
EU copyright reform: the facts - raleighm
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2018/09/07/eu-copyright-reform-the-facts/
======
snarf21
In my mind, the most salient point is this one:

FACT: The proposed new copyright rules will lead to direct surveillance of
users’ activities online.​

This and the recent 5 eyes document to require backdoors for all technology
and services are the same. The surveillance state is coming. It is being
bought. You are being sold.

But don't worry, they are doing this for our own security and safety. No one
need watch the watchers.

~~~
rayiner
How is that a "fact"? Pretty much every time you upload data to a website,
there will be some sort of validation of the uploaded data that will happen.
That's not "surveillance" it's a basic process that happens on the Internet.
"Surveillance" requires going a step further to _track_ what users are doing.
( _E.g._ checking your ID at a club is not "surveillance"; having the bouncers
file a report so someone can track what clubs each person goes to is
surveillance.) Mozilla points to nothing in Article 13 to suggest such
tracking would be required. They seem to be speculating that such tracking
will happen. That may or may not be a good _conjecture_ , but that doesn't
make it a "fact."

~~~
shkkmo
The european law requires services to have tools to not just validate content
format, but process and categorize the content itself.

The australian 5 eyes memo says they think they can / should be able to
require services to report all of this output directly to them.

------
kmisiunas
For EU people who want to take action: call or email your Member European
Parliament (MEP) and let them know that don't supper the policy (or support
it?!?). You can call them via:

[https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-
call](https://act.openmedia.org/savethelink-call)

Or email by finding your MEP details on:

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/search.html)

More info on taking action can br found here (scroll a little):

[https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/](https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-
reform/)

~~~
Y_Y
You can use an automated (customisable) tool at saveyourinternet.eu to do this
too.

~~~
mstade
Thank you, I've now used this to send an email to my representatives.

~~~
Kliment
Having called a few of them and spoken to them on the phone about this they
are mostly pissed off about the cookie-cutter emails spamming them about this
but quite happy to talk about it on the phone.

~~~
guy98238710
On the other hand, some of us are much better at typing than talking. And some
might have a fit of social phobia at the mere thought of a phone call.

The templates might be tedious, but they are there for people who would
otherwise post some random flame or rant. Pages encouraging phone calls have
scripted templates on them too.

~~~
Kliment
Yeah and that's fine, personal emails were quite well received. Template
emails were universally ignored, regardless of which side of the issue the
representative stood.

------
fermigier
Julia Reda's page on the EU Copyright reform is actually the best resource to
get the facts right:

[https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/](https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-
reform/)

(edit: Not just the facts of course, also her opinion, shared by many
organisations and individuals knowledgeable on how the Internet should work,
eg. Vinton Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee, see
[https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf](https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf)).

------
phonicspree
Good on Mozilla for taking this on.

There's so many problems with this.

It sets up the infrastructure for control of media. Is an image being shared
that is unflattering to the current powers that be? Well, now we have a
mandated system in place that can immediately pull that image from the web.

I don't think getting totalitarian control is the goal here, but it is the end
result of it.

------
gcb0
the IP Juggernauts are pushing so hard and strong that they will be their
demise, hopefully.

they are trying too hard to have their claws on every jurisdiction and be the
international police that can prosecute everyone based on content piracy. And
they are very close to that.

They already have control on north America and southeast Asia (via US, ChinaN
and TPP agreements). Now they are "fixing" what they wanted im GDPR but
lawmakers were too clever to see the tricks then, so they are being more
explicit.

But eventually, what people will start doing is what we see in china. everyone
in country A will do whatever it takes to consume content/interact with other
people via sites in country B, which is not under the same jurisdiction of
country A.

Hopefully people will still be able to live as they live today, and only yhe
advertising market will suffer as brands now can't reliably reach one market
or another. Maybe that fixes advertising too and force brands to sponsor
services regardless of demographic. or maybe I am too optimistic and the IP
conglomerates will win and people will not have access to any content that is
not made and authorized by them.

------
no1youknowz
From the viewpoint of regulations on business:

\- GDPR (Facebook/Google)

\- Article 11 (Reddit)

\- Article 13 (Github)

\- Mandated EU Content on streaming providers (Netflix)

\- EU Internet sales tax (Amazon)

The simple question begs: how many more regulations aimed at US companies are
coming?

At this rate, the more regulations are created at fighting US companies. The
number of internet startups and business located in the EU will one day cycle
downward to zero.

What are they going to do next?

~~~
klmr
Art 13 isn’t a EU vs US thing. It‘s a digital vs analog thing (or, more
precisely, old-style copyright holders vs young content creators).

~~~
jotm
It's a carebear legislation aimed at protecting imbecile content creators who
can't be bothered with at least trying to run it like a real business. Why not
let people figure it out and deal with it on their own, ffs

------
zenovision
Europe is a no-go area for any startup. Instead of building your product, you
will spend all your time complying with thousands of GDPR-like laws, difficult
tax regulations, different languages etc. and every country has also a lot of
additional national laws (Hackerparagraf in germany for example). It's just
not worth it.

~~~
jopsen
It's not that bad... In practice startups don't have worry about these things
before they grow large.

I've yet to be fined for not having a cookie popup on my blog :)

------
andyjohnson0
Anyone want to speculate on the chances of this getting approved by the
European Parliament? Last July they blocked an earlier version and sent it
back to the commission.

Edit:

And as someone living in the UK, I'm also wondering what the implications of
this are for brexit[1]. Will the post-brexit interface between the EU and the
UK w/r/t copyright be made even more complicated by this, with knock-on
effects on digital service providers on each side?

[1] which I continue to oppose

~~~
pjc50
> I'm also wondering what the implications of this are for brexit

We're well into "who knows?" territory, but what would _definitely_ happen is
the UK would lose any say over the EU rules. The UK isn't really large enough
to be its own market for startups (unlike the EU and US), so we'd mostly end
up using companies hosted in one or the other and obliged to follow their
rules.

(Safe Harbour is probably a more interesting one to consider!)

~~~
frockington
If the EU continues down the regulatory path, the UK could become the startup
capital of Europe if they market correctly

~~~
blibble
the UK is already the startup capital of Europe

~~~
jotm
*still. As it is, not for much longer

------
kd5bjo
Is there a simple, objective summary of the proposed rules? Everything I've
seen is propaganda trying to convince me they're the end of the internet,
which makes me quite wary of the authors' motivations.

~~~
pjc50
You can read the directive itself: [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593)

~~~
kd5bjo
Yes, but with all the cross-references and legalese specifying which level of
government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the directive, the
actual regulations can be hard to extract for an untrained reader.

Hence my request for an objective summary.

~~~
pjc50
> which level of government is responsible for enforcing each piece of the
> directive

At least that's an easy question to answer: the member states.

A directive obliges member states to introduce local legislation to achieve a
particular effect. Usually it's transcribed pretty closely, but some states
may use their sovereignty to impose additional restrictions (if they're not
precluded by the Directive, a different directive, or human rights law).

Generally if you want to speed up reading a Directive you can skip all the
"Whereas" clauses, they're not binding but do specify the reasoning behind the
directive.

~~~
kd5bjo
And the real meaning of stuff like [1.11.3]? It's got to be there, or else the
law is underspecified, but it doesn't make for effective lay communication. I
still think a real summary would be useful for all the people that don't have
your personal guidance about how to decode legislation.

[1.11.3] Articles 5 to 8 of Directive 2001/29/EC and Directive 2012/28/EU
shall apply mutatis mutandis in respect of the rights referred to in paragraph
1.

------
Ygg2
Holy crap on a stick. These new laws are just stupid.

I don't generally see eye to eye with libertarians (or whoever advocates for
minimal interference of state), but out of touch laws like this are just the
worst.

------
scotty79
If we all ignore all copyright it will go away and with it all the nighmares
conceived to prop up its rotting corpse.

But it won't happen sooner than before majority of creators learn that
copyright does not benefit them in any way.

We can teach them that by never paying for copyrighted things.

~~~
apocalypstyx
There is one apocalyptic scenario here that everyone ignores: it is monetary
compensation that keeps the social norm. Remove that, make it so only the rich
or the obsessed write, make music, etc, and they will increasing do so for
their own ends, because there is no reason not to. Social alone approval will
motivate very few to commit to the amount of work necessary for most creative
endeavors.

On the surface, of course, this would seem ridiculous. But we only have to
examine how much cultural capital is employed to keep writers writing toward
the money and controlled by editors, and ratings boards, etc. And the common
consumer expects what they, the consumer, to always be delivered unto with
exactly that which they claim to desire. Under the monetary system
reproductive advantage slates toward those who accrue capital. However remove
that, and the 'shock value' of 'independent artistic work' becomes the most
viable remaining path to mate attraction.

So, remove the money, and the only artists, writers, etc, who remain, are the
ones that the mass of consumers despise as 'experimental' and 'weird', etc.

And given that humanity is pretty much by definition a story species, the
resulting effects on society as a whole, with such a major hit to the mytho-
poetic infrastructure that undergirds any society, might be very interesting.
Most likely some government or wealth-backed cultural production engine will
emerge in the vacuum, however, the question might be whether it will do so
fast enough.

~~~
clarry
I think everyone ignores it because it's so far fetched (even if they go as
far as assuming copyright == monetary compensation)

~~~
apocalypstyx
How does anyone otherwise do work that is distributed via mass mechanical
reproduction?

Disney could operate private theatres that threw out and banned people with
recording devices, but how could home distribution function.

For popular work, we are back at the pre-copyright world of patronage.

Popular appeal might lead certain rare individuals to monetary compensation in
academia, but this, I would say, will be country and culturally dependent. In
France, for example, I might see it, but not the United States. And it might
lead to a certain amount of tribal-production to sustain the replication of
certain cultural norms, but in order for that to e so the trend of production
and consumption previously adhered to in these industries (from the consumer
viewpoint) will have to be reverse: the consumer will be paying patronage _in
advance_ of the creation of the work which will then be mechanically mass
reproduced upon release. However, I think a smaller amount of people than
currently consumptive model of media will be as likely to switch wholly to a
'pig-in-a-poke'-model. Even with things like netflix, the primary draw has
always been that which pre-exists, that which the consumer already knows to be
available, and its primary value is not weighted on what necessarily 'might'
be produced in the future. People might be willing to fund such models through
'micro transaction', however, any individual funding themselves, thus, would
necessarily require a proportionally larger base of funders; however this
would have the function of keeping the cultural mytho-poetic framework in
check, producing what commonly referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'.
Also, however, even if someone were to make a living in this manner, they
might not what to in that, no matter what survivable level of income they may
derive, a Disney would then, through the sheer economy of their scale, be able
to transform that, now mechanically reproduced work into something distributed
through the private theatre system at no cost for the acquiring of the source
material. This alone may be a sufficient psychological demotivator for many,
and present a common source of burnout (thus requiring a change in
employment), or even an obstacle to many taking up the profession at all.

The question remains, if the so-called creator is likely to get no monetary
compensation, and little in the way of social capital anyway, what will induce
them to create any works besides those they want to create. The problem is
that 'artistry' in the mytho-poetics of most western countries attains a
somewhat religious significance, but the most of its practitioners (or at
least those who mange to make their primary living at it) would leave so-
called creative fields for greener pastures; it's a job.

(I suppose I should add here that I am very much against to current copyright
system as it stands now, though I realize my reply might indicate otherwise. I
do, however, become aggravated when the attitudes of so-called consumers
amounts to a type a slavery where they want what they want [produced but want
it for free, resembles too much those companies that have baited artists and
writer with 'exposure' for far too long. As it stands, what is said about the
disruptive potential of the internet aside, most writers and artists make what
they do (and paltry sums at that) by effectively signing over their copyrights
in perpetuity to what amounts to intellectual property holding companies. So
the law may say the author owns it, but to see anything from it (in the vast
majority of cases) they have to give that right away, and then so-called
consumers come along and claim (purely to pinch pennies) that authors should
relinquish even (and presenting no alternative) that is, to me, as aggravating
as the media conglomerates who do the same.)

~~~
icebraining
A few notes (not dismissing your post):

\- The prepayment model was quite successful in the past; authors like Arthur
Conan Doyle, Dickens and Dostoevsky made a living from producing novels in
serialized form[1]. This model fits well also with TV shows, podcasts, and
potentially video games.

\- Plenty of content is already funded by volunteer donations and ads
(although, personally, I abhor the latter more than copyright).

\- You don't necessarily need copyright to have protection; contracts exist.
It's doubtful the competing private theater networks would just copy each
other's movies, rather than reach a legal agreement not to do so.

\- For certain types of works, live performances provide a funding model that
doesn't rely on copyright. It's not copyright that keeps people going to
concerts.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_(literature)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_\(literature\))

~~~
apocalypstyx
The problem is our respective post are sort of coming at the problem from
opposite ends. Though, I agree with you, for the most part. Mine is attempting
(lazily, I perhaps have to admit) to formulate how a post-copyright world
functions. And, again, I agree, for the most part, with what you point out.
Fundraising has been more and more a useful model employed by many writers and
artists, no doubt. But all of that is still backed by copyright. Even in
Dickens and Dostoevsky's day. (Though, in Tsarist Russia, it was the printer
and not the author who obtained copyright.). Dickens, however, (in typical
author fashion of often going from feast to famine) had almost all of his
works circulated in the United States (where he was extremely popular) outside
of the control of copyright, as, at the time, and as most developing nations
do, the United States (much as China had done with technology in the nineties)
neglected, for the most part, protecting foreigns works in favor of 'building
themselves up' quickly. This was (to draw in your point about live
performances) helpful to Dickens after a fashion, in that, at one point, his
speaking tours ere his primary means of income. (However, part of that can be
attributed not just to his popularity as a writer, but his phenomenal skill as
an orator, so more than anything else, he may represent the exception that
allows certain individuals to rise so much within the sphere of social
influence.) But, to me, it still remains an unanswered question as to what
would happen if, say, writing a 'Game of Thrones' under such a model, where a
studio would have access to the material with no restrictions. The only thing
that might hinder it is that multiple such entities would have the same
rights, and they would most likely not want to step on each others toes (only
for the reason they would likely see it as dividing their potential audience
and thereby dividing the result money stream), and contractual and wink-wink-
nudge-nudge agreements might become common place between them in such
circumstances. And given the fact of the enormous amount of capital required
for such undertakings (it's unlikely something on the order of Marvel film
would be generated solely by crowd-funding) it would be unlikely, I would
think, for many upstart companies to produce such, thereby locking in the
defacto 'gentlemen agreements'. But there is also the question of just how
much social impart such media would have, without the angel of home
distribution, something that is fundamental to replicating the modern myths-
poetic frameworks of western societies. And in any regard a truly post-
copyright world, would seem to have the possibility of reshaping both culture
and society in ways that are not apparent or predictable in extrapolating from
system that are still in essence backed by it. After all, even Creative
Commons and Free Software exists wholly on the back of copyright.

In regards to contracts, I think we only need to look at history: the case
comes to mind wether agents of Thomas Edison saw a screening of the film
'Voyage to the Moon' and bribed a theatre operator to get a copy of the film
made, so it was Edison, showcasing it in his private theatre chains (he owned
an enormous amount of patents in motion picture technology, which is why
Hollywood is movie capital of the United States, to get beyond the legal reach
of Edison in New York), thereby having extracted the commercial value of the
film prior to the director managing to bring it to the United States. Still,
this leaves out the entire possibility of home distribution (outside of the
most egregious contracts and locked-down hardware (so far as I can see),
which, looking at the way things are going, may be the case under the current
system as well).

I will completely agree as it regards to live performance. But that is a very
small segment of so-called creative work. And even then we are still left with
the perennial problem of the lion's share of the resultant capital going not
to the actual performers, to the investor class. But, then again, copyright or
no, maybe we'll always have that as the touchstone of commonality no matter
what social, political, or artist upheaval does or doesn't come to fruition.

------
vfc1
"Only a handful of the largest tech companies have the technical and financial
means to operate the sprawling filtering systems that this law demands."

The smaller platforms often use under the hood Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or
equivalent.

Probably the copyright verification is going to be added at that level, and
hopefully will be transparent to the platforms built on top of those cloud
services.

So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it might
look.

~~~
feanaro
> So hopefully, this will not impact smaller SaaS companies as much as it
> might look.

... this _would_ not impact smaller SaaS companies ...

This isn't a law yet and I don't think most people want it to become one.

That said, I disagree that this isn't a terrible burden for the small guy.
Even if it would be trivial to set up, all the other downsides remain and it
leads to lock-in in the form of dependence on large companies who have
implemented this.

More importantly, _why_ do we want this? What _benefits_ does this bring? I
don't see many for the ordinary person.

~~~
jandrese
> More importantly, why do we want this? What benefits does this bring? I
> don't see many for the ordinary person.

Maybe it could shift liability? So if someone posts the lyrics to a song and
Sony sues them for 50,000 euro could they argue that it is the fault of the
ISP for not filtering their post properly?

This is a longshot, but I was trying very hard to think of some way in which
this law doesn't screw over individuals for the benefit of large corporations.

------
esquivalience
Whether or not you agree with the copyright reforms, it is not helpful to
present these opinions (e.g. 'will negatively affect...') as fact. You may as
well stand outside the legislative building with a placard.

To my mind, it's impossible to take part in the debate until you've realised
that your position is a point of view; that other have a different point of
view; and that compromise is going to be necessary.

~~~
ManlyBread
It's quite hard to talk about a compromise when there's zero benefit in
accepting the new law to begin with. Remember how effective the SOPA/ACTA
protests were, the only reason these succeded was because no one was
interested in a compromise.

~~~
GekkePrutser
They weren't effective. The same has already been implemented through a
loophole with Canada (CETA) so US companies can already force their lower
standards on us through their Canadian subsidiaries.

Simple distraction and switch and playing into the mindset that Canada has
somehow ties with Europe and is therefore 'good'.

It's amazing how they get away with these things.

