The problem with this thinking is that google et al will profit! They have the resources to deal with this. Smaller companies will not be able to deal with this so easily.
Thus, we are subsidizing people with the help of google at the expense of smaller competitors (incl those in Europe). That’s a though trade-off
If Google were forced by law to pay the content creator (all revenues from ads on pirated content) times (1+0.1 times (the number of reports of infringement - 1)) and the random people on the Internet who reported the infringement 1USD per report, how long do you think until infringement stops?
How many minutes would you guess? I think less than 100 minutes.
It would stop instantly. Here's how: Google immediately blocks all content from being uploaded from the EU citing too much risk. And pretty much every other website would do the same, including HN.
You forget to point out what will happen immediately after:
EU creative industry gets reset to the 1980s (what they -so desperately- want). The rest of the world doesn't stop. Not the US, not India, not China. Every EU entertainment industry business goes bankrupt because better alternatives exist to TV and EU Movies, most/all creatives in the EU are fired/out of a job ...
2 years later, all that remains of the EU creative industry is 100 vloggers and one film collective that all operate from outside the EU with material "not targeted at EU citizens" and, on rare occassions, EU governments will seriously underfund one or two movies who are mostly made by volunteers (and since every kid in every school is made to watch every such movie thrice - as a bonus these movies are hated with a passion by 90% of the population, their mere mention evokes bad memories of forceful teachers and painful, extremely tense absolute nonsense quizzes afterwards).
Youtube still reigns supreme. Amazon still reigns, Netflix still reigns. Nothing has changed, if anything these have become stronger, it's just that EU material is now never touched with a 10 foot pole by anyone on these platforms. Film students regularly come on TV, in tears, complaining about how EU copyright law means that as soon as anyone finds out where they're from, nobody returns any calls anymore and purges any video received from them from their hard drives and SSDs, drenching them in holy water 5 times afterwards in hopes of appeasing Youtube's enforcement of EU law.
I assume it would actually be worse than that. You're only looking at the entrainment industry, but most other industries would be impacted by this as well.
I know that they added an exception for source code, but that doesn't really cover all the things you would like as a developer, because sometimes you need to include additional stuff with code. Also, good luck trying to separate code from some other types of copyrighted text automatically. It probably wouldn't work.
It already has stopped. Nothing fundamentally has changed on the web in the last 10 years. Apart from the size if the major players making it more restrictive and centralized.
DeepMind is the only innovative project Google has, and that was an acquisition.
How long can they be allowed to steal data from their users and sell it, and steal content from other creators and shove and advert in front it?
Nobody but Google or Apple can push through meaningful changes to software anymore, at least on mobile, and in many ways on the desktop too. Is anyone surprised all we get is more dumb devices whose brains are in a data center?
As much as I'm no fan of Google for the way they treated me when I briefly worked there, along with DeepMind, IMO Waymo is acting as the adult in the room when it comes to self driving cars.
This. People need to understand that the root cause of life being as terrible as it was under Soviet rule was not so much the atrocities that got reported (that, of course, had to do with it too, but it was not the direct cause of daily life being so unbearable).
But day to day, what really killed every initiative, every improvement, every little bit of relief that might have been is that bureaucrats controlling the platforms were forced to take a 0.00000001% chance of terrible personal consequences every time they said "yes you can do that".
The result was: no to EVERYTHING. Absolutely every, every, everything. This law works the same way. Youtube will be forced to do deny everything. So will facebook, reddit, ycombinator, ...
Copyright can only exist if ALL the rest of society is constantly on the lookout for violations. Sorry, but that's just not worth it.
This is really about corporations flagrantly violating people's rights for their own profit.
We aren't sending anyone to the gulag. Just wanting them to fairly compensate those who produce the content they sell ads on and otherwise benefit from.
How much are you willing to pay per post to post on HN? Because that's what you're basically asking for. If you force companies to vet every single post a user makes and they have to take responsibility for it, then they'll have a rather substantial monetary value attached to each post you make.
Copyright is theft. It is theft of people's natural right to expression and sharing. We've seen that if you give publishers an inch, they'll take the whole 9 yards and sue you for there not being 20 yards, because their accountants predicted a 30 yard profit. At this point I don't think I can honestly support any kind of copyright law. Some limited author's right law, one that cannot be reassigned, sublicensed, etc. might work, but I have my reservations for that as well.
Big Content is certainly making a strong case that copyright law is incompatible with the internet, and arguably with any kind of freedom of expression.
This does not in any way diminish my point. If I contract a publisher to print my book or movie is still not right for Google to steal that book or movie and put ads on it.
I don't know why society let's them get away with that.
It doesn't, though. They are obligated to immediately remove this as soon as they attain knowledge of the infringement.
You, however, are cheerleading an obligation to somehow prevent anything infringing on anyone's rights from appearing online in the first place – which is just practically impossible, and any forced attempt is bound to massively cut into free speech.
After all, there's no registry of copyrighted content. Everything creative is copyrighted automatically. If I take a photo of a tree and send it to you, according to Article 13 a service like Instagram now has to (a) make best efforts to acquire a license for that photo from me and (b) prevent you from uploading it there – how on earth should they do either?
Making platforms directly liable for all posts/uploads in practice just means they can no longer accept posts/uploads – not that artists will magically get rich.
You gave instagram a license to share your content.
I'm pretty sure, neither Adam Curtis nor the BBC gave Google a license to share Hypernormalization or sell ads on it. If I buy the DVD of it and show it with a protector outside for free on a summer evening for anyone to watch I could be arrested.
That world makes no sense to me. It's unfair and wrong.
> You gave instagram a license to share your content.
No, in the scenario you're responding to, someone sent you a photo that is not and has never been on Instagram. Instagram is now required by law to prevent you from uploading it, because you are not the copyright owner of the image. How does that make sense?
Right. So, Article 13 apparently requires prescreening material. That's specifically why people are up in arms.
Everyone is pretty much on board with the necessity for providers to take down content in response to infringement reports, albeit with a side argument about how current implementations of this favour big money over small creators.
You could be taken to court and ordered to pay damages if someone reports you – but not the owner of the garden you're projecting it in. And you definitely don't have copyright cops show up at your door pre-emptively everytime you turn on your projector, without whose approval nothing will even play, do you?
"You gave instagram a license to share your content."
No, that's not the flow here. A takes a picture and sends it to B. Whatever method A sends it to B can be presumed to at least have a license to do that much. Let's call it Instagram to be safe, which is a Facebook property. Google, an entirely separate entity which has never heard of this photo before in its life, is now obligated to prevent B from sending it to anybody else.
That requires Google to operate on the basis of knowledge it can't possibly have. That's not good legislation.
The solution the lawmakers will propose is a massive centralized registry. Said massive centralized registry will not be free, because it can't be; it's going to have huge operational costs if nothing else, and if it has any liabilities, it's going to need a massive war chest. (This war chest will basically be a slush fund for Big Media; when it gets big enough, lo and behold, there will be a lawsuit that coincidentally just happens to drain it, and, remarkably, the registry will basically throw the game. This can then be used to say they need even more money for the war chest, and they'll raise their fees, so the slush fund is even bigger for the next lawsuit.) When Instagram is obligated to use it, they're going to have to pass the costs on to the user. Once this all shakes out, A is going to find out that they can't send a photo to B without paying money to the copyright registry, despite their complete lack of desire or need to do so.
Eventually, when it turns out the centralized registry doesn't work either because people will start using the services that are excluded from it, the only solution will be to block people from uploading anything that could be copyrighted.
But given the expansive copyright laws that currently exist, "anything that could be copyrighted" is pretty much "anything". Don't worry, though, Big IP will have a solution to that, too; only their stuff will be worthy of being copyrighted. Probably it'll get a special "media copyright" or something, rather than contracting current copyright laws. Now big media will get special privileges that you can't have.
And copyright law will have come full circle, and instead of promoting innovation, will be 100% dedicated to protecting entrenched incumbents.
I'm don't particularly feel like I'm deploying a lot of rhetoric and trying to be scary about something that isn't going to happen. These are all very high-probability outcomes. I wouldn't be surprised the media companies behind their closed doors are totally gunning for the special privilege end games. They aren't stupid. It would incentivize them to continue to be pissy about violations, even after the registry is in place, and complain about the violations they still see, which will mystify anyone who doesn't understand the end goal.
The really sick part is that I suspect Big Media is overestimating the amount of money it will make doing this. It'll do immense damage to the societal fabric, and recover only a small portion of it, making them very heavily-stupid-trending B2 bandits by the basic laws of human stupidity: http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...
This will be more difficult to get anywhere with in the US, as numerous elements of what I just outlined will have massive conflict with the First Amendment. And while laws often follow the money rather than the logic, it's worth remembering that, technically, should copyright and the First Amendment come into conflict, the latter, as an amendment, would win.
(Nominally, it ought to conflict with a number of European constitutions as well, but Europe appears to believe it unsophisticated and the sign of intellectual inferiority to be too bound by what constitutions say like those vulgar Americans who are always arguing over it.)
This is more like owner of a noticeboard being liable of things posted there.
Either have a human verify everything nailed (the upload filter) or just remove the noticeboard. Which one will happen?
Libaries and bookstores are more comparable to online shops. I have no qualms for Steam being liable for selling a pirated game. Shops should have verification on products being sold.
> Why should companies like Google be allowed to profit off content creators' work
> without complying with those content creators' licenses?
If it's about profit, simply having YouTube pay all revenue from infringing videos to the real owner, might be a much better idea than to block all content.
The process might work like this: A publishes something, gets revenue from it. B claims copyright. YT suspends payment to A until the issue is settled. When B turns out to be right, B gets all the withheld revenue plus however much YT already paid to A, either to be paid by A, or to be withheld by YT from other payments to A.
Or it turns out B was wrong, willfully so, and A just lost their income. Sadly, this was A's most popular content and, since A was living paycheck to paycheck, they were unable to pay their rent and were evicted.
B went on to do the same to many other small content creators, because B has 100 million dollars in the bank.
Then A disputes the claim a YouTube asks B if the they are sure its infringing on their copyright. B lies and says yes, then YouTube sides with B while A gets a copyright strike, 3 of which and you lose your channel.
Scammers are also extorting money from Youtubers using this feature of Youtube's claim process. See: ObbyRaidz
In case of conflict, YouTube shouldn't blindly side with the most powerful party as they're currently doing. Legally the fairest way would be an impartial judge, but in practice small players can't afford the legal representation for that.
Yeah, there does need to be a way to restrict bad actors. And this is already a real problem: major corporations claiming copyright over other people's original content on YouTube, and that original content getting blocked as a result. When a company does that regularly, submits too many false positives, their ability to claim ownership should be restricted somehow. At least there should be some sort of reasonable consequence. But at the very least, the original owner should retain ownership and eventually get their money again, and that's not currently happening.
In one vote in the EP, something similar was proposed as an alternative:
* Make (big) platforms provide APIs with which rightholders can check new posts for their copyrighted content and request either removal or monetisation
* Give uploaders 48 hours to contest removal requests before they are honoured, during which their uploads stay online, but may be removed from search results
* Once an infringement is identified and not contested, all earned revenue goes to the rightholders
That's rather sensible. However, it was voted down in favor of just making platforms legally liable for all uploads. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-showdown/ (The "EPP group" proposals won – that's the Parliament position, not to be confused with the Council's, which are yet to be fully reconciled).
I'm strongly considering voting straight Pirate Party for the EP from now on. Copyright and internet freedom seems to be by far the most important concern for the Europarliament these days.
The big problem is to get the majority of voters on board.
Why should companies like Google be allowed to profit off content creators' work without complying with those content creators' licenses?