
European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill - sebst
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44546620
======
sebst
Technically, a law like this is prone to be abused for censorship purposes.
Whether this “dual use” is intended or not by parliamentarian voters, is
obviously unclear.

To make it even worse, such laws don’t “outlaw” some behaviour, but put a high
risk on it through civil law. So, it helps multinationals (and a possible
malevolent regime) and hurts small companies as well as citizens. To me, it’s
hard to believe this is not intended (like so many other (mostly) EU laws.

However, always bear in mind Ayn Rand:

> “Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We
> want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch
> of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s
> no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power
> to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one
> makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes
> impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-
> abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of
> laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted –
> and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now
> that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it,
> you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I want to say, I heard all this talk of Ayn Rand as some kind of evil
bogeyman, and then I listened to her speak on YouTube. She grew up in a
horrible communist dictatorship, and then found refuge in the US. She spoke
about how unfair governments can be, and spoke out against forced control of
the people. I found her to be super reasonable! She only represents one
persons view and I feel that libertarians often fail to appreciate the
benefits of collectivization, but I think a lot of normal people that
criticize Ayn Rand are actually mad about the jerks who use her name in
political conversations to justify being self centered. Especially in this age
of overbearing governments, I encourage everyone to look her up on YouTube and
listen to her own words.

~~~
ngold
Being that her friend and apprentice was Alan Greenspan you can see where
people get a little weird about rand. Also the rand think tank that spews
serious amounts of fascist policy.

~~~
ngngngng
> the rand think tank that spews serious amounts of fascist policy.

Like so many ideologies, the fan club is what most people dislike. If you are
capable of taking Rands philosophies with a grain of salt, there are many
brilliant concepts to glean.

~~~
michaelmrose
"If you are capable of taking Rands philosophies with a grain of salt, there
are many brilliant concepts to glean."

Such as?

Minitel:It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the
baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
--Adam Smith

Except in practice societies require self interest and benevolence and
structures designed to promote the latter in order that we can all enjoy the
fruits of our respective labor in a functional society.

------
mrleiter
It was approved on in a committee of the European parliament (for legal
matters), which means that now they will enter negotiations with the European
Council and then after some time and processes laid out in Art. 293ff TFEU, it
will be debated in the European Parliament at some point.

So yes, there is still plenty of room and time to discuss this rather
unfortunate policy.

EDIT:

For more info: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
room/20180618IPR...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
room/20180618IPR06024/copyright-meps-update-rules-for-the-digital-age)

Votes: Yes - 14 MEPs No - 9 MEPs Abstentions - 2 MEPs

~~~
tomp
Is there a list of who voted and how available anywhere?

~~~
andy_ppp
I wonder if any of these people have received campaign funding from entrenched
industries that benefit from draconian copyright laws?

Having said that, GDPR has actually turned out to be a very well thought
through piece of legislation - I actually agree with it's premises largely and
the fact we can't take a database dump anymore and have full access to
people's personal details is an extremely good thing IMO.

How Facebook are in compliance with it I have no idea as it would seem
impossible to justify a lot of their more intrusive/social features.

~~~
monsieurbanana
Facebook doesn't need to justify it. All they need to do is send a notice to
their users asking for consent. How many of them do will read what that
entails, and how many of those would decide their privacy is more important
for them than facebook?

~~~
tom_mellior
My understanding is that consent is not sufficient. In addition, data
collection must directly serve a legitimate business purpose. Though I guess
Facebook has lawyers willing to argue that anything they do serves their core
business.

~~~
mrmr1993
My reading of it was that you need either consent or a legitimate business
purpose, not both.[0]

[0]: Article 6(1), [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0679)

~~~
tom_mellior
Ah, yes. Agreed.

------
josteink
This is what happens when those in control don't understand, know or care
about the things they regulate.

So I guess this is bad.

 _\--goes and reads article--_

> Article 11, requiring online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link
> to their news content, was also approved.

What the fucking FUCK?

Pay to send companies actual traffic? Pay to be allowed to use the basic
building-block of the world wide web on the world wide web?

Just how is it possible to be so out of touch with how things work, and still
be allowed to pass regulation?

I'm honestly not able to come up with an analogy which sufficiently
illustrates just how backwards this whole thing is.

~~~
hesk
The law was basically made at the publisher’s behest to get Google to pay
them. So far, it has spectularly backfired.

In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After
traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law
defeated.

In Spain, they went a bit further and wrote into the law that Google had to
list news sites in their index. So Google News shut down in Spain. Law
defeated.

I guess, third time’s the charm?

~~~
wiz21c
>>> In Germany, Google started to delist news sites from their index. After
traffic dropped, the publishers gave Google a license to link freely. Law
defeated.

I don't know the detail but the way you put it seems very fair to me. Law
protect publishers against Google, so they can say to Google "no", except that
their interest is to say "yes". So they say "yes". Looks to me that even if
the end result is the same, the publishers had a say. Without the law, Google
takes whatever it wants without asking. Now, it has to ask. Looks fair to me.

~~~
Asooka
Except you always have a say in whether or not Google takes any part of your
site. Google have always respected robots.txt and it's trivial to block your
site, or parts of it, from being indexed and shown in searches.

~~~
anilakar
Except you won't be able to delist content without first allowing their
crawler to rummage your site and returning 404 to Googlebot. Happened to me -
I wanted to delist a single URL because it was generating unwanted traffic but
still keep it accessible to those who have a direct link.

------
leifg
As a EU citizen I have always been (and still am) a strong advocate for the
European Union. I think the founding of the European Union was one of the
greatest things that could ever happen to European citizens. I full heartedly
believe this institution played a major role in retaining the piece after
World War 2. The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I
would never want to miss.

But seeing the lawmakers fucking up more and more on these kind of laws makes
it harder to build a reasonable argument against all the so called "EU
critics" (most of the time just straight up racists).

It also makes me wonder if the laws they pass in other areas are as
disconnected from reality as this is.

~~~
timrichard
Retaining the "piece"... WW2 ended in 1945. The EU came into being in 1993.
Was it retaining it in previous guises as a trade federation - the EEC, and
before that the European Coal and Steel Community?

Or are you thinking of NATO?

> The concept of open borders in (most of) Europe is something I would never
> want to miss.

In what context?

"I don't have to show my passport on holidays - yay!"

or

"people can drive from a ghetto on the outskirts of Brussels with a trunkload
of Kalashnikov's, spray bullets at Paris cafe society, and immediately
afterwards they can be traced to.....er dunno..."

~~~
Sammi
The European Coal and Steel Community was explicitly started to stop war in
Europe. As the original proposal of the community said directly: _" The
solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war
between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially
impossible"_ [0].

Steel and coal (or more generally energy) are necessary in order to to wage
war. Pooling these things in a super national organization makes war between
the member states impossible.

[0] [https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-
day...](https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day/schuman-
declaration_en)

~~~
growlist
This claim that the EU/predecessor organisations have secured the peace since
WW2 is often made but I think is impossible to verify, since we have no way of
rerunning history without the EU in place. Some point to NATO as far more
significant a guarantor of peace than the EU.

~~~
Sammi
Yes correlation does not mean causation. But sometimes the correlation is so
obvious that it becomes hard to ignore.

So what I would say is this: Ignore this correlation at your mortal peril. The
risk is that of total war.

~~~
vsl
Yet the folks who make this assertion about EU helpfulness are all too happy
to ignore the correlation with NATO.

------
walterbell
[https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5](https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-26993-5)

 _> According to Columbia professor and policy advocate Wu (Who Controls the
Internet), the great information empires of the 20th century have followed a
clear and distinctive pattern: after the chaos that follows a major
technological innovation, a corporate power intervenes and centralizes control
of the new medium—the “master switch.”

> Wu chronicles the turning points of the century’s information landscape:
> those decisive moments when a medium opens or closes, from the development
> of radio to the Internet revolution, where centralizing control could have
> devastating consequences. To Wu, subjecting the information economy to the
> traditional methods of dealing with concentrations of industrial power is an
> unacceptable control of our most essential resource.

> He advocates “not a regulatory approach but rather a constitutional
> approach” that would enforce distance between the major functions in the
> information economy—those who develop information, those who own the network
> infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the venues of
> access—and keep corporate and governmental power in check. By fighting
> vertical integration, a “Separations Principle” would remove the temptations
> and vulnerabilities to which such entities are prone. Wu’s engaging
> narrative and remarkable historical detail make this a compelling and
> galvanizing cry for sanity—and necessary deregulation—in the information
> age._

------
izacus
This bill pretty much demands that YouTube Content ID like systems are
introduced across the web. With the wording, it's better for the site to
delete more content on false positives than risk false negatives. All in the
name of mighty copyright.

Side effects of these false/negative averse copyright takedown systems can be
easily seen on YouTube:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338700)

~~~
Jabbles
An update to the original article you linked says that the issue was not with
Content ID, but is "related to its updated partner agreements."

~~~
izacus
You can take example of any of the other thousands of false postive copyright
takedowns happening across YouTube. Android Play Store too.

~~~
Jabbles
Sure. But not that one.

~~~
izacus
You have a point there.

------
aiisahik
I once wrote a thesis on DMCA and Youtube during that huge Viacom vs Youtube
litigation was going on. The copyright holders wanted to shift more of the
burden of detecting and blocking copyright breach onto the web services by
removing the DMCA safe harbor. Youtube ultimately won the case but they also
implemented much of what Viacom wanted anyway - a fairly aggressive content
filter that probably caught most of what Viacom wanted. However, the automated
systems also prevented the posting of much fair use content since it can't
really make the nuanced judgement call between blatant copying and fair uses.
If Viacom had won that case, Youtube would have been forced to be much more
restrictive in their automated filtering. Other video platforms would either
have had to invest in the filtering tech or go out of business. The Coase
theorem says that where there are two rational negotiating parties, the laws
governing property rights don't really matter. The parties will generally
negotiate their way to an optimal outcome. What does matter is the impact of
those laws on the transaction costs. The transaction costs are higher for
smaller parties and for parties where there is no significant financial
interests at stake.

Thus in evaluating these new laws, it's not really Google or big European news
that we need to consider - rather we should ask how small news aggregators,
independent bloggers, small news outlets, and individual readers going to
react to this. Are small content creators going to go through the trouble of
negotiating payment schemes with each and every news aggregator and vice
versa?

All laws that increase transaction costs will concentrate more market power in
larger firms that have the scale to deal with the additional costs and
undermine smaller players who do not. Lawmakers focus too much on the Google
and the like. Google can look after itself.

~~~
glitchc
Regarding the small aggregators, perhaps they shouldn't be aggregating, but
rather producing their own content? It's a problem when a blog copies a
Reuters or Associated Press article verbatim just to garner some ad views.

------
sqdbps
A Couple of things:

Mainstream news outlets on this side of the atlantic didn't do much reporting
on this vote which might signal tacit support on their part (at least for the
link payment portion of this thing which is frankly the sillies part) and that
should shape everyone's understanding of their coverage of tech companies in
general.

Second, it's hard not to notice that much of what the EU does is trying to
hurt US tech companies be that: copyright, GDPR, antitrust, taxes, and many
other initiatives the goals of which are to control and "punish" these
companies. It's easy to complaint about silly steel tariffs while they keep
enacting these trade barriers on US industry, the fact the the news media
isn't making that connection brings it back to the first point.

~~~
akoncius
> Second it's hard not to notice that much of what the EU does is try to hurt
> US tech companies

I totally understand what you are saying, but on the other hand: maybe a lot
of US tech companies do unethical/bad things? Antitrust cases must be based on
something, so it's not just tariff on tech company products, it's more like a
fine for bad behaviour.

~~~
nickik
> Antitrust cases must be based on something

A study of the history of Antitrust would abuse of of that naive thinking.

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
I’m truly not overly familiar with the history of such cases. I’d appreciate
some direction on how to undertake such a study. Any good places to start
reading about this?

~~~
bertil
I would strongly recommend Tim Wu’s _Master Switch_, because it is well-
written, and focused on how those conversation influence today controls.

The overall trend in anti-trust is that most of the issue is _not_ that people
have done demonstrably bad things: Rockefeller typically would over-pay for
the distributors and wells that he purchased–and he was the only buyer. The
issue was more that prior to the negotiation, he used often unconventional but
legal tactics (like showing his books) to make clear that he could conduct a
price war, and would ruin the company that he was offering to purchase. The
price he did pay typically was low without that in mind, but every other
potential buyer knew as much and stepped away.

The whole debate wasn’t focusing on measurable harm, but the ability to
threaten, hence a focus on __market share __. Since, it has gone up, to catch
less blatant, but not unjustified potential to harm the market: the key
measure went from market share to __Lerner index __which measure the ability
to raise your own price without loosing share. Apple typically has a small
market share of smartphones worldwide, but seem to be able to raise their
prices without loosing much sales; that allows them to corner supplies by
over-bidding and retain feature exclusivity. It’s less morally obvious that
this would hurt the market, but some executives at Samsung are probably
adamant that this is a major concern, let alone smaller player.

There are still some hard evidence, but the bar has become surprisingly low:
three cellphone providers in France were fined one Billion Euros (with a B)
for price-fixing, based on the testimony of a taxi driver and a _penciled-in
and rubbered-off_ “Ok on Yalta” on someone’s notebook (and significant
econometric proof that prices stopped going down). The discretionary ability
of the Competition Authority becomes key, i.e. they ability to enforce a
loosely defined norm of market preservation.

Current trend is closer to consider __dynamic __considerations, the ability of
currently non-existent firms to enter the market: has Facebook’s ability to
purchase Instagram and challenge Snap discouraged entrepreneurs? Facebook did
nothing illegal buying one or offering feature that they users enjoyed on the
other; however, that behaviour, couple with the ability to invest a lot of
developers, can seem threatening and discourage entrepreneurs. Who do you ask
if that was significant? Investors who said they wouldn’t invest on that
basis? Young CS graduates?

 __Disclaimer: __I was personally involved in most of the cases that I
mention, either working for the company being looked into, or serving as an
expert for regulators. I’m happy to provide context, but none of this should
be considered testimony.

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
That’s a fantastic response, thanks very much.

------
Grumbledour
What I haven't heard mentioned yet is, that for the big companies like Google
and Facebook, there won't actually be much change in regards to upload
filters, because they already do this. The DMCA has led to quite a similar
problem for them, so that for example youtube provides big license holders
with backend to decide themselves which videos to block for reasons of
copyright infringement. So in the end, they wont even have to do anything,
they already have the infrastructure in place to overblock and have indeed
done so for many years.

But at the same time, where this becomes really disastrous is smaller
communities, where admins and moderators have no chance of checking every post
themselves for violations and neither the technological means to do it
automatically.

In Germany at least, this was from time to time reason for lawsuits but until
now, the consensus of the courts was, that it is enough for the admin to
remove the offending content after he was made aware of it. This changes now
of course, which makes it practically impossible to offer these kind of
services if you are not a big company with huge resources. I know Forums and
the like are not as far spread as they once were, but this will make it
practically impossible to create these kind of communities.

~~~
doh
You are right. This bill is a disaster for smaller platforms.

My company [0] built business around Content ID-like technology, so we should
be celebrating, but we don't. We are going to announce, that our services will
be provided to all impacted platforms free of charge. We are hoping to
facilitate licensing deal between rights holders and the platforms, preferably
on pay-per-play basis, instead of completely blocking content from being
uploaded to the platforms.

It still is not a great outcome, but at least it will not put smaller
platforms out of business, and hopefully not completely stiff the innovation.

[0] [https://pex.com](https://pex.com)

------
indigochill
If I may play the devil's advocate for a moment here, isn't this a boon for
decentralizing media? If third-party publishers like YouTube are crippled,
perhaps there's more room for self-hosting your content, enabling you to build
your brand on your own terms rather than YouTube's? Perhaps it's time to stop
outsourcing the publication of our content to third-parties and host it
ourselves, especially now that granularly-scaling cloud servers are an option?

But I'm not very familiar with this bill aside from the fact everyone hates
it, so someone can probably point out why I'm wrong.

~~~
PinguTS
I does not matter who hosts. Because, if you haven't paid your royalties, your
are not allowed to host the remix/meme/... yourself.

It hurts also decentralization has anybody who provides space becomes
responsible.

------
teamhappy
Here's the final document: [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN)

Searching for "article 11" (the link one) and "article 13" (the filter one)
will help you find the relevant paragraphs. They're both very short and fairly
easy to understand.

~~~
tom_mellior
That's a document from 2016. It's only "final" in the sense that it's the
final version of the Commission's proposal, I think.

[https://edri.org/copyright-reform-document-pool/](https://edri.org/copyright-
reform-document-pool/) has a whole lot of different versions of the text,
though I don't know how to find out what text was actually voted on today. I
expect it to show up at
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=&reference=2016/0280\(COD\))
though apparently that may take a few days.

Anyway, the version at
[http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf](http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf)
for example adds the following paragraph to Article 11: "The rights referred
to in the first subparagraph shall not apply in respect of uses of
insubstantial parts of a press publication. Member States shall be free to
determine the insubstantial nature of parts of press publications taking into
account whether these parts are the expression of the intellectual creation of
their authors, or whether these parts are individual words or very short
excerpts, or both criteria."

I don't find this particularly easy to understand, but one reading is "Member
States may define article titles to be 'substantial'", in which case any use
of them (as in linking) would be prohibited without a license.

~~~
phicoh
Agenda:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bCOMPARL%2bJURI-
OJ-20180620-1%2b01%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN)

Documents:
[http://www.emeeting.europarl.europa.eu/committees/agenda/201...](http://www.emeeting.europarl.europa.eu/committees/agenda/201806/JURI/JURI\(2018\)0620_1/sitt-8204228)

Relevant amendment: 746
([http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COMM...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COMMITTEES/JURI/AM/2018/06-20/1124644EN.pdf))

"including an unwaivable right to equitable remuneration for this use. That
unwaivable right to equitable remuneration can be enforced only by a
collective management organisation"

(Yes, it took me for ever to find this. I didn't find the results of the
voting though)

------
frisco
> They voted to approve the controversial Article 13, which critics warn could
> put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content.

This won’t put an end to memes. It might encourage innovation around
decentralization, though. It won’t end the internet, but given all of the
stuff like this happening recently, it might be time for the internet to
evolve. The technologies have been around for a while as a curiosity, and now
there might be the market need.

~~~
sebst
I hope you're right on this.

Decentralization is what the internet was actually build for. Centralization,
on the other side, brought the web to less technical people and thus scaled so
massively. Can technical literacy which certainly increased (in some ways)
lead to a new era of decentralization or will that be the fatal end of a
symbolic "Eternal September"?

~~~
orwin
I was kinda skeptic about federation at first (mastodon, GNU.social etc), but
i've installed and tested a nextcloud platform for one of my client and i've
been really impressed so far.

It's clunky, a bit bloated (for me, TUI > GUI for 90% of apps, so take it with
a grain of salt) and have an average documentation (a pretty good
documentation for a free software /s). But despite that, once installed
successfully, it is better than most free cloud services i have used imo,
except maybe gDrive (integration with email, android calendar and gSuite is
hard to beat).

If other federated services can see light, and if people start to care about
it, internet will be a better place i think

(sightly related: is lichess federated too? I know you can host a server
yourself, but i'm not sure if it's true).

~~~
sebst
A long way to go: Have a professional install nextcloud for you vs. sign up at
dropbox.

And that's basically just for hoarding private files.

The network effect makes it even worse: Why should I use XYZ if all my friends
are on Facebook/WhatsApp/WhatsOEver?

Decentralized infrastructure (as in email, usenet, irc, ...) needs to have a
bigger popularity than every walled garden. Then, the internet will become "a
better place" rather than "there is a better niche for hacker kind of people
on the net"

------
pmlnr
I remember the Internet Blackout Day in 2012, to stop SOPA/PIPA.

I'm all in to organize something similar this time as well. The suggested
replace snippets and linked titles with [censored by the EU] could work quite
well, but it all needs coordination, and big players, like Wikipedia, Google,
Twitter.

Please, if you're in a position at large traffic sites, consider doing a
campaign.

------
Jaruzel
I submitted this link to HN a week ago [1]:

[https://savethelink.org/](https://savethelink.org/)

The site highlights whats going on, and encourages people to write to their
MEPs.

If I understand the bill correctly, it will become illegal for 3rd party sites
to use all those 'graph' meta-tags that provide rich snippets/previews when
you post a link to your status etc. If so, then the impact of this will be
_massive_.

\--

[1] but it failed to get any traction.

------
glook
Vint Cerf AND Tim Berners-Lee declare it "an imminent threat to the future of
the Internet." Then Cory Doctorow calls it foolish. This feels like a no-
brainer for opposition.

~~~
pmlnr
Those voices don't seem to reach MEPs.

~~~
saalweachter
... none of those voices are from the EU[*].

(Well, I guess Tim Berners-Lee still is until Brexit finishes.)

~~~
pmlnr
That shouldn't matter at all, especially when it's about the internet.

------
bogle
It's really not very clear what the outcome of this is going to be although it
doesn't look good. So "internet platforms" are going to filter all the content
we post? Seeing as this isn't going to work properly what is the point of
setting it down as a law? Someone's going to end up in court and only then are
we going to know exactly how bad it is.

~~~
saintPirelli
I wonder if this can be interpreted as a future edge for distributed platforms
like mastodon, where you might not find "the responsible person/company" right
away?

~~~
daveid
I'm seeing the opposite, as independent platforms like Mastodon won't be able
to implement content ID they won't be complying with this new law, which means
it'll potentially become legally dangerous to run Mastodon within the EU. It's
like the EU parliament is bent on giving all the cards to Google and Facebook
and shutting down European competition...

~~~
netheril96
I guess the EU's reasoning is that because there hasn't been any European
competition for all these years, there probably won't ever be, so they might
as well make those pesky American companies miserable.

------
bluecalm
EU has long proven record of making laws targeting specific big players and
not caring about smaller local businesses and specifically not caring about
promoting competition. VAT MOSS disaster didn't generate that much discussion
because the ones hurt were busy selling their sweaters on Etsy and didn't have
time to take it to the streets.

I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your
fees/licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by the
engines. Old media will fight for their licenses and fees and die there as
sites will just stop aggregating from them. That would be great outcome, they
are pretty useless anyway and they give a lot of power to morons currently
residing in EU structures. With some luck it can become a win-win. I just hope
bloggers and small publishers won't need to run circles just to get their
stuff indexed and linked.

~~~
detaro
> _I just hope with this one we can get some mechanism where you waive your
> fees /licensing in the html header and then your stuff is freely linked by
> the engines._

There's actually a proposal by Axel Voss (the MEP pushing this the most) to
explicit forbid waiving it, since previous laws like this "didn't work"
because nearly everyone waived their fees... It's truly a disgrace.

~~~
loa-in-backup
Horrid! The extension mentioned in parent would be making this whole thing
_passable_ , it is really something worth considering.

------
lasermike026
We are not progressing as a world society. The world is retreating. This is
why people of conscience and ethics must double our effects to secure freedom
for every person in the world.

I condemn this legislation by the European parliament.

~~~
aembleton
The legislation comes from the European Commission. It has been voted for by a
committee of MEPs (they don't have the power to make changes to the
legislation, but they could have sent it back).

------
specializeded
IIRC, EU citizens helped defeat ACTA by taking to the streets and influencing
parliament.

Would I be mistaken in believing it can be done again, even without the
additional anti-US/trade treaty attitudes that helped against ACTA?

~~~
sampo
European newspapers are left-leaning, so they were happy to write pieces
criticizing free trade treaties.

But now with the proposed link tax in Article 11, the newspapers pretty much
support the proposed new copyright law. Without old media, it might be
difficult to reach and inform a critical mass of people for demonstrations to
happen.

~~~
CloudNetworking
"left-leaning". Hehe.

Goes to show how much the left-right axis has tilted to the right since WW2.

------
megaman22
So, saying this goes into effect, what are the real consequences going to be?
If I'm hosting outside the EU, do I have to deal with this Article 13
nonsense?

It's a little funny, we just went through a cycle where people were moving
their datacenters off of US territory because of NSA revelations, often to
Europe. Are we going to see a backswing now, as EU regulations get more and
more onerous (not to mention it keeps coming out that everyone and their
brother was doing the same tapping as the NSA did...)?

------
timow1337
Does anyone have a list of which MEPs voted for and against? I can't find it
yet.

~~~
aembleton
The minutes will be published in the next few days.

------
bitL
Can't wait for the first person jailed for operating a darknet news aggregator
with links and thumbnail previews. The horror!

------
TuringTest
_" Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition
technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate."_

They may as well request providers to deploy magical leprechauns riding on
rainbow unicorns, because such "effective" technologies don't exist. Case in
point: Google's copyright detection.

------
Jaruzel
Managed to find a good legal take on the proposed bill:

[http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-
reda-d...](http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/18/julia-reda-
discusses-current-proposal-directive-copyright-digital-single-market/)

------
agotterer
So in the case of this link does that mean that HN would have to pay the BBC
or filter the link out?

~~~
nemo44x
Only for EU IP addresses. Seems like a good way to keep their people ignorant
akin to China or NK firewalls. But in a way that appears less authoritarian
and "to protect EU business interests".

Lets face it - power structures are terrified of the open communication
available today and how everyone is able to organize and see through their BS.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
Why not just range ban IP addresses originating from the EU? Seems like a
simple and fair solution to me.

------
firic
I dislike this bill as much as other HNers but writing "Disastrous" in the
title makes this look more like an option piece rather than a news piece. How
hard is it to ask for news to report facts and for me to decide if the facts
are disastrous or not?

------
pascalxus
This copyright bill is a complete disaster.

Here's a potential solution: A third party could create a website that allows
website owners to register with them and agree to sell their links for some
trivially small amount (if they want to give away their traffic), say
.00000001 cents (effectively making it free). Then social sites with potential
links would have a list they could check to ensure they're not accidentally
linking to sites that require payment.

Sure, it's a hack. imperfect solution to a disastrous regulations.

------
kuwze
I believe that this bill would make copyleft licenses ineffective. I remember
reading a more detailed article, but at the moment all I can find is this post
by the FSF[0].

[0]: [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-
risk...](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/free-software-is-at-risk-in-the-
eu-take-action-now)

------
VMG
I'm excited about this. This will boost VPN, Tor and other technologies that
protect users from inane regulations.

[https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/cryp...](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-
crypto-manifesto.html)

~~~
merinowool
It is very easy to block VPN, Tor and other technologies. These can be in fact
criminalised the same way drugs are. Possession of a VPN on your device could
give you a criminal record.

~~~
VMG
This will in turn make encrypted devices, plausible deniability setups and
steganography more pervasive.

The US lost the crypto wars, EU lost the piracy wars once, and they will lose
again.

~~~
merinowool
In some countries you can do time for not disclosing passwords. In the UK it
is 5 years.

~~~
VMG
Again, this is where plausible deniability setups kick in.

Of course the EU can go full police state, but at that point I hope the
regular citizens pushes back.

The goal is to raise the cost of enforcement.

~~~
merinowool
Problem is that you cannot pretend you can't remember the password. So unless
what you hide can give you more time than for not disclosing the password,
then yes having things encrypted could help...

~~~
VMG
You can have different volumes for different passwords.

Plausible deniability.

~~~
merinowool
This can be easily checked.

------
mavidser
This bill reminds me of the 'Melancholy Elephants'[0] story by Spider
Robinson, about the dangers of unchecked copyright.

[0]:
[http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html](http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html)

------
Kliment
Here are the actual votes: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-
committee-...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/149721/juri-committee-
result-roll-call-votes-20062018.pdf)

------
peterwwillis
Why is this even necessary? Publishers can just block Google Referer: links
until Google pays them.

------
nns
Article 13 puts more onus on websites to enforce copyright and could mean that
every online platform that allows users to post text, sounds, code or images
will need some form of content-recognition system to review all material that
users upload.

------
billpg
The pro-Brexit people must be happy with this news.

"No, don't pay any attention to our complete lack of planning despite us
wanting to leave the EU for decades. Pay attention to this thing they've done
instead!"

------
JustSomeNobody
I hope it goes through and it truly is 'disastrous'. People who make bad laws
need to be held accountable. And I'm sure they will be after the affects of
this law are seen first hand.

------
NedIsakoff
See everything evens out at the end, you get some good and some bad. In this
case the good we got is the G.D.P.R. and the bad is this. Its like karma, it
evens out eventually.

------
javajosh
They should stop beating around the bush and pass a law that says, "Google
must share ad revenue with all links returned by the search that generated the
revenue."

------
IdiocyInAction
As a european citizen, I fear that this marks the beginning of a new age of
china-like censorship in europe. The EU was a very nice idea that got executed
very badly.

------
darth_mastah
Maybe I don't understand the Article 11, but does it essentially mean problems
for Hacker News?

------
test6554
"This content is not available in your region" should go on their flag.

------
kizer
Can we just block Europe? Like, partition the internet or something... /s

~~~
geoalchimista
This is likely what's gonna happen if these bills get passed. The Chinese GFW
has created a "Chinternet" already, which not only blocks access to Google,
Facebook, etc., but also throttles the bandwidth going out of China down to
1990s dial-up modem speed. The EU is not authoritarian but I suspect that EU
regulators may do the same to block US websites that do not comply with their
copyright laws in the future.

------
ericdykstra
> _it requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their
> news content._

This is such ridiculous government overreach. Forcing people to create a
business transaction that neither party wants?? The EU was a mistake.

------
shmerl
So corruption prevailed?

~~~
c12
Corruption always prevails in the end. Humanity is weak. We are no better than
babboons with diseased brains.

------
dalbasal
Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and
clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We
have 20 years years of anecdata now.

The old news publishers will never make it online. They see their financials
problems as being cause by a moral failing in society: " _People do not value
quality, and won 't pay for it_" or somesuch. They see the solutions as
legalistic. Some law or industry association which will guarantee them an
income.

Meanwhile, on their own sites... They run one small square of content,
overlaid and surrounded by loud, flashing ads. They plug in every last bit of
ad-spy software available. They run fake news, via their "native content"
widgets selling scams using blatant lies on literally fake news articles.
Kettle, meet Pot.

The only solutions they can think of are legalistic. An industry association
that can stand up to google and demand money. A law that guarantees someone
(anyone) pays them.

There's no vision. The few, moderate paywall success stories are considered
revolutionary. What does this add up to? Eveyone picks a newspaper or two,
subscribes and reads just them? Have you not noticed how the internet works?

Meanwhile, at least 50% of any broadsheet is straight plagiarism. Plagiarism
is normal in news media. Does a paper pay another paper when they report on a
report? Does twitter (or trump) get paid when your front page is an article
about a tweet? Kettle, remember Pot from before?

I really think there's no hope. Most of these dinos aren't going to make it.
Don't let them break the internet on their way out.

~~~
krapp
>Honestly, I think it might be better if these old news companies die off, and
clear space for a newer generation that understands the internet better. We
have 20 years years of anecdata now.

The internet isn't some hip new technology only the young people understand.
You act as if old media companies must still use rotary phones and manual
typewriters, but these companies have changed with the decades and have
adapted to the internet like everyone else. They understand the internet
perfectly well, they just disagree with you about how they should use it.

~~~
dalbasal
I'm claiming that many/most news companies that formed their culture in the
pre-internet days have failed to find stable business models, and they are
looking to legislation for a fix.

~~~
krapp
But most companies on the internet have failed to find a stable business model
- including companies which presumably do "understand the internet better."
Even Google has trouble making money on Youtube, which is about as new media
as new media gets. That problem isn't unique to pre-web companies or their
cultures, it's a result of the nature of the web itself.

~~~
dalbasal
I'm not saying if you started before a certain year you are guaranteed to
fail, I'm observing that many did.

I'm also observing that they are trying to solve their problems by lobbying
for specific laws, ones that (imo) are, on balance, bad.

