
The European Commission is preparing an attack on the hyperlink - jsnathan
https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-european-commission-is-preparing-a-frontal-attack-on-the-hyperlink/
======
ohthehugemanate
I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology.

Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are
almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is
native to the technological change in question. It's not possible to win in
that situation.

You're asking someone whose paradigm of video was formed by the advent of
color TV, to understand the cultural and technological consequences of popcorn
time. It's like the tech problems of WWI: generals who only knew cavalry
rushes continued ordering i calvary rushes, even against machine gun fire and
even against staggering numbers of dead.

So I think I give up now. Technological issues may as well ignore the legal
framework, because the legal framework ignores the technological issues. If we
stop fighting, the rules will get so ridiculous as to he openly impossible to
satisfy, offering industries the choice to either ignore them, or go out of
business. In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the
hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the
legislators' paychecks. So fuck em. Legislators can figure it out when it hits
their tax receipts.

~~~
oneJob
Finally! An opportunity to say something positive about representative
democracies! The opportunities to do so are rather meager these days, it
seems, what with all the talk about their failings and lackings, especially
when compared to direct democracy, which is becoming more and more possible
every day. This is a tailor made case for representative democracy.

To all the comments speaking to the shortcomings of their legislators and how
those shortcomings translate to suboptimal or even outright harmful laws,
please consider two other options. Direct democracy and laissez-faire
/libertarianism /anarchy.

First, consider direct democracy. By opening the legislative process to every
eligible citizen, there is little chance the voting base will become more
knowledgeable as to the issues of technology it will be voting on. It will in
all probability become less knowledgeable, on par. Direct democracy increases
the cognitive load on the legislator by orders of magnitude. By not having
professional legislators each citizen must become, in addition to already
being a productive member of the work force keeping their skills sharp and
keeping abreast of advancements in their field, being a responsible, good
member of their social circles, oh, and having a personal life, they must now
both make decisions as to when they should devote resources to their
legislative duties, given there will always be something up for vote, they
must also devote resources deciding how they will vote. So, direct democracy
not only creates a larger pool of non expert technology legislators but it
also creates a framework in which those new legislators are less capable to
devote the appropriate resources to legislate effectively.

Now consider the laissez-faire case. This one is easy, and for a contemporary
case study one just needs to look at the recently drafted TPP language on
restrictions on States regarding OSS. Laissez-faire simply settles in whatever
state is conducive to the capabilities and sensibilities of the most fit
entity given the initial state of the environment and its constituents. If the
environment is most conducive to an entity which is benevolent and
intelligent, awesome. If it is conducive to the successful outcome of a self
interested, profit motive driven entity, awesome or not, that is the outcome
in that case. It is amoral. No judgement. Just outcome.

The case for representative democracy then follows rather nicely, for once.
Representative democracy creates a specialized space for crafting legislation
where the citizens concerned about a given piece of legislation can appeal to
the legislators to devote more resources to that particular issue, over other
issues. Additionally they can provide additional resources to the legislators
on a case by case basis to help them legislate, which may come in the form of
financial assistance, access to relevant case or field studies, or experts in
the domain. The non legislative citizens can then still go on about their
lives, and the legislators can craft better quality legislation. Lobbying
would be a form of this activity, but one in which the non legislative party
is already decided as to how the legislation should look in its finished form,
rather than simply trying to inform better legislation.

Two other benefits of representative democracy. The process inserts safety-
switches in the form of, for example, checks and balances (only possible when
the legislature is split in to different bodies, does not work when the whole
legisture is involved in every part of the process), vetoes and recalls (same
thing here), or the formalized process itself, which might require drafting,
review, certification, or cooling-off/reflection periods.

All of which I mention to say that, sure, our "legislators" proper have had
some pretty dumb moments recently while discharging their duties, but let's
not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are only a small part of our
law making apparatus. Lobbyists have certainly been providing their full
energy. The process itself, while never perfect, has certainly done well for
its constituents over an extended historical period, especially compared to
other experiments; part of the beauty of the currently implemented process is
its ability to improve and broaden the scope of its constituency, which should
certainly continue. And there are some examples of grass roots activity
influencing the dialogue and end-product.

As technology experts, throwing our support and resources behind the entire
process, in a holistic fashion, providing expertise, opening up operations to
legislators and citizens so they can familiarize themselves with often
mysterious domains, providing a forumn for dialogues surrounding the issues,
etc, this, to me at least, seems like a promising way forward, as opposed to
withdrawing from the process all together and assuming everthing will sort
itself out to one's personal liking. Not every issue will be settled in a
manner that will satisfy each citizen every time. But that is the trade off
one makes for being part of a larger community which shares most, but not
necessarily each of their interests and priorities with the other members of
their community. On balance though, we should all be better off if everyone
engages and basic rights are respected.

So, yeah, call you Senator or Representative today. :)

~~~
nickbauman
No market (as libertarians understand markets) has ever emerged in all of
history the way libertarians believe they do. All markets emerge in the
context of _state_ actors, the earliest being warlords that capture gold and
silver, strike coin with their visage to pay their soldiers and demand the
peasantry to pay taxes in said coin. Markets follow directly from that. They
require states to function for no other reason to have police protection over
transactions. When you have too much control from a police state, markets
suffer. When you have too little, markets suffer (or melt away actually). You
will have to do better than this.

~~~
anon4
I must correct you about one thing. Gold/silver wasn't used until fairly
recently - 15th century IIRC and for a lot of the time the value of the coin
was in no way correlated to the metal it was printed on. Gold caught on in a
time of market crisis because the rulers thought that telling people that the
metal itself was valuable it would give them more confidence in the currency.
Also it's convenient for currency because it's both absolutely useless and
rare (hard to counterfeit).

~~~
Retric
Your off by at least 2,000 years as Rome for example used gold coins. 200BCE
examples on this page :
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency).
And older gold coins dating back to 600BCE showed up in turkey.

Currency was likely directly created as tax payments. There are several
examples where some unit of currency was basicly X food for Y time.

------
tetheno
"And it's clear: When, like that, the number of subscribers dramatically
declines, young people no longer subscribe to newspapers as my generation did,
when the number of papers sold at newsstands declines, when the classified ads
for the labour market, for used cars and for apartments decline because it all
becomes an online service then newspapers are in existential danger. One can
either accept that, or act now – in five years it would be too late."

I say, let them die. Most newspapers are a joke. I don't subscribe to them
because it's actually a way to become misinformed about any specific topic. Or
at least that's what I see in their take of any topic I know profoundly.

There are alternatives. Reader-supported news like LWN seem to be working. I
get most of my content from topic specific websites, blogs, and mail lists.

About the classified ads. Why is that a problem at all?

"Maybe Google will only accept an European provision, accept European
instruments because then, if needed, via the competition law and the European
Commissioner for Competition measures, penalties and legal action in case of
breach of European rules are possible"

Transcription -> Steal.

------
bitL
So we need to go through the legalese in detail and make new definitions of
slightly modified original concepts so that the law can't be applied to them
anymore - like what the pharma industry does with rebranding old medicine by
changing the formula slightly. Ideally, that should also be polymorphic in
nature, i.e. the definition/implementation could be changed easily
algorithmically. Unless there is some radical change to the law making it
algorithmic, it would always be trailing a few years behind.

As an EU citizen, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer stupidity of our
politicians in the past 2-3 years...

~~~
fpp
I believe it is more incompetence, lack of technology understanding and / or
complete ignorance. You can't explain otherwise how a person like Oettinger
can be put in charge of such an important part of the economy.

I'm still waiting when they suggest that airline pilots can be replaced with
bus drivers to stop them going on strike / industrial action - it's called an
Airbus so there shouldn't be much difference, after all it has bus in the
name.

~~~
merb
He is a shame for his country. Never heard a man speaking english so badly
when thats his job.

And he never said anything good. He was one of the worst minister of the state
i'm living in. Clearly only one guy after him was worse.

He is totally stupid and he and his successor managed it that people started
to vote other parties on state votes, after over 50 years the CDU dropped out
of the state cabinet.

And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are
politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country. The problem is even if they
do completely bad things these politics never needed to fear about any judges
against them.

~~~
Fiahil
> And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are
> politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country.

That's funny, it's exactly the same, here, in France!

~~~
disgruntledphd2
In Ireland, too. It's essentially where you send either a complete idiot, or
someone who threatens you politically, to retire.

They get lots of money, and you get rid of them. Sure, the Council pretty much
agree with all commission proposed laws anyway, so the only risk is a media
one.

~~~
sonthonax
Ireland's pretty bad, recently as MEPs we've had legalize-weed-druid,
Ireland's Michelle Bachman, and far to many Sinn Feiners lately.

------
DominikR
This is one of the reasons why the IT industry in the EU is so weak when
compared to the US.

As a citizen of an EU state I can't help but feel that we are here governed by
complete morons.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
How are EU regulations holding EU IT industry back?

~~~
pvdebbe
Regulations by definition are for holding rapidly advancing industries back,
for various reasons.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Good regulations have almost nothing to do with technological change. We have
regulations against pollution or fraud not because the technology has changed
but because the incentives otherwise don't line up. You can pollute the air
using technology from 1895 and if it's cheaper to do that than to install
emissions controls then economics will drive you to do that unless regulations
prohibit it.

Regulating very new technologies is almost always unwise. There will already
be existing generic laws and regulations against serious bad outcomes (you are
not allowed to knowingly kill people regardless of method) and for less
serious outcomes it's generally better to let the technology shake out and
take some time to study and understand it, even if there is a short-term cost
to doing that.

~~~
pvdebbe
Well I'm thinking along the lines, "low-polluting equipment is most likely
more expensive => the company is held slightly back by demanding new
standards". Maybe some regulation is needed, some is not. And all of it is by
definition against the company. But not necessarily against the society as a
whole.

------
sokoloff
> judges established that the simple act of linking to publicly available
> content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new
> public, a few questions were left open bis this ruling, however: For example
> when exactly content can be seen as accessible by the public and how e.g.
> links surpassing paywalls are to be treated.

Links surpassing paywalls are a non-issue, IMO. Those coming-from-Google
paywall bypasses are put in place _by the content copyright holders_
specifically for the purpose of making that possible. If they didn't want
their paywall bypassed, they wouldn't have built (or would turn off) their
paywall bypass for search engines.

~~~
x5n1
The end points are 100% under control of the content owner. They are free to
decide who to let in and who not to let in. Why should there be any onus on
the linker to do anything whatsoever and not exercise their full rights to use
hyperlinks any way that they want to?

------
alkonaut
I don't understand. Help me. Why do you even PUT content at a linkable url
online if you don't want anyone linking to it?

If I wanted to control exactly who views my content and where they come from I
can just check headers for internal linking or generate unique single-use URLs
for each visitor.

What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?

~~~
kalleboo
> What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?

Newspapers want Google to give them money

~~~
alkonaut
Or else what? Or they will stop being indexed by Google? Why would they want
that? It makes no sense!

~~~
DanBC
It doesn't make any sense.

Google should sometimes just give people what they claim they want. "Be
careful what you wish for". Unions often have "work to rule" \- you do what
you're paid to do and no more, and it's an effective method of industrial
action.

If a newspaper site doesn't want Google to index them Google should just drop
them. Maybe provide help about setting up robots.txt.

Does Google have a blog post about why they index pages behind a paywall, and
why they're happy to not index pages behind paywalls? (I understand it as "we
want to index stuff that people can get to. If they can't get to it we don't
want to index it")

Or maybe Google should just give ads and paywalled content the same shaded
background?

------
mariusz79
I no longer care.. fuck it. Let them break the internet. We will not be the
only one to face the consequences.

I for one, started hoarding data, scraping good websites for valuable
information while I still can.

~~~
mbrock
We should also be preparing the infrastructure for a global network that's
asynchronous, anonymous, and encrypted. It doesn't seem all that unlikely that
the whole notion of a real-time internet is going to collapse or become
infeasible for anything but entertainment approved by the corporations and
states. And of course that has already happened to some extent. We should
maintain a relatively slow grassroots samizdat network. Even the remotest
regions should be able to receive dispatches through couriers, and in regions
where packet-switched internet is somewhat operational we can distribute the
samizdat at net speeds. I suppose I'm thinking of an "interplanetary" network.
A network fit for the Firefly universe, if you will.

~~~
jumperjake
There already are efforts to address this with projects like the IPFS.
However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative
internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open
internet.

~~~
mbrock
Somewhat agreed. However, there is enough repression to provide incentive for
semi-shady people to work on these things. Unfortunately piracy seems to be
the biggest incentive for secret communications, and while that is indeed
productive, it incentivizes high-bandwidth torrents for large files, which is
not exactly in line with the most crucial needs (although of course there are
important uses for distribution of videos and photos). An interplanetary low-
bandwidth Usenet might be the most crucial necessity for the upcoming
dystopian future. So I suggest we start encouraging the spread of subversive
poetry and politically uncomfortable discussions, to incentivize such a
grassroots network.

~~~
hellbanner
You're best off figuring out other avenues to do this - HN is preaching to the
choir.

~~~
nitrogen
You need a choir to make a chorus.

------
chris_wot
I would have thought that those in European nations would have learned from
their mistakes by now. Spain did this, initially only some companies demanded
money and so Google just removed them from the index. Then the companies
realised it was a disaster.

Then the Spanish government made it mandatory for everyone to pay the media
companies, regardless - and they weren't allowed to do it directly either.
They had to pay the state, who then paid the publisher. Nobody was allowed to
opt-out. So Google News pulled out entirely. It was an unmitigated disaster...
for the publishers:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-
shows-s...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains-
google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-publishers/)

To quote that article:

 _Whatever loss of traffic occurs due to readers who may read a news
aggregator and then choose not to read an entire story, is more than made up
for by the "market expansion" effect, the study found. In other words, given
access to a news aggregator like Google, people read much more news._

 _The NERA analysis found a 6 percent overall drop in traffic from the Spanish
Google News closure and a 14 percent drop for smaller publications. Those
numbers are slightly smaller than a GigaOm analysis from last year, which
found traffic drop-offs of 10 to 15 percent._

~~~
DominikR
But once these plans apply to every single EU state Google will in effect have
to choose between leaving the EU market or paying.

That's at least the plan they have come up with.

If they severely limit the Internet in the process doesn't matter to them.
They'll create a shitty EU alternative if they have to.

~~~
tomp
How much do you think Google earns with News? I'm pretty sure they would
simply shut down the service EU-wide, and continue providing just their core
business, Google Search.

~~~
DominikR
It doesn't matter to them how much Google earns, it is threatening the
business model of EU media corporations.

Therefore the framework of rules must be changed. This is protectionism.

------
pestaa
Am I the only one who finds these regulations increasingly funny?

I want to see how they would react to URL shortening services, base64-encoded
outgoing redirects, links injections only on click events; you know, the gray
tactics the whole internet already uses!

Please explain this one thing to me: why don't politicians work with field
experts? Not just IT, but any domain, really.

~~~
andor
The government sets an agenda and uses all kinds of tricks to get it through
the parliament as fast as possible. A real democratic process is not desired.
MPs usually don't have enough time to even read bills, doing proper research
is completely out of the question, and therefore they trust the party
position. Disagreeing with the party is sanctioned, e.g. you won't get listed
in the next election (-> you lose the income you need for your mortgage), less
speaking time, etc.

Source: Members of the Bundestag and "Von Rettern und Rebellen" by Klaus-Peter
Willsch

~~~
pmlnr
> MPs usually don't have enough time to even read bills, doing proper research
> is completely out of the question, and therefore they trust the party
> position.

I don't get this. They should automatically reject anything they didn't have
time to read.

------
endymi0n
And another strike by the same EU Digital Economy commissioner (!) that "had
no sympathy for Jennifer Lawrence when she happens to post her private
pictures online".

I'm pretty hopeless, especially because there's no way on gods green earth to
get rid of this guy. EU is so high above country level politics (yet defines
>80% of laws in the end), it's hard to even get people to the voting booth.
And even if they do, it's completely parliamentary, no chance to influence
anything.

It doesn't help that completely incompetent politicians in the country parties
get dilbertized one level up so they "can't hurt anymore". This pirate
politician is about the only one there decently transparent and accountable.

------
sacado2
A hyperlink is the same as a reference in a book. That means referencing a
precise portion of a book (for instance, ISBN + page number, or just title +
publisher + chapter number) would become a copyright violation too.

I'm not sure the EC is conscious of that, because it would have huge
consequences. The cost of academic research papers, for instance, with their
pages full of references, would become dramatically high to produce, or even
impossible (what if I don't want you to talk about my works ?)

------
walterbell
Has any organization formally estimated the worldwide, annual economic value
generated by the open internet? When copyright (intended to promote the
generation of creative works) is abused for control, the loser is the
legitimacy of copyright. Those who want control should invent new mechanisms
that are specifically for control, instead of hiding behind and squandering
the legitimate role of copyright.

~~~
tomp
> Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically
> for control

You mean, DRM, rootkits, hardware TPMs, etc? Personally, I prefer copyright,
at least it can be easily ignored.

~~~
walterbell
The problem is that "technological protection" mechanisms are being bound to
copyright, the violation of which is being bound to criminal law in
TPP/TTIP/RCEP.

DRM would have an uphill battle if it could not hitch a ride on the legitimacy
of copyright. They need to be separated. One protects transient and ever-
changing business models, one protects human creativity in a virtuous circle
inspired by past creativity.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Bypassing DRM has been criminal for decades now, as a result of the WIPO
Copyright Treaty and TRIPS.

------
Radle
Any fellow Europeans here, who remember the good old time, when we used to
make jokes about American Politics being so stupid?

I feel sad, very sad.

------
andor
_" the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright
infringement, because it does not reach a new public_"

That's not really the most straight forward reasoning? I'd say linking is not
COPYright infringement because nothing is ever copied.

------
blazespin
lol. it wouldn't break the internet. it would just break european websites. I
applaud Julia's euro-centric ego though.

I agree though, let them do it. Someone has to show everyone what nonsense
this is. Cautionary tales serve a purpose.

------
henrikschroder
If you are a EU citizen, vote pirate in the EU elections.

We got Christian Engström last term, and we have Julia Reda this term. They're
doing a ton of good. We need more.

------
joeyspn
IPFS, anyone?

[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

~~~
jumperjake
I completely support the IPFS (especially with them keeping content hosting
explicitly out of scope). The problem I faced when trying to leverage IPFS for
a project is that the reference implementation is very difficult to use in
languages other than Go, and to completely embed in applications (as in
staticly linking to sqlite).

~~~
ashark
Yeah, I _like_ Go, but the reference implementation should have been a C
library (or similar). There are splinter projects trying to implement it for
other languages, but they're either already dead or moving at a snail's pace.

I love the idea, but that decision leaves me with little confidence that it'll
catch on.

------
mikerichards
When you have a culture of statism this is what you get. You elect governments
that want to and do micromanage your lives.

Don't blame it on the politicians. You guys elected these people. They're just
following the ideology of their politics.

~~~
alexro
Don't you think that the whole 'democracy' model is flawed from the top to the
bottom? If there were no good candidates offered to the public, how would the
public choose a good one? And if a good one would somehow emerge, it is
trivial to 'catch him' with a pack of heroin or being related to 'enemies',
isn't it?

------
rubiquity
I think it's a great idea because those media companies will get crippled when
everyone stops linking to them. What a great way to put a serious dent in an
annoying industry.

------
jjuhl
This is so broken.

I'm giving up. The political system is broken beyond repair.

------
philip142au
It really doesn't matter, I will make my own internet.

------
kalleboo
Why are tech companies so bad at lobbying? If a small, dying industry like
publishing is strong enough to push through stuff like this, why can't cash-
flush tech companies combat it?

------
waxjar
When I lock my front door and leave a spare key under the doormat, my
insurance company is not obliged by law to pay for any damages if the spare
key is used by thieves to enter my house. I could have easily prevented the
situation.

Content publishers should properly lock their front doors, too, and not have
spare keys lying around all over the place.

------
chejazi
Silly for digital media to try and leech off of the more successful tech cos.
In general, digital media is scrambling with various monetization strategies.
But they're thinking about the problem wrong. They obsess over how to monetize
people already _on_ their site. Instead, they should start asking how they can
monetize people _coming_ to their site. I think the proposition linked by OP
is a very premature recognition of that. The proposed solution is way out in
left field, but there are saner approaches, such as the use of interstitial
advertising. Of course, now adblockers become relevant to the discussion, and
I won't go down that rabbit hole (here, at least.)

Disclosure: I operate a link shortener [1] that pays people based on their
traffic using interstitial advertising.

[1] [https://credhot.com](https://credhot.com)

------
5ersi
Will this also way the other way around ? I.e. will newspapers also need to
pay if they link to external source?

------
Joeri
Time to play devil's advocate and do a thought experiment. What if we created
a site containing every word and every conjugation in a way that could be
linked to. This work is clearly not a copyright violation. What if we then
wrote a "compression" program that took any text file and converted it to a
file containing only links to this site. Few would argue that is not a
copyright violation. Yet the resulting file contains nothing of the original,
it is just a link. If linking to a whole text with a single link is not a
copyright violation, at what point between that and our "compressed" file does
it cross the line, and why?

Or, put another way, if links had been copyright violations from the start,
would we think that it was a sensible and logical characteristic of copyright?

~~~
waxjar
That experiment has been done before!
[https://github.com/philipl/pifs](https://github.com/philipl/pifs)

~~~
sonthonax
What is the legal implication of distributing a range of Pii that can be
translated into copyrighted material?

------
ikeboy
Remember all these sites that ban hyperlinking to them in their ToS:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+fro...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+from+any+other+website+without+our+initial+and+ongoing+consent)

------
dclowd9901
Since democracy seems incapable of progressing with changes in the world,
would it ever be possible to have a bureaucratic technocracy? Something where
technocrats write up and implement legislation rather than people who have no
understanding?

~~~
fsloth
Um, it's not democracy that's at fault. Legislative structures first goal is
to protect capital. In practice this leads to lobbyists influencing legal
decisions.

In the fantasy technocracy - unless it was totalitarian communism - there
would be instruments to sound the markets for need for legislation and big
capital would have as much say so there as here now.

------
ryanmarsh
I'd like to know how many of the people complaining here about their
legislators have called, written, or visited* (yes you can do that) said
legislators to help educate them.

*In the U.S.

------
fried_chicken
Just let them pass the legislation. Any media company actually trying to
enforce their "rights" will promptly die.

------
dreamdu5t
Hyperlinks are not a problem. Government is a problem. The EA and it's
legislators are a problem.

------
mcs_
when was internet free? i always have paid to use it. i understand free
software but internet is here cause an infrastructure was created and deployed
(means paid). my lan is free (cause i paid for that).

i don't get the point. someone wants to control a wan. is that a news?

------
scotty79
Internet already has this. If you want to be paid by google for linking to
your site you just need to put NOINDEX in proper place in the page header.
Though it's really up to google if they choose to list you and pay you or not
list you.

------
Amarandei
What exactly makes a text a hyperlink?

Does it have to be only the usual <a href="#">text</a> ?

What if I do this: <div link="#">text</div>

And then I use JavaScript to redirect, is it still considered a hyperlink?

Have I just found a loop hole? :)

------
Kristine1975
There's a lot of "considering" and "seems" in the article, and skimming the
leaked document I didn't find anything definite either. So I'm not particulary
worried.

------
JustSomeNobody
Let it pass. Let these nimwits embarrass themselves.

------
bpodgursky
Maybe before establishing all these EU bureaucracies they should have focused
on establishing a strong bill of rights. The first amendment at least in the
US would almost certainly prevent nonsense like this.

The EU commissions overall feel like they are flailing around making up the
rules they go. At least when courts in the US disagree, it is about adherence
to precedent and the constitution, not appeasing whatever group is lobbying
them at the time.

~~~
pjc50
* (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
    
    
        (2) The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.*
    

(At first glance it has more caveats, but in practice they're all present in
US 1st amendment caselaw as well)

~~~
bpodgursky
It is not true that these are remotely equivalent. US case-law says, you have
freedom of speech unless it specifically calls for violence or threatens very,
very, direct harm ie calling "fire" in a theater (and yes, even copyrighted
material can be quoted or satirized as necessary to make a political
statement).

"For the prevention of disorder of crime, for the protection of health and
morals for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" \-- those are
wide, gaping holes which make this statement absolutely useless.

~~~
nmrm2
The US has the same caveats, it's just that the limitations of free speech are
decided in case law instead of specifically codified.

 _> For the prevention of disorder of crime_

There are all sorts of types of speech that are criminal in the US because
they are either a crime, or encourage/enable crime in some way.

 _> for the protection of health and morals_

There are plenty of examples in the US of speech being limited for health
reasons.

Protection of morals is a bit more of a gray area, but certainly there are
historical examples of the US limiting speech for reasons that amount to
morality.

 _> for the protection of the reputation or rights of others_

Again, libel is a crime in the US.

~~~
bpodgursky
Libel specifically says you cannot say provably false things. You can ruin a
reputation, without lying, without a problem in the US.

The difference is evidenced by the "right to be forgotten" ruling in Europe,
where the ability to hide past actions was deemed more important than the
right to publicize those links / events.

~~~
pjc50
Unless it's about agriculture:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws)
(civil burden of proof, and reversed in some places).

------
mtgx
Take Ottinger out of the Commission, and this idea will die. He was the one
pushing for such a tax in Germany, too. He has strong ties with GEMA there.

