
The EU Copyright Directive: What Redditors in Europe Need to Know - DyslexicAtheist
https://redditblog.com/2018/11/28/the-eu-copyright-directive-what-redditors-in-europe-need-to-know/
======
mabbo
If Reddit and other similar sites want to make a point, a banner won't be
enough. They need to do the unthinkable: Block all access from the EU.

If the legislation as written is going to make it impossible to do business in
the region, then that's what these companies are facing eventually anyways.
This sucks for them, sucks for users, sucks for everyone. So let's have a
taste of what that looks like. A preview.

Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Instagram, TwitchTV, etc. All
the websites where the content is made by users. As a group, shut down for 24
hours within the EU, instead displaying a simple page explaining the problem
and what can do done about it.

Until they're willing to do that, the users don't know or care what they're
talking about. Legislators are relying on a population who is too distracted
to care what they're doing. Well, fine, let's take away the distractions.

~~~
gambiting
I live in the EU and I fully support this. Youtube should block all access
from EU, as well as Reddit and others. The legislation is insane.

~~~
disiplus
nothing would be lost, i visit reddit for some subredits but if it gets
blocked i can do what i did before reddit and go back to forums.

~~~
dageshi
Wouldn't the forums have the same problem...

They're even smaller, with less resources.. wouldn't they have even more
incentive to block the EU?

~~~
IanCal
If they're not for profit, the regulation won't cover them as I read it. Not
will it cover them if they make money but have under 250 employees and
turnover under €50M.

~~~
Aeolun
If I were in a position to comply I think I would be very happy about that.

------
eksemplar
It's perfectly fine to share links, the EU directive specifically states so.
What you can't do, is take content, and host it as your own without getting
authorization to do so by the content creator.

You can probably imagine why that would be a problem from Reddit.

I don't personally care if companies like reddit get to face the harshest
possible fines from the EU, they are morally bankrupt after all. I mean,
almost every image posed on reddit is a form of piracy, and very rarely does
the original content creators actually benefit from having their works shared
or altered on reddit, and that's not even touching their shady political and
commercial manipulation. On the other hand, I really doubt that EU legislation
will ever be successful in stopping people from sharing dank memes.

Also, I'm guessing this only applies to the desktop version of reddit, because
would be impossible to see anything on the mobile version anyway since
everything is blocked by all those "USE OUR APP" banners.

~~~
betterunix2
_Morally_ bankrupt? Copyright is not a moral issue, it is just a several
centuries old regulation created by people who could never have envisioned
something like the Internet. The effort to turn copyright into a moral issue
is nothing more than a tactic employed by copyright-based industries in their
desperate bid to stay relevant without changing their business models.

~~~
snazz
The potential moral issue is that the creator of the work (author,
photographer, artist, musician) receives no compensation for widespread use of
their work. On the other hand, the publishing company or record label or other
middleman almost always makes most of the money anyway. An illegal but morally
somewhat right thing I’ve seen people do is to pirate the work and pay the
artist directly, cutting out most of the expense while still benefiting the
creator.

~~~
betterunix2
There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work, even if
other people enjoy that work, even if it is widespread. Are you going to track
down every person who told you a funny joke at a bar that you go around
repeating to your friends, or perhaps feel guilty about repeating that joke?

The idea that there is moral obligation to pay authors for their writing was
itself a tactic used by the publishing industry to establish copyright law
_when it was first being debated_. As you point out, publishers almost always
receive the bulk of the money while creators receive little if any
compensation. Copyright has _always_ been about business interests and not
about morality.

~~~
Angostura
> There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work

Make sure to tell your boss.

~~~
randallsquared
He and his boss have a contract. That’s the difference.

~~~
eksemplar
So do you and the content creator.

I mean, we've all laughed at the "you wouldn't steal a car" commercials, and
the truth is, if you could download and 3D print a car, risk free, you
probably would steal it.

The underlying social part of that statement is both true and interesting
though. Because the reason you wouldn't steal a car is because of the social
contract you have with other members of society. We don't steal from each
other, and if we do, society punishes us.

That's basically what the EU is doing with this legislation, and sure, its
annoying, but I have a hard time seeing how it's wrong.

~~~
phreack
There is a very hard difference between stealing something from someone, which
deprives them from having access to it, and copying it, which doesn't. The
first one is considered morally wrong by everyone here, the second one is
argued not to be.

~~~
eksemplar
Maybe if you're comparing piracy to stealing of personal goods, but if you
steel a few gallons of milk from your local supermarket then you're not
depriving them of selling that particular brand of milk either.

Digital products are easy to replicate, so they're obviously different, but
that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them. Well you can,
because it's extremely hard to regulate, but that frankly doesn't make it any
better from a moral point of view.

~~~
zorga
> but if you steel a few gallons of milk from your local supermarket then
> you're not depriving them of selling that particular brand of milk either.

You've deprived them from selling those specific gallons of milk to someone
else and caused them a direct monetary loss. Conflating that with brand is
intellectually dishonest.

> but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with them. Well you can,
> because it's extremely hard to regulate, but that frankly doesn't make it
> any better from a moral point of view.

Yes it does, it's hard to regulate because it's stupid precisely because you
haven't actually deprived them of anything which makes it morally not wrong.

------
IanCal
> like sharing links to news articles

Aren't there repeated statements in the text that links are not covered?

> the use of existing content for creative new purposes (r/photoshopbattles,
> anyone?) would suddenly become questionable under the law

What's actually changed about the law here? AFAIK the rights for fair use
aren't changed, and using copyrighted content otherwise is already legally
questionable.

~~~
vorticalbox
The problem is the liability will now fall on the host rather than the
uploader.

~~~
Semaphor
And even with less extreme rules we already had YT ContentID which errs on the
side of the possible rights holder even if they aren't actually holding the
rights.

~~~
IanCal
A13 seems to require that users can dispute things (and that rightsholders
have to justify the takedown), requirements of proportionality and I think
also requires an independent body setup by member states to raise these issues
up to if not properly solved.

~~~
Semaphor
Yeah, but it still leads to overbroad takedown through filters first, maybe
corrections after. Because everything else is simply too much risk for the
platform.

------
esotericn
Could someone clarify the impact of this legislation on decentralized
platforms?

It seems to me that all of the problems here stem from the fact that there's a
centralized entity that is profiting from the re-use of links.

If you have a peer-to-peer protocol with no-one to "go after" so to speak,
what happens then?

On the face of it this legislation looks bad, but could it be seen as a good
thing if it sows the seeds for decentralized platforms to outcompete
centralized ones (because they have a competitive advantage due to lower
cost)?

The users themselves don't seem to be committing any crime by posting the
links - it seems like the website, owned by a company or individual, ends up
being chased after. So what if they don't exist?

~~~
jstanley
I don't think it's "a good thing" that they're making it harder to run online
services.

I agree that the likely outcome is that decentralised systems get better, and
I agree that that outcome would be a good thing. I still don't think the end
justifies the means, and would rather see politicians just leave the internet
alone: [https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-
independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence)

~~~
esotericn
I agree.

Perhaps I'm just jaded; it seems obvious to me that the political view on
copyright is radically out of touch with constituents, and copyright law is
morphing from something that's a bit weird, to probably OTT, to evil, and
eventually into complete absurdity as a result.

The entire system benefits a tiny number of elite players whilst the man on
the street ignores copyright completely - unless their choice is restricted
(e.g. DRM) they won't even think about violating it, it's "not a thing" to
them.

If I thought that the legal system accurately represented the desires of the
population, centralized entities wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a
problem. It blatantly obviously doesn't, though.

------
gingerlime
> especially on small and medium-sized companies like Reddit

slightly OT, but is Reddit really a small / medium-sized company? or are they
seriously downplaying it to get sympathy?

~~~
mcguire
According to Wikipedia, Reddit itself has 230 employees. Advance Publications
is private, though; I can't find numbers.

------
jokoon
EU citizen here.

I keep using reddit but I have to admit the content quality has decreased. I
keep going on it just like people like to go to facebook, just to entertain
myself.

If reddit was blocked, I guess I would just give up using it.

~~~
buboard
i don't know a single other forum where you can converse with "EU citizens"
other than /r/europe . I also follow other local reddits to find out the odd
news that are not typically reported. And reddit is fun, entertaining, that's
its value proposition and is based on the community, with posts being
generally just a conversation starter. I would need an alternative to it.

I also bet a lot of publications are going to miss the traffic it gives them.

------
xhruso00
reddit makes money when a user shares a link. EU just disrupts their business
model and they are defending.

~~~
mimsee
Link target also (almost always) make money when visiting the site. They want
the publicity from all sources. Nobody small lives on direct traffic.

------
apexalpha
Guys this is meant for platforms that continuously allow users to upload fully
copyrighted stuff, offer no good takedown and just point to the users when
asked. "We're a platform so the user is responsible".

Thousand, maybe millions, of Youtube videos by small channels are re-uploaded
to FB everyday and essentially stolen.

Watch this, for example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q)

This law just says: ehm no Facebook, you ARE responsible for this, and you
can't just say 'talk to the user / page who stole it'.

The way Reddit and others interpret it is just because they don't want to be
legally beholden to laws that protect people smaller than they are. And
they're calling it a 'ban on memes' to get people online to protest it like
useful idiots.

No one read the texts but everyone is angry.

~~~
pas
Reddit allows image and video uploads nowadays by users.

How is Reddit supposed to filter all of it?

------
MistahKoala
Initially I thought this was an appropriate and proportionate response.
However, I eventually realised that doing so would be a tacit admission of
acceptance of the extra-territorial ambition of the Directive and its
application - which would be far worse, if we're truly concerned about global
freedoms and rights.

The morally correct response, as an organisation outside of the EU in terms of
its presence and activities, would be to ignore the Directive, just as
thousands of other bits of local legislation are by routine and convention.

Unfortunately, Reddit is a subsidiary of Advance Publications, which I expect
has physical operations in the EU and can therefore become subject to ransom
locally. In which case, perhaps banning EU citizens in the EU from accessing
Reddit is the most viable and proportionate moral response after all. It would
mean I lose access, but I strongly believe that the European Commission
monster must be tamed and cut down to size.

------
dahfizz
What is the end game for Reddit if this does pass? Will it just block European
users?

~~~
deno
Upload filters ala Google’s ContentId. The impact will be similar to Youtube
in the short term. Since Reddit is GIFs not audio it will be topical things
like FIFA replays etc.

The ultimate goal is to lay ground work for filtering/shadow banning political
content. But that will happen slowly, not overnight.

~~~
nerdponx
Which of course is where the truth comes out.

This _helps_ big tech players at the little guys' expense. Big companies can
build their own content filters. Small companies can't, and are forced to buy
content filtering software or services from the big companies.

~~~
ffwd
As far as I can tell it doesn't even help the big players, Google has said it
is economically impossible to be compliant with article 11
[https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/11/12/2045240/youtube-
ceo...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/11/12/2045240/youtube-ceo-says-eus-
proposed-copyright-regulation-financially-impossible)

There's a big difference between a DMCA system where the content host has the
responsibility to take down copyrighted content in a reasonable time frame,
while having safe harbor protection in cases where content gets through,
versus a "non-safe harbor" law where you literally cannot allow any
copyrighted content _on upload_, or you can be held liable. It would be
impossible to decide who owns what, even for Google, and so they would need to
have some other system that is not user generated content (who knows what).

User-generated content is the life blood of the web, it's why everyone can
communicate and we have this new world, we simply need it I think. I really
disagree with others who try to frame this as if Google and Reddit are simply
another company trying to defend their turf. This is a real blunder for the EU
and completely misinformed IMO

------
SimeVidas
Who are the companies behind these directives? Who are we fighting against?

~~~
jansan
Probably German media "giants" like Springer and Bertelsmann. They don't get
their shit done and are losing mind share each year, so they are panicking.
However their influence on politics is still strong, therefore they can pull
off stuff like that.

~~~
mrep
Probably since GDPR will decimate most targeted advertising based businesses,
they need to find another way to make money.

The natural solution are paywalls but those don't work since people end up
just copying the content and pasting it elsewhere. Shit, even journalists
themselves rip off each others stories, paraphrasing the whole thing and then
linking back to the source website. It's so prevalent that hacker news even
has a rule about posting the original link to a story.

~~~
mrep
Example copying and pasting paywalled article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675496)

------
dustycat
The thing I can't understand is why on earth would anyone want to leave an
organisation like the European Union?

------
qwerty456127
Every European reading this should call their local parlament representative
and the EU authorities themselves and tell them their opinion on this subject
(I know this kind of action can actually help in the EU).

------
ww520
With GDPR and now this, EU is asking to be blocked off from the rest of the
world. So be it.

~~~
PunchTornado
GDPR is good

~~~
YetAnotherNick
Can you give me one example where it has helped(not the it would be helpful)
the users. All I see now is everyone including FB and Google using the same
privacy model, and just ask for big "consent", which is not much better than
age old T and C, as I do it without reading it anyways.

~~~
abc-xyz
Anyone who doesn't care about protecting people's privacy don't care because
they don't understand how the data can and will be used. If they did
understand and continued not to care (or god fodbid, continued to violate)
then they're morally bankrupt.

GDPR is amazing because it forces companies to think twice about the data they
collect. Uneducated users tend to blame EU because some of their favorite
websites (e.g. imgur) suddenly have a overlay that forces users to consent to
them allowing themselves and a hundred random companies to violate users'
privacy and force those who don't consent to manually click the opt out button
a hundred different times. This should be a wakeup call for people to abandon
these evil websites/companies rather than to blame EU.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
Don't get me wrong, but I hate this kind of response. It has been many months
since GDPR arrived. "This should be a wakeup call" is exactly what I was not
asking. Either it has been till now, or will never be. Based on my personal
experience, it's the latter for data collecting companies like FB. Unless you
change my mind by giving any example of good changes in data collecting sites
that has been forced due to GDPR.

> users to consent to them allowing themselves

Isn't it almost the same with always present terms and conditions, which like
GDPR consent I and most other users generally don't read.

~~~
abc-xyz
Even if you can't see it with your own eyes then you can be sure that
thousands of companies (including the one I work for) are collecting a lot
less data than they normally would (after all, it's often impossible to know
exactly what data is being collected, for how long, and how it will be
stored). I'm sure you've also noticed some websites even blocked EU visitors
until they had time to comply with the law, at least I saw a couple of stories
and comments about it on HN. And if the companies didn't care/worry then why
would they even bother with consenting overlays?

A lot more people (and not just the tech folks) are also beginning to care
about their privacy (not only because of GDPR but I do believe it has had one
of the biggest influences, along with the Facebook scandals, China's growing
dystopia, etc).

A lot of people (such as myself) also stopped using evil services like imgur,
and use every opportunity to encourage people to do the same and spread
awareness. Although I had mostly stopped visiting imgur links a long time ago,
I didn't really start to bash them and block them completely until I saw their
insane GDPR overlay where they showed how they share data with hundreds of
different companies and even forced users to visit their websites to opt out.

Stopping people from using these websites/apps is a slow process, but just
because you can't see drastic changes then it doesn't mean it isn't affecting
them. Would you notice if Signal's userbase had grown by 20% as a result of
people becoming aware of the importance of privacy due to GDPR, or if
imgur/Facebook dropped by 15%? I wouldn't, but I did notice the likes of
Google and Facebook facing multi-billion dollar fines. I've also noticed
Facebook has been struggling a lot lately, and that Google has been facing a
lot of backlash for their Dragonfly project.

------
mcguire
Does the directive affect HN?

~~~
raverbashing
Most likely it won't as it only hosts text, and links + individual words is ok

(the reason I'm less worried about Art 11 is two fold: first is that I do
agree that content scraping like Google News should be under agreement and
that it will be worse for the news orgs than they think it will be)

~~~
mcguire
But in much of the discussion, links are explicitly mentioned.

On the other hand, HN doesn't have ads.

------
znhy
Very slightly related, but I'm concerned. Reddit has recently implemented the
NetzDG law and has yet to say if posts that are censored under that law will
disappear only for German users or worldwide.

