
The European Union versus the Internet - juokaz
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-european-union-versus-the-internet/
======
mrmekon
In my network of friends, which is within the EU and comprised entirely of EU
citizens and spans multiple EU tech companies from dinky startups to Giant
Unicorn, GDPR has been almost universally approved. We had to implement it,
and generally feel better for having done so. The Giant Unicorn employees were
dismayed by how little time they were given for such a giant task, but were in
support of the law.

Everybody is completely and 100% against the copyright law.

There is a huge difference between the two from my point of view:

GDPR is not a law about "The Internet", it is a law about company records. It
applies to Google, but it also applies to the Pakistani food stand on the
corner. It affects Google a lot more, sure. I support the concept that a
company does not have some inherent right to be a steward of my personal data
without my explicit consent. GDPR is also easy enough for even tiny startups
to comply with, and is significantly easier for small companies than large
ones. It does not create a large barrier to entry for new startups or a rift
between the existing small and large companies.

The copyright law, however, is a law about The Internet. It controls how
businesses interact with the internet. It sets _technical_ restrictions on how
they can do so. It sets technical restrictions that are probably not even
feasible, at that. It absolutely does create a huge barrier to entry for small
companies, and could possibly enshrine the existing tech giants into de-facto
monopolies (I mean, if they aren't already...)

The copyright directive is horrible enough on its own. I don't see why
everyone is in a rush to pull in mentions of GDPR to make it seem "worse". For
a lot of us, it weakens the argument instead of strengthening it. Not everyone
likes GDPR, obviously, but we can _all_ agree that the copyright law is
garbage.

~~~
Tharkun
I disagree with the GDPR "success story" part of your comment. So far it's
backfired entirely. The goal was to provide users with more control, and (from
the standpoint of such a user) to reduce relentless personal data harvesting.

That hasn't happened. What's happened is more annoying "we use cookies and
track you"-banners all over the internet. As a user who doesn't use cookies,
these damned things won't even go away and keep coming back. It hasn't given
me more control. At all. If anything, it's made me more trackable on the
internet (because now I'll have to use cookies to tell people I don't want
their god damned cookies).

Online newspapers are the worst. "Here's a front page you can read, and maybe
the start of an article, if you want more, you have to give us permission to
track you -- or you can just fuck off". What exactly has GDPR solved here?
Nothing. Before this nonsense, I could simply tell my browser not to accept
cookies from these sites, and I could tell my plugins to ignore their tracking
stuff. But at least I could read the newspaper without any hassle. Now all I
get is more annoying popups and less contents. Thanks, GDPR.

Yes, I'm being snarky. Yes, I know the idea of the law is pretty solid. But
no, I'm not at all happy with the outcome.

~~~
tomp
Yea, I agree.

AFAIK GDPR does explicitly legislate against all that - dialogues should be
"opt-in" and should include a simple "no" option, and that sites shouldn't
"ban" you for not clicking "yes".

But unless EU actually starts delivering some hefty fines, the law is just a
dead tree.

~~~
ezoe
But if the site relies on cookies and localStorage and cannot work without it,
"no" option is equivalent of "ban".

And it's their computer that allows the usage of cookies and localstorage. All
modern web browsers has an option to disable them. It's technically stupid.

~~~
tomp
Nah, the equivalent is "using the website with degraded experience", not
"can't read the article, we'll redirect you to the home page instead".

------
tw1010
It's super interesting to watch the reaction of the US blogosphere to EU laws.
I feel like I'm learning a lot about US culture just by observing the general
attitude that seems to be coalescing against things like GDPR. I used to think
that I'd been pretty well indoctrinated into the US value system, despite
being born in the EU, just by virtue of having most of my influences (movies,
the internet) having come from there. But seeing how much different my
attitude is towards all these laws, compared to articles like this one,
totally gives me a whole new source of specific little value updates I aught
to make if I want to escape from a mindset I suspect isn't optimal in the
current economic climate (an EU-based one), to one that is (i.e. an american
attitude to things).

~~~
ktosobcy
My perception and view of the US and it's culture also slightly shifted after
GDPR came into spotlight (same conclusions as yours).

Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started
completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same
corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it
gives you freedom". The problem is - the argument (my understanding of the
interlocutor) was about companies, and what they can do.

In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals
over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the
difference.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
Idk how you can argue the EU values people over corporate interest while this
copyright law is on it's way to being passed.

Here's one of the many articles about what's wrong with it.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-
proposal...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-
extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia)

~~~
Tomte
It's one of thousands of laws, but sure, this one is the definitive indicator
of the EU's values.

Maybe we could try to find a single US law that we don't like and dismiss
America just as readily?

~~~
r_smart
We all know you're going to pick the Patriot Act :)

~~~
Tomte
Or maybe The Hague Invasion Act? ;-)

~~~
r_smart
Never heard of this one, and didn't know anything about it. I tried reading
the Wikipedia page. Now I've heard of it, but still don't know anything about
it.

------
no1youknowz
It's not just the EU that the Internet is in danger of.

A Labour MP in the UK announced a bill that wants to curtail "closed" forums
on social media [0].

Analysis on the topic [1].

[0]: [https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3062557/mp-plans-laws-to-
ope...](https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3062557/mp-plans-laws-to-open-up-
closed-internet-groups-claiming-they-fuel-extremism-and-hate)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eobVBf5S8uM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eobVBf5S8uM)

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
That's absolutely ridiculous. Is she going to let us listen in on all her
private phone calls? Read all her emails?

Please tell me this has no hope of passing...

~~~
mjw1007
It's a Ten-minute rule bill. Ten-minute rule bills have no hope of passing.
You're welcome.

~~~
chris_mc
For the lazy folks who (initially) thought this was a 120x extension to the 5
second rule:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Minute_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Minute_Rule)

------
kodablah
> This brings me to a piece of legislation I have been very critical of for
> quite some time: GDPR. The intent of the legislation is certainly admirable
> — protect consumer privacy —although (and this may be the American in me
> speaking) I am perhaps a bit skeptical about just how much most consumers
> care relative to elites in the media.

Amen. The way Google and FB are using data just doesn't bother the masses the
way it bothers the media and the narrative they've built (or the way it
bothers us). There are many steps that can be taken, some incremental, towards
the curbing of these practices. But we, as technologists, should always decry
heavy-handed government regulation of the internet, especially as an early
step. The intent does not matter.

If legislation doesn't work, don't make more or make it larger assuming it was
the scope that was the problem. Take a step back and recognize alternatives
including enforcing existing statues, promoting alternatives, educating
citizenry, more targeted and narrowly scoped legislation, etc.

~~~
josteink
> But we, as technologists, should always decry heavy-handed government
> regulation of the internet, especially as an early step.

This is not an early step. The trend has been clear for the past decade, and
it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

This is pretty much something the tech industry brought upon itself by trying
to always trying to outdo itself in terms of how much tracking and privacy
violations it could get away with.

IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river.

~~~
pathseeker
>The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the
wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to
spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing
speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on
perception?

>IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river.

Don't do this.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something. "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
394549
>> The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the
wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

> Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to
> spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing
> speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on
> perception?

To make an analogy, what you're saying is similar to saying "I'm not convinced
violent crime is going in the wrong direction, because people many people are
regularly wearing better bullet-proof vests."

Better tools to block tracking is part of a trend going in the wrong
direction: an arms race between trackers and anti-tracking blockers. If things
were going in the right direction, we wouldn't need better blockers, since the
tracking companies would have taken the hint, and either become opt in or
respect simple measures like DNT headers.

~~~
pathseeker
>To make an analogy, what you're saying is similar to saying "I'm not
convinced violent crime is going in the wrong direction, because people many
people are regularly wearing better bullet-proof vests."

That analogy only makes sense if the bullet-proof vest prevents violent crime
entirely. Someone shooting you when you wear a bullet proof vest is still a
violent crime so I'm not sure what point you are getting at.

>Better tools to block tracking is part of a trend going in the wrong
direction: an arms race between trackers and anti-tracking blockers. If things
were going in the right direction, we wouldn't need better blockers, since the
tracking companies would have taken the hint, and either become opt in or
respect simple measures like DNT headers.

Solutions that depend on the goodwill of participants don't work on the
Internet. The only people they impact are the ones that want to play by the
rules.

You know it's illegal to take people's money out of banks, yet for some reason
banks still use encryption. Don't you wonder why?

------
arxpoetica
It seems there's a common warfront in general around what can or can't be
said, and it has coalesced in the every-one tool, the Internet.

Greater ease to publish, greater impulse to control one another.

The test of our day seems to be around the right to speak freely, online.

~~~
netsec_burn
I'm surprised Tor usage hasn't skyrocketed.

~~~
octosphere
Well we do know that Tor usage shot up after Snowden's revelations

[https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186025-privacy-
behavio...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186025-privacy-behaviors-
after-snowden/fulltext)

[https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/tor-usage-doubles-snowden-
ns...](https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/tor-usage-doubles-snowden-nsa-prism/)

~~~
chris_mc
Darknet markets had a huge boom around that time, too, which could also
correlate. I think it's more likely the cause than Snowden, as I think more
people care about drugs than privacy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market#Silk_Road_and_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market#Silk_Road_and_early_markets)

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2013-01-01%202...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2013-01-01%202013-12-31&geo=US&q=%2Fg%2F11b6hxvzw9)

------
tannhaeuser
I will come out and say I don't agree with this portrayal of EU legislation
being absurd. Time and again we're discussing what's wrong with the current
web landscape: commoditization of content, leading into an attention economy
with tracking and surveillance, and concentration of ad spend and most money
to be made in the hands of very few players. If creators don't get their share
of profits made using their works, this won't sustain further content
creation. YouTube and file sharing sites can not shrug and say "we're just
running the platform" when they disproportionally benefit and leave content
creators with a pittance if anything.

Now that the EU actually wants to do something about it, the law is being
denounced as lobbied by big media, but, to the contrary, the current status
quo only serves Google et al. I have my reservations about the feasibility of
content filtering, but "EU vs the Internet" is coming from an internet "mob"
mindset having come to expect everything to be free (as in FREE of direct
cost) immediately and without friction. "The Internet" is not consumers, but
made by creators. In fact, I'm cautiously optimistic this (and the GDPR)
legislation will benefit smaller publishers and diversity and bring back
unproblematic syndication and end-user content aggregation via RSS or similar.

The EU is first and foremost a common _market_ and concerned with creating
fair economical conditions. Obviously, the web is stuck (economically) in a
quasi-monopolistic situation. The EU Commission/Parliament is attempting to do
exactly what is necessary to re-establish desirable market conditions. If
they'd do nothing, this would question their very reason for existence;
they're not in for establishing state- or other monopolies. Along these lines,
what the EU should consider next is to establish workable e-payment standards
and legislation.

------
digikata
So there's a lot of coverage about the EU parliament process, but where did
the drive for this copyright directive come from? There seems to very little
coverage on how this directive came about. Whose interests are being
represented by these changes?

~~~
Joeri
Economic interests. EU governments are seeing the majority of digital revenues
carted off to american coffers and want a bigger slice to remain in europe to
bolster its lagging economy.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
If this were the case, I think it's much more likely the EU would try and
achieve this via changes to tax law for corporations operating within the EU
than copyright directives.

There's been a lot of press about how little tax the Google's and Starbucks of
the world pay in the places they derive the revenue, and some of the highly
creative ways they avoid (not evade) taxation. That would seem to point at
issues with international taxation agreements rather than copyright.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _it 's much more likely the EU would try and achieve this via changes to tax
> law for corporations operating within the EU than copyright directives_

Top income earning families in many EU states pay shockingly little in taxes.
They're able to structure their gross income such that reportable income is
virtually nothing. These families are rich and powerful, and go a long way
towards explaining why the EU retains its complex tax code.

------
ttepasse
The author's strange interpretation of the motivations behind the GDPR makes
me ask if he never spend any thought on the preceding data privacy directives
and national privacy laws of EU members. It's a rather small update, not big
paradigm change and the GDPR is rather in the same spirit like the privacy
laws of the 90s and 80s.

------
AdamM12
"Internet tech giants including Google and Facebook could be made to monitor,
filter and block internet uploads under amendments..."

Should read.

"Countless companies that do not have the resources of Google and Facebook
could be made to monitor..."

------
joejerryronnie
I think it boils down to the following question: "Do you trust the government
to make decisions that will benefit and protect you?" In the EU, it appears
the answer is Yes. In the US, the answer is unequivocally No.

------
supermatt
IMHO, It should be up to the respective authorities to decide if things are
covered by copyright or not. Following this ridiculous proposal, THEY should
be the ones to provide the relevant tools and services to service providers to
enforce this ludicrous position.

------
angrymonk
I take it that every one is pro intellectual property when it comes YOUR data
being handled by services through their support of GDPR. But also anti
intellectual property when it comes to copyright data being handled by
services through their opposition to copyright laws, because that would be
overreach.

Just take your punishment.

------
3pt14159
The only part about these EU types of laws that kinda rubs me the wrong way is
how they infect across business dealings. But overall I support their
objectives, even if I think the true solution to some of the problems they're
trying to solve is a technical change to how the web and internet work.

------
FactolSarin
I disagree with the EU about their copyright legislation, but applaud their
attempts at increasing privacy.

What I find odd about the conversation around EU internet legislation is the
idea that "The Internet" is a single entity that has some kind of natural
state, and further that natural state is for all information to be free and to
be a place where anyone can say anything (or should be able to). I think this
grows out of the American origins of the Internet, and the American concept of
free speech.

But other countries have different views of how free speech should be. Should
you be able to deny the holocaust? Should you be able to purchase unlimited
political ads? Should you be able to spread misinformation? Americans tend to
say yes, because the truth will sort itself out. I'm not going to make a
judgement on whether that's true, but it _is_ true that other societies make
different judgements on where to draw the line on freedom of expression, and
those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their people on
the Internet just as much as Americans have a right to have wild-west style
freedom of expression.

Oh, also, before someone straw-mans me, I'm not talking about repressive
regimes. I'm talking about societies where the populace is making informed
decisions about their leaders, and have collectively decided they draw the
line on expression in a different place than Americans do.

~~~
nybble41
> ... and those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their
> people on the Internet ...

No, they do not. One's natural rights do not disappear just because one
happens to be living under a regime which fails to acknowledge them. When an
American talks about the freedom of speech, they're talking about a right
shared by every human being on this planet, not just the ones who happen to
live in the USA. It is a matter of objective fact, not opinion or local
preference, that the use of force, including fines, imprisonment, etc., is not
a proportional response to mere speech, regardless of the content.

~~~
FactolSarin
It's a matter of objective fact? Show me the experimental data that shows the
American interpretation of freedom of speech is correct. Even Americans draw
the line somewhere. For instance, the old "shouting fire in a theater." bit.
Or, say, planning a murder.

Other people decide to draw the line different places. Sorry, but claiming the
American legal interpretation is "objective fact" and, say, the German one is
wrong is just crazy.

~~~
Nasrudith
Personally I think the crazy notion is that governments have rights. They are
an embodiment of power. They need and have limits not rights. If the people
stop the government from having an army - circumstances of the practicality of
doing so aside its rights haven't been violated. It doesn't have any and the
notion they do is absurd.

Even the transience property of personhood for corporations (regardless of
one's opinion on the matter) doesn't apply to them for several reasons. Anyone
with sufficient actually trivial resources can form a corporation. Forming
your own government (in a non-parliment sense) is generally known as treason.

The people may have a right to self determination but that is a very big
distinction.

~~~
FactolSarin
Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace
wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.

~~~
qball
>Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace
wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.

So... mob rule. That seems like a very stable and restrained society. I can't
think of any obvious problem with that, or any time in, say, German history
(to name a particularly egregious example) where mob rule run amok destroyed
most of the Continent. Or Russian history. Or Cambodian history. Or Chinese
history. Or...

The only currently reliable way to defuse mob rule is to decentralize. This is
done by passing laws that say that society can't stop its individual members
from doing certain things. And while this does lead to a very polluted commons
(and sometimes isn't sufficient on its own to prevent the mob from taking
over), it also leads to an exceptionally stable society simply because the "we
should gang up and hurt/ban the people we hate" reflex is impotent outside of
one's chosen groups and the hands-off attitude becomes ingrained in the people
after a while.

The right to be wrong is important, because once the mob decides that your
life itself is wrong (or rather, the closer the local Overton Window is to
that idea- the more entitled a society is to restrict its members, the closer
it is to this by definition) you're in trouble as soon as the mob hits a rough
spot. It might advance faster at times, but it's just too unstable.

~~~
Nasrudith
While mob rule can be problem it has long been the 'democratic bogeyman' to
justify why oligarchs and dictators must retain power even if what they want
isn't remotely close to being unreasonable like not facing famine when it can
be prevented. I'm not sure that decentralization works for stopping it - just
limiting their demesne to one small town where you could be lynched instead of
a whole country.

The system of constitutional rights of some sort has worked pretty well to
excellent for limiting that purpose especially when combined with a judiciary
willing to look ahead. The issue it helps prevent is the same as the mob rule
example although it can also happen with more 'restrained mob rule' situations
in a set up for a turnkey dictatorship that allows for absolute power in just
a few steps.

The 'democratic institutions' and societal structure seems to be a factor of
how resistant from degrading as well, how likely a transition to democracy is
to stick and not have travesties in the attempt and how the aftermath of a
dictatorship is handled. It would be interesting to see if there can be a good
qualitative breakdown here as there are for signs of rising fascism and
dictatorships.

------
zer0faith
Let's say I live in the EU but use a VPN in another country can I circumvent
this copyright law?

------
phobosdeimos
To be hypocritical is to be human: if the EU can make life miserable for some
American based businesses Trump style I won't lose sleep over it.

------
a_imho
tldr; the author uses the copyright directive to go off tangent and cry about
GDPR a bit more

------
reacweb
The usage of natural language to write legislations about internet will always
create ambiguities and loopholes. I think regulations should be writen in a
mathematical language with proof of consistency and unambigous reference
implementation of algorithms that are imposed to FAI.

~~~
furgooswft13
Lets pass a law that states all laws must be written in Haskell!

Best part about it is much fewer laws will be written since so few understand
that language.

~~~
mdpopescu
> Best part about it is much fewer laws will be written since so few
> understand that language.

Legalese didn't seem to have that effect.

~~~
furgooswft13
Yea but you can throw legalese madlibs into a document and get it passed as
law as long as you provide the legislators enough kickbacks.

Haskell has to compile at least, and be pure and stuff.

Who's up for a Pure Functional Programming government.

~~~
makapuf
Sometimes I get the impression we get pure fictional programs before the
elections ...

