
Forget GDPR, EU's New Copyright Proposal Will Be a Disaster for the Internet - SirOibaf
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180525/10072939912/forget-gdpr-eus-new-copyright-proposal-will-be-complete-utter-disaster-internet.shtml
======
sbhn
From a point of view of a creator who's had there work copied for someone
else's profit, I created some music for cats. It was a bit of fun really, you
wouldn't like it, but your cat might,
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKWUX7aMnlEK3edghsEnS...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKWUX7aMnlEK3edghsEnSyBU7FjosH0qd)

anyway, occasionally my music is copied and monetised on other youtube
channels without me knowing. While this annoys me, YouTubes approach to this
is very good, If I report this copyright infringement, YouTube allows me to
enter an agreement with the copyright infringer for shared revenue or other. I
balance this multi tiered approach as very good, since this other channel may
be getting better views than me, and the cost of marketing is so high, and
this other user is effectively endorsing my brand and creating awareness for
me, and to waiver their violation, I can enter a shared revenue agreement with
them. This is a win/win for me as I get another opportunity to profit, and my
music is shared in more places than just the places I manage to manually put
it myself or pay someone to.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
> Make platforms directly liable for all copyright infringements by their
> users, and then offer that they can avoid that unreasonable liability if
> they can show they’ve done everything in their power to prevent copyrighted
> content from appearing online – namely, by deploying upload filters (Article
> 13, paragraph 4). Which remain totally optional, of course! Wink, wink,
> nudge, nudge.

I have some personal story about this. A while ago a certain person decided to
scan some books copyrighted by me and put it on Scribd. Every few weeks he'd
scan one and upload it, saying that information should be free. I contacted
Scribd and my experience was overly negative. Yes, they would wait a few days,
then answer and remove the book. Then this person would reupload it, and the
story repeated itself. Basically, the book was longer on rather than off
Scribd. I repeatedly asked Scribd to take it more seriously, and, for example,
remove the offending account, but they refused. They did it in the end after
some weeks. Of course the same day that person uploaded all books again under
another account. It all looked like a joke, as if the copyright law was some
boring invention that they only pretended to observe.

Now, this was a few years ago, and maybe things changed since, I don't know.
But at that time it felt like Scribd was cooperating more with the offender
than with me.

~~~
true_religion
You should go after the person directly rather than relying on the 3rd party
platform to enforce law and carry out investigation.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
He was using Tor for uploading.

------
tannhaeuser
I hope someone could explain _who_ is supposed to check content, _under which
conditions_ and _how_. If this applies to anybody running a web site or
offering hosting services I simply fail to see how this can be realistically
implemented at all. I don't even understand the primary goal of this proposal
for a law, and thus question it's adequateness (which gives rise to appeal
before court). Criminal persecution is the police's/attorney's job; offloading
these duties to private entities prompts the question why we need those
institutions in the first place.

~~~
teamhappy
If this draft passes tech companies "storing and giving access to large
amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users" would be
liable for copyrighted content that is shared on their platforms.

They can (but aren't forced to) avoid that liability by making "best efforts
to prevent the availability of specific works or other subject matter by
implementing effective and proportionate measures, [...], to prevent the
availability on its services of the specific works or other subject matter
identified by rightholders and for which the rightholders have provided the
service with relevant and necessary information for the application of these
measures" and "upon notification by rightholders of works or other subject
matter, it has acted expeditiously to remove or disable access to these
works".

There's also some stuff in there saying these measures should be "effective
and proportionate", taking into account how big the company is, how much
content is uploaded on their platform and the availability, cost and
effectiveness of the measures.

~~~
tannhaeuser
Thanks. They seem to want to go after sharing platforms just shrugging when
their community uploads videos, music, and warez, yet receiving all the
commercial benefit, and I guess that's fair. But clearly this law needs more
exposure, discussion and refinement. It also should be unbundled from the law
about link previews for news snippets which is an entirely different legal
issue.

------
sbhn
The proposal should also consider the product placement business model. For
example, I create a movie, and I get some funding from a trusted advertiser
because I said my famous hero actor will wear your shoes, use your earphones,
use your phone, drive your car, shoot your guns, flash your badge, wear your
glasses and drink your drink on film and at all press events. I say, I think I
can get millions of views using clever marketing techniques. I won’t need to
spend anything on distribution and promotion. I get the money and I release
the film on pirate bay. I even cry my film was copied by the North Koreans and
the Russians since the BBC is so eager shove it in people’s faces as they eat
breakfast. Win/Win. The people can share and copy my film as much as they
want, I still own the original copyright, and I would have monetised the
product placement better than anybody else.

------
dang
This article is a gloss on a more original source, which was submitted at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244).

------
eveningcoffee
This sounds Orwellian to me.

We should not give in to so called "content producers". Their privileges are
not more important than peoples rights.

------
sbhn
The internet wayback machine is one of the biggest copyright thiefs in my
opinion. I hope the proposal considers how that business model works and why
it should be immune from prosecution

~~~
AsyncAwait
> The internet wayback machine is one of the biggest copyright thiefs in my
> opinion.

Ugh, Is Google too then?

EDIT: Misunderstood OP, it appears he/she was being sarcastic.

~~~
detaro
> _why it should be immune from prosecution_

I don't think the parent is _raging against_ the Internet Archive, just
pointing out the legal problems of what it does. Strict copyright law will
destroy archives.

~~~
vanderZwan
Libraries tend to have (some) exemptions to such laws, no? And the Internet
Archive is recognised as a library AFAIK

~~~
ghaff
Some limited exceptions. Section 108.
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108)

But these don't really address digital archives as the Copyright Office
recognizes.
[https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/](https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/)

Presumably the Internet Archive is considered a library, museum, or archive
although I don't know if there are specific technical factors that would make
them one or if it's more of a "know it when you see it" situation in the event
of a dispute.

------
neilwilson
The EU is just a disaster in general.

Unless you believe corporatist technocracy is the future of civilisation.

This proposal is just another example of that process.

~~~
AsyncAwait
The GDPR is pretty good, this is terrible, like any org/government they have
both good and bad policies. Sadly, i.e. Brexiteers generally want to eliminate
the good ones, (food standards), and keep the bad ones, (copyright), so am not
sure what the solution to eliminating is here, but it doesn't seem to be
specific to the EU.

~~~
neilwilson
You know that ascribing views to a group without evidence is prejudice.

~~~
AsyncAwait
You can ascribe certain views to a group certainly, if that's what you read,
observed etc. about them and it is not discriminatory. For example, I can say
"religious people generally believe in a God". This is problematic when you
start making judgments about people based on outright false claims or based on
attributes that they have no control over.

I said "generally" on purpose. There are exceptions of course, but from
speaking to a lot of them, watching interviews etc. that's the impression I
got for their general sentiment. I of course am not presenting this as a fact,
just as what I observed.

~~~
neilwilson
If you get an impression from lots of rap videos that people of colour behave
like gangsters can you then legitimately describe them all as such
'generally'?

Or is it incumbent upon you to realise that you have selected a small and
unrepresentative sample and look for balance. It's not difficult to find and
talk to Paul Embery, Kate Hoey, Brendan Chilton, Thomas Fazi, Bill Mitchell,
etc. Or for that matter me.

~~~
AsyncAwait
Of course not, however people of color is not a voluntarily made up group that
represents an idea, since race is an attribute. You can criticize ideas a
voluntary group stands for. I said this in my previous comment. If you cannot
make observations about a voluntary group of people and their ideas, there's
no point of them being associated with that group. Them being in that group is
supposed to signify _something_. Opinions may differ as to what _exactly_ it
is supposed to be, I just offered my observation on that, that's all.

------
anoncow
Related discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244)

HN, unfortunately, seems biased towards laws like the GDPR and somehow
believes that start-ups can no longer self regulate or Do-no-evil. I hope I am
wrong regarding this.

Self-regulation was once the gold standard on boards like HN.

Imagine creating the Google search engine in 2018 without the new proposed EU
copyright law in place. Seems difficult right? Most websites have anti-
scraping techniques in place if you are not Google-bot. Now imagine, creating
the next Google after laws like the new EU copyright law go live.

Laws like the GDPR are red tape and are poison to start-ups. Self regulation
is the way to go and we need industry bodies who can stand up and talk to
government bodies like the EU to come up with meaningful regulations which
help both the industry and the end user.

~~~
cdancette
Self regulation, really?

Startups could never self regulate and never will. And a few bad startups can
be enough to do massive damages.

Look Cambridge analytica: this startup alone made the case for regulations
like GDPR.

As a user, I really am pleased with gdpr, so that "do-no-evil" startups stop
selling my data around and not caring at all about my privacy.

~~~
existencebox
(For the record, and to confuse my own statement, I actually generally agree
that self-regulation isn't historically effective. I'm just also not sold on
GDPR as a US resident/am as nervous as heavy regulation as I am of a lack
thereof, and when I read your post it begged a devils-advocate counter to your
statement from a different angle.)

As a user, I'm _not_ pleased that the law has devoided me of a choice to
participate with businesses under a previously acceptable business model, and
without any input/say on my part, assumes my agency to chose which businesses
I interact with. I accepted it as my responsibility to know that some may be
selling my information, and to make conscientious choices accordingly. This
not even touching on that the law does precisely nothing against the sort of
data incidences that I have the most issue with (Equifax).

~~~
DanBC
> As a user, I'm _not_ pleased that the law has devoided me of a choice to
> participate with businesses under a previously acceptable business model,
> and without any input/say on my part

Which business model do you think is killed by GDPR? Can you point to the bit
of GDPR that you think causes that change?

~~~
existencebox
Since GDPR began to come into force, I've seen an increasing pivot from ad-
based revenue models to subscription/pay per view based models, I imagine
motivated in part by the fact that if you have to acquire non-implied consent,
so you might as well force that friction point to fully onboard a user, and
part as well by fears as to how targeted advertising will continue to provide
a revenue source given the new requirements. It's fair to say that this may be
an overreaction, but historically these sorts of experiments don't get
reverted, once the infrastructure is in place. I personally do not find the
benefits offered under GDPR to be worth losing what was previously a
"relatively free" ecosystem. Others can disagree with whether they are OK with
the prior state of affairs, but this is not the law I would have written to
change it, and as I said before, a lot of my frustration comes in from having
0 say in the matter, (or deriving 0 benefit) yet being exposed to the friction
of the legislation.

(One can also observe that this may serve as a regulatory moat protecting e.g.
large ad networks that have enough scale to merit the overhead/costs of global
compliance infrastructure, but not new startup networks. We've seen similar
problems in recent HN writeups re: starting a bank; where something much more
consensus, financial security, can still serve to overreach and serve
incumbents more than it protects users.)

As a meta comment, I notice you are _very often_ present defending GDPR in
threads where I've stayed quiet in the past; to the point that as someone who
almost never notices names on this site, I've noticed yours before this
interaction. Can I be curious about why you advocate this so comprehensively
while also answering your question? (because, frankly, even the advocates I
know personally agree that there are costs and risks involved, and that the
letter of the law itself also left a lot up in the air)

~~~
DanBC
> I imagine motivated in part by the fact that if you have to acquire non-
> implied consent, so you might as well force that friction point to fully
> onboard a user, and part as well by fears as to how targeted advertising
> will continue to provide a revenue source given the new requirements.

Again, please can you point to the actual part of GDPR that forces people to
gain consent before targetting ads?

Here's the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner, saying that legitimate
interests (one of the lawful reasons for processing data) might be ok for
marketing.

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-
da...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-
protection-regulation-gdpr/legitimate-interests/when-can-we-rely-on-
legitimate-interests/)

> As a meta comment, I notice you are _very often_ present defending GDPR in
> threads where I've stayed quiet in the past; to the point that as someone
> who almost never notices names on this site, I've noticed yours before this
> interaction. Can I be curious about why you advocate this so comprehensively

It's because almost all of the people posting against the GDPR will post
things that just aren't in GDPR. They haven't read any of the regulation; they
believe things that are not true and they spread those incorrect statements.
Some of this is unintentional - they've read a bad blog and they beleive it.
Some of it is intentional - fuck the EU.

I don't mind people being against GDPR if they've read it and are against
things it's actually doing.

~~~
anoncow
I have read the GDPR. The point is not what this law directly impacts today.
The point is what laws like the GDPR open up the industry to.

~~~
DanBC
Sure, if we elect Hitler next year we're all fucked.

I'm not sure how that's an argument against GDPR today, especially since it's
built on long standing EU traditions and law.

------
amelius
> Make platforms directly liable for all copyright infringements by their
> users, and then offer that they can avoid that unreasonable liability if
> they can show they’ve done everything in their power to prevent copyrighted
> content from appearing online – namely, by deploying upload filters

I guess that's okay, as long as the EU provides those upload filters. Or a
machine-readable specification of one. And as long as the EU is penalized for
false positives.

~~~
tmalsburg2
Why should platforms not be held liable for copyright infringement? Most of
them are directly benefiting from distributing pirated content (page views),
which means they have a selfish interest not to act forcefully against
copyright infringement. For instance, Youtube would likely not have been the
success that it was without pirated content.

Edit: It's okay to disagree with my comment. But why not share your view with
us instead of just downvoting me?

~~~
ghaff
YouTube is a really interesting case. I'm probably not unique in thinking they
were going to go the way of Napster given how much of the content of YouTube
1.0 infringed copyrights. It operated in a time when "user-generated content"
wasn't nearly as big a thing and certainly wasn't monetizable for the most
part.

I doubt they'd have made it out the other side had Google not acquired them.

~~~
padthai
Copyright infringement is still big in Youtube. It is flooded with stolen
content. Big things The Simpson or Family guy or even full films. But also
compilation channels from other Youtubers:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRwTep1kvrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRwTep1kvrw)

~~~
DanBC
But youtube has mechanisms to remove monetisation from the uploader and funnel
it to the rights-holder.

I haven't read the proposed EU regulation, and it sounds like there's a bunch
more stuff in it.

It would have been nice if Techdirt had a clear link to the proposal.

~~~
padthai
I completely agree with you.

Some channels get some money before they get closed though.

