
European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/european-copyright-law-isnt-great-it-could-soon-get-lot-worse
======
vatueil
There was a previous discussion based on a similar article from Creative
Commons a couple days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810999)

c3o (Christopher Clay), who works in the EU Parliament according to his
profile, posted several informative comments including one explaining the
backstory behind the proposed legislation:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812099)

> _The back story of the law may shed some light._

> _First, it 's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of
> struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for
> spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content._

> _After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided
> to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in
> Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of
> losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license._

> _The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the
> idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn 't opt
> out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google
> News altogether in Spain._

> _This is the version that the Parliament 's chief negotiator now wants the
> EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which
> have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of
> Europe._

~~~
fh973
I keep hearing Google News, but I can't see how and why people would use it
frequently.

Is anybody here using it? What for?

~~~
andybak
I check it most days as I like to skim a variety of international news sources
in one list. I'd welcome suggestions of alternatives - especially if I could
filter out the Daily Mail and other low quality sources.

~~~
vatueil
You can filter out the Daily Mail in Google News, too. Scroll down to "See
news from your favorite sources" for how to block/prefer certain sources:
[https://support.google.com/news/answer/1146405](https://support.google.com/news/answer/1146405)

------
mattsfrey
"The biggest and most worrisome changes are to the "link tax" proposal, which
would establish a special copyright-like fee to be paid by websites to news
publishers, in exchange for the privilege of using short snippets of quoted
text as part of a link to the original news article. Voss's latest amendments
would make the link tax an inalienable right, that news publishers cannot
waive even if they choose to."

"...that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to."

This is horrendous.

I generally favor: "Do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by
incompetence."

However this seems like a blatant attempt to shut down any interpretive or
third party news sites in favor of centralized media control.

~~~
IAmEveryone
That's a strange interpretation, and I say it doesn't seem like you're trying
too hard to assume good faith.

The EU is worried about publishers both big and small. Currently, investing
half a year's worth of a journalist's work into investigations is a rather bad
business decision, because everyone can freely reuse the facts you uncovered:
spend a year finding corruption, write it up in a day, 10 minutes later it's
on AP.

Ther 'inalienable' is to ensure you're not pressured into giving those rights
away by a stronger actor such as Google. The principle is the same that makes
it impossible for you to agree to buy something new without warranty.

Your idea also doesn't make much sense because the current crisis of
journalism has hit smaller publishers hardest. The New York Times will
survive. The Bodunken Tribune is probably long dead already. And the major
players for centralization are obviously Google and Facebook, the two largest
targets of this legislation.

All this DOES NOT mean I believe this proposal to be a good idea! I think it's
too much beaurocracy for too little effect, plus probably unintended
consequences.

But it's hard to completely disregard the true motivation and ascribe malice.

~~~
ubernostrum
If a newspaper in a town of 1,000 people was devoting half a year of a
reporter's work to a single investigation, that newspaper was already going to
fail as a business. Even if every link to the eventual story required the
linker to pay €100, because in that case people would just refuse to link.

There is nothing good about link taxes. And sufficiently advanced incompetence
is indistinguishable from malice.

Meanwhile, this cannot help even responsibly-run small news organizations,
because it will just direct all the large aggregators and large news companies
to make deals with each other, and the small news companies will get zero
links and collect zero "link tax", and small/new aggregators will not be able
to afford to operate. Result: large organizations stay large, small ones
continue going out of business.

Someone on Twitter earlier was saying journalism has a history of relying on
rich people who don't mind losing money (the modern example being Bezos and
the Washington Post), and that we're trending back that way. Anyone who can't
find a patron is probably going to go out of business no matter what.

(unless you'd like to have news organizations be funded by government, which
can work but has its own set of problems)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Someone on Twitter earlier was saying journalism has a history of relying
> on rich people who don 't mind losing money (the modern example being Bezos
> and the Washington Post), and that we're trending back that way. Anyone who
> can't find a patron is probably going to go out of business no matter what._

I'm not sure it can (or _should_ ) be any other way. If you try to run
journalism as a for-profit business, you end up with ads and clickbait. Good
journalism is like medicine - very important, and very unable to bring in
profit.

------
greggman
I'm guessing this is an unpopular idea but is it possible we just don't need
as many journalists? I 100% Agree that journalism is important but before the
internet, for the most post, every news paper needed people to cover every
story they wanted to run. Even if they took a story from the AP or Ruters they
still needed someone to dig that up. Now, there is no reason why the AP and
Rutere can't just publish their content themselves to the entire world.
Similaly a local newspaper doesn't need to pay someone to cover the world
news. We don't need every major news paper from every country to have
reporters in every other country as they can just use someone else's
reporting.

I'm guessing your first thought to that is we need multiple voices and points
of view and I don't disagree. I'm just pointing out that in 1975 you probably
had 2-5 reporters from Sweden in NYC, 5-15 from Germany, 5-15 from France, 4-7
from Italy, 2-3 from Spain, 5-15 from the UK, 3-4 from Ireland etc etc. Add up
all the major countries and their might have been 400+ NYC foreign
correspondents. Do we need all 400 or has the internet made it so we only need
10-20? Apply that concept everywhere, even to local papers and it seems like
the biggest hit to journalism isn't Google, it's the internet itself. Just
like a few wheat harvesting machine replace hundreds of workers the world has
changed to one where far less journalists can do the work of what used to take
many more?

~~~
temporalparts
I know I'm a day late, but thought I would provide my perspective.

I think there's two aspects to this, is journalism sustainable and is
journalism worthwhile. I think publishers are having a hard time with the
former, but I think undeniably it is valuable in the latter. As the world
becomes more complex and bad actors are becoming more sophisticated, I think
the world needs more journalists to uncover truth and reality, especially
since there is profit to be made from writing fake news. I think the fact that
it's not sustainable now means that we should move to a model where we
subsidize news with public funding; not sure what the best structure is, but
there is so much good public externalities to journalism that it's worthwhile
to fund it with public money.

------
mtmail
The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative, sometimes
called the "Google tax": Allow newspapers to charge for snippets. Newspapers
did because after lots of lobbying it would look bad if they didn't. Google
News delisted all that charged money. Shortly after the large newspapers
allowed Google to use snippets without payment. So small websites (search
engines) lost while those delivering substantial traffic (monopolies like
Google) still strive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers)

~~~
latexr
> The article mentions Spain, but Germany had a similar initiative

There’d be little point in making the post longer by mentioning Germany inline
as well. The shorter and more digestible the post is, the more likely people
will read and share. Germany’s case is mentioned in the post they link to when
referencing Spain’s situation[1].

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-
shop...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-
thanks-ancillary-copyright-law)

------
codazoda
The news industry is already in trouble. This seems like it could backfire in
a way that news services might automatically be de-listed from many services
and simply lose ALL of their traffic. Seems like it's meant to save them but
could sink them by accident.

~~~
phkahler
What they really need is for sites to stop ripping off their stories. How
often do you see an article that is essentially a reprint of a story written
somewhere else. It's not really a reprint, it's written as an alleged summary
of the other story but contains all the details and some irrelevant banter by
the author. This stuff is all over the internet and prevents readers from
needing to read the original source.

~~~
ddmd1
Is it really any different in print media where half the stories come from AP
or Reuters? Everyone is rewriting the same stories.

~~~
icebraining
Pretty sure print media pays AP and Reuters. Which is the point here.

------
rotrux
Is anyone really surprised by this?

We (America) just signed
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act)
into law last month without so much as a blip from The AP or Thompson Reuters.

The internet is sorta like the printing-press but more important. Of course
it's threatening the powers-that-be & of course they're gonna' try and get
that under control.

~~~
incompatible
The idea that the powers-that-be are working on getting this new Internet
thing under their control has been a recurring meme for a long time. I'm sure
it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing a good job so
far; unless they are somehow secretly behind Google and Facebook.

~~~
rotrux
> _"...I'm sure it was around in the 1990s. They don't seem to have been doing
> a good job so far"_

Totally agree except RE: the last year or so. If you look closely "they"
appear to be wising-up.

The CLOUD act (at least how I'm reading it) says that the American internet is
American...in other words, "If we wanna subpoena your s#!t in Thailand, we can
cuz your cloud-provider is probably based in Seattle, WA, USA."

Law is ultimately about precedent, and there is now a precedent for America to
get a warrant allowing them to see any American company's consumer-data,
regardless of where that data is geographically.

------
nine_k
Well, let's suppose the legislation is voted into law.

Every news outlet with a grain of reason offers every major search engine or
news aggregator, or maybe a whole self-publishing platform like Twitter a
blanket deal: €20 per month for unlimited use of blurbs and links, as long as
blurbs are short and are actual quotations.

So, the market would have fended off the attack on the way it operates, and
ready to continue as usual.

The losers would be the non-commercial sites. Wikipedia would have hard time
showing you all these Creative Commons-licensed pictures. Free (as in beer)
publications would see large drops in traffic, not being able to offer their
content _legally_ for free, or re-licence it (it's often quite involved).

What a useful law that might be. /s

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
€20 per month is an _astonishingly_ optimistic figure.

~~~
nine_k
I think that large papers could ask, say, 1000 or something, to avoid being
ridiculed, but no public news source in their sane mind would turn this fee
into a profit center. They'd have much more to lose if their traffic slumps.

------
capturesss
The underlaying question in this law is about estimating the monetary value of
a piece of information and creating a market for selling information. As an
example, here in Spain the master of Madrid Community's mayor has been deeply
investigated, here that information has strong political implications, and
produces monetary value for some political parties. A law can't be easily
applied to Giants and ants, to huge actors and to individual bloggers, the
model can't scale appropiately. So I would suggest just to impose a tax to
huge actors and forget about creating a law that ranges from bloggers to
google or twitter, those entities can't be measured with the same rule.

Googling about how to quantify in dollar the value of journalism, I found

1)[http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-
journalism-...](http://mediashift.org/2016/10/much-investigative-journalism-
worth/) 2) The limits of quantification:
[https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref...](https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://mediashift.org/&httpsredir=1&article=4265&context=californialawreview)

3)[https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-
Inves...](https://www.amazon.com/Democracys-Detectives-Economics-
Investigative-Journalism/dp/0674545508)

------
cromwellian
I wonder how this will hold up with AI written summaries that don't use any of
the original text.

------
Crontab
I generally have a favorable opinion of Europe but this copyright law
proposal, and the stupid "right to be forgotten" nonsense, shows that they are
far from perfect.

~~~
latexr
See also: the law that ended roaming charges also shoehorned the taking away
of Net Neutrality rules.

------
th-ai
If Kryder's Law holds, then by 2030 local hard drives will store petabytes (4x
library of congress or 500 mp4 years). 32 terabyte thumb drives will cost $10.
Routes around ISP's will be plentiful. How can copyright survive?

~~~
dbasedweeb
Because it’s a huge “if” and assumes that by 2030 the A/V standard won’t grow
as well? I hope you’re right, but past performed is not a guarantee of future
gains.

~~~
xoa
> _but past performed is not a guarantee of future gains_

Yes, but to your question regarding A/V standards, that works both ways. While
past performance often isn't a great predictor, human biological specs _are_ a
decent predictor for the near future. If we take 8k as the current bleeding
edge (given actual beyond-the-lab 8k screens exist, albeit at horrendous
bleeding edge pricing), we're somewhere around one more doubling (quadrupling
of pixels) away from the point where the number of image elements will
literally exceed the number of retina in a human eye. Now yeah, the human eye
jitters around a fair amount, and maybe there'd be some value in peripheral
vision coverage too in theory, but even taking all of that into consideration
to be very conservative we're still rapidly approaching the point where our
display tech can exceed the limits of human visual acuity, at which point it's
reasonable to predict that we will in fact be "done" when it comes to A/V
standards (post-human seems farther away then 2030). And even that is getting
into heavily diminishing returns territory.

It really does make for something interesting to think about, similar to that
of audio where we've already been "done" for a long time now. We've lived in
an era where a significant amount of innovation and money flowing around and
such came out of a lot of work to ever more closely match our synthetic light
outputs to the input capabilities of our vision systems. But that's not a
forever thing, our vision system is such a powerful part of our senses that
it's been a very hard target, but there is in fact a hard physical limit
there. When it's reached, and there will be no more video format changes ever
again, and no more screen changes ever again, no more chances to sell
"remastered" and "updated" versions of older visual products, etc., it may
make for some real changes in the industry.

And to GP's point, the theoretical limits of information storage in matter do
seem to be a lot farther beyond the theoretical end of information
requirements necessary to match a human's AV. Optimistically for all parties
though, the music scene seems to have done alright through that transition so
far, on both the production/industry and consumer side (where we enjoy near
universal DRM free high quality competition). Granted, that was after a lot of
very ugly thrashing...

~~~
dbasedweeb
You’re thinking in terms of one big screen, but by 2030 maybe it’s VR that
rules the day? What does 16K per eyeball look like? How about a movie with a
dozen perspectives in the file? There are loads of foreseeable ways to blow up
file sizes in a dozen years.

~~~
incompatible
360 degree video already exists: I believe it works by transmitting the entire
output from 2 or more wide angle lenses and letting the viewer select an angle
to display. Search for 360 video on youtube for examples.

------
pdonis
Upload filtering would be required for code sharing sites like Github? WTF?

~~~
latexr
See their blog post on it[1]. I think it made HN’s front page at the time.

[1]: [https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-
filter...](https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filters-
code/)

------
DoctorOetker
This 'link tax' sounds awful. Will WikiPedia need to start paying 'link tax' ?

