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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: 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!"