Panzermann Posted February 14, 2019 Posted February 14, 2019 In other news Apple has offered the press a 10U$D flatrate subscription (of which Apple pockets half) for their products to the press. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18222281/apple-news-subscription-service-50-percent-cut-publishers-media-deal The press really must be nearing the end now. See also the recent layoffs. No wonder they want to push this through.
Panzermann Posted March 5, 2019 Posted March 5, 2019 Great. The European People’s Party (EPP) (conservative group in the european parliament) has proposed to move the date of voting to an earlier date. To not stumble over MEPs that are changing their minds I bet and trusting the short memory of the sovereign. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Proteste-gegen-Upload-Filter-CDU-will-Abstimmung-ueber-EU-Copyright-vorziehen-4325821.html(in german) theregister's takes on the current situation: OK, Google? Probably not! EU settles on wording for copyright reform legislationCommission fumes at 'fake' campaignhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/14/eu_copyright_reform_tweaks/Lovely website you got there. Would be a shame if we, er, someone were to sink it: Google warns EU link tax will magnify media monetary miseryhttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/08/google_warns_eu_copyright/ Write, phone, fax whateve your MEP and tell them that you won't vote for them in the upcoming elections in May. My stack of emails has been sent out already and I made a few phonecalls to the representatives for my Bundesland. list of MEPs by country with phone and email: https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/ hmm, maybe I should send some supporting emails to those that have voted against it, so they don't switch in the next voting.
Panzermann Posted March 21, 2019 Posted March 21, 2019 Axel Voss (MEP, CDU) the guy pushing this, shows once again who he listens to: Julia RedaVerifizierter Account @Senficon4 Std.vor 4 StundenAt a press conference in Berlin, @AxelVossMdEP confirmed rumours that some press publishers have threatened parliamentarians with bad election coverage if they vote against the #copyright reform. Voss does not consider this problematic. #Article11 #Article13 #SaveYourInternet https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1108674187529515011 Yup, no problem at all. in other news, the final spurt has arrived. Call your MEPs to kill this shit: https://pledge2019.eu Literally, make a phone call. The webiste should jump to your language and show your MEPs. If not on the upper right is a button to change language. Scrolldown to choose your country from the dropdown list.
Panzermann Posted March 21, 2019 Posted March 21, 2019 On March 23rd there are demos Europe wide. check your area: https://savetheinternet.info/demos
Panzermann Posted March 26, 2019 Posted March 26, 2019 Why is especially German party CDU so after this? Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has seen records that there is horse trading going on for article 13 in exchange of french support of Nord stream 2 pipeline. in other news the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party) has given out an advisory to its members to vote in favour of art 13. "liberal". Yeah right. WEll we will see uif the MEPs are going to follow this or vote against it still.
Martin M Posted March 26, 2019 Posted March 26, 2019 It was so clear that the german government would flip on this issue despite what they wrote into their coalition agreement. Why did they take so long haggling it, when they ignore it anyway? And of course these things are pushed through late at night so nobody notices. Council ready to continue negotiations on the worst version of Article 13 yet Tonight, the EU’s national governments adopted as their common position the deal struck by France and Germany on the controversial EU Copyright Directive that was leaked earlier this week. While Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Luxembourg maintained their opposition to the text and were newly joined by Malta and Slovakia, Germany’s support of the “compromise” secretly negotiated with France over the last weeks has broken the previous deadlock. This new Council position is actually more extreme than previous versions, requiring all platforms older than 3 years to automatically censor all their users’ uploads, and putting unreasonable burdens even on the newest companies (see my previous blog post analysing the deal). The German Conservative–Social Democrat government is now in blatant violation of its own coalition agreement, which rejects upload filters against copyright infringement as disproportionate. This breach of coalition promises will not go down well with many young voters just ahead of the European elections in May. Meanwhile, prominent members of both German government parties have joined the protests against upload filters. The deal in Council paves the way for a final round of negotiations with the Parliament over the course of next week, before the entire European Parliament and the Council vote on the final agreement. It is now up to you to contact your MEPs, call their offices in their constituencies and visit as many of their election campaign events as you can! Ask them to reject a copyright deal that will violate your rights to share legal creations like parodies and reviews online, and includes measures like the link tax that will limit your access to the news and drive small online newspapers out of business. Right before the European elections, your voices cannot be ignored! Join the over 4.6 million signatories to the largest European petition ever and tell your representatives: If you break the Internet and accept Article 13, we won’t reelect you! https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/council-worst-article-13/ Write, phone or visit your MEP! " Why did they take so long haggling it, when they ignore it anyway? " Answer: this is typically Germanically, the normal course of behaivior; observed countless times. " Write, phone or visit your MEP! " Answer: no one will, unless the writing, phoning and visiting or even "visiting" is important to the Greens and they organize it. I have no interest in this BTW. Just a comment.
Panzermann Posted March 26, 2019 Posted March 26, 2019 " Why did they take so long haggling it, when they ignore it anyway? " Answer: this is typically Germanically, the normal course of behaivior; observed countless times.I for one would have welcomed them spending the four years debating their coalition agreement and leaving the rest of the world alone. " Write, phone or visit your MEP! " Answer: no one will, unless the writing, phoning and visiting or even "visiting" is important to the Greens and they organize it. I have no interest in this BTW. Just a comment. The Greens? for the most part the demos last Saturday were organized by the german Pirate party in Germany. I don't know who did it in the other countries. Sooo, results are in. A combination of ignorance of the realities of copyrights and internet today (Voss claimed that you could put a quote on your personal website without problems. Yeah right. The vultures are fast and send letters) , party discipline and plain old smearing (all the protestors were bots and paid for by google or something) the EU parliament accepted the articles. The modifications have been rejected a while ago already. Julia RedaVerifizierter Account @Senficon How the political groups voted on #uploadfilters and the #linktax:• @eppgroup overwhelmingly in favour• @theprogressives & @aldegroup significantly in favour• @GreensEP & @GUENGL overwhelmingly opposed#SaveYourInternet https://twitter.com/Senficon/status/1110552457682264065 So, welcome the internet of big corps exploiting the users.
Panzermann Posted March 26, 2019 Posted March 26, 2019 The protests at least in Germany sem to have had an effect looking at the individual results: the lone SPd pro vote was a mistake by her. complete list for all MEPs: https://juliareda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/copyrightvote.pdf
Stargrunt6 Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 Dankula was there: https://web.archive.org/web/20190326153203/https:/twitter.com/CountDankulaTV/status/1110564183001698309
Soren Ras Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 Let's have vague rules on what the rightsholders are supposed to do when identifying their work, let's be unclear on what content is subject to the directive, let's be opaque about what responsibilities fall on creators, but be firm on demanding an upload filter on all content. Then let's let all member countries implement their own versions of this, and assume that faced with this, the digital platforms won't err on the side of caution and that all sorts of unintended consequences won't be the result, because, hey, unintended consequences never happen when technological morons attemptto legislate what they don't understand. I really lack words to describe how much contempt I have for the tossers who pushed this piece of excrement through their sphincters. --Soren
BansheeOne Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 (edited) Let's have vague rules on what the rightsholders are supposed to do when identifying their work, let's be unclear on what content is subject to the directive, let's be opaque about what responsibilities fall on creators, but be firm on demanding an upload filter on all content.Where did you see that? Far from being the only firm point, the agreed guideline makes no mention of upload filters at all in Article 17 (ex 13). Article 17 Use of protected content by online content-sharing service providers 1. Member States shall provide that an online content-sharing service provider performs an act of communication to the public or an act of making available to the public for the purposes of this Directive when it gives the public access to copyright-protected works or other protected subject matter uploaded by its users. An online content-sharing service provider shall therefore obtain an authorisation from the rightholders referred to in Article 3(1) and (2) of Directive 2001/29/EC, for instance by concluding a licensing agreement, in order to communicate to the public or make available to the public works or other subject matter. 2. Member States shall provide that, where an online content-sharing service provider obtains an authorisation, for instance by concluding a licensing agreement, that authorisation shall also cover acts carried out by users of the services falling within the scope of Article 3 of Directive 2001/29/EC when they are not acting on a commercial basis or where their activity does not generate significant revenues. 3. When an online content-sharing service provider performs an act of communication to the public or an act of making available to the public under the conditions laid down in this Directive, the limitation of liability established in Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31/EC shall not apply to the situations covered by this Article. The first subparagraph of this paragraph shall not affect the possible application of Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31/EC to those service providers for purposes falling outside the scope of this Directive. 4. If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have: (a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and ( made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event © acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (. 5. In determining whether the service provider has complied with its obligations under paragraph 4, and in light of the principle of proportionality, the following elements, among others, shall be taken into account: (a) the type, the audience and the size of the service and the type of works or other subject matter uploaded by the users of the service; and ( the availability of suitable and effective means and their cost for service providers. 6. Member States shall provide that, in respect of new online content-sharing service providers the services of which have been available to the public in the Union for less than three years and which have an annual turnover below EUR 10 million, calculated in accordance with Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC1, the conditions under the liability regime set out in paragraph 4 are limited to compliance with point (a) of paragraph 4 and to acting expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice, to disable access to the notified works or other subject matter or to remove those works or other subject matter from their websites . Where the average number of monthly unique visitors of such service providers exceeds 5 million, calculated on the basis of the previous calendar year, they shall also demonstrate that they have made best efforts to prevent further uploads of the notified works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided relevant and necessary information. 7. The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation. Member States shall ensure that users in each Member State are able to rely on any of the following existing exceptions or limitations when uploading and making available content generated by users on online content-sharing services: (a) quotation, criticism, review; ( use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche. 8. The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation. Member States shall provide that online content-sharing service providers provide rightholders, at their request, with adequate information on the functioning of their practices with regard to the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4 and, where licensing agreements are concluded between service providers and rightholders, information on the use of content covered by the agreements. 9. Member States shall provide that online content-sharing service providers put in place an effective and expeditious complaint and redress mechanism that is available to users of their services in the event of disputes over the disabling of access to, or the removal of, works or other subject matter uploaded by them. Where rightholders request to have access to their specific works or other subject matter disabled or those works or other subject matter removed, they shall duly justify the reasons for their requests. Complaints submitted under the mechanism provided for in the first subparagraph shall be processed without undue delay, and decisions to disable access to or remove uploaded content shall be subject to human review. Member States shall also ensure that out-of-court redress mechanisms are available for the settlement of disputes. Such mechanisms shall enable disputes to be settled impartially and shall not deprive the user of the legal protection afforded by national law, without prejudice to the rights of users to have recourse to efficient judicial remedies. In particular, Member States shall ensure that users have access to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright and related rights. This Directive shall in no way affect legitimate uses, such as uses under exceptions or limitations provided for in Union law, and shall not lead to any identification of individual users nor to the processing of personal data, except in accordance with Directive 2002/58/EC and Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Online content-sharing service providers shall inform their users in their terms and conditions that they can use works and other subject matter under exceptions or limitations to copyright and related rights provided for in Union law. 10. As of [date of entry into force of this Directive] the Commission, in cooperation with the Member States, shall organise stakeholder dialogues to discuss best practices for cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders. The Commission shall, in consultation with online content-sharing service providers, rightholders, users' organisations and other relevant stakeholders, and taking into account the results of the stakeholder dialogues, issue guidance on the application of this Article, in particular regarding the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4. When discussing best practices, special account shall be taken, among other things, of the need to balance fundamental rights and of the use of exceptions and limitations. For the purpose of the stakeholder dialogues, users' organisations shall have access to adequate information from online content-sharing service providers on the functioning of their practices with regard to paragraph 4.http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+TA+P8-TA-2019-0231+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN Edited March 27, 2019 by BansheeOne
Soren Ras Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 An upload filter will necessarily be required technically in order for a content-sharing service provided to be able to tell whether or not material is covered by a rightholder. That is the problem. In the revision I understand some of the requirements of the kind of material that can be distributed was loosened, but that hardly matters as long as the underlying requirement is that the content-sharing service provided is potentially liable for putting up material copyrighted by someone who might object. Putting on the cap of someone having to implement technically the ability to comply with this directive (which happens to be what I do for a living - not this directive specifically, I mean, but regulatory compliance in IT), the upload filter is step one for any attempt to comply with the directive. Human nature and 27 (or 26, I suppose) different national interpretations of this will combine with erring on the side of caution from the tech companies(*) to ensure that such a filter when implemented will have to be very conservative. Quite likely so badly so that it will in quick order cause a public outcry that may serve to undo the entire matter. But that is not exactly a comfort, (*) to limit any potential liability, their legal departments will insist on it --Soren
Ssnake Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 (edited) Sigh... Where do I begin? Article 17 Use of protected content by online content-sharing service providers1. Member States shall provide that an online content-sharing service provider performs an act of communication to the public or an act of making available to the public for the purposes of this Directive when it gives the public access to copyright-protected works or other protected subject matter uploaded by its users.An online content-sharing service provider shall therefore obtain an authorisation from the rightholders referred to in Article 3(1) and (2) of Directive 2001/29/EC, for instance by concluding a licensing agreement, in order to communicate to the public or make available to the public works or other subject matter. The content-sharing provider is obliged to acquire an authorization from the rightholder prior to the upload, or to magically determine the rightholder at the moment of upload without knowing whether the content is actually prior art, or the uploader's very own. Obviously that's impossible to begin with, and opens the door to copyright troll litigation. I suppose I should upload the thousands of photos that I took during my professional career with the caveat that I do not consent to their sharing, and then have a buddy uploading those meaningless photos and videos to unsuspecting sites so my lawyer army can sue them. 2. Member States shall provide that, where an online content-sharing service provider obtains an authorisation, for instance by concluding a licensing agreement, that authorisation shall also cover acts carried out by users of the services falling within the scope of Article 3 of Directive 2001/29/EC when they are not acting on a commercial basis or where their activity does not generate significant revenues. This is incredibly vague. "Not acting on a commercial basis" has a very low threshold. Even by asking for donations to cover running server costs TankNet already falls under a (probably not very successful) "commercial basis". Courts in Germany already determined that uploading 20 songs is a "large number", I shudder at the thought what "significant revenues" could mean. In any case it will open to doors to a lot of litigation until the courts finally settle what the wording of that paragraph actually means. In the meantime, every owner of a forum software is left to wonder when weaponized lawyers will raid his domain (see above). 4. If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have:a. made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, andb. made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any eventc. acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b.) a. whatever constitutes a "best effort" when you have to deal with potentially 7 billion active copyright owners on this planet, plus the deceased ones of the last 70 years, including the paintings of great apes and elephants, as well as every newspaper headline ever written. b. not only are "industry standards of professional diligence" to be met, they must be "high standards" which is pretty much guaranteed to be interpreted by the courts as the one "highest" standard there is, that is being used for comparison in the inevitable battle of the experts. Obviously such "highest standard" can't be an army of super recognizers (be they specialists for music, or photos, including thumbnails and cliparts, or avid consumers of all human literature and newspaper headlines (and let's not forget about the specialists in ape and elephant paintings, possibly also whale songs); the only way to ensure such a "highest" standard that is remotely affordable for a commercial enterprise can only be an automated process. And even then you will effectively purge all low-to-no-profit web forum hosters that cannot afford the license fees of the monopolist provider of the "best effort" solution. This is where your opload filter hides behind a veneer of legalese. 4b. does not "mandate" an upload filter, it only factually prevents any other form of known implementation. c. effectively screams for an automated process as well; also, see my critique of section 1 above since repeat offenses are to be prevented by "best effort"; protected material is to be identified during the upload process (or immediately afterwards). Comparing materials with a hash database is insufficient since mirrored, rotated, or cropped portions of an image are protected by the same copyright, so every thumbnail must be compared against the full amount of copyrighted material of the whole world to determine whether it's licensed or explicitly non-licensed. (Again, see my critique of section 1.) 5. In determining whether the service provider has complied with its obligations under paragraph 4, and in light of the principle of proportionality, the following elements, among others, shall be taken into account:a. the type, the audience and the size of the service and the type of works or other subject matter uploaded by the users of the service; andb. the availability of suitable and effective means and their cost for service providers. Yay. More undefined, fuzzy blanked statements that do nothing but add more wiggle room for lawyers and courts to interpret the meaning as is most profitable to their clients. b. "cost-effectiveness" - another direct implication of an automated process (aka "upload filter"). It's supposed to "help" the forum operator but effectively it will help to cement the dominating position of Google and other big commercial players by forcing everybody else to license their automated processes (aka "upload filters"). A nice side-effect is that the EU thereby facilitates the development of technology that will then also be used to detect politically undesired materials, be it by China (Google already demonstrated that it was willing to prostitute itself), be it the suppression of "violations of community standards" amply demonstrated by Twitterbook over the last years. 6. Member States shall provide that, in respect of new online content-sharing service providers the services of which have been available to the public in the Union for less than three years and which have an annual turnover below EUR 10 million, calculated in accordance with Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC1, the conditions under the liability regime set out in paragraph 4 are limited to compliance with point (a) of paragraph 4 and to acting expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice, to disable access to the notified works or other subject matter or to remove those works or other subject matter from their websites .Where the average number of monthly unique visitors of such service providers exceeds 5 million, calculated on the basis of the previous calendar year, they shall also demonstrate that they have made best efforts to prevent further uploads of the notified works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided relevant and necessary information. TankNet falls under this directive - "available to the public in the EU" for more than three years even though the turnover is well under a thousand EUR I presume, with a number of users closer to 500 than 5,000, let alone 5 million. In other words, pretty much every blog and forum that allows user uploads (including pasted and written text, such as the headlines of every newspaper article ever written) falls under this directive and, failing to license an upload filter, risk litigation.Of course, lawyers will concentrate on the more juicy targets first, like SteelBeasts.com where a company is behind the forum. Everybody knows, companies have money. 7. The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation. LOLOLOLOL.Seriously, as satire experts they are first class. Or simply deluded. Take your pick. I don't want delusional people to write my laws, nor should satire be used when writing law. Somehow, both leaves me rather uneasy. Member States shall ensure that users in each Member State are able to rely on any of the following existing exceptions or limitations when uploading and making available content generated by users on online content-sharing services:a. quotation, criticism, review;b. use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche. Good luck with that. When humans can't readily recognize satire (the highest form of satire is nearly indistinguishable from reality, satire experts say) I can only imagine how much an automated process can fuck that up. Well, the most likely response will be "if it doesn't put the lotion on its skin, it gets the treatment". 8. The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation.Member States shall provide that online content-sharing service providers provide rightholders, at their request, with adequate information on the functioning of their practices with regard to the cooperation referred to in paragraph 4 and, where licensing agreements are concluded between service providers and rightholders, information on the use of content covered by the agreements. A-HAHAHAHAHA, see above. Seriously, I don't know what to respond to this useless drivel. This is grade-A 1984 double talk. I'll stop here. There was nothing redeemable to be found so far, if the nonsense isn't clear yet it's beyond my ability to highlight it. Embrace the suck. Edited March 27, 2019 by Ssnake
BansheeOne Posted March 27, 2019 Posted March 27, 2019 6. Member States shall provide that, in respect of new online content-sharing service providers the services of which have been available to the public in the Union for less than three years and which have an annual turnover below EUR 10 million, calculated in accordance with Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC1, the conditions under the liability regime set out in paragraph 4 are limited to compliance with point (a) of paragraph 4 and to acting expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice, to disable access to the notified works or other subject matter or to remove those works or other subject matter from their websites .Where the average number of monthly unique visitors of such service providers exceeds 5 million, calculated on the basis of the previous calendar year, they shall also demonstrate that they have made best efforts to prevent further uploads of the notified works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided relevant and necessary information. TankNet falls under this directive - "available to the public in the EU" for more than three years even though the turnover is well under a thousand EUR I presume, with a number of users closer to 500 than 5,000, let alone 5 million. In other words, pretty much every blog and forum that allows user uploads (including pasted and written text, such as the headlines of every newspaper article ever written) falls under this directive and, failing to license an upload filter, risk litigation. I'm sorry, but interpreting doom from a select snippet of language that happens to have become available, or at worst was distributed for this exact effect, without checking for context, is the precise reason why I'm completely disregarding the current hysteria. I've been professionally exposed to semi-regular bouts of such collective lunacy for ten years, like the Lisbon Treaty supposedly allowing the reintroduction of capital punishment and indiscriminate shooting of protesters - because somebody held up a footnote to the declaration of the EU's collective accession to the European Charter of Human Rights pointing out the negative definitions of death penalty (i.e., lawful use of lethal force) and referencing an outdated supplementary protocol that still allowed capital punishment in wartime. With 75 percent of Europe-wide protests usually occurring in Germany as the latest symptom of good old German Angst, driven by irrational fears as well as competing political and economic interests masquerading as concern for "the good of the people". Of course the length and convolution of legalese texts lends itself to such results, but a search of the full document readily provides the definition of terms that is typically included in such (on page 61 f.): (62) Certain information society services, as part of their normal use, are designed to give access to the public to copyright-protected content or other subject matter uploaded by their users. The definition of an online content-sharing service provider laid down in this Directive should target only online services that play an important role on the online content market by competing with other online content services, such as online audio and video streaming services, for the same audiences. The services covered by this Directive are services, the main or one of the main purposes of which is to store and enable users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit therefrom, either directly or indirectly, by organising it and promoting it in order to attract a larger audience, including by categorising it and using targeted promotion within it. Such services should not include services that have a main purpose other than that of enabling users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit from that activity. The latter services include, for instance, electronic communication services within the meaning of Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council, as well as providers of business-to-business cloud services and cloud services, which allow users to upload content for their own use, such as cyberlockers, or online marketplaces the main activity of which is online retail, and not giving access to copyright-protected content. Providers of services such as open source software development and sharing platforms, not-for-profit scientific or educational repositories as well as not-for-profit online encyclopedias should also be excluded from the definition of online content-sharing service provider. Finally, in order to ensure a high level of copyright protection, the liability exemption mechanism provided for in this Directive should not apply to service providers the main purpose of which is to engage in or to facilitate copyright piracy. Based upon this, my assessment from page 1 of this thread still stands: 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. I actually fully agree that the language is incredibly vague, including on whether to use upload filters, to the point of probably being unworkable with or without them. Part of the reason being that this is after all a EU directive, which leaves precise legal implementation to the member states much more than a regulation - itself not a very sensible approach given the global nature of the subject (German CDU types have already stated they want a domestic solution without upload filters). Which in fact increases my not bothering about the effects. While I see the possible problems, including the abuse of any technical solutions, for abovementioned reasons my reaction to people screaming that the EU is destroying the internet is therefore the same as to the repetitive prophets of doom over the environmental disaster du jour (acid rain, ozon hole, global warming, particulates, plastic in the seas, etc.): notify me when it happens.
rmgill Posted March 28, 2019 Author Posted March 28, 2019 Banshee, I think you're giving the people who will execute this policy far too much credit and good will. I predict it will be a downright mess and that the algorithmic issues we see with Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, will seem like a minor challenge by comparison because that doesn't have the force of law behind it.
Jeff Posted March 28, 2019 Posted March 28, 2019 Banshee, I think you're giving the people who will execute this policy far too much credit and good will. I predict it will be a downright mess and that the algorithmic issues we see with Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, will seem like a minor challenge by comparison because that doesn't have the force of law behind it. And those subject to their whims will undoubtedly err on the side of CYA knowing that a beaurocrat with ill intent can destroy them at a moments notice.
BansheeOne Posted March 28, 2019 Posted March 28, 2019 (edited) I'm not giving the people who will try to put this into national regulation resembling anything like a working real-world solution any credit. But neither do I give it to the people of the kind who have told me, beyond this and the abovementioned Lisbon Treaty issue, that CETA, TTIP etc. will lead to chlorinated chicken and American hedge funds taking over local European public utilities; that the EU is planning to resettle hundreds of millions of Africans to Europe, based upon the UN Migration Compact and an unrelated document including a comparative table on how numbers would look if everybody took in refugees to reach the population density of tiny Malta; and so on. The only reason some of these purported issues get more public traction and coverage than others is that they are more widely politically acceptable, particularly in Germany, which as noted provides a disproportionate share of concerned citizens within Europe. Again, that doesn't mean the underlying fears are completely unfounded, just like the environmental problems I mentioned earlier are real to some degree. I'm just unable to get worked up over them due to overexposure to the accompanying hysterics. What's more, even the hysterical demographics usually don't give a damn when problems foreseen by their predecessors actually emerge, out of sheer convenience of the upside to the development. As a practical example of this, the original manifestation of German Angst over government control of and by computer data were the mass protests against the 1987 census, probably rooted in leftist criticism of data-driven crimefighting introduced to counter the terrorist threat of the 70s, but also general historic experience with totalitarianism. When Bundestag offices were first equipped with PCs, the Greens rejected them because computers were an Evil Tool of Oppression. 30 years later, the vision of encompassing data storage on citizens and its potential for abuse has arguably become real - though most of it not even by governments, but willingly provided to internet corporations by their users. Which are the same ones protesting the current reform on the grounds that it will infringe upon free use of content, and possibly free speech; this in step with the lobby for Big Data which has realized the dark vision of computer abuse their forebears protested. If they don't care about those problems having become true to the same extent, I certainly can't about the ones they imagine today. Edited March 28, 2019 by BansheeOne
BansheeOne Posted March 28, 2019 Posted March 28, 2019 I see the resident NPCs haven't had their routines updated to reflect the evolution of arguments.
Mr King Posted March 28, 2019 Posted March 28, 2019 I see the resident NPCs haven't had their routines updated to reflect the evolution of arguments. What argument? I'm just laughing at you.
Nobu Posted March 29, 2019 Posted March 29, 2019 One could sort of see this coming, because it does tick 2 boxes that are dear to the Bureaucracy of Anything: the one extreme (barely any regulational oversight) to another (compensation by overreach) box, and the formation of a legal and administrative framework for monetizing the internet box. The advantage much of the world will have in this experiment is the luxury of sitting in a field box to see how successful Europe and Europeans are in performing it.
Panzermann Posted March 29, 2019 Posted March 29, 2019 One could sort of see this coming, because it does tick 2 boxes that are dear to the Bureaucracy of Anything: the one extreme (barely any regulational oversight) to another (compensation by overreach) box, and the formation of a legal and administrative framework for monetizing the internet box. The advantage much of the world will have in this experiment is the luxury of sitting in a field box to see how successful Europe and Europeans are in performing it. And later implement it in other countries. Pointing at the succesful example in the EU.
Harold Jones Posted March 29, 2019 Posted March 29, 2019 (edited) I don't think the results for small sites like us will be noticeable, but I suspect companies with deep pockets are going to get hit pretty hard because there will some set of rights holders who will be inclined to jurisdiction shop and launch suits in the countries with the most easily exploited laws. Sort of like patent trolls who used to sue in Texas district court due to it's propensity for awarding large damages to the plaintiffs in software patent infringement suits regardless of the merits of the suit. Edited March 29, 2019 by Harold Jones
Markus Becker Posted March 30, 2019 Posted March 30, 2019 And on it goes. So called terrorist content needs to be removed as the EU prepares to climb the next step on the censorship ladder. https://netzpolitik.org/2019/druck-auf-abgeordnete-eu-parlament-soll-uploadfilter-rasch-auf-terroristische-inhalte-ausweiten/
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