US: Copyright Law is Hard / EU: Hold My Beer (Article 11)

oh god are they going after google news again

so fucking dumb

Ooof. That's a bad idea.

Wow.

What in the fuck is this?! It'd destroy half the internet if true! You can't even talk about news except as hearsay!

Imagine what it'd do to Wikipedia when it can no longer link to history!

Someone tell me we're misreading this, or this is just some vague proposal.

it would mean that news would have be to valuable as to validate the license. It's very well-intended on that end.

Sadly it's not very practical as "totally legit newz!!!" would start to fill the void. However, it would probably be good for maintaining traditional (printed) journalism, if it could ever work.

I am really not against this, to be honest. (hint: EU citizen)

Who thought this will do anything good? I am sure there are other ways to go after the big tech giants.
I often wonder how these people that make these policies ever got their job. Normal employees would have gotten the boot a long time ago for such bad performance.

Not sure there is much the normal people can do here outside of contacting your representative. =(

Wowza. That is pretty bad.

ItRhymesWithDoom said:

it would mean that news would have be to valuable as to validate the license. It's very well-intended on that end.

Sadly it's not very practical as "totally legit newz!!!" would start to fill the void. However, it would probably be good for maintaining traditional (printed) journalism, if it could ever work.

I am really not against this, to be honest. (hint: EU citizen)

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Sure if you want to protect news organization 100% then this is good for them but say goodbye to sharing news on forums like this.

this will backfire badly for the old press.

It would basically mean, that every news-site that enforces this license is going to be left behind by the fast-paced social network society.
Other "news" sites would spring up that rewrite or source the original sites and "sell" their license for nothing. In the end, Facebook, Twitter, and Google would link to the secondary sites and the old press will not only not make money, but also lose readers.

Yeah I've heard of that and can't imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea.

News organizations need to link more as is, not less. Not to mention how bad this would be to Wikipedia and similar sites.

Kyougar said:

this will backfire badly for the old press.

It would basically mean, that every news-site that enforces this license is going to be left behind by the fast-paced social network society.
Other "news" sites would spring up that rewrite or source the original sites and "sell" their license for nothing. In the end, Facebook, Twitter, and Google would link to the secondary sites and the old press will not only not make money, but also lose readers.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Probably, most news articles aren't that long to begin with. You could simply shorten it even more and offer a summary for free.

I wish people would read the actual text of the directive (not law) and rely on sources more trustworthy than a single Pirate Party representative. Most notably, there's no mention of any "link tax" in the directive. This directive is not much of a substantial change and, like always, actual implementation will be left to Member States. The fact that this is being pushed mostly by American technobros, people who think the GDPR is the worst piece of legislation ever made and Brexiters should also give everyone pause. I think one ought to be skeptic and check things carefully when people from r/The_Donald change their flags for Finnish ones and try to flood r/Europe.

Personally, I have read the actual directive and haven't found any reason to worry. The suggestions and rationale all seem fair and reasonable and claims of "censorship machines", "banning memes" and the like seem to be based less on truth and more on "bendy bananas" anti-EU hysteria.

To quote myself:

Anyways, I had a look at it and it can be summarized like this:

Platform holders are liable for the copyrighted material they hold. They must obtain proper copyright cleareance before hosting or uploading that content. Basically, ask for permission before you take something that isn't yours or let people upload it into your platform.

The big change is that you can no longuer hide behind "User upload!" to deflect blame, if you allow users to upload content you don't own, you are responsible for it because it's your platform.

The main drive behind this is the large "value gap" between the people who hold the platform and those who actually create its content. 9gag and other content farms are a good example: They do not produce anything nor create value, they rely extremely heavy on stolen content and yet reap the benefits while the creators get nothing. If you follow comic artists on Tumblr or Twitter you have probably seem them complain about stolen art being posted on big sites who then profit on it. It's like that, but on a bigger scale.

Ultimately, this doesn't seem like a large change for anyone that was ever honest. In fact, we already have similar legislation in Spain and I can assure you we are fine. The EU isn't going to chase people down because they used a meme or used a Fire Emblem/Taiko mashup as their avatar on a forum.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Erik Twice said:

I wish people would read the actual text of the directive (not law) and rely on sources more trustworthy than a single Pirate Party representative. Most notably, there's no mention of any "link tax" in the directive. This directive is not much of a substantial change and, like always, actual implementation will be left to Member States. The fact that this is being pushed mostly by American technobros, people who think the GDPR is the worst piece of legislation ever made and Brexiters should also give everyone pause. I think one ought to be skeptic and check things carefully when people from r/The_Donald change their flags for Finnish ones and try to flood r/Europe.

Personally, I have read the actual directive and haven't found any reason to worry. The suggestions and rationale all seem fair and reasonable and claims of "censorship machines", "banning memes" and the like seem to be based less on truth and more on "bendy bananas" anti-EU hysteria.

To quote myself:

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

This post basically needs to become part of the OP. I'm so tired of misinformed techbro fearmongering

Kitsunelaine said:

This post basically needs to become part of the OP. I'm so tired of misinformed techbro fearmongering

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Does that mean file uploader have to check every file that gets uploaded?

First, it's "Hold my wine."

Secondly, the fuck EU!? We're supposed to be the smart ones about this stuff! Okay, which people have been taking US. money?

For the record, you can check not only the directive but every single one of its revisions and ammendtments since its inception in EUR Lex, in the European language of your choosing. By the way, this is the full text of Article 11:

Article 11
Protection of press publications concerning digital uses
1.
Member States shall provide publishers of press publications with the rights provided
for in Article 2 and Article 3(2) of Directive 2001/29/EC for the digital use of their
press publications.
2.
The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall leave intact and shall in no way affect any
rights provided for in Union law to authors and other rightholders, in respect of the
works and other subject-matter incorporated in a press publication. Such rights may
not be invoked against those authors and other rightholders and, in particular, may
not deprive them of their right to exploit their works and other subject
-matter
independently from the press publication in which they are incorporated.
3.
Articles 5 to 8 of Directive
2001/29/EC and Directive 2012/28/EU shall apply
mutatis mutandis
in respect of the rights referred to in paragraph 1.
4.
The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall expire 20 years after the publication of the
press publication. This term shall be calculated from the first day of January of the
year following the date of publication.

As you can see, there's no mention of any link taxes or anything of the sort. In fact, it doesn't even mention the word link!

So yeah.

Syriel said:

Maybe address the arguments, rather than making appeals to authority?

The first author quoted is the co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group and former European director of the EFF, an appeal to authority is going to fail because he probably has more knowledge/experience in this area than a random person on the 'net who is going to classify him as an "American technobro."

Spoiler

He was born in Canada, and lives in London.

Content filters are an Article 13 provision (not Article 11), but if hosts are going to be liable, they're going to err on the side of the false positive.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

"Pah, you're tired of techbro fearmongering? Jokes on you, he's not even from America!"

I can't find a single argument in this post. Just... Appeals to authority? Huh.

This would effectively carve the EU out of the global internet, they would never be able to enforce this with foreign hosted websites.

Disguised protecionism.

Article 11 is a link tax, full stop. Exhibit 1, and Exhibit 2. Even its 'exceptions' display a horrific lack of understanding about how the internet works. It's not even going to be effective, Google always flexes their muscles so they don't direct traffic to any sites covered by the link tax, and what do you know, those sites who wanted the tax freak out and beg for the tax to be dropped.

The EU Copyright Directive is a horrific mistake that needs to be stopped, otherwise either the internet as we know it will die, or the EU internet will basically be cut off from the rest of it.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/5/17535874/eu-copyright-law-article-11-13-rejected-first-vote

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.

We'll punish ourselves doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed in frustration? All to later be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games ourselves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competitive, hard core, by nature. We love a challenge. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challenge us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.