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from the unfairly-taxing-a-single-Zelda-character dept.
Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament representing Germany, writes about a EU study which finds that even publishers oppose the proposed "link tax" which is currently up for consideration by legislators. Interestingly, the report also finds that many journalists are afraid to cover the issue. Several publications declined to comment giving various reasons, including differences of view between the online editions and their parent publications. In other words, the subject is being silenced.
The report, a bit misleadingly entitled "Strengthening the Position of Press Publishers and Authors and Performers in the Copyright Directive" [warning for PDF], was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the JURI committee. Specifically it reviews Article 11 and Articles 14-16 of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Julia Reda also notes that many of the MEPs are not in a position to find out about the report prior the vote. That puts them in a situation of making a less informed decision than is desirable.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 14 2017, @11:19AM (1 child)
This is why we can't have nice things.
Seriously though, fuck em. They can sue us in the EU all they like but we're a US company (with all the speech/journalism protections that implies) and our servers are all in the US.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:50PM
If they are able to sneak this one through then it is likely that the cartels in the US will start whining about needing to "harmonize" with EU regulations. That's how things have worked in the past through the decades. They collude to ratchet downwards like that.
Alternately, if it becomes a copyright issue, as it is heading towards, then they could decide to go after SN with the helicopters and armed assault teams and demand extradition, doing like they did with Kim Dotcom. Though there are probably not enough assets to sieze to make that lucrative.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 14 2017, @12:11PM (3 children)
Europe may not have a 1st Amendment enshrining Freedom of Speech, but they do have a real Pirate Party that actually won a few elections.
Copyright extremists are so weak. That they prefer to hide their despicable proposals and trick people into accepting them with especially poor quality propaganda shows serious weakness.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday October 16 2017, @09:28AM (2 children)
And yet they've consistently managed to get copyright terms extended, decade after decade.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 16 2017, @12:44PM (1 child)
But look how they've done it. Rather than gain popular support for fair measures, they've tried to slip unfair ones past the public, in trade agreements and through heavy lobbying (bribing). They know they don't have public support, and have to do their dirty legislating out of the public view. That's weak.
Weaker yet, their propaganda campaigns push credulity too far. Captain Copyright was a laughingstock. Their DRM efforts have served only to anger their customers and raise awareness. The old region encoding scheme on DVDs is an illegal restraint of trade that persists to this day, constantly reminding customers in one more way that they don't play fair themselves. And, unskippable commercials, what fools ever thought it was a good idea to abuse the obedience to DRM, meant only to prevent "illegal" copying, to force commercials on their customers who did pay? The whole point of paying was so that you don't have to sit through commercials, among other perks. Instead, the way to get the privileges you were willing to pay for is to pirate the material. They reneged on their end of the expectations they themselves helped create, and people know it. And they're still pushing, trying to further change the deal so that, with software at least, the customer can't "own" a copy anymore, the customer can only "lease" a copy. The Copyright Alert System ended in failure, I think overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of violations, though they tried very hard to spin it as a success.
People still sympathize with the "starving artists" line, and some are still terrorized, afraid to be accused of piracy, but most understand that there's something wrong with the system and are willing to rebel against it. Pretty much everyone agrees that time shifting, format shifting, and device shifting should be allowed. They were greedy idiots to ever try to fight those unwinnable battles.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday October 16 2017, @05:49PM
Oh come on. If an entity has great sway over US law, that means they're powerful. If they're powerful, that means they aren't weak.
You've already conceded that they're continually getting their own way. You really want to call them 'weak' because you don't like the way they're doing it?
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Saturday October 14 2017, @10:12PM
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @01:01AM
It sounds a lot like what Spain passed as law years ago. Biggest effect was that Google closed their News service for Spain, as the law said they must pay everyone. No exceptions.
Notice the last thing. If they paid, big business would get extra money claiming they are big and thus deserve most of the payments. They would get money from people "advertising" the newspapers. If there was no money to pass around, everyone was out of the aggregator, but small media was the worst hit as it was a big path to them. Even services that are not media get trashed, so big corps can push their equivalent ones or stomp personal sites.
And that is what happened, big media got a small hit, but managed to silence competition and put others into risky ground. Not their first plan, but outcome was acceptable for them. Of course they would had prefered if they could charge for people for saying "go read the news here" instead of them paying for that. Upside down world.
In Germany something like this took place, but IIRC it was optional and some companies dropped the money charges, or did after some time when the traffic suffered.
Now you see why European news companies don't want to talk: it's a retarded "pay to do a job instead of get paid", shows how dickish some of news corps are, it has bad examples of what will happen instead of all being "doubts & maybes", it destroys the facade of caring about news or even plain people, just more corps pushing their agendas (profit and power).
(Yes, TFA mentions all this... just giving my personal experience as reader of such media)