
Everyday things on the web the EU Commission wants to make illegal - walterbell
https://juliareda.eu/2016/12/10-illegal-things/
======
aub3bhat
The internet in its current form is not under threat from Russian and Chinese
government but rather from EU, France & Germany. Germany with its outdated
publishers trying to seek rent and France with its bureaucrats practicing
neocolonialism on internet (only french residents being privileged enough to
be forgotten). If the US government does not counters EU, it wont be too long
before Silicon Valley loses its edge. Sadly over last few years the valley has
rolled back its lobbying effort. But it cant afford to do that in future.

Currently Chinese entrepreneurs can already innovate faster than American
companies due to the lax IP laws. In Xiaomi & DJI you can already see this
happening. Imagine if USA lets EU dictates new set of convoluted
copyright/internet laws designed to keep old-money publishers and out of touch
bureaucrats happy. The eventual casualty would be American businesses which
rely on both USA & EU for revenue.

~~~
raesene9
So a lot of the issues mentioned in the article seemed, to me, to relate to
rights extensions for publishers.

I'm a little surprised that you think that the US goverment is likely to
champion the cause of Internet companies against copyright holders give the
fact that, AFAIK, the US has led the way in extending the rights of copyright
holders. Indeed there was a story today on HN on this very topic
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13297792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13297792))
which pointed out that Canada and the EU actually have less restrictive
copyright laws than the US.

------
hex-m
Julias talk on the topic at 33C3:
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8229-copywrongs_2_0](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8229-copywrongs_2_0)

------
Silhouette
The EU leadership is heavily pro-big-copyright at almost all levels, with all
the negative connotations that comes with. Oettinger has been one of the
worst, and these kinds of proposals aren't exactly surprising coming from him.

That said, the details always matter, and it's also worth remembering that the
critic here is a vocal Pirate Party MEP who is obviously not neutral on these
issues herself.

Not all of the points challenged here are entirely unreasonable. For example,
I've never quite understood how a site like Pinterest isn't flagrantly
violating existing copyright laws, never mind any new ones lobbyists might be
asking for.

~~~
DanBC
> For example, I've never quite understood how a site like Pinterest isn't
> flagrantly violating existing copyright laws

They have a DMCA process which seems to protect them.

~~~
ctpide
That should only apply in the US, though. How would a publisher in - let's say
Sweden - care about DMCA?

~~~
krona
Sweden is a member of WIPO, too, and it's laws incorporate the same copyright
treaties that the US does.

[http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/profile.jsp?code=SE](http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/profile.jsp?code=SE)

------
insideworld
Assuming these proposed laws would only apply to web services operating in the
EU, could affected businesses evade these laws by simply moving their services
to other continents, outside of EU jurisdiction? For example, registering
their business in Hong Kong and renting servers outside of Europe?

~~~
nine_k
If you happen to collect any "personal information" about the users from the
EU, e.g. things like real names and addresses, you have to operate from the
EU, or implement the EU-level protection in your country [1]. All major
players, like Google or FB, have EU-based subsidiaries to handle this, AFAICT.

[1]: [http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-
collection/...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-
collection/data-transfer/index_en.htm)

~~~
rahimnathwani
The first line of the article you linked says "The Data Protection Directive
applies to countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes all
EU countries and in addition, non-EU countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and
Norway."

So, why would it apply to a Hong Kong company, with no presence in any of
those countries?

If I use a web service based in Hong Kong, there's no expectation on my part
that they keep my data in the EU. And they're not even the ones transferring
the data outside the EU. I, as the user, am the one sending the packets from
my browser, to their server in HK or wherever.

~~~
nine_k
You may not collect personal data of EU residents if you're operating from
Hong Kong. If you did, you'd be doing so lawlessly and likely fined. How
exactly this could be enforced is a different matter, but likely there are
ways to do so, like arresting Hong Kong property if the amount due is high
enough. Maybe if you operated from within China, and have enough backing, you
could try to ignore it.

So, if you want to make a service for EU residents, make sure you're not
collecting any personal information. Should be fine for a MMOG, but probably
impossible for an online store.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"You may not collect personal data of EU residents if you're operating from
Hong Kong."

This is incorrect, unless the Hong Kong business has an establishment in the
EU. This was clarified in an opinion by the Article 29 Data Protection Working
Party in 2010: [http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-
protection/article-29/docum...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-
protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-
recommendation/files/2010/wp179_en.pdf)

It's a long document, but in short, the law only applies if the company
collecting the data ('controller') has an office ('establishment') in the EU,
or if they're processing the data on equipment in the EU. The 'equipment'
doesn't count if it's just forwarding the data on (so a router or proxy
wouldn't count).

------
open-source-ux
Like many public officials that hold a 'digital' portfolio, Oettinger is
completely unqualified to hold it.

This is the man who recently called Chinese people 'slant eyes' and now he's
been promoted to another EU role to oversee budgetary matters. It dents your
faith in the EU Commission when people like this can crawl to the top.

More on Oettinger: [http://www.politico.eu/article/the-strange-successful-
career...](http://www.politico.eu/article/the-strange-successful-career-of-
gunther-oettinger-european-commission/)

------
maverick_iceman
The European Union has so many stifling regulations, no wonder UK voted to
exit.

~~~
morsch
I'm sure UK post-Brexit will be a freewheeling wonderland of copyright sanity!

~~~
Silhouette
It's tough to say. On the one hand, the British government has historically
been heavily pro-copyright itself. On the other hand, in recent years there
have been some real attempts at significant, if still rather modest, copyright
reform. The last of those actually reached the statute books, though it was
undermined shortly afterwards, in part thanks to shenanigans involving
European law.

There is still a depressing amount of old school thinking within the civil
service and, particularly offensively, the House of Lords, where any time this
debate comes up it seems a succession of privileged and wealthy individuals
disclose interests that sound a lot like "I own millions of pounds of shares
in Big Media companies" before telling us all why big copyright is essential
to our national well-being.

But within other parts of the civil service, within the succession of formal
reviews conducted by senior judges in recent years, and sometimes even within
the Commons, there are also signs of our representatives and political leaders
entering the 21st century and realising that the laws of the 20th may no
longer serve either economics or technology well.

------
webdev2017
How can such laws be enforced? If people are uploading thousands of images to
my web service every day, who is going to sift through each and every image
and determine whether it violates a copyright?

~~~
mati
No one really cares how you do it...but you have to comply.

~~~
Silhouette
Which in itself isn't an unreasonable position. Complying with the law isn't
optional just because it happens to make an otherwise extremely profitable
business more difficult or expensive to run.

What we should be doing is going back to first principles and asking what
we're trying to achieve with the kinds of restrictions that IP laws impose,
and what sorts of trade-offs and incentives are in the best interests of our
society overall. Laws that serve those purposes should be kept or introduced
as necessary, and everyone should comply with them. Laws that no longer serve
those purposes or perhaps never really did should be removed.

------
Proven
Exit the EU and problem solved, as well as many other problems.

~~~
jlg23
I wonder how the German OP is helped when Germany left the EU. What do we do
with Oettinger? Tie him to a tree and hope someone feeds him from time to
time? He is German, we'd have to take him with us!

------
lacampbell
I wonder how viable the EU is now. They've had so many tests and failed. They
failed to have a unified front on the Iraq war. They failed to coherently
respond to the migrant crisis resulting in many member states re-establishing
border check points and even fences. They failed to provide any military
deterrence to the Russian federation - NATO is still completely dominated by
the US. And now they failed to persuade one of their most powerful members
from leaving.

Co-operation between neighbours is a inherently a fairly good idea, but that
doesn't mean the bureaucratic fustercluck of the EU is the only vehicle with
which this can be accomplished.

~~~
pavlov
The EU has been around for 50 years in evolving forms. It's easy to cherrypick
failures, but the achievements ought to get some mention too.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, about twenty countries wanted to join the
EU as soon as they could. Some like Serbia are still working to fulfill the
entry criteria. Brexit does nothing to change that: Britain was always an
exception with its recent imperialist past.

The EU institutions are often bureaucratic. Yet they offer more representation
and individual freedom to small countries than does the American constitution,
for example. Given the often conflicting requirements, many aspects of the EU
work amazingly well.

~~~
maverick_iceman
_> Yet they offer more representation and individual freedom to small
countries than does the American constitution_

I had to laugh after reading this line. American constitution gives much more
power to the residents of the smaller states because of the Senate and the
electoral college. In addition, US offers everyone much stronger civil
liberties than most European countries. Compare the First Amendment with
Germany's hate speech laws for example.

~~~
pavlov
The European Council is the most powerful decision maker in the EU, and it
decides by consensus except where treaties specifically provide otherwise. For
a small country that's hell of a lot more power than the biases of Senate and
electoral college representation.

Civil liberties between USA and EU are a toss: the First Amendment is strong
in its scope, but on the other hand things like privacy are much better
protected in most EU countries. American legislation doesn't do much to
protect citizens against corporations.

~~~
lacampbell
I feel like I need much more protection from governments than I do from
corporations - so putting the government in charge of protecting me from
something much less dangerous/violent seems very very odd.

I suppose governments are regarded as inevitable, which is why this strange
double standard exists.

