
Illegal Memes? Weak Safe Harbor? Unpacking the Proposed EU Copyright Overhaul - awat
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/illegal-memes-weak-safe-harbor-unpacking-the-proposed-eu-copyright-overhaul/
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yasp
With this and GDPR the EU is seemingly begging to be cordoned off from the
broader internet.

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dzek69
Gdpr is actually a good thing. It's at least weird that USA-based companies
must follow it, but the law itself is very good thing for a customer and not
that bad for companies until they like collecting data and doing dirty stuff
with it.

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yasp
I would have preferred promulgating a set of standards to be GDPR compliant,
and allowing companies the option to choose whether to conform. Individuals in
turn could choose whether to use GPDR compliant services or not. Rather than
hitting all companies globally over the head with a hammer. Eventually this
strategy of legislative aggression is going to blow up in the EU's face.

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sandworm101
That's the argument for why health codes should be optional, that customers
can choose whether or nor to eat in dirty restaurants and the market will
settle the issue. Nope. I don't want to play that game. I want everyone to
obey a mandatory set of minimum rules.

It's about information imbalance. Without mandatory minimums it is too easy
for businesses to hide faults from consumers. I don't want websites to use
business judgment when deciding whether to protect consumer privacy. I want
them to fear massive retaliatory fines should they not do the bare minimum
necessary to protect the public from harm.

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frockington
"I want them to fear massive retaliatory fines " is exactly why America/Asia
is currently dominating Europe in technology. No start up and innovation can
happen in such an outwardly hostile business environment

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yifanl
No startup or innovation should happen at the cost of harming the userbase.

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kodablah
You can take the good with the bad or have neither in some idealistic world
where only one exists. You can even limit the bad (oftentimes limiting the
good as well), but you shouldn't say in absolute terms that innovation with
some bad should never occur even if there is significant good.

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tannhaeuser
I have yet to see an informed discussion about this law anywhere. The
"copyright" (if there were such a thing) reform is about regulating two things

\- display of StackOverflow, Wikipedia, news, and other (commercial) info
content full-text in link previews of search machines and news aggregators and
discussion boards

\- requirement for file sharing platforms to make an effort to check user
uploads for "copyright" infringements.

I understand the latter is to fill a gap where file sharing platforms just
shrug-away accusations of large scale copyright infringement by their users,
yet receive all the economic benefit. Obviously, scanning upload content for
infringement isn't technically feasible without also requiring publishers to
somehow register content/hashes to claim commercial rights, and mechanisms in
place for resolving disputes, etc. The law text as it is written seems also
too broadly applicable. Because of these flaws, the content filtering part
should maybe be unbundled into a separate law after further discussion.

I also believe the Web can come up with technical superior, more practical
solutions. For example, using HTML metadata to tag content, embedding and
linking content from an origin site, and/or exposing snippets as public
syndication feeds. In fact, these mechanisms have been in place for such a
long time that they might've been forgotten already.

I don't have a definite opinion yet. I guess if one accepts the EU is mainly
an institution concerned with common _economic_ market conditions, it should
strive to make the Web work better for content creators than it is now with
very few ad networks raking in cash. OTOH, link preview and content scanning
laws are obviously lobbied for by big media (the former by German newspapers
as it seems, the latter supposedly by Hollywood and music publishers).

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AnthonyMouse
> Obviously, scanning upload content for infringement isn't technically
> feasible without also requiring publishers to somehow register
> content/hashes to claim commercial rights, and mechanisms in place for
> resolving disputes, etc.

It isn't feasible at all. It's already common to upload encrypted zip files
and distribute the passphrase with the link, as a method of privacy protection
against the hosting provider. But that obviously also defeats any kind of
hashing or fingerprinting system and would be employed universally by pirates
as soon as any such thing was mandated. It's just a garbage law that imposes
costs and yields no benefits.

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gm-conspiracy
Anybody building a colo facility in Antigua?

old: [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/antigua-legitimate-
piracy](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/antigua-legitimate-piracy)

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EdSharkey
Anybody else catch this delicious tidbit?

> Unpublished research carried out on behalf of the European Commission at a
> cost of $400,000 suggests that unauthorized uploads are not a pressing
> problem: "In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of
> displacement of sales by online copyright infringements."

Unpublished, eh? Sounds like a whistleblower in the bureaucracy is trying to
torpedo this turd. Pretty weak attempt though. Next, leak some memos or emails
showing government apparatchiks plotting against citizen dissenters who've
used clever memes against them and then we've got a bombshell story! ;)

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c3o
Not a whistleblower, a member of the European Parliament with FOIA requests:
[https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-
infringement-s...](https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-
study/)

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EdSharkey
Laudable citizen action!

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tracker1
"By using this site, you agree to hold it's owners, management and developers
harmless for any materials which users uploaded and did not have appropriate
license to upload." Along with the Cookie, and GDPR notices.

In order to "scan" and report, you have to agree to said TOS.

