exciting. It was too good to be true. I see now that things only ever will get worse as time goes on. Probably 1,500 years or so until things might start getting better again. However, It may be more likely that intelligence is overrated from an evolutionary standpoint and in maybe as little as 20,000 years humans will lose the recently acquired traits that have enabled them to think of empire-building. Back to a life of making stone tools, no more science, no more engineering. Live in a tribe of 100 to 200 or so. Maybe it's better that way.
No worker's paradise. No anarcho-capitalist utopia. No starfaring civilization. Just the obvious reason for the Fermi paradox.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:05AM
It's amazing how the few determined people at CIA manages to upset a whole world, isn't it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 13 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)
Nah, I don't want that. Much easier and better to hang the ruling class. Next Wednesday works great for me. How about you guys?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @09:30AM (1 child)
It is like saying "let's remove the surface of the sea" - if we could do it, the layer beneath would become a new surface, virtually indistinguishable from the old one.
(Score: 1) by MindEscapes on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:41PM
Well, at least we would feel like something had been done....for awhile.
Actually, things would break down into chaos, life would be very crappy for awhile until something new managed to emerge and take hold. Could be better, could be worse...ready to roll the dice?
Need a break? mindescapes.net may be for you!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:01PM
Is that really true?
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:11PM (1 child)
More likely:
5) Google [flicks switch]: Ok, the entire EU is now blacklisted
6) Lawmakers: "Whoops."
7) Massive outcry from European citizens (which doesn't show up anywhere, because nobody is allowed to link to any of it)
8) Lawmakers who pushed this law leave politics for well-paying private industry jobs [see 1)]
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:49PM
No, see, if you blacklist a quarter of your market, you both lose and people will blame the side that forced it to happen, not the side that provoked the side that forced it to happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:18AM
No, they will just make a form where the content creator can allow their site a royalty-free license. And then Google can then remove them from the ban list for the crawler. Or add them as exception.
No need to pay licensing fees if the two parties agree on what to do. And if they need to pay a fee regardless, then Google can require the news site to pay the fee for them as part of the service to add them back into the index.