
EU businesses sign open letter against copyright directive articles 11 and 13 - zoobab
https://nextcloud.com/blog/130-eu-businesses-sign-open-letter-against-copyright-directive-art-11-13/
======
buboard
Signed. Here is the link to add your signature:
[https://nextcloud.com/press/pr20190319](https://nextcloud.com/press/pr20190319)

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chme
What I find odd about the protest against this is that it is mostly coming
from Germany. Why is France not protesting against this more?

~~~
est31
The French government is very much for Articles 11 and 13, while the German
govt ... can't make up their minds. One of the German coalition parties is
against, including the justice minister, but she still voted in favour of it.
Quoting this [1]:

> Wenn Barley im Kabinett nicht zugestimmt hätte, hätte sich Deutschland im
> Kreis der EU-Staaten enthalten müssen –- dann wäre die nötige Mehrheit nicht
> zustande gekommen.

Translated:

> If Barley had not agreed in the cabinet, Germany would have had to abstain
> in the circle of EU states -- then the necessary majority would not have
> been achieved.

The French government is so much for the directive that the French ambassador
even tried to convince SPD party members... which is diplomatically very
impolite, you don't just meddle with interior politics of another country [2].

[1]: [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/EU-Copyright-
Artikel...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/EU-Copyright-
Artikel-13-und-Upload-Filter-Barley-verteidigt-Ja-zur-EU-Reform-4316759.html)

[2]: [https://netzpolitik.org/2019/frankreich-draengt-spd-
abgeordn...](https://netzpolitik.org/2019/frankreich-draengt-spd-abgeordnete-
zu-ja-bei-der-urheberrechtsreform/)

~~~
chme
Thx for the reply, but it doesn't really answer the question: Why is the
French government so uniformly for this reform and why are there no
demonstrations against this in France, while at the same time in Germany this
is a pretty dividing issue.

Does the French use and understand the internet differently? Do they have more
trust on the government to not mess this up? Or do they currently just have
different, more pressing, issues on their mind?

~~~
dagw
I wonder if the fact that France, and the French government, have a very
protectionist approach to their own culture factors into this. Anything that
limits the power of the US to spread its 'culture' is seen as a net win.

------
xxmarkuski
Due to reordering article 13 is now article 17:
[https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1109153304964222976](https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1109153304964222976)

------
KingMachiavelli
I don't know for sure but it seems to be mostly music copyright companies
pushing for articles 11 and 13. There reasoning seems a bit unclear but then
again music licensing are some bizarre aspects to it. But I think it's
important to understand the who and why behind articles 11 & 13 in order to
understand what the proposed issue is. It's not unlikely that the media and
copyright industry would try to reach farther than they need either
intentially or unintentially due to misunderstanding the technical details.

For the first example, The British Phonographic Institute (BPI) has a
statement argueing that big tech companies, under current safe harbor laws,
are allowed to profit off user uploaded content if it contains music. The
statement says:

> This so called “safe harbour” from liability means that sites can provide a
> vast global jukebox of music whilst arguing they don't even need to
> negotiate a licence to do so.

I can't think of a single site that operates in this manner. Besides upload
filters, Youtube allows copyright holders to flag videos for copyright
violation. Does this work differently in the EU than the US currently? The
system seems to be very effective to the point that it's abuse is widely
critized. Are other sites currently implementing a subpar system? Are there EU
hosted sites that are currently providing these "global jukebox's" ? I guess I
haven't seen a single online site in a while that provides unlicensed music in
the manner that BPI describes. The best example was Grooveshark but that's
been defunct for years.

[https://www.bpi.co.uk/news-analysis/bpi-brit-awards-ceo-
geof...](https://www.bpi.co.uk/news-analysis/bpi-brit-awards-ceo-geoff-taylor-
calls-on-meps-to-support-artists-boost-creativity-and-back-the-eu-copyright-
directive/)

I don't think money would be spend on lobbying if they didn't think there
would be a return; therefore there must be some industry, site, or platform
that EU copyright holders think they can extract rent from or push more people
into buying music. Given that the most likely form of music copyright
infringement is having music in the background of a video uploaded to some
social media site, I guess it seems that copyright holders are after the ad
revenu of user-generated/uploaded content sites (Facebook, Reddit, etc). If
their music appears in the background of a video, they want a slice of the ad-
revenue the site collects. But I think many sites would opt to just muting the
audio (like Twitch already does).

If videos with background music are the major target of this legislation and
would impact any site that allows users to upload videos, the expense of
building an identification system and forking over a portion of the ad-revenue
is likely less than using ML to selectively remove/replace the background
music while leaving other sounds in-tact. In the short term I expect sites to
just mute copyright infringing portions.

~~~
retSava
> mostly music copyright companies pushing for articles 11 and 13

bit simplistic thinking, but this in itself is enough to take a stance against
the articles

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gerdesj
_Especially Article 13 is dangerously experimenting with the core foundation
of the Internet’s ecosystem. Making companies directly liable for the content
of their users forces these businesses to make billions of legal decisions
about the legality of content. Most companies are neither equipped nor capable
of implementing the automatic content filtering mechanisms this requires,
which are expensive and prone to error._

Crap grammar and rubbish sentence construction, whilst opining, will rarely
make friends.

The letter is a dreadful example of how to not plead a case. It has several
bold sections that are are shouty - use italics instead.

 _Although the purpose of these regulations is to limit the powers of big US
Internet companies like Google or Facebook,_ This may be true but again it is
not the way to take the moral high ground. Do you have proof of that
assertion?

If I was one of those 130 businesses and was charged for that letter then I
would feel seen off. I do own a small business in the UK and I will not put my
tiny weight behind that rubbish. I acknowledge some of the issues mentioned
are potentially a problem but the message is garbled so badly as to be
unusable.

~~~
pizzazzaro
I see you're a novice to legal-ese, while pedantically forming your opinion
based on... Sentence construction? Not the content?

I guess we'll just have to deal with a Europe without memes. We'll see only
slower, mass-market-only creators on the internet. The small businesses, the
artists, the actual innovators will have no seat at the table... _because you
cannot wrap you head around a multi-clause sentence._

If you're going to be that _American_ about this, you can keep your Brexit.

On the off chance that you're here to learn instead of just quasi-Schrute-ing
on everything? I would suggest you watch a couple documentaries: "Rip: A Remix
Manifesto," and "Everything is a Remix," to learn how creativity works. Any
efforts to restrict derivative works, such as from these small outlets,
demolishes the human ability to create. These are creative commons works, so I
trust you to find them without having to buy a DVD/bluray.

------
reaperducer
_EU businesses sign..._

Isn't this more accurately " _Some_ EU businesses sign..."

Form what I know about Article 13 from HN, it was created at the behest of a
group of EU businesses.

