
How the EU may force all artists to use Youtube forever - pmoriarty
https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/extinction-level-event.html
======
pedro_hab
This is one more reason for innovation to keep dying in Europe.

They are working on this regulations that stifle tech and are losing.

The EU had 16B VC investments agains 60B in the US, the market capitalization
of Top 500 companies has been declining. [1]

Of the 50 countries studied in the Digital Evolution Index, which tracked the
levels of digital development and attractiveness to global businesses and
investors, the bottom 9 were European. [2]

From the video [1]: "Loser: Europe, which is becoming irrelevant when it comes
to innovation. Only six of the world's most valuable companies are based in
Europe, and venture capital funding has declined."

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiTz-
NTEXAM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiTz-
NTEXAM&feature=youtu.be&t=42) .

2\. [https://hbr.org/2015/10/europes-other-crisis-a-digital-
reces...](https://hbr.org/2015/10/europes-other-crisis-a-digital-recession)

~~~
stochastic_monk
It’s counterproductive to label all regulations as if they’re the same.

Antitrust laws and consumer protections are very different from something like
this designed to maximize profits for record labels and publishing companies
in character and effect on the world at large. Some regulations are essential
to a functional society, while others, like this, are disastrous and serve
only to reinforce monopolistic strangleholds.

~~~
tananaev
Pretty much any regulation harms business. The smaller the business, the more
toll new regulations usually have on it. The more regulations we enact, the
more big companies grow and small companies die/not started. It acts like a
positive feedback loop because the whole reasons for most regulations in the
first place was to tame big evil corporations, which in the end usually
benefit more from regulations (less competition). Also, consumer pays for any
regulation costs anyway, so everything becomes more expensive with more
regulation. It might not be immediately noticeable, but it's definitely the
trend in the long term.

I'm not saying that we don't need any regulations at all, but I think we
should strive to keep it to absolutely bare minimum.

~~~
adrianN
That's okay, because politics isn't just about helping businesses. It's mainly
about helping people. Sometimes that means helping businesses, but sometimes
it means harming them.

~~~
simula67
> politics isn't just about helping businesses. It's mainly about helping
> people

Many politicians are not about helping people, many are about helping
themselves. Also, sometimes you can harm people with the intention of helping
them

~~~
adrianN
So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or
less regulation is better.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> So? The system isn't perfect. That doesn't help in deciding whether more or
> less regulation is better.

The entire concept of "more or less regulation" is partisan ideology. Every
regulation has a cost and a benefit. Good regulations have benefits in excess
of their costs.

The problem is that calculating the cost is very difficult. You may have a
regulation that increases costs by $10 and produces a $12 benefit. But if the
$10 cost increase drives a competitor out of business and allows the remaining
provider to raise prices by $20 in total, you're now paying $20 for a $12
benefit.

They also have opportunity costs. You may have a regulation that consumes $20
of a $30 surplus but produces $50 in diffuse positive externalities, which
sounds like a good idea. But if there is an alternative that also consumes $20
of the same $30 surplus and produces $500 in positive externalities, you can't
have both ($40 > $30) and enacting the first one is really destroying $450 in
benefits relative to the second. Trying to enact both is even worse, because
then you get neither one and even destroy any benefits inherent in the
original transaction.

It's so easy to screw this up that it's better to err on the side of not
regulating something than to convince yourself you gained $30 when you really
destroyed $1000.

The regulations you want are the ones that have unambiguous, huge net
benefits, like prohibiting people from dumping toxic waste in the river,
because the cost is low and the benefit is enormous. But even then you have to
be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to prevent $50,000,000 in harm,
you could still be wasting $40,000 because there is a way to do it for
$10,000.

And the incentives are wrong for people to carefully evaluate things like
this, because the people paying the cost aren't the people creating the rules.

Which means "all regulation is bad" is false but "any given regulation is bad"
is a solid heuristic.

~~~
wavves_collide
> But even then you have to be careful, because if you're spending $50,000 to
> prevent $50,000,000 in harm, you could still be wasting $40,000 because
> there is a way to do it for $10,000.

Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to
implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings
(regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider us
as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having not
set up that regulation at all. The government spending e.g. 1M on experts
hired to check whether, say, oil pipelines are built to spec and standards,
and not break unexpectedly - is much better for everyone involved overall,
than the company operating the pipeline paying hundreds of millions for the
cleanup of the resulting environmental damage. Same goes for pretty much any
and every other industry that we actually depend on. Yes, sure, be careful if
possible - but personally, I’d rather see inefficient spending on necessary
regulation than no regulation at all. Because then we’d definitely be picking
up the bill for it, maybe not always directly with our wallets or government
budgets, but we lose either way.

I do agree with the rest of your points.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Yes, but even if you create a regulation that is $40k more expensive to
> implement than the cheapest option, it still results in a $49.95M in savings
> (regardless of who would be picking up the bill, at least when you consider
> us as a society that depends on each other to function) compared to having
> not set up that regulation at all.

Which is why those kinds of regulations are the ones you want.

But it's still worth carefully revisiting them from time to time, because
$40,000/company/year is still literally having each company hire a person to
waste their entire working life. This is what regulators should optimally be
spending most of their time on -- evaluating the _existing_ regulations for
ways to reduce the costs without losing the benefit.

------
djrogers
This sounds like a horrible law, with some really bad consequences. That said;

> This is an extinction-level event for the internet, folks.

Hyperbole like this doesn’t help, and in fact often turns off people whom you
might be able to sway to your cause.

The immediate reaction of most people to an absolutist phrase such as that is
skepticism, which naturally leads to disbelief and scorn - not what you’re
likely looking to foster in your readers.

~~~
falcor84
Agreed. I suppose if it passes, it's going to be another application of John
Gilmore's excellent "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around
it".

~~~
pmoriarty
The widespread success of the Great Firewall of China puts the lie to such
optimism.

------
tj-teej
Copyright law, Net-Neutrality, it sometimes feels that our current Governments
cannot bring forward decent legislation on complex tech issues.

Regardless of whether the cause is ignorance or cynicism; have there been
other examples of times in US or EU history that governments passed such
clearly 'anti-people' (for lack of a better term) laws?

~~~
lbarrow
20 years later, the DMCA in the US actually seems pretty decent. It's not
perfect but it strikes a pretty good balance between the interests of
copyright holders and allowing for innovation.

~~~
saagarjha
In my experience, it's been used to threaten people who reverse engineer
software to find bugs and take down content that is not remotely infringing.
Not a "pretty good balance" in my book.

~~~
rhino369
That is a downside. But it also makes it very difficult to sue a
website/service for the actions of its users.

------
hk__2
Why remove “How” from the original title? "How the EU will force all artists
to use Youtube, forever".

Edit: even the original title is misleading: it should be something like "How
the EU may force all artists to use Youtube, forever, _if_ that EU proposal is
approved".

~~~
DoreenMichele
There is a character limit. I'm on my phone, so checking character count isn't
convenient for me at the moment, but that's a common reason to drop words that
add little meaning.

~~~
37
A very brief look at the HN homepage tells me this is not the reason.

~~~
1337biz
I have had countless times these problems with the hn character limit. It is
really tricky deciding which words to cut out or how to reframe titles when
the hn limit sets in. Somebody is always going to be unhappy (if the
submission ever makes it ot the front page).

~~~
hk__2
But the original title doesn’t even come close to the character limit. "How
the EU will force all artists to use Youtube, forever" is 57-characters-long
while the submission limit is 80. A quick look at the current homepage shows
that exactly a third of its titles (10 out of 30) are longer than 57
characters.

------
cm2187
This is what happened with banks, where the regulatory requirements are so
onerous that they constitute a massive barrier to entry to new competitors.
That's both a curse for banks (it's not fun to be regulated to death) and a
blessing (it does't matter how badly your service sucks, as long as it is
about as bad as your few competitors).

~~~
s_dev
The specific legislation in mind that relates to these banks in the EU is
PDS2: basically banks have to make their data both machine consumable and
portable for the user. Basically they have to make a public API.

------
INTPenis
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I did read these articles back when the
vote was up a few months ago and my interpretation was not that it is a
requirement to have an automated evaluation system.

Sure youtube will of course implement an automated system but my point is that
if you setup your own Peertube instance you can still screen content and let
users report possible copyrighted content to you for manual screening.

So small scale, self-hosted or themed instances will still be possible but
they will have to moderate their content and they will have to act on received
copyright violation reports.

The author seems to be pointing out that small players cannot compete with
Youtube because Youtube will have the means for automated large scale content
screening.

Well small players can do it manually. It will only work up until a certain
level but it still enables people to host small themed instances of peertube
for example.

~~~
dx87
From what I remember, you're right that it doesn't strictly require an
automated system, but the only way to practically do it is with an automated
system. With current safe harbor provisions in the DMCA, if someone uploads
copyrighted content, the host isn't liable as long as they take it down when
notified. The new EU rules would make the host liable for any copyrighted
content uploaded by a user, no safe harbor provisions. So you're options are
automated filtering/blocking of all uploaded content, or roll the dice and
hope that if a user uploads copyrighted content, that you find out before you
get sued by the copyright owner.

------
phyller
The author of this article is a genius, able to express the problem so
clearly. These types of regulation that have been coming through the EU are
good for the biggest of businesses. Complex and difficult to follow regulation
allows the big companies to build a big moat, they have the money to build
systems to satisfy the regulations, even to game the regulations. And no new
companies will be able to disrupt them. Who's going to risk $60 million
dollars on your startup before they get anywhere, just so they can comply with
regulations?

EU, get ready for Google, Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Coca-Cola to choose what
services and products you get, and how much you pay for them.

------
imperio59
The point is moot as soon as someone builds an API to take your user's
uploaded video and run it through copyright detection. The software doesn't
have to be good, it just has to do what the law asks. This article is pretty
off the mark.

~~~
Aeolun
You can be pretty certain a EU law will be fairly specific in what is
required.

And I doubt it will be simple.

Either way, it’s still an absurd idea, regardless of whether it’s doable in
reality.

------
polemic
Car makers support safety regulation because it further entrenches their
position and increases barriers to entry.

That does not mean that safety regulations are wrong, or that they need to be
rolled back in the name of innovation.

The mantra that _any_ imposition on innovation is bad just does not hold true.
There will be services that challenge YouTube's dominance, and there will be
innovation in the copyright protection space to enable that.

You might believe that the increased cost to market entry is detrimental, but
you have to actually explain why the inability for garage-startups to compete
with YouTube is materially bad _for artists_ , rather than taking it as an
article of faith.

~~~
betterunix2
Car makers were vehemently opposed to seatbelt requirements, and actually sent
women after Ralph Nader in an attempt to discredit him when he was advocating
for it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Industry_response)

Auto makers are also far less vulnerable to being unseated by startups than
tech companies, due to the capital intensive nature of their business and the
maturity of their market.

------
bjt
Definitely an exaggeration.

You don't need every single startup to build a $60 million Content ID
equivalent.

You just need one startup to build Content-ID-as-a-Service.

Which actually looks like a pretty good startup idea right now.

~~~
bubblethink
>Content-ID-as-a-Service

Some torrent trackers have pretty good databases of content. They can make
some side cash instead of relying on donations. Win-win for everyone.

~~~
jacob019
torrent trackers don't database content, they index it

------
opportune
Can someone explain which large organizations within the EU are pushing for
article 13 and why? The more I read about this law the more stupid it seems.

GDPR compliance isn’t that hard but Article 13 is bad enough that it gives a
compelling reason to just ignore the EU market for lots of applications. And
it’s really going to up the costs of unseating internet incumbents

~~~
barry-cotter
Publishers of newspapers, books and music. The old content industry.

------
lifeisstillgood
I did this a weird / specious argument

1\. Youtube, right now, flagrantly violates copyright - search for Peppa Pig -
oh look dozens and dozens and dozens of videos on crappy channels. Same goes
for pretty much anything. Maybe Disney does a good job

2\. As such _attribution_ is shit. youtube kiddies regularly strip something
and post it for the "hey look" value. Trying to find the original creator of
day an animated short you find on youtube is frankly impossible. This in a
world wide web designed explicitly to be attribute friendly is crazy

3\. However, having one, government mandataed IP database is an even bigger
crazy and Article 13 shoukd die. The point of the web and domain names is to
solve this - surely?

/rant

Edit: What I have realised is that I think content publishers should be liable
for the content on their platforms... Senator :-)

Frankly that solves pretty much everything. Want free speech? sure fine no one
is stopping it.

------
IronWolve
I cant even get Shazam to work on many songs in tv shows, due to music sold
from companies that produce music for content creators and not the public.

Also noticed this trend is now happening into youtube creators using leased
music from their creator company or 3rd party youtube music provider.

How the heck is Youtube able to identify music if Shazam cant?

------
thecleaner
EU where innovation goes to die. However industry 4.0 and other initiatives
are rather exciting. Wonder why they keep sucking at consumer tech.

------
jowiar
There's some irony in posting this here, given this is a user-generated site
and all, but I'd love to see all the safe-harbor provisions be seriously
rethought. It would wreck the tech industry, but save the internet by
decentralizing it, and kill off cesspools where idiots wreck society while
profiteering scum become billionaires amid the carnage.

~~~
Nasrudith
That would do massive harm to transparency due to making it harder to find
anything. Not to mention the effective end of anonymous speech - either they
host wrote or reuploaded it and either way they can be attacked for it. Which
means vanishingly few would upload content from another.

Really the tear it down and build something new mentality is faulty. You don't
tear your house down and then build a new one before you die of exposure, you
build the new one then abandon or tear down the old one.

~~~
jowiar
We had a (mostly) working house, then money happened to it, driven by
legislation which let the VCs and their friends avoid the liability that
prevented others from doing the same before.

What we needed was tools to make it easier for people to publish to the shared
internet. What we got was a centralized mess -- the bastard child of AOL and
the advertising industry.

The past 20 years of growth in the internet have been a mistake. Not a "small,
needs a bit of tweaking" sort of mistake, but a "burn it all" mistake. Twitter
is a garbage fire. Facebook is a garbage fire. The world would be better
without them. Not a "slightly modified" version. Burned to the ground.

The liability insurance required to hold data on a billion people should be
unaffordable. Services at that scale should not exist.

------
drdrey
It's hard to take the story seriously when it uses hyperbole such as "this is
an extinction level event"

------
jasonkostempski
If a law is going to require an algorithm, the algorithm should be supplied by
the government, open and free for all to use and they should be responsible
for the correctness of the results.

------
nyxtom
This is how centralization and sweeping censorship/fascism seems to work in
the new modern era we live in. Govt bodies react to pressing problems by
increasing regulatory footprint so much that only companies like Facebook,
Google/YouTube, Twitter, could possibly comply with. At the same time, these
companies are at increasing pressure both from frequent public outrages to
politicians to do something about users and types of content shared on their
network. It’s easy to dismiss how these companies comply with regulatory
bodies and react to public pressure to ban certain types of content and users
so long as it is possible to create alternative networks. With stuff like
this, it’s not so far fetched to imagine it increasingly difficult to launch
platforms similar to YouTube and Facebook/Twitter, if not prohibitive without
special deals and partnerships with major media companies. We need a new
internet

~~~
balt_s
> We need a new internet

Let me know when it's done; seems you've got your work cut out for you..

~~~
black6
Most people will always flock to the “free” option that all their buddies are
on. It’s entirely possible for me to host streaming video on my web server
that I pay for. Hell, it may even be within my skill set to deploy it. But if
you watched my video(s) on my sever, there would be no easy, one-shot way to
populate similar videos on all my friends own web servers. The same applies to
(micro)blogging services like Facebag and the Tweeter.

You get what you pay for, and most don’t want to pay a subscription fee to
watch random cat videos whenever the feeling strikes.

------
quotemstr
"Build your own platforms if you don't like your censorship", they said.
"Private companies can do what they want. Go make your own."

Bwahahahahahaahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahah.

When I was young and stupid, I thought tech would be an unfettered,
unassailable force for individual liberty. Now, I realize that people like
Evgeny Morozov were right all along and that the internet is a tool for
totalitarian thought control like the world has never seen.

~~~
_visgean
"Private companies can do what they want. Go make your own." I mean have you
heard of this thing called laws? Like its not a new thing...

This is a stupid regulation but it was never the case of "Private companies
can do what they want".

------
nkkollaw
These clickbaity, overdramatic headlines are getting kind of tiring.

