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posted by martyb on Friday January 11 2019, @04:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the triskaidekaphobia? dept.

MEP [Member of European Parliament] Julia Reda provides an update on the EU Copyright Directive which is in the final drafting stages. The whole text will be finalized January 21st but the infamous Article 13 is already set and Internet platforms will be made directly liable for any copyright infringements their users commit, should the final text be voted in.

What remains in the drafting stage in regards to Article 13 is to decide exactly which lengths will platforms need to go to and just how much they will need to restrict our ability to post and share content online in order to avoid or limit their liability.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:21PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:21PM (#785091)

    I'm European and if that's what it takes, i hope all and every platform shuts down all forums and upload capabilities. Then all there is to do is to watch and wait.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:24PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:24PM (#785093)

      ...I mean shut down from EU members of course.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 11 2019, @04:31PM (5 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday January 11 2019, @04:31PM (#785095) Homepage Journal

        I think we'll probably just ignore it here. I'm not aware of any treaties that would require us to follow that law even if we're required to honor EU copyrights. If they want to blackhole our site on their end, that's fine, but I for one am not going to put any effort into forwarding the cause of idiocy unless I have no other choice.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:34PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:34PM (#785098)

          But i could copy/paste subtitles here! OOOOoooooo

        • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @07:37PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @07:37PM (#785183)

          I've read your political posts. You freely put effort into forwarding the cause of idiocy on a regular basis.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @07:11AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @07:11AM (#785425)

          But then beware of travelling anywhere in EU.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:33PM (#785097)

      all forums and upload capabilities

      Why only online? Surely if someone grabs a portable laser projector and projects copyright material onto the walls of an EU building, the EU would be liable for the copyright infringement? Surely a graffiti artist writing a paragraph of a copyright literary work onto the walls of the EU parliament should result in legal action against the EU?

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 11 2019, @04:34PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 11 2019, @04:34PM (#785099) Journal

      You're going to run into the problem that every union runs into.

      Scabs. Fuckers who realize they can make more money by crossing the digital picket line.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:07PM (#785244)

      And that is the main objective - to make Internet passive like a TV. Most companies are OK with this, as people will still come for ads, will have no way to answer or criticize it, and there will be no possibility for smaller players getting own Internet place.
      And I repeat: This noise about Article 13 is just a squeak of smaller pigs being put away from food by bigger pigs. There was time for opposing when Internet providers shut in-plan hosting to force users to give their licensing - of their articles, designs, photos etc. - to big players. Now it's a fight who will steal more, and general level of content put to modern Net looks like there's not much more to steal.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:52PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @04:52PM (#785110)

    Serious question. I run a small website as a hobby. In view of this I am faced with a choice: either shut down user comments, or block all of Europe. I prefer the 2nd option. So, what is a free reliable source for GEOIP (both IPv4 and IPv6) information sufficient to block all of Europe from seeing anything other than a "sorry, your government doesn't want you to see this website" page?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:05PM (#785125)

      Not all of Europe, just EU countries

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday January 11 2019, @06:17PM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday January 11 2019, @06:17PM (#785155)

      TFA indicates that this does not apply to not-for-profits.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday January 11 2019, @06:41PM (7 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Friday January 11 2019, @06:41PM (#785163) Journal

      I am faced with a choice: either shut down user comments, or block all of Europe.

      I can think of some other options.

      You could filter all links out in comments; and then moderate actively to prevent copypasta of text into the comments.

      You could, I suppose, trigger this filter with IPs that are not whitelisted as US IPs. Or blacklisted as EU IPs. Though I'm not sure where you'd get the info in such a way as to keep it updated.

      You could also just actively moderate and edit problems out, if your site is as small as you indicate. Only fairly busy sites actually have a somewhat good excuse that active moderation is too hard, IMHO. Other than "I'm just lazy."

      --
      A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single schlep

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Friday January 11 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)

        by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Friday January 11 2019, @08:12PM (#785200)

        Whitelisting works better if you must choose between them. You can download lists for free from here: http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/ [ipdeny.com]

        The lists are not, in my experience, perfectly accurate. You will need to make sure you are syncing your local copy on a regular basis as IPs shift around a fair bit. Once you start getting into the weedy details of what country maps to each IP you will also realize it's total insanity. An IP can be associated with RIPE in the Netherlands, registered to a company in Denmark, assigned to a client in Belgium, and functions as a proxy for a user from France.

        There's other, better sources around, but they are more expensive, and not so much better that I bother. IPDENY is good enough for most things.

        It's not hard to set up though, and you can make an argument you took what measures you could afford to limit potential problems ahead of time, without resorting to draconian methods like banning all users.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @11:32AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @11:32AM (#785461)

          What about VPN users?

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 11 2019, @11:14PM (4 children)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday January 11 2019, @11:14PM (#785285) Journal

        I hope you're not defending this crap! Or maybe I was fished in?

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:28AM (3 children)

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:28AM (#785328) Journal

          I hope you're not defending this crap

          No, definitely not. I'm more suggesting a way to neuter the EU citizens if this passes, and from then on until/if they rein in their idiot masters.

          But I am for protecting the web site owners. If you are a web site owner, why would you let some random citizen put you at risk?

          Put the blame on the lawmakers (I'll put that on every page, if this comes to pass); put the onus for a fix on the people they are screwing out of free-ish speech. In at least nominally democratic countries, the citizens can apply pressure. And they should. And this will incline them to.

          Don't think it can't happen here, either. Plenty of government repression of free speech already going on in the good 'ol 1st-amendment-having USA.

          --
          Stupidity is actually a superpower. We learn this when
          we repeatedly fail to defeat it with intelligence.

          • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:22AM (2 children)

            by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:22AM (#785342) Journal

            Put the blame on the lawmakers

            Lawmakers don't care about people that don't vote for them. We have to go after the people that do. A bit more difficult maybe, but you have to go to the source.

            There is no hope for internet freedom while we are dependent on registrars and ISPs. They are the defacto government enforcers. Our only hope is a long way off, but not impossible.

            --
            La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
            • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:08PM (1 child)

              by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday January 12 2019, @03:08PM (#785527) Journal

              There is no hope for internet freedom while we are dependent on registrars and ISPs. They are the defacto government enforcers. Our only hope is a long way off, but not impossible.

              The reality of a WAN — mesh or otherwise — is that you will always have dependencies, and these can always potentially turn, or be turned, into enforcers.

              The common conception of a "right", as far as "freedom" goes, is confused. No philosophically-derived right to act actually exists in fact without power backing it up. The other side of that coin is that your rights and freedoms will always be at the mercy of any service required to implement them, and those who control those services.

              So in the end, if the powers-that-be won't back up your right, then all you have is the philosophical concept of it, not the actuality of it — which has considerably less value.

              --
              Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse.

              • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 14 2019, @10:19PM

                by fustakrakich (6150) on Monday January 14 2019, @10:19PM (#786661) Journal

                No philosophically-derived right to act actually exists in fact without power backing it up.

                I fully understand that *might makes right* in this context. We are on our own. Too bad people don't want to see that elephant...

                But for connections to the network, there is also great safety in numbers (of connections), the more the merrier, and trust won't really have to be an issue, though some is always needed. Presently the ISP is your single point of failure, more powerful than a boat anchor. This is the damage the internet has to route around. And multicasting, gotta have multicasting.

                --
                La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Friday January 11 2019, @04:52PM (5 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday January 11 2019, @04:52PM (#785112)
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:05PM (#785124)

      I knew The Russians were going to be involved at some point.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:45PM (#785144)

      If i got the correct text, frazes like "giving access to large amounts of works" means absolutely nothing in terms of who is liable. 2 is many, 3 could be large amount.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @06:32PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @06:32PM (#785157)

      Worth reading this...

      No it isn't, it was written by El Reg's resident MAFIAA/pro copyright lobby shill and isn't by any measure objective.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @07:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @07:30PM (#785180)

      For once, Big Tech is doing something good by opposing this.

      This "copyright above all else" bullshit is a few orders of magnitude more dangerous than if copyright itself were outright wiped off the face of the Earth. And yes, there are many reasons to make intellectual work without copyright; if there weren't we'd have never left caves.

      Besideswhich, most of the losers here are just other megacorps that already acrewed over the "little guy" content creators anyway.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by exaeta on Friday January 11 2019, @05:15PM (2 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Friday January 11 2019, @05:15PM (#785130) Homepage Journal
    We need an open source database of IP address assignment. I'm going to block all EU IP addresses from my website if this passes.
    --
    The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @06:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @06:45PM (#785167)

      We need an open source database of IP address assignment.

      To be going on with...I find this lot moderately useful

      https://www.countryipblocks.net/country_selection.php [countryipblocks.net]

      there are others out there as well..

      I'm going to block all EU IP addresses from my website if this passes.

      I'm a bit rusty on the old config files, but ISTR you could block access based on tlds, so what's wrong with adding as many
      Deny from tld_you_want_to_block for all the eu tlds you want to zap?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jb on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:37AM

      by jb (338) on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:37AM (#785419)

      We need an open source database of IP address assignment. I'm going to block all EU IP addresses from my website if this passes.

      Not really.

      If you genuinely want to do something as crazy as blocking the whole of Europe, you could always just use whois(1) to build a local db on a just-in-time basis; adding the whole AS to your black list each time an unknown remote IP address comes back as allocated by RIPE and adding the whole AS to your white list each time an unknown remote IP address comes back as allocated by any other RIR.

      Network numbers often get reallocated to new ASes, but very rarely move between RIRs, so at that sort of level of (non-)granularity your local db will probably converge on stability within a couple of weeks.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 11 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday January 11 2019, @07:39PM (#785184) Journal

    These copyright trolls refuse to get it. We are not turning the clock back to 1989, before the Internet went big, before there was mp3 and Napster, and before the consumer grade CD burner and 0.5G hard drives. If this is passed, and it's toothy and obnoxious enough, a lot of sites may decide to go dark. How draconian will it be? Is just one "bad" link enough to put the site in violation, no matter how many millions of legit links it has? I see no practical way for search engines, forums such as SoylentNews and Reddit, and knowledge aggregators and repositories such as Wikipedia to comply. Even Project Gutenberg might have to go dark. Policing their links wouldn't be enough. What if, buried deep in a cyberpunk SF novel, there are naughty links? The trolls have shown they have no scruples. They'd probably like it if Project Gutenberg went dark.

    If they do go dark, wonder how long a repeal will take? Politicians will think the protests against SOPA and PIPA were small and polite compared to the backlash potential of this. I don't know how similar the EU is to the US, but I'm imagining another way forward is that their high court could quickly strike the law down.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:20AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:20AM (#785341) Journal

      If this is passed, and it's toothy and obnoxious enough, a lot of sites may decide to go dark.

      Even worse, they might just decide to go outside the EU and keep doing what they're doing without regard for the law.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @11:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @11:34AM (#785463)

      Just disable comments from anywhere in the EU. Done. Easy. Move on.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @02:49PM (#785518)

    I'm sure you are well aware that he Internet is international.
    Users are identified by their IP addresses.
    It is often difficult for a web site to tell if a specific user is in your jurisdiction or not.

    If you wish to make a law that applies to Internet users or web sites in your jurisdiction, then you need to provide a list of the IP addresses for the users that the law should apply to.
    This will make it possible for web sites to follow your law.
    Without it, you are asking folks to do the impossible.

    Note that a user in this list will be at a disadvantage over users outside your jurisdiction.
    That you put your users at a disadvantage is between you and your citizens.
    But this is not so for users outside your jurisdiction.

    But please be careful not to put folks outside you jurisdiction in this list.
    That would be a matter of international relations outside your jurisdiction.

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