SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 tangomargarine on Thursday September 13 2018, @07:23PM (9 children)
Maybe not impossible, but a waste of time and money. This is one of those wars that never ends.
The problem is stupid, their proposed solution is stupid, and their reasoning behind the proposed solution is stupid. It's Sturgeon's Law all the way down.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:08PM (8 children)
Can you clarify why you think this is a stupid problem?
As far as I can tell -- and Jaron Lanier writes [wikipedia.org] eloquently about -- in the crux this is about people's livelihoods, and an abominable concentration of power in the hands of a few megacorps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:17PM (3 children)
Your desire to make money does not override other people's rights. All this will succeed in doing is making many companies fearful of allowing user-submitted content, creating a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Enforcing copyright is far less important than preventing that from happening.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday September 13 2018, @09:01PM (2 children)
I desire to make money by producing something unique. Why should other people have a right on using my creation without giving me something in exchange for the effort?
Also, remember the time before Napster? With this thing called home sites, and blogs? Why on earth should there be a company (for chrissakes!) between me and my freedom of speech? How can I express myself by copying something somebody else has made??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @11:56PM
one can argue that "works" that can be used as-is can be covered by a usage right.
however everything digital in its pure form is totally uses for human sensory consumption.
for digital information to be consumable or recognizable alot of tfansformation needz to happen before it is a movie picture or music.
thus one can interpret this copyright law for the internet as crazy ban on certain forms of mathematics (that transform ones and zeros) into human sensory compatibility.
to end: the digital "work" is not directly accesible to humans as-is.
the eu copy laws shos similary to stanxardizing "pi" to "3'.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:33AM
Conversely, why should you have a right to mess up society to further your interests?
If you are producing something "unique" as you claimed above, then you've already answered the question. Everything is derived and copied to some degree from older works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:21PM (1 child)
Also, that nutjob you linked to is literally arguing that the "open source" movement can't create anything new or innovative, and that the iPhone was innovative. The iPhone is a prison that does not respect users' freedoms; it is proprietary and locked-down. This is a person who is attacking freedom and promoting proprietary black boxes. How is that good for society?
Not sure why you linked to it, given that it's just illogical flamebait.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:54PM
Oh young'un!
Start here [smithsonianmag.com], and here [edge.org].
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 13 2018, @09:10PM (1 child)
If the *IAA weren't such greedy assholes, they'd just pay their artists decently instead of keeping 80% or 97% or whatever it is of the money the industry makes, and then these artists wouldn't care nearly as much about what royalties they can scrape out of the system (their kids would still care, but lazy, greedy heirs is a separate problem).
I really don't understand their logic at all on this one, apart from "Google is linking to our stuff and somehow we want Google's money. Because." Google listing you in their search results can really only be good for your exposure.
If you have a paywall on your site, then Google shouldn't index your stuff. But there are people who want to have their cake and eat it too, so they spoof their pages so Google's bots index the page but when you click the link it throws the paywall in your face. They can fuck right off.
Again, more greedy assholes being greedy. People sharing a photo of football player Joe McBeef online in memes hurts who, exactly? Didn't we used to have a parody exception under copyright rules?
Probably also traces back somewhat to "sharing these videos online is the only way to get them because you don't sell them anywhere." And again, doesn't it help the sportsball networks if more people are talking about their product? Is it really going to help your viewership if you release the game on DVD 8 months later and sue everybody who uploads clips of it in the meantime?
How many movies have been made where the central message is "you can't kill an idea", again? The mere continued existence of flat-earthers proves it true.
--
So in conclusion, half of these "problems" amount to "We're making $60 million a year and want to be making $65 million."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday September 14 2018, @03:40PM
That's $0.0006 per song.
The statutory rate [freeadvice.com] for US copyright, for a single song, was $0.091 until 2006.