MEP Julia Reda has decided to try to lift the lid on the secretive copyright negotiations between the EU Parliament and the EU Council. These negotiations started Tuesday. She goes into detail on the implications of the upload filter, "link tax", and sports ban for individuals and society in general. She takes a close look at the similarities and differences between the current positions of the Council and Parliament and breaks down what the these positions mean.
Today, the first “Trilogue” meeting is held on the EU copyright reform law infamous for its “link tax” and upload filter provisions.
In this series of closed-door meetings, the European Parliament and the Council (representing the member state governments) hammer out a final text acceptable to both institutions. It’s the last chance to make changes before the Directive gets adopted. Meetings are currently scheduled until Christmas, although whether the process will be concluded by then is up in the air.
In light of the massive public attention, I’ve decided to provide some transparency to this normally opaque process. [...]
Related Stories
The Creative Commons, the international non-profit devoted to expanding the range of creative works available legally, summarizes how the EU's proposed link tax would still harm Creative Commons licensors. The proposed Copyright Directive legislation entered the final rounds of negotiation back in September, retaining the problematic articles that raised hackles earlier this year, notably articles 11, 12, and 13. The Creative Commons discusses the current stat of article 11, known informally as the link tax.
Article 11 is ill-suited to address the challenges in supporting quality journalism, and it will further decrease competition and innovation in news delivery. Spain and Germany have already experimented with similar versions of this rule, and neither resulted in increased revenues for publishers. Instead, it likely decreased the visibility (and by extension, revenues) of published content—exactly the opposite of what was intended. Just last week a coalition of small- and medium-sized publishers sent a letter to the trilogue negotiators outlining how they will be harmed if Article 11 is adopted.
Not only is a link tax bad for business, it would undermine the intention of authors who wish to share without additional strings attached, such as creators who want to share works under open licenses. This could be especially harmful to Creative Commons licensors if it means that remuneration must be granted notwithstanding the terms of the CC license. This interpretation is not far-flung. As IGEL wrote last week, [...]
Previously on SN:
Secretive EU Copyright Negotiations Started Tuesday: Here's Where We Stand
EU Copyright Directive Passes; "Terrorist Content" Regulation Proposed; Astroturfing?
How The EU May Be About To Kill The Public Domain: Copyright Filters Takedown Beethoven
European Copyright Law Isn't Great. It Could Soon Get a Lot Worse
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:42PM (7 children)
I glanced at the whole linked article and it seems to be a lot of effort over dying media.
Social media is at or just past peak, so who cares about upload filters if none of the industry is more alive than MySpace is today.
News is dead. Especially old fashioned legacy models. Nothing left but paid propaganda. Give me one reason to care if buzzfeed disappears?
Pro sportsball is explicitly boomer in the USA and frankly they're dying off along with sportsball.
To quote James T Kirk when kronos's moon exploded, "let them die". Euthanasia for the social media industry, old fashioned news, and legacy sportsball.
Does she have any comments on stuff relevant to people of Gen-X age and younger?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:08PM (2 children)
Not to give too much credence to a media industry that's full of totally avoidable shammery, but isn't a major part of what investigative journalism so dead because of the difficulty cultivating a paying audience in the internet era?
Opinion is cheap, and gets enough clicks to pay for itself. Real news isn't and doesn't. And thus a contempt for "the news" exacerbates all the problems that makes you so contemptuous in the first place?
I wish there was a third choice other than government controlled, which rapidly devolves to state propoganda, and for profit, which has already devolved into almost pure telling people what they want to hear, as a method for producing information about world events.
(Score: 1) by Mainframe Bloke on Thursday October 04 2018, @12:00AM (1 child)
In spite of all its faults, the ABC here in Oz is still a trusted source: witness the public display of anger at the recent turmoil, including some claims of government interference up to the point of "demanding" the firing troublesome journalists, that were roundly condemned. Of course, it has faults as I say, but I'd rather it than Pravda, the Voice Of America, or CNN/Fox/whatever.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 04 2018, @12:29AM
The most respected news source here in New Zealand, is Radio NZ, funded by taxpayers.
They're so good in fact that the two private news networks demanded (and got) access to their stories at a price of almost free. Kind of like Reuters, but using taxpayer's money to prop up two horribly managed private companies.
I would like to say the same for the state owned TVNZ but I can't, because that is, and always has been horribly mismanaged also.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:37PM (2 children)
You further enhance your position as "local nutter".
Who cares about upload filters? News is dead? Various sportsballs dead?
Do you pay any attention to reality? Or do you just form your opinions based on internet discussions amongst angry trolls? The best I can grant you is that "sportsballs" are diminishing but they are hardly dying out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:28PM
Is that VLM, the EU or both?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:38AM
Clearly you agree with me, having provided no factual data nor google-able leads to follow up upon, but graphs of average age of consumers of those legacy products is ... dismal to say the least. Those products are dying. Weird legal wrangling is unlikely to help, and by the time the current legal dust settles those legacy products will be about as relevant to daily life as reforming telegram delivery in 1995.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:44AM
Sports were dieing in America, that's so true. No more. I'm making them great again. Starting with our NFL. Fans were staying away in DROVES. Because of disrespect for Flag, Anthem & Country. I said, force the players to stand for Anthem. With a BIG penalty. They did National Anthem Policy, the fans love it.
And Super Bowl. Canada, they've been showing our Super Bowl -- with our commercials. With the American commercials that nobody in Canada understands. The stations wanted to put in Canadian ads. In the Canadian language. And make some money. Their government told them "no." Well, I fixed that. New Trade Agreement, I call it my United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. USMCA. And it says, you treat Super Bowl the same as any other program -- or BETTER. And Roger Goodell thanked me for my "LEADERSHIP & DETERMINATION." You're welcome, Roger!!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:18PM (2 children)
ANYTIME government has secret negotiations that affect regulations and policies, especially concerning our speech and expressions, they have abjectly failed.
I can't help but remember The Animal Farm and how "those who walked on two legs" became privileged. That's what this is, the ruling and political class in Europe discussing the future affairs of regular people, while preventing regular people from knowing what is going on, or ensuring representation.
Governments that have secret negotiations regarding legislation entirely deserve outright revolution. It may be acceptable to keep military secrets (to be later disclosed), and the judicial sections of government deal with citizen's privacy, but it is never going to be acceptable for the legislative branches of our government to meet or act in secret.
Never.
That's where are. Non-representational governments governing in secret.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @01:18AM
Calling EU a government is totally disengenous towards governments aroudn the world who work very hard to maitain high level of corruption under the radar of their citizenry.
EU is maniacally evil, with no effort to hide it because they are not accountable to anyone. All it will accomplish during it's historically brief existance is prop up few Central/Easter Euro countries as they develop, and then it will be dealt a lethal blow by said benefactors once they think they can come collect on their "investment."
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday October 05 2018, @09:42AM
This is not government holding "secret" negotiations. This is a negotiation between three parties, the European Parliament (directly elected members) and the Council of Ministers (elected Ministers of the different member countries), facilitated by the Commission, which is the administrative arm of the EU. There's nothing secret about it: they're just informal meetings to hammer out a modified proposal for voting upon by both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
In short, there are no secrets here: the result of these informal meetings will be formally publicized and voted upon.
The way Ms Reda writes is contentious -- so contentious, in fact, that she felt obligated herself to publicize (a) the dates of those so-called 'secret' meetings, (b) the fact that the EU curia explicitly states [europa.eu] that the 'secret' documents from these meetings are, in fact, public material, and (c) even the time the modified proposal will be voted upon, again (linky [juliareda.eu]).
The only thing that is "closed door" about these meetings is that, in fact, the door of the meeting room is closed -- though even that, in fact, may not always be true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:27AM
laws dont make people better but people can make better laws...or not.