
EU Copyright Directive is a catastrophe for free expression and competition - manigandham
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/internet-facing-catastrophe-free-expression-and-competition-only-europeans-can
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BlackFly
I wish that the EFF would include links to the updated directive. The latest I
can find is the language as of 2018-05-25
([http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf](http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf))
which doesn't contain the terms "commercial platforms", "news site" or link.
It does leave the definition of "unsubstantial parts" up to member states,
which is indeed worrying from a single market perspective.

Furthermore, that wording contradicts EFF's assertion for article 13 that
unlicensed content is not allowed to appear, "even for an instant." Since all
that is needed to avoid liability is to perform effective and proportionate
efforts to prevent availability and to react expeditiously upon notification.
Proportionality and effectiveness explicitly depend on the size of the content
provider: a new streaming video service would explicitly need to do less than
YouTube. Has the updated documentation explicitly removed the provision about
expeditious action upon notification? Because the exception proves the rule
(the rule being that unlicensed content is indeed allowed to appear for more
than an instant).

So... links to spam commissioners but no links to verify that EFF is
presenting a fair reading of the updated documents.

~~~
dmitriid
This is a much better update: [https://juliareda.eu/2019/01/article-13-almost-
finished/](https://juliareda.eu/2019/01/article-13-almost-finished/)

It describes the changes and why they will/will not work

~~~
BlackFly
That is indeed. Thank you for that.

Instead of requiring filtering on behalf of rightsholders that refuse to
license to platforms (an asymmetric relationship that just increases costs for
one party), I wish that the EU would legislate FRAND style royalties.

As in, if you want copyright protection then you have to issue Fair,
Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory licenses to any platform that may want to
host the content. Don't want to issue such a license? Then the EU won't help
you protect your work. In that way a platform could just host the content
using a central database and performing deduplication instead of using the
same central database to forbid viewing. Rightsholders would get royalties by
virtue of the license agreement, EU would spend less money policing copyright
since there would be many more legal avenues to access content.

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mc32
It's alarming that there appears to be no provision for fair use of
copyrighted materials. I'm not in the EU, but that would seem to be a grave
oversight.

One can imagine an image or any copyrightable material which might become
offensive or embarrassing might get copyrighted so as to in effect censor the
material.

~~~
pas
Hm, well, education is an exception already, but political speech and comedy
are not enumerated as exceptions. (Though I guess these things will be decided
by the Courts eventually, as the Directive is about proportional
remuneration).

Also, the proposal leaves intact other Directives, and it'll take a bit of
work to figure out if all of these are in harmony, or if there's a conflict
between the rules. (And if there which one prevails.)

"Except in the cases referred to in Article 6, this Directive shall leave
intact and shall in no way affect existing rules laid down in the Directives
currently in force in this area, in particular Directives 96/9/EC, 2001/29/EC,
2006/115/EC, 2009/24/EC, 2012/28/EU and 2014/26/EU."

for example 2001/29/EC is the WIPO copyright treaty [ratification] directive,
which already protects political speech and parody/caricature. (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive#Exceptions...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive#Exceptions_and_limitations)
)

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kodablah
Action was already taken when large-scale government interference of the
internet was cheered on in the past. Since taking the bad with the good of a
less-regulated internet wasn't acceptable, we now have to take the bad with
the good of a more-regulated internet. Ideally we could have nuance where
things work the way they're intended and overreach of power to add legislation
wasn't continually leveraged. But reality has shown us it doesn't work that
way.

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TadaScientist
Ok, so what can those of us not in Sweden, Germany, Poland or Belgium do?

~~~
sethherr
Go to the article. Click on the button for your country to take action.

~~~
TadaScientist
you might want to read my question again - I am not a citizen of these
countries.

~~~
lixtra
RTFA:

> If you live in the rest of Europe: please contact the ministers working on
> the Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. We'll update this page
> with more information as we get it.

~~~
diminoten
What about those of us who don't live in Europe?

~~~
ucaetano
Are you asking how can you influence law making in a country that you're not a
citizen of?

~~~
diminoten
Yes, because it effects me, and I am morally opposed to this position.

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cronix
To get around the linking to news sites problem, couldn't search engines just
not provide ANY links to news sites? Who defines what a "news" site is? Is
there a strict definition? Anybody with a website? If it's something I have
not read or known before, it's "news" to me no matter how old or from where.

~~~
sobani
That's what Google did in Germany when a "have a contract with news sites" law
went into effect. It didn't take long before Google got free access to all
German news sites.

Spain learned from this and make a minimum compensation mandatory. Since then
Google News hasn't been available in Spain.

So now they're making a third attempt to make Google pay for sending business
to news site. The result will probably be the same though.

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lbj
I wonder whyI always get downvoted into oblivion for stating that which to me
is an obvious fact: The EU is too far removed from reality to legislate. It
now has a long and sordid history of over-doing things to the extreme.

In Denmark, we've had 'cinnamon patrols' go from bakery to bakery to verify
that only the allowed amount of cinnamon was sprinkled on buns.

We had what felt like a complete shutdown of IT departments in the months
leading up to the GDPR because, again, it was overreaching and too vague. (the
idea was good though)

I could write a list much longer, but in general I think the Unix approach
works: Many small things that each do one thing well. The EU is the opposite:
One giant thing which does nothing well - If for no other reason, than the
distance from the Parliament to a wooden cabin on the mountains of norway is
just too great for them to regulate that cabin in great detail, but still this
is what they attempt to do. And now, down to each word on each and every
webpage accesible from the EU.

~~~
vardump
Yeah. Remove EU and I'm sure Russia will be happy to take over your little
countries.

Individually European countries are pretty weak. They're only strong as a
common entity.

~~~
lbj
Pretty sure NATO would survive the dismantling of some bureaucracy.

~~~
Ralfp
NATO is military pact. EU has economic advantages for member states like
single market and trade union (so you can't create trade agreement in WTO
sense with single EU member).

~~~
kazen44
Also, the EU has a common defence clause aswell, so all EU member states are
practically under the same defence umberella, even if they aren't into NATO.

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umvi
Right to be Forgotten, GDPR, and now this... pretty soon the barrier to entry
will be so high that no new players would be able to get off the ground with
an internet company in Europe.

~~~
kowdermeister
I want to open a i-shirt store and I'm in the EU. None of these will prevent
me.

Edit: typo... t-shirt

~~~
fuscy
I have no idea what i-shirt is but it's likely that if an user uses
copyrighted material for his i-shirt, you'll have to pay because it's your
platform. Bonus points for not using a censorship filter in trying to do this.

~~~
kowdermeister
No UGC will be allowed and the text you add will not be displayed anywhere :)

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agigao
This one I do like.

People could diverge from consumption of “data deluge”, and return back in
time when we used to have meaningful conversations on a private forums created
around a very concrete ideas other than feeding society with ads.

