Tank Net And The Eu's Article 13

[rmgill]

How is tank net going to handle Article 13 restrictions in the EU?

How are European Tank-netters going to handle it?


What is Article 13?

Also, what about GDPR? Edited June 14, 2018 by rmgill

[bojan]

Lol on that video.

[Marek Tucan]

Article 11 is actually probably worse for publishers, however the art. 13 is bonkers not because of "banning memes" (as fair use etc. is still there) but because of large upload sites. Unless the directive specifies just that sites have to allow copyright claims (same as YouTube) - which would still mean a notable load on them, but far lower than pre-moderation.

 

 

Basically it seems to be EU version of PIPA, hopefully with the same fate

[rmgill]

Lol on that video.

It's Tim Pool. What do you want? BBC drones talking about Trump's plans to destroy the world?

 

 

Here's an EFF article on it.

 

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

 

 

The pending update to the EU Copyright Directive is coming up for a committee vote on June 20 or 21 and a parliamentary vote either in early July or late September. While the directive fixes some longstanding problems with EU rules, it creates much, much larger ones: problems so big that they threaten to wreck the Internet itself.

 

Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works.

 

Even under the best of circumstances, this presents huge problems. Algorithms that do content-matching are frankly terrible at it. The Made-in-the-USA version of this is YouTube's Content ID system, which improperly flags legitimate works all the time, but still gets flack from entertainment companies for not doing more.

 

There are lots of legitimate reasons for Internet users to upload copyrighted works. You might upload a clip from a nightclub (or a protest, or a technical presentation) that includes some copyrighted music in the background. Or you might just be wearing a t-shirt with your favorite album cover in your Tinder profile. You might upload the cover of a book you're selling on an online auction site, or you might want to post a photo of your sitting room in the rental listing for your flat, including the posters on the wall and the picture on the TV.

Wikipedians have even more specialised reasons to upload material: pictures of celebrities, photos taken at newsworthy events, and so on.

 

But the bots that Article 13 mandates will not be perfect. In fact, by design, they will be wildly imperfect.

 

Article 13 punishes any site that fails to block copyright infringement, but it won’t punish people who abuse the system. There are no penalties for falsely claiming copyright over someone else's work, which means that someone could upload all of Wikipedia to a filter system (for instance, one of the many sites that incorporate Wikpedia's content into their own databases) and then claim ownership over it on Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress, and everyone else would be prevented from quoting Wikipedia on any of those services until they sorted out the false claims. It will be a lot easier to make these false claims that it will be to figure out which of the hundreds of millions of copyrighted claims are real and which ones are pranks or hoaxes or censorship attempts.

 

Article 13 also leaves you out in the cold when your own work is censored thanks to a malfunctioning copyright bot. Your only option when you get censored is to raise an objection with the platform and hope they see it your way—but if they fail to give real consideration to your petition, you have to go to court to plead your case.

 

Article 13 gets Wikipedia coming and going: not only does it create opportunities for unscrupulous or incompetent people to block the sharing of Wikipedia's content beyond its bounds, it could also require Wikipedia to filter submissions to the encyclopedia and its surrounding projects, like Wikimedia Commons. The drafters of Article 13 have tried to carve Wikipedia out of the rule, but thanks to sloppy drafting, they have failed: the exemption is limited to "noncommercial activity". Every file on Wikipedia is licensed for commercial use.

 

Then there's the websites that Wikipedia relies on as references. The fragility and impermanence of links is already a serious problem for Wikipedia's crucial footnotes, but after Article 13 becomes law, any information hosted in the EU might disappear—and links to US mirrors might become infringing—at any moment thanks to an overzealous copyright bot. For these reasons and many more, the Wikimedia Foundation has taken a public position condemning Article 13.

 

Speaking of references: the problems with the new copyright proposal don't stop there. Under Article 11, each member state will get to create a new copyright in news. If it passes, in order to link to a news website, you will either have to do so in a way that satisfies the limitations and exceptions of all 28 laws, or you will have to get a license. This is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of wiki (obviously), much less Wikipedia.

 

It also means that the websites that Wikipedia relies on for its reference links may face licensing hurdles that would limit their ability to cite their own sources. In particular, news sites may seek to withhold linking licenses from critics who want to quote from them in order to analyze, correct and critique their articles, making it much harder for anyone else to figure out where the positions are in debates, especially years after the fact. This may not matter to people who only pay attention to news in the moment, but it's a blow to projects that seek to present and preserve long-term records of noteworthy controversies. And since every member state will get to make its own rules for quotation and linking, Wikipedia posts will have to satisfy a patchwork of contradictory rules, some of which are already so severe that they'd ban any items in a "Further Reading" list unless the article directly referenced or criticized them.

 

The controversial measures in the new directive have been tried before. For example, link taxes were tried in Spain and Germany and they failed, and publishers don't want them. Indeed, the only country to embrace this idea as workable is China, where mandatory copyright enforcement bots have become part of the national toolkit for controlling public discourse.

 

Articles 13 and 11 are poorly thought through, poorly drafted, unworkable—and dangerous. The collateral damage they will impose on every realm of public life can't be overstated. The Internet, after all, is inextricably bound up in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Europeans and an entire constellation of sites and services will be adversely affected by Article 13. Europe can't afford to place education, employment, family life, creativity, entertainment, business, protest, politics, and a thousand other activities at the mercy of unaccountable algorithmic filters. If you're a European concerned about these proposals, here's a tool for contacting your MEP.

Edited June 14, 2018 by rmgill

[Mr King]

[Panzermann]

doublette

Edited June 14, 2018 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

How are European Tank-netters going to handle it?

I wrote a letter and emails to german MEP that is undecided at the moment. Thinking about calling.

 

 

Write/phonecall/email/talk to your countries MEPs. A list of fence sitters you can find on this pdf:

 

https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf

 

https://juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyourinternet/

http://saveyourinternet.eu/

 

 

Great. installing a filter infrastructure to catch copyright infringements beforehand. And who controls these lists? You could smuggle anything into these and it would disappear in the exected mass of entries. And what about false positives? And why are service providers tasked with enforcing someone else`s copyrights?

 

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Article 11 is actually probably worse for publishers, however the art. 13 is bonkers not because of "banning memes" (as fair use etc. is still there) but because of large upload sites. Unless the directive specifies just that sites have to allow copyright claims (same as YouTube) - which would still mean a notable load on them, but far lower than pre-moderation.

 

 

Basically it seems to be EU version of PIPA, hopefully with the same fate

Don't bet on it. We have to thank the EU for these pointless cookie notices on many websites. Dumb regulations that create lots of pointless busywork are a favourite hobby of the bEUrocracy.

 

Which MEP is covering you Marek? There is a french and a czech on the fence. ah, just annoy them both.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

I think the rattlesnake flag is in the public domain.

[BansheeOne]

For people wondering what the heck this is all about, it refers to the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright in the Digital Single Market. Article 13 of which reads:

 

Article 13

Use of protected content by information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users

1. Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter.

2. Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1.

3. Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments.

 

Since I happen to have some people familiar with TankNet's infrastructure on hand at the current I&I, I was able to cross-check my judgement with them. The result is, it affects TN in no way. First, it's not a file hosting site; any picture, video etc. posted here is linked from elsewhere. The only way TN itself could run afoul of copyright laws, as I see it, is people copying and pasting large swathes of text (or, say, undertake to type down and post the complete content of "War and Peace"). It's something I actually think about when posting long news excerpts, but that's more due to my ingrained reference to specific German regulations concerning fair use of content among different news media.

 

Second, TN or its servers aren't located in the EU, which is basically end of the story. As for posters, the directive is aimed at legal, not individual persons, which are already covered by existing law. As Marek already noted, memes and such generally fall under fair use abyway.

[rmgill]

I wouldn't bet on a non EU hosted site being excluded from EU rules.

[seahawk]

The Eu can still block all sites outside the EU.

[Panzermann]

First, it's not a file hosting site

 

 

One can upload files to the board software, or has this been switched off?

[BansheeOne]

The thing is, TankNet has no legal residence in the EU. Or you would have been asked your consent to the site's use of cookies and personal data under the applicable new rules by now, as any whose operators even think they might be liable somewhere in the EU are currently doing.

[Soren Ras]

The directive is like a hammer given to hyperactive kids with very poor hand-to-eye coordination.

 

It is not guaranteed to be a disaster; all it takes is for the politicians to exercise judgement, restraint and an appreciation for the technical limitations in effectively applying the intent...oh, for God's sake, who are we kidding?

 

But it won't kill the internet. If it becomes bad enough, it will be ignored in practice. (Except by the Germans)

--

Soren

[rmgill]

I'm aware of the residence and location issues. However given how a blogger in the US can sue a British Blogger like Sargon of Akkad for copyright infringement, it stands to reason that EU rules will be applied to sites not in the EU. That's part of the problem in how I've seen the legal types have been trying to box in the internet.

[rmgill]

It is not guaranteed to be a disaster; all it takes is for the politicians to exercise judgement, restraint and an appreciation for the technical limitations in effectively applying the intent...oh, for God's sake, who are we kidding?

I think I'm more concerned about what the bureaucrats will do and what the big money lawyers at news sites will do when they have an added tool to beat on people for perceived infringement of copyright. We already have plenty examples of copyright farming with DMCA letters.

 

Also, we just had a big GDPA push here. As far as I know, none of our sites are actually hosted in the EU. Certainly not the main one folks go to for news. But we still had all the software bolted onto the front end to make sure folks were aware of the cookie policy. The way the laws are written, if you have a CDN that has a server someplace, they could argue that you're hosting out of X country. Possibly without even knowing exactly where a given CDN provider has their servers.

Edited June 14, 2018 by rmgill

[BansheeOne]

Of course a US blogger can sue a blogger in the EU under law applicable in the EU. A blogger in the EU could also sue a blogger in the US under law applicable in the US. Where it gets kinda hard is sueing anybody under law not applicable where he has his legal residence.

[rmgill]

Which means a company in the EU could sue the operators of Tank-net for content posted on Tank-net for which they feel was inappropriately copied. Article 13 seems to lower that bar by a substantial measure. The Berne convention appears to be getting gutted by Article 13. We'll see of course.

[BansheeOne]

The EU company could sue, right now and in future, under US or Canadian or whatever law, for content violating their copyright and stored by TankNet. No pictures or videos, which are hosted elsewhere and only linked here, but if somebody copied and pasted a whole text from behind a paywall, I guess the media company owning the rights to that content could sue TN owners in a court in the latter's jurisdiction if they ever found out and thought it worth the bother.

[Mike Steele]

It seems the EU wishes for dissent to just go away.....

[rmgill]

Yes, I know someone can sue now. I could sue you for shooting better than I did at PFT (which you did ). Such a suit would not go very far.

The problem is that when bars are lowered for what makes for a valid suit that will go further, you make it easier for such suits to go further. In the US, DMCA letters lower the bar. Article 13 lowers it further.

Edited June 14, 2018 by rmgill

[Jeff]

 

First, it's not a file hosting site

 

 

One can upload files to the board software, or has this been switched off?

 

I can see the files I uploaded a while back but can no longer find how to upload more.

[Mr King]

I'm aware of the residence and location issues. However given how a blogger in the US can sue a British Blogger like Sargon of Akkad for copyright infringement, it stands to reason that EU rules will be applied to sites not in the EU. That's part of the problem in how I've seen the legal types have been trying to box in the internet.

 

Free communication of the stinking unwashed masses is dangerous to the political class. Better censor that shit before it gets out of hand.

[Panzermann]

 

I'm aware of the residence and location issues. However given how a blogger in the US can sue a British Blogger like Sargon of Akkad for copyright infringement, it stands to reason that EU rules will be applied to sites not in the EU. That's part of the problem in how I've seen the legal types have been trying to box in the internet.

 

Free communication of the stinking unwashed masses is dangerous to the political class. Better censor that shit before it gets out of hand.

 

 

While this is true of course, the main driver for this EU regulation is that the old media houses want to lawyer their income back that they lose out on because of the competition on the WWW.

 

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The Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) has voted in favour of the new regulation yesterday. Most of the time the EU parliament just nods it and rubber stamps what comes out of the committees. But they can vote against propositions. So if you are an inmate of the EU, call your MEPs, write letters, write emails as to why this regulation is a bad idea and that it is based off of a big lie. The lie that Google was making lots of money off the publishers news, when in fact there is no advertisements on news.google.de (.cz,.pl .co.uk, .fr etc. pp.) at all. Also it will install an automatic control infrastructure for content, that can easily be used to censor anything. Who is going to control the upload filterlists? And what makes a website commercial so that they fall under the new regulations?

 

 

a list of adresses and phone numbers you can find here e.g.: https://saveyourinternet.eu/

[Panzermann]

the EU parliament list of members:

 

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/de/search.html

 

you can change language in the upper left and search for your MEPs to harass with communication

 

 

or pick your country on this map: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/de/map.html