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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: 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!