
German Data Privacy Commissioner Says Article 13 Inevitably Leads to Filters - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/german-data-privacy-commissioner-says-article-13-inevitably-leads-filters-which
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koonsolo
I'm currently creating an online platform with user generated content.

I'm based in Belgium, but if this bill passes, it leaves me no choice but to
take my company abroad. Funny how the EU tries to compete with US startups and
multinationals, with various incentives, and then tries to get this crap
enforced on all of these same companies within the EU.

Bunch of idiots.

Although I live within the EU, I hope various companies will block access to
their services.

~~~
duado
The EU doesn’t really need to compete since they can get as much revenue as
they want with regulatory fines. They don’t care if you go abroad since if you
get big they will find a way to get their money.

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eveningcoffee
So we will have automated censoring. What a world we have to live in. Do the
MEPs really do not understand what they are building?

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lstodd
Why, they do perfectly - their careers and their retirement plans.

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mcv
Not if we can get everybody to vote them out. We need more public attention
for this. There are plenty of people who will be hurt by this who blindly vote
for the parties that support this.

~~~
Mirioron
It's not going to happen. The number of voters in EP elections is low and the
main parties at home will devote their resources on these elections.

~~~
mcv
If the number of voters is low, it's actually easier to mobilise voters to
vote against the people who support Article 13.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
also the most effective way is to write a letter or call them in person
(engaging them on facebook etc has little value in comparison)

~~~
raverbashing
Yes

For those in Germany they can use this service to help them assemble a letter
to be send by post [https://botbrief.eu/](https://botbrief.eu/)

This site also helps you call them directly
[https://pledge2019.eu](https://pledge2019.eu) ( _please be polite_ \- the
best way we can win them is not by acting like we don't know what we're
talking about)

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doh
Horrendous law with an incredibly severe consequences to us all. And I'm
saying this as the one benefiting most as my company is the ultimate upload
filter (we are orders of magnitude larger than Content ID [0]).

We are not going to stand by idly and let it to wipe out all competition
because they can't afford to be compliant with this idiotic law. As such, we
are making our services free to all rights holders and platforms [1]. This is
the best way we, as a company, can fight the law and make sure that it will
have the least negative impact as possible.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1102655191654981632](https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1102655191654981632)

[1]
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsy...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsyYJbEv6hGI64-ptGgQB0/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
jackewiehose
Well, thanks. But using your service doesn't feel like "fighting the law".
It's just complying with the law by being dependent on one generous external
company.

I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like
youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response to
these kind of laws.

~~~
doh
> I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like
> youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response
> to these kind of laws.

You know the complete opposite will happen. Those are literally the only ones
that can comply "easily" with the law. What about the rest?

> Well, thanks. But it doesn't feel like "fighting the law". It's just
> complying with the law by being dependent on one generous external company.

I'm on this with you. I'm European living in US. I don't want this law any
more you do. I'm still hoping the law is going to be dropped. But even then,
the law will eventually come back in some form or shape. So we are trying to
find a sustainable way for others to comply with it and be able to compete
with the giants.

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I_am_tiberius
Why aren't American Internet giants react like it was done with SOPA?

~~~
nerdponx
Because they benefit.

~~~
I_am_tiberius
How? E.g.: Google wouldn't be able to display website content descriptions for
free anymore (OK, they are allowed to display a few words of the description).

I understand that content creators will benefit most (e.g. news sites).

~~~
martin_a
Who will be able to run infrastructure in terms of money and people that will
fulfill the requirements of Article 13? Only the big players.

So, let Article 13 take place and lots of competition will vanish.

~~~
I_am_tiberius
Sure, I am with you. However, I also don't see how Google can continue with
its business model in Europe when Article 13 goes into effect.

~~~
martin_a
Ah, they will find their way. Make some concessions, cry about the laws, show
some figures and bribe some politicians. In the end there will be exceptions
which are strangely well-tailored for those big players...

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rurban
What Cory misses is that the proposed legislation is technically impossible to
implement. Even giants like Facebook and Google cannot do content violation
filtering on every media, like text submitted by text area boxes ("citations"
over de copying the minimis limit), sound and video. Maintaining hashes of
protected content is also technically impossible. Who's gone decide which data
will get processed, and from where?

Only the previous legislation is technically implementable, the current
proposal will make user input on all European websites illegal, like Hacker
news, reddit, WordPress blogs with comments, wikis like wikipedia, YouTube,
Facebook,... you name it. Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people
will either ignore it, leading to risk of becoming a random target, or disable
all userinput at all. which will be the death of internet 2.0 in europe.

even a theoretical central filtering service will not be able to solve this
problem, because registering and filtering all worldwide protected content is
not feasible. there will be 5% of some big studios and press agencies content
hashed, but not much else. adding legislation on this idea is just
destructive. the previous legislation is the only practical and useful way.

~~~
type0
> Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it,
> leading to risk of becoming a random target

Not random target, it's by design, first make a law that almost all website
owners break, then you are free to punish whoever you want.

The future looks bleak for Europe. If this continues, in a few years you
woldn't be able to criticize politicians online or uncover corruption they're
involved in.

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adventured
I'm waiting for the inevitable EU firewall that will ultimately be required to
aggressively control all Internet usage for anyone in the EU.

It can end no other way than that. Particularly as these draconian regulations
continue to get worse. How else will they enforce these policies against
foreign entities that can trivially ignore them while still serving EU users?
They have to put a stop to that, as it's an easy circumvention.

I can build a service in the US. Allow EU citizens to sign up. Entirely
disregard most, if not all, EU laws. Monetize the huge US market first as a
cash springboard. Acquire scale. Then turn on EU monetization when it's
convenient to deal with the regulatory challenges there. There might be
considerable retroactive fines involved for ignoring EU law over time while
still taking on EU users (when you attempt to monetize the EU users, requiring
business on the ground in the EU, that's when they'd land punches financially;
the retroactive approach would be the solution the politicians would come up
with as a desperate stop-gap against this approach); so what, I'm now a
monopoly platform, I already won, hit me with your speeding ticket. If you
make the speeding ticket too large, I'll demonetize the EU users, remove all
business from the EU, ignore any fines, retain the EU users anyway to prevent
competition, and keep going (come back later and see if I can lobby/bribe the
EU politicians in some kind of fine settlement).

The sole means to stop that scenario - which is almost obnoxiously beneficial
to furthering US dominance in platforms - is to lock down all Internet usage
in the EU and dictate by permission what sites may be used. The tighter they
get with Article 13 style regulations, the more likely they have to implement
an EU firewall.

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StavrosK
Which draconian regulations continue to get worse? I'm only aware of article
13, which hasn't passed yet.

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Mirioron
GDPR. It has some good parts, but a lot of bad in it as well.

~~~
StavrosK
You're going to be searching for a long time to find a piece of legislation
that only has good parts in it. The GDPR is overwhelmingly positive, and a
massive step towards ensuring privacy online.

In my opinion, it has been pretty overwhelmingly a net positive, whereas
article 13 is a clusterfuck that made me come up with a Cloudflare rule to
block EU visitors from accessing sites (and yes, that includes myself):

[https://twitter.com/Stavros/status/1100799044862033922](https://twitter.com/Stavros/status/1100799044862033922)

If anyone from Cloudflare is reading this, can we get a "redirect" firewall
rule so I can point the visitors to something like "you can't access that site
because the politicians you voted for are morons"?

~~~
Mirioron
I don't need a legislation to only have good parts in it, but I do want it to
do more good than bad. GDPR does not do that. The harm it causes for internet
businesses in the EU in the long term is going to be too much. It's already
making EU companies less competitive[1] and it'll become worse as time goes
on.

[1]
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912)

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, all regulation makes companies less competitive than unregulated
companies. That's why you regulate everyone.

Whats the harm of the GDPR?

~~~
Mirioron
Less competitive companies means that we won't have these types companies in
the EU. We are already doing very poorly when it comes to anything related to
computer technology and this will make it even worse.

~~~
StavrosK
The GDPR is pretty sane and not very hard to comply with, unless you're being
scummy. I'd rather not have scummy companies, even if that means we won't be
competitive.

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adrianN
This comes as a surprise to no one but Axel Voss.

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raverbashing
Nah there are a lot of artists that think it's just fine to censor the entire
internet so that they can make more money

James Blunt is one of them
[https://twitter.com/CDU_CSU_EP/status/1098531302490468352](https://twitter.com/CDU_CSU_EP/status/1098531302490468352)
and "helping" the CDU campaign

~~~
jackewiehose
According to the following tweets, this video is not in regard to article 13.
They just reused some old video there and put it falsely into this new
context.

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gjsman-1000
Only a few days from most signed petition in human history? If true, very
impressive.

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1waYstilltheree
A little off-topic and a real mental leap, but wayback (hundreds of years),
the katholic church was the one with a information-monopoly (dome-building,
history and mint studies for example) crawled with the years by the principle
of syncretism. All the katholic church had to do, was to use their
'Leitungsschutz' (german word) to make their bucks... history... info-bits
-sure... ^^

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expertentipp
If advisory of German specialists from the either side will make the internet
in the EU anything like the internet in Germany, in any regard, people will be
really pissed. Kindly bugger off and let decide those from the places were the
internet works.

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ahartmetz
That comment makes no sense in this context.

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jplayer01
It does in a way. Article 13 is largely a product of French and German
politicians. Just because the German data commissioner says something like
this doesn't mean there aren't plenty of German politicians eager to implement
Article 13.

