
It’s time EU laws caught up with technology - doener
https://changecopyright.org/
======
leereeves
> It's time our laws caught up with our technology.

Politicians usually update our laws to catch up to technology by banning,
restricting, or regulating it.

We'd have to change the power structure to get new laws that "create room to
tinker, create, share, and learn on the internet."

~~~
csydas
I don't think that's necessarily true. The current Copyright laws are
extremely over-reaching and also incredibly one sided, as user generated
content or personal IP is often used by companies without the actual copyright
owner's permission. Basically Copyright currently is a one-way street and it's
wildly inconsistent and frequently misused.

This doesn't really need a government to "create room to tinker, create,
share, and learn on the internet", it just needs the government(s) to fairly
apply the law and punish businesses who rampantly abuse it. With US DMCA
claims, all are made under the penalty of perjury that the claims are valid
and true - how many stories do you know of that are about companies being
punished for an overreach of copyright claims or for false claims? The answer
is likely none because despite there being debate over the copyright misuse in
courts, there are just too many damn instances of copyright misuse to even
start with.

It's a considerable imbalance in US law because it's truly a case of where a
wealthy few are able to protect their rights and use the law as a cudgel to
get their way, and often their claims have no basis or are not covered by the
copyright law as the companies want to interpret it. However, individuals do
not have the resources to adequately challenge these claims, and the
fraudulent DMCA claims have effects beyond the takedown.

~~~
sandworm101
Of course copyright laws are one-sided. That's like calling the law against
murder one-sided for being too against murderers. Most all laws are one-sided.
The other side is found not in the law, but in rights and privileges protected
by things like constitutions and charters.

Take "fair use" in copyright. The language in the copyright law is a bit of a
fiction. Fair use is just a loose description of an underlying constitutional
right, freedom of speech. The language used in copyright law doesn't trump the
constitution. So while it is one-sided, that side is balanced by the
constitution, which is also rather one-sided.

A copyright law that attempted to be two-sided would have to define
constitutional rights, something that can/should not be done in a law. Its a
fools errand. Instead, you write a one-sided law, with some loose nods to
constitutional rights, then leave it to the courts to ensure that you haven't
trampled too much. If you haven't, then the law stands. If you've gone too
far, the law is quashed and you have to start again. That's our system.

~~~
csydas
forgive typos, on phone.

While I understand your point there are some major differences in the purpose
of murder laws and copyright laws and specifically in how they are carried
out. You can't automate murder charges; you can't issue thousands of murder
charges a day against someone. The onus is on the accuser to have evidence and
they are required to present that in trial before anything legally actionable
can happen. There has to be reasonable cause for suspicion to deprive a person
of rights over a murder charge. And most importantly perhaps, murder laws can
be used by people far more evenly.

My issue with copyright claims is that there's no cost to the companies for
lying or being wrong. There's no reason to not send out dmca notices if you
have no proof or are wrong. Murder is pretty clear cut in whether or not a
murder has occurred, it's the "whodunnit" that is on trial. With copyright,
whether a crime has actually been committed isn't as clear.

When a dmca is sent, it must include an oath, under penalty of perjury, that
the information is accurate. If you lie in court, you get punished for
perjury. Not so with dcma. An individual cannot win against a corporation as a
rights holder -- this has been tested and often nothing happened except the
corp eventually stopped the I fringemet after they already profited.

Fun aside, iOS Keeps trying to autocorrect dmca to scam.

~~~
sandworm101
Murder is the go-to law for comparison because it is simple, old, and the most
commonly understood. It is balanced against a host of doctrines that legalize
various forms of killing, as copyright is balanced against doctrines that
allow copying/taking.

And murder charges could be automated like the DMCA. Millions die every year
in hospital. We could easily setup a system whereby a wrongful death suit (one
of the many civil version of murder) is launched after every death by default.
As takedowns are sent on scant evidence, wrongful death actions could start as
soon as there is a body. We don't do that because it would be expensive,
onerous and silly, which should inform the DMCA takedown process.

------
adrianratnapala
While I favour the sentiment, I won't sign the petition. One reason is that I
am only a visitor to the EU.

But if I was a European, I would still be troubled by the vagueness of the
thing. I'm all for putting rhetorical pressure in general directions; but if I
am to put my signature on it and send it to a legislator, I want to see some
concrete reform proposals.

Instead I see a wish-list of outcomes.

~~~
kbart
Agreed. While to goal is noble, the description sounds like something written
by 10th grader. I mean, com'on, are memes and GIFs are really among the most
important things?

~~~
Symmetry
If you're aim is to convince enough people for political action you really
need to dumb down your discussion to a 10th grade level.

------
philipov
There's no text. I can highlight it, but it's not even the same color as the
background. It looks like every letter has been replaced with a space. Is that
copyright protection?

~~~
throwanem
No, that's a web font failing to load.

~~~
brassic
It isn't. The body element has its opacity set to zero so you can't see
anything. I guess there's some Javascript or CSS or something intended to
animate it, but if that fails to load you get an empty screen.

~~~
throwanem
Oh, for God's sake.

------
jrockway
There is not enough information on the site to get me motivated to take any
action. It sounds like the EU doesn't have fair use or the freedom of
panorama? But is anyone is prison for photographing the Eiffel Tower or making
a meme?

According to Wikipedia, it looks like it's not the entire EU that's missing a
freedom of panorama, but just a few countries:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama)

There are countries where the government mandates what clothes you wear and
whatnot, so perhaps their society does not particularly value personal
freedom. Thus it doesn't make much sense to me for a US company to intervene
here.

Meanwhile, the law seems to be ignored and the cost of an international
lawsuit over a picture of a building is prohibitive to nearly everyone, so I'm
not too worried.

------
sofaofthedamned
I can't understand why law isn't drafted under a version control system like
GIT. It would stop some of the umderhand earmarks and such like

~~~
DarkLinkXXXX
Sorry if that was just an off-hand remark, but how would a GIT workflow
account for judicial review?

------
guard-of-terra
Let's have a talk about copyright, at least, in our societies, instead of
having laws and persecutions just pushed on us from the top, in batches?

I don't see any democracy in observing how this system works, only sense of
entitlement of the minority.

~~~
ffggvv
You can do something. Support organizations like Mozilla, EFF and FSF. Donate
to them and stop using companies like google (which pushed for DRM on the
web), facebook, etc. That make money selling your privacy and use that money
to influence standards and laws.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I don't want to do just "something". It's too little, too late. I want to have
what's mine, all of it.

Getting my voice heard out loud, my interests acknowledged.

~~~
ffggvv
That's called dictature. Everybody wants it, but what we get is compromise
(democracy) that tries to make happy the whole society (obviously it fails in
some places, that are the rules of the game). Think of it as a free-market in
economics, but including privacy, freedom, etc. besides money.

Every action I take matters. It just seems that most people prefer a short-
cut.

What's strange to me is when people like richard stallman stay loyal to their
principles and fight for a better society they get criticized by the same
people they want to help!

TL;DR; it may seem that we all want privacy, freedom, etc. but don't want to
fight for it.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I don't see that I ever get any compromises. What I see is that decision-
making is usurped.

I don't see many people in society particularly happy.

I don't criticize Stallman, doesn't mean it's the only way to go.

~~~
ffggvv
> I don't see that I ever get any compromises. What I see is that decision-
> making is usurped.

Maybe I'm just young and naive, I don't know. But I like to think I can fight
for something. To me at least it seems we are in a golden period (I'm in
europe): few wars, few illnesses, more or less freedom of speech.

> I don't see many people in society particularly happy.

This is maybe human's condition? See leopardi.

> I don't criticize Stallman, doesn't mean it's the only way to go.

No way I was implying we should all agree with Stallman, I was only saying
that I respect him because he doesn't take "short-cuts".

------
MollyR
Yet we still have strong pushes from the government on the radical TPP and
TTIP. I fear they want to update the law to catch up with technology but not
in pro-consumer or pro-citizen way.

------
cornstalks
Am I the only one who finds reading text surrounding an animated GIF
impossible?

------
summarite
EU copyright reform is coming. The Commission (=administration/ministry)
proposal is scheduled for 21st of September. It will propose more
harmonisation (currently the EU sets just a basic framework, countries choose
what/what not to implement in detail, but the terrible is of course that the
more ambitious it tries to be the less likely it will go through. The more
national systems will be unpredictably affected, the more likely you'll get a
few vetos. So the proposal will significantly update, improve and bring more
clarity across borders, but necessarily makes compromises and has to leave
enough freedom to not ruin existing working systems.

At that point the ball is handed over to the European parliament (~750 members
elected from the 28 EU member states) and the council, i.e. the heads of state
.

That means 1-2 years of negotiations and finally political bargaining between
the member states.

The big issue is that copyright is only partially harmonised, so after that
procedure EU member states have to transpose the EU law into national law.

Along all these stages vested interests will be lobbying. Politicians will cut
deals. The EU (at least the eurocrats) will try their best to get an ambitious
result, but we all know that it's in the end about politics. Political parties
and leaders will make the final call.

There is no abstract EU making decisions about Europe. There are national
governments, national parliaments and nationally elected politicians
negotiating and cutting deals.

If you want a good copyright framework stop sending incredibly vague
petitions. Go and pick up the phone and call an MEP. Go and join a party and
make an effort to get into the committee that sets the party line. Go and
visit your local politicians' open hours and tell them that you expect them to
make their party listen - and offer to provide support.

Then you'll make change happen.

Stop slacktivism. Start informing yourself (by reading the stuff on 21st
September) and then take an honest look to try where you can act.

------
adamnemecek
Laws need to be written in some automatically checked formalism and have some
sort of checker.

~~~
ffggvv
Writing laws is much much much harder than writing code (corner cases,
ambiguity, corruption, etc.).

Did you ever write a "big" program completely bug-free? I think we should
first start by writing correct programs (e.g. invest more in Coq, linters,
etc.) then "pass" our wisdom to law writers.

~~~
adamnemecek
I was talking about something like coq.

~~~
ffggvv
I know. But if not even professional programmers use Coq day to day (because
it's hard to use, the limitations and well known, etc.) why should we base our
laws on it?

WE should start using it, when we enough gain experience we start using it in
law writing.

As a matter of fact I'm going to check out Coq right now...

------
barkbro
> Did you know making a meme technically isn't allowed in many parts of the
> EU?

Does Mozilla also think that a meme is an image macro or am I misunderstanding
here?

------
reitanqild
I think they should add Norway tobthe dropdown. While technically not a part
of EU it is affected by EU laws anyway.

------
mike128
The prime example of what you can expect when EU politicians take on
technology is the Cookie Law...

------
WorldMaker
«It's time laws caught up with technology»

For a brief second I saw the sci-fi view of that headline and am now
disappointed this isn't about someone's "time laws".

------
Dowwie
Is the United States not listed in the dropdown for this petition?

~~~
ldjb
It's not. The page seems to be mostly about the EU, so the list only has EU
countries. There is an "Other" option at the bottom of the list, though.

------
99182912
Looks like [http://hooli.com/](http://hooli.com/) :

"We're more than the sum of our collective accolades."

"We're bigger than our innovations."

