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posted by cmn32480 on Friday June 22 2018, @12:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the hyperlink-taxation dept.

A European parliament committee has voted in favour of the Copyright Directive, leaving tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon in the lurch over publication rights.

The directive will force online publications to pay a portion of their revenues to publishers, and take on full responsibility for any copyright infringement on the internet.

As a result, any service that allows users to post text, sound, or video for public consumption must also implement an automatic filter to scan for similarities to known copyrighted works, censoring those that match.

The vote passed by the legal affairs committee is likely to be taken as the political body's official line during further EU negotiations next month, unless a new vote is forced by lawmakers appealing the decision.

Julia Reda has more details of the vote


Original Submission

Related Stories

What Can the Copyright Directive Vote Tell Us About the State of Digital Rights? 17 comments

Andres Guadamuz has written a blog post analyzing why last Thursday's vote by the JURI Committee to reject fast-tracking the proposal concerning "harmonization" of copyright in the EU went as it did. The rejection of fast-tracking means that the issue will still come up for a general vote in parliament in September but the interesting part is that for the first time in Europe a wide coalition has managed to defeat powerful media lobbies, at least for now. He goes into how this was possible and what needs to happen in September.

The main result of this change from a political standpoint is that now we have two lobbying sides in the debate, which makes all the difference when it comes to this type of legislation. In the past, policymakers could ignore experts and digital rights advocates because they never had the potential to reach them, letters and articles by academics were not taken into account, or given lip service during some obscure committee discussion just to be hidden away. Tech giants such as Google have provided lobbying access in Brussels, which has at least levelled the playing field when it comes to presenting evidence to legislators.

Earlier on SN:
The EU's Dodgy Article 13 Copyright Directive has Been Rejected (2018)
EU Committee Approves Controversial Copyright Directive (2018)
Censorship Machines Are Coming: It’s Time for the Free Software Community to Use its Political Clout (2018)
Mulled EU Copyright Shakeup Will Turn Us Into Robo-Censors (2018)
EU Study Finds Even Publishers Oppose the "Link Tax" (2017)


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:02AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:02AM (#696503)

    SN and similar sites will likely have to be blocked in Europe if this bull (typo but I'm keeping it) passes parliament.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:03AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:03AM (#696505)

      Don't worry, the US and other nations will "harmonize" their copyright rules with Europe's.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:43AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:43AM (#696559)

        Don't worry, the US and other nations will "harmonize" their copyright rules with Europe's

        Don't you mean the US will slap a tarrif on any post trying to get into the US from Europe?

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 22 2018, @02:33AM (2 children)

      They're welcome to block us if they like. I'm not typing one extra character to accommodate this nonsense though.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:02AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:02AM (#696504)

    Only then can we render the issue moot and end this stupid argument.

    Sure wish that what goes in the EU would stay in the EU, but the US will soon impose the same thing.

    If we kill the ISP then anybody can serve what they want without breaking any stupid terms of service that only serve to protect the *tech giants*

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:07AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:07AM (#696506)

      If they thought for one second this would survive a first amendment challenge, it would already be here. You won't be seeing something like this in the US anytime soon. Now something else entirely that is also bad, sure but not this.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:14AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:14AM (#696509)

        Meh. The US government violates the Constitution all the time, and often with approval from our treacherous courts. For example, obscenity laws are a blatant violation of the first amendment, and yet the courts invented the Miller Test out of thin air to justify them. The courts also have an insanely expansive view of the commerce clause to justify the federal drug war and other overreaches. Sometimes the courts make correct rulings, but I just never know what nonsense they're going to approve of next.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:55AM (#696627)

          Prevert! You probably work for one of the child prisons detaining children for the Trump pedophile conspiracy in the unused Walmarts!

          Oh my god, the Cosmic Ping-pong Pizza thing was pure projection! And who would you expect to be pedophiles if not Steve Bannon, Steven Miller, Steve Stevenson, and Steve, the ICE agent in charge of separating children from their families, because, you know, wink wink, the law requires it! OMG!

  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday June 22 2018, @01:30AM (4 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday June 22 2018, @01:30AM (#696516)

    Somewhere someone is going to make a lot of money selling automatic copyright filters. And they bribed the right people.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:47AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:47AM (#696561)

      ********* ******* ** ***** ** **** * *** ** ***** ******* ********* ********* *******. *** **** ****** *** ***** ******.

      That's odd, I only see a bunch of asterisks.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:28AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:28AM (#696621)

        hunter2hu hunter2 hu hunte hu hunt h hun hu hunte hunter2 hunter2hu hunter2hu hunter2. hun hunt hunter hun hunte hunter.

        What does it mean?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:42AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:42AM (#696639)

          helter skelter... face melter...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:14AM (#696633)

        My god, it's full of stars!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:31AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:31AM (#696518)

    Small ones can't pay for the overhead of scanning. And based in what happened with Google News in Spain, it could mean a bigger massacre, hitting everyone.

    For those that still didn't hear about it, Spanish newspapers wanted to be paid for the links & quotes in Google News so they pushed for a law to force aggregators to pay everyone (no exceptions)... and Google just dropped the service as response when the law took effect (newspaper articles still appear via plain search, but mixed with other things... and Google Search has become rather crappy in recent years anyhow). Small news sites that were getting traffic via GN are in worst situation now (small win for handful of big media corps, less competition). In Germany big publishers also wanted money for traffic from search links... and Google stopped indexing them until they asked to be linked again because traffic was going down.

    The more time passes, the more I believe it's all a game of lobbies, in which they don't care if the full place is burnt down to the ground mid term (some years, not long term), as long as current quarter they get one extra cent over the rest. Lack of action about human trafficking (aka migrants in PC mass media), diesel engines still being developed, slow push toward renewables (sometimes with artificial obstacles added)... retarded EU corps meet useful idiots in bureaucracy. We didn't learn anything from centuries of wars.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:41AM (#696522)

      Indeed. This is the greatest gift the EU could ever hope to give the Silicon Valley giants. This will deliver their domestic market to Google et al with wrapped in a little bow cementing dominance by giant US corps. for as long as this law exists assuming it ultimately passes. The little guys can't compete as they don't have access to the scale and the technology Google has. Besides, if Google doesn't get it right, they break out the lawyers, pay a fine and continue on their merry way. As far as the payments from publishers, Google just stops listing them and they wither away. Or even worse, local-interest EU content gets hosted on servers outside of the EU and they get listed by Google as the "news" and the EU newspapers get nothing. The stupidity is unbelievable.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday June 22 2018, @06:26PM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Friday June 22 2018, @06:26PM (#696875) Homepage

      This is just biting the hand that feeds them. Indexers, linkers, and even piracy is just free advertising. If you're demanding free advertisers pay you for the privilege or try to ban them outright, you have zero business sense and deserve to go out of business. If you're a small business owner with business sense, but got fucked by big corps pushing the stupid new laws, welcome to capitalism, enjoy your stay.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:45AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @01:45AM (#696524)

    I refuse. SN should also. Fuck literally everything about this. Automated filters cannot and will never be able to handle fair use. The copyright landscape is a fucking nightmare, with different things in the public domain in different countries.

    As far as I know, SN is not based in Europe. Fuck them.

    Anyone reading in the EU: Start making noise. Send daily messages to your MP.

    The only good that could come out of this is an international discussion about copyright. And its sole purpose: to enrich the PUBLIC DOMAIN. You know, that store of vibrant and relevant cultural works we can all freely access and remix (which hasn't had anything added to it for fucking generations, since Steamboat Willie)? And how, back when copyright started when the printing press was a novel idea, it was 14 years in length with a single renewal. Today that should be 5 max, maybe with one renewal, not life plus anything or 70-100 years.

    Pull out of all international copyright agreements (as they are unconstitutional), and set copyright to what it actually should be.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 22 2018, @02:37AM

      SN is not based in Europe. Fuck them.

      My sentiments exactly.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:19AM (#696596)

      I believe this will happen only if a good sized majority of us know exactly who is behind all this, and make it damn clear they will no longer spend any time as a public representative if they don't fix this mess.

      I know good and well my Congressmen are mixed up in this, and they are certainly not representing *me*. Their only purpose seems to be a deflection shield for getting corporate wish lists codified into statutory law. I find it extremely frustrating that we do not organize likewise, and overthrow the R&D apple cart, and vote some people into power that are accountable to the people who voted them in.

      But for now, we still seem to be too influenced by the microphone-men, the mailers, and the press... and who controls those? We've gotta stop giving those corporate buffoons the time of day.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:34PM (#696785)

      yep. screw these @#$%#@$%^. site operators in the eu should be responding with overwhelming force. if these stupid weasels get this filter enforced how long would it be before they filter everything else they don't like. i'm sure "hate speech" like "copyright lawyers are parasites" would be on the chopping block. why are they so scared of ideas? the internet is not for keeping people dumb and they hate that. you idiots can't stop shit but i hope you die for trying.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:08AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:08AM (#696537)

    The "content cartels" are going to kill the internet before this is over. They have already wounded it badly.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:55PM (#696762)

      The problem is the bullies, corporations and the police.

      We planted a garden. A wonderful rose garden. And there were people stopping to look at it and say "hey, that's neat!" and we, the good natured fools we are, thought it would be great to open our garden to the public, so they can come in and enjoy it. And hey, who knows, maybe some of them might want to plant a few roses themselves? We can only benefit from it, right?

      So we let them in, even showed them how to plant roses. And while they were not really too good gardeners, we handed them a few tools to make the work easier for them. And some of them (ok, a handful of them) actually went and built something nice. Most just wandered about and smelled a few roses. We even built them a few paths they could wander on so they don't accidentally stumble upon that field we built that camo net over, ya know, with our "special spices".

      A few came in and trampled all over the roses. We shrugged and grabbed them and threw them out, because we not only know how to plant roses, we also know how to use their thorns to smack those bullies about and give them a wedgie on their way out. We build this garden after all, and we know every plant and every bush here, you can't hide from us! Well, ok, I admit, some of us thought it's fun to make fools out of the idiots that have no idea how to plant roses and snuck into their gardens when they weren't looking (and too stupid to close the door so people can only look but not touch), dyed their roses pink and blue polkadotted, mostly for fun and to ridicule them. It was good natured fun, hey, we did that to each other too and we really had a good laugh!

      One cardinal mistake we made is that we built a few paths to the camo net patches, too, because, hey, they're nice folks and wanna have some of the good stuff too, what's the harm in giving them some? Well, there's not really a problem with that, but when the bullies trampled across our fields, they also trampled through the fields of those that can't defend themselves, and these guys started to call for the police. And they eventually stumbled towards our camo net patches and, well, erh... well, they decided that it's a problem, ya know? If we hadn't built paths to them, only we would have found our way to those "special places", through the hedges and the overgrown paths that need machetes to get to. Few policemen had those machetes...

      Also along came the corporations who found out that people love to wander in our nice garden and started to built there too. At first, we didn't bother to worry. Like the native americans didn't worry when the first whities came along, we let them settle in our garden. Until suddenly we were told that we can't go to a few places of our garden anymore because that's now off limits. In our own garden! Not to mention that they were crying bloody murder if you went and polkadotted their roses!

      And now we're sitting here, in our ever shrinking corner of our once wonderful garden, trampled down by the masses, broken up into lots by corporations with a policemen at every corner making sure you don't plant where you're not supposed to, and of course that you don't try to camo net anything.

      If there's any lesson to learn, than that we should not let the masses in next time we build a garden. The seeds will be more expensive, granted, but at least we can grow what we want and keep the harvest.

  • (Score: 2) by Booga1 on Friday June 22 2018, @02:38AM (3 children)

    by Booga1 (6333) on Friday June 22 2018, @02:38AM (#696553)

    How similar does it need to be before you have to censor it?
    How many lines in lyrics borrow from and reference other works? Do you block the oldest because it's out of copyright, but "infringes" on the new work that's still protected?
    Do you just block all of it because you can't possibly afford all the fines from any of it in case the courts disagree with your choice?

    Just take the easy way out and just block the EU...

    • (Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday June 22 2018, @04:13AM (2 children)

      by Spamalope (5233) on Friday June 22 2018, @04:13AM (#696586) Homepage

      If a big label artist 'samples' my work, does my work get blocked? This is going to be something where only the media cartels get protection isn't it?

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Booga1 on Friday June 22 2018, @05:45AM (1 child)

        by Booga1 (6333) on Friday June 22 2018, @05:45AM (#696601)

        It's worse than that. I know someone who had their Youtube video taken down because the one piece of music they use hit their content filter.
        The thing was, he had permission for it, direct from the artist. It didn't matter. The artist had posted the work on three different sites with slightly different terms of use, and one of them had registered the piece with Youtube's content filter.
        Because they didn't license it directly through that particular outlet, he couldn't use it at all, despite being able to prove he had the rights to use it. Youtube/Google doesn't care. No human looks at this stuff. It's almost all automatic and irreversible.
        He got the video back online by changing to some other music from another artist, but I can't help but think this is the worst result possible. The video maker is harmed. The musician is harmed. Youtube is harmed. There's no benefit at all.

        • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday June 22 2018, @01:13PM

          by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Friday June 22 2018, @01:13PM (#696726)

          Interesting thought... to oversimplify a bit, you can summarize a small time musician has having basically two choices:
          1. No rights control at all, anyone can use it for anything = the artist has no control over it
          2. Sign rights control over to various automated systems and processes, they control everything = the artist has no control over it

          You could try to manually control things, whether directly or through people you delegate, and thus have actual control - but the time and costs are probably prohibitive for a small timer.

  • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday June 22 2018, @02:56AM

    by Mykl (1112) on Friday June 22 2018, @02:56AM (#696566)

    After all, they'll need to allow for fair use surely?

    Oh silly me, I forgot nobody paid anyone to ensure that's protected.

    (Seriously though, it would be pretty easy to code something so that 'infringing content' must be more than a certain period e.g. 10 seconds and more than a certain percentage e.g. 10% to trigger a flag. This would protect movie reviews, fair use sampling etc)

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:39AM (#696599)

    I wonder how much it cost copyright mafia to bribe all those in favor.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:58AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @05:58AM (#696605)

    Locate your servers in the UK after Brexit, or in another nearby country not in the EU. For low latency content delivery.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:02AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @08:02AM (#696629)

      There will be no servers in the UK after Brexit. They will be controlled by the NSA, and the Swedish "Assange-fucking-detection" special police force. No EU required, the Brits can be totally fucked all by themselves. Fucking Brits!

      • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 22 2018, @08:47AM (1 child)

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday June 22 2018, @08:47AM (#696643)

        > No EU required, the Brits can be totally fucked all by themselves. Fucking Brits!

        Just to clarify, are the Brits active or passive in aforementioned buggery? Your post was ambiguous.

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 22 2018, @07:15PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @07:15PM (#696898) Journal

          Both. And they don't get to choose with who.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 22 2018, @01:13PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday June 22 2018, @01:13PM (#696725) Journal

    This is just what Lawrence Lessig was complaining about, that through corruption, idiotic copyright bills that are opposed by over 80% of the public, are massively unfair, and unworkable and unenforceable with anything close to evenhandedness, are enacted into law anyway. This will be just another stick in the selective enforcement basket.

    I could hope that it's the final straw that leads to a massive backlash, but no. Piracy has been underground for decades, and will merely stay underground.

    Instead, what often happens in the US is that lawmakers pass some stupid law as a sop to their donors and supporters, knowing full well that it is unconstitutional and will be shot down the first time it is challenged in court. In fact, I shouldn't be surprised if they count on that happening. Allows them to tell their donors, "well, we tried, it's your fault you didn't write a better law". And the voters get treated to a blamefest starring the judges and courts, and the lawyers of the ACLU, as the evildoers who wrecked their moral crusade. See that all the time with anti-porn and anti-abortion legislation.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 22 2018, @03:01PM (1 child)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday June 22 2018, @03:01PM (#696768)

    But come on.

    A European parliament committee has voted in favour of the Copyright Directive, leaving tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon in the lurch over publication rights. The directive will force online publications to pay a portion of their revenues to publishers, and take on full responsibility for any copyright infringement on the internet.

    The directive will force online publications to pay a portion of their revenues to publishers, and take on full responsibility for any copyright infringement on the internet.

    As a result, any service that allows users to post text, sound, or video for public consumption must also implement an automatic filter to scan for similarities to known copyrighted works, censoring those that match.

    The vote passed by the legal affairs committee is likely to be taken as the political body's official line during further EU negotiations next month, unless a new vote is forced by lawmakers appealing the decision.

    --
    "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, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday June 22 2018, @03:59PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday June 22 2018, @03:59PM (#696789) Journal

      Hmmm … but how can you implement a comparison to copyrighted stuff if you have no access to copyrighted stuff? Obviously everyone provide such a service must be granted access to the copyrighted stuff, in order to write a filter for it, right? And since anybody can provide such a service … :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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