"internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of copyright-protected works uploaded by their users in order to make a profit"
That's actually a lot of limitation. From my understanding: "organise and promote" means it is not simple hosting, and "in order to make a profit" excludes organizations like Wikimedia Commons and "large amounts" most likely excludes smaller websites like fan sites, and "uploaded by their users" exclude search engines.
It is clearly meant to target a form of abuse that is much too common in the "internet as we know it". It is mostly apparent in sites like PornHub. They live by monetizing content they don't have the rights for, and they use their status as a platform as a way to stay legal. I think YouTube admitted that in the early days, they voluntarily turned a blind eye to copyright infringement as a way to grow ahead of their competition.
It is unfair to legitimate companies who do their best to make sure their content really is original or properly licensed.
And if it changes the internet as we know it today, is it that bad? It will push people to self publish instead of relying on "platforms", like the old internet.
As for the potential for abuse, remember that the article isn't finished, it has yet to be completed, ratified, and tried. Public debate is important and we shall not let everything pass, but IMHO, the spirit is good.
This seems like it will benefit the whales more than the fish, as they can absorb copyright infringement costs into their already expansive legal departments, whereas a smaller company will likely go belly up or be chummed.
This is exactly the ongoing problem with the EU they don't distinguish between large corporations and small businesses which really illustrate how clueless the EU is when it comes to the market and the businesses that are governed.
Just like adblockers. You can advocate using them, but they only help the big players, because Facebook and such can ask for subscriptions if needed and they can also afford implementing anti adblock measures.
While small sites with a handful of staff, can't do that. People may subscribe for big sites like Facebook and Youtube , but they won't subscribe separately for a lots of small sites.
So blocking ads helps eliminating the small guys while the whales can deal with it.
Net neutrality regulations include vague language that allows "reasonable network management", which is a multi-million dollar legal hassle that stresses small ISP owners. And I shudder to think how Duck Duck Go's programmers will manage to comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten [from a search engine's results]".
I hope the politicians in Washington, D.C. recognize that America is the world's last refuge for small business growth and economic innovation.
In a weird way, this might be EU's strategy to finally deal significant damage to Google and Facebook, as this law will encourage development of alternatives on decentralized peer-to-peer technologies. However, I'm not sure if EU politicians are that smart...
If this is their intention, then the measure might be totally counterproductive. Regulations very often hit small businesses harder than big ones, because big businesses have capacities to deal with them.
In this example, Youtube or Facebook will have more resources to (automatically) detect copyright content than a small content-oriented startup.
This only increases "barriers to entry" for new companies and strengthens the position of incumbents.
According to the article, politicians initially addressed the problem:
> TBC Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted from the law.
but this at risk of being dropped:
> This was one of the European Parliament’s main improvements to the text. Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.
It’s not made by EU politicians, it’s made by a combination of lawyers, engineers and public administration majors.
In many ways the EU is a functioning technocracy, and if you ever read through the actual EU documents it shows. They are almost always sound, they are also massively bureaucratic and around 90% longer than necessary, but I’ve never read through something that wasn’t sound.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read up on article 13, but I do read (and sit through) a good deal of EU standards and proposals for EU wide Enterprise Architectural principles, and they are never thwarted by politics.
FAANG will be pissed but I doubt it really makes a dent. Their focus is Asia (has been since 2 decades now). Us Europeans are just a sleepy backwater of old people with lot of history which makes for nice tax havens and retirement homes.
Alternatively, with a little lobbying and a few tweaks, any 'platform' deemed not to be implementing sufficiently advanced filtering could be subject to ISP-level blocking / filtering.
Punitive measures on information like this rarely encourage anything. The worst part is people look at the intent and potential effects of legislation as though it is the actual, realized result. I have to assume the reason is a mix of naive optimism, anti-big-web-tech, and the inability to take the bad with the good so e feel obligated to keep shaping things. Real, actual teaching and encouraging and efforts and money and motive and all of that is far different from what's happening here.
The fact that they only know how to tear down and not to build will make it futile.
At best it will create a divergent protectionist demense while doing nothing to aid viability outside the market - and its help inside is dubious. Even outright banning Google and Facebook won't suddenly make Bing and Yahoo the next big thing. At best they will be the postum to the real coffee.
How. They are the ones who have the lawyers to protect themselves. It's the small platforms that will suffer, and creating startups in the user-generated content will be too risky.
The strategy is legal, political and economic harmonisation. It does this by passing vague legislation that requires its own court to interpret. Everything else, literally everything, is secondary. And so a nation state is born.
yes, this could be called the "anti-google act" of 2019 ... google is basically the only company it applies to. facebook has never been a major venue for piracy (afaik?) so i don't think it even affects them much.
however, it is a good thing. youtube has always been a massive for-profit piracy operation, and they just license and pay the people who are big enough to threaten them. all small content creators get the shaft. even google search is mostly a form of piracy. taking other people's content and slapping ads on it.
google needs to die and it is nice to see the EU helping here.
No, FAANG will not be targeted. Even GDPR which would have been able to piss of facebook was not used to attack them. Only small companies have been attacked because of GDPR violations. Inoffically they have told people they will not attack the big ones because they have enough lawyers so an attack on e.g. facebook will be too time consuming.
Following a number of important amendments being made to the Copyright Directive since July, the proposal was put to a plenary vote in September, which over 60% of MEPs supported. During further negotiations between Parliament, the Council (EU Member States) and the European Commission, any remaining shortcomings can be addressed.
I am in favour of a balanced Copyright Directive that allows for a free and fair internet, and also ensures the fair remuneration of creators, artists, publishers and journalists who create important jobs, growth and innovation in the EU.
With regard to a stronger right for press publishers, Article 11 allows for:
• Fair remuneration for journalists and press publishers for the use of their articles.
• Financially independent press (independent from platforms).
• Quality journalism.
• Journalists to get a share of the press publishers' remuneration.
Private use of press articles is allowed.
Hyperlinking is allowed.
With regard to the value gap, Article 13 allows for:
• Platforms to take more responsibility for the content on their websites.
• Fair remuneration for European right holders (artists, musicians, authors etc.) from the platforms that use their works.
• Platforms to conclude licenses with the right holders.
• Right holders and platforms to find a practical solution to bring copyright and liability in a better balance.
The scope of Article 13 has been limited to those platforms which infringe the most copyright.
Platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Netflix, eBay, Wikipedia, dating-platforms, software developing platforms, blogs, private homepages, dropbox etc. do not fall under Article 13.
Copyright rules need to reflect the new realities and business models of the 21st century, particularly the rise of digital media. Press publishers and other content producers should receive a fair share for the use of their content on the internet. Currently, most generated revenue goes to the platforms and aggregators, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube.
It is of course a priority that the Internet remains a platform where free speech prevails. The rules will only affect platforms that explicitly make profit from copyrighted works. Private individuals can continue to share content on the internet for non-commercial purpose. Platforms such as universities, scientific databases and online encyclopaedias, which are not dealing with copyright content as their primary purpose, will all be exempt from the new rules.
The GDPR has already resulted in quite a few websites simply refusing to serve the EU. Will this clinch it? Will the EU be cut off form the internet due to over-regulation that no one wants to put themselves at risk over?
I think calling GDPR over-regulation is extremely suspect. The GDPR does a good job in codifying basic privacy principles of what you can do with personal data. Clear communication, consent, control over your own data and data protection principles. Things that should be self-evident but we have been failing with forever, and something that has become an extremely widespread widespread in an online society. The only reason to call it over regulation is if you're spoiled about not being regulated beforehand - but there was a clear need for such a law and codifying reasonable privacy principles. I don't understand why I hear so few Americans about wanting this in their own country.
Article 13 is fundamentally different from the GDPR. The fundamental problem is that I think (and most people hopefully do) user privacy is an ethical good, and I don't believe (much of) copyright law is an ethical good. If you fundamentally believe copyright must be defended vigilantly Article 13 is not an unreasonable consequence at all - I just don't agree with that premise one bit.
Websites that don't want to comply with GDPR, I say good riddance. If you really feel you cannot uphold the basic privacy principles posited, then screw you too. But for Article 13, the laws are only in the interest of big corporations. I don't care about those.
GDPR caused some non EU media businesses to preemptively block EU users because their primary readership is not in the EU and their primary business model is abusing their users in ways that GDPR restricts.
GDPR did not really change the media landscape in the EU. Business as usual here. Mostly companies went through a brief period where they had to consult lawyers and expensive agencies on how to cover their asses. Mostly good things have started happening after that. Some companies that were doing technically unacceptable things under pre-GDPR legislation have now grudgingly stopped doing those things.
I've so far only noticed the blocking on (tabloid) US news sites which when visited with a VPN are full of trackers and overflowing with ads. It didn't feel like a loss to me but would be curious to know if there are services which people feel they really needed/wanted but now can't access w/out VPN?
Businesses cannot afford it and no, it is not happening. Also, abusing GDPR is one thing, how about all these companies start to pay VAT and taxes on sales originated from EU.
But it's in a website's favor to serve as many consumers as possible, won't any group that isn't willing to conform to EU standards be out competed by those that do?
This has the potential of being a blessing in the disguise since these barriers will not hold for decentralized alternatives where there is no obvious platform operator to hold responsible.
Bloody hell that's rather terrifying. After GDPR I was thinking Europe would be the bastion of the internet, now it looks like it's time to decentralise the internet completely. Which is going to surely have it's own issues I'm sure.
I'm worried about influencing outcomes in the EU due to language barriers, especially on boring and "unsexy" issues like Internet regulation. It'd be important for the EU to be able to vote for representatives regardless of your primary jurisdiction.
Even if I manage to convince most of the representatives from my region, they will be outvoted by the French who had a big hand in passing the proposal forward the last time... It's like they reside in a completely different universe, with no hope of meaningful communication.
Edit: adding a link to this false-positive emulator script[0] as an example of how stupid the proposal is.
I don't think this will happen, but if this is actually made into a liability then this would create a rather interesting situation where a platform could be sued for blocking fair use content and miss-identified content.
It's unclear to me what "internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of ... works uploaded by their users" really means. It presumably applies to Facebook. It presumably doesn't apply to e-mail. But if I had a social networking service that had no advertising and was only accessible to its paying users, would the law apply to it? What if postings were encrypted and could only be read by users that had requested access to them? Would the company running the service be expected to either backdoor the encryption or create bogus accounts and request access from those bogus accounts in order to monitor postings that might contain infringing content?
> Licenses that platforms take out cover uploads by their users, as long as they act non-commercially or “don’t generate significant revenues”
Am I reading correctly that when you have a forum (e.g. Discourse) which is non-commercial i.e. for an open community, that any users uploading stuff or quoting article sections are exempt from this regulation (even though the forum is hosted on Discourse servers on a paid plan)?
If huge content distribution platforms like YouTube and Facebook are not viable anymore, it might put a renewed wind in the sails of self-hosting systems. Getting the Internet back to it's distributed nature would make it more resilient.
So usenet is dead, right?
90%, usenet ISPs are a download server pretenting to be a mail server so they can claim safe harbour. If they are responsible for auditing their content, presumably this isn't viable anymore...
I am curious about other interpretations of the impact this law will have. Would it encourage the development of more peer-to-peer sharing networks, which lack a central space to upload?
I wish we had the kind of concerted effort that the copyright lobby is able to launch, but focused on issues that reduce the net benefit of these platform more than copyright infringement: hate speech or intentional misinformation.
This wil change nothing that is not already in effect for most sites. Try to upload a movie to Youtube, it will be removed. But only when the owner/author complains or some automatic filter is triggered.
There is also too much content to check and enforce it all.
What strikes me as odd is that most of these efforts are driven by the EU. Are other unions and nations not seeing the need for these things? It reminded me of GDPR.
[+] [-] GuB-42|7 years ago|reply
"internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of copyright-protected works uploaded by their users in order to make a profit"
That's actually a lot of limitation. From my understanding: "organise and promote" means it is not simple hosting, and "in order to make a profit" excludes organizations like Wikimedia Commons and "large amounts" most likely excludes smaller websites like fan sites, and "uploaded by their users" exclude search engines.
It is clearly meant to target a form of abuse that is much too common in the "internet as we know it". It is mostly apparent in sites like PornHub. They live by monetizing content they don't have the rights for, and they use their status as a platform as a way to stay legal. I think YouTube admitted that in the early days, they voluntarily turned a blind eye to copyright infringement as a way to grow ahead of their competition.
It is unfair to legitimate companies who do their best to make sure their content really is original or properly licensed.
And if it changes the internet as we know it today, is it that bad? It will push people to self publish instead of relying on "platforms", like the old internet.
As for the potential for abuse, remember that the article isn't finished, it has yet to be completed, ratified, and tried. Public debate is important and we shall not let everything pass, but IMHO, the spirit is good.
[+] [-] porlune|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmortin|7 years ago|reply
While small sites with a handful of staff, can't do that. People may subscribe for big sites like Facebook and Youtube , but they won't subscribe separately for a lots of small sites.
So blocking ads helps eliminating the small guys while the whales can deal with it.
[+] [-] akerro|7 years ago|reply
https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2018/gdpr-goog...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/23/google-ow...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/24/alphabet_q1_2018/
[+] [-] ddxxdd|7 years ago|reply
Net neutrality regulations include vague language that allows "reasonable network management", which is a multi-million dollar legal hassle that stresses small ISP owners. And I shudder to think how Duck Duck Go's programmers will manage to comply with the EU's "right to be forgotten [from a search engine's results]".
I hope the politicians in Washington, D.C. recognize that America is the world's last refuge for small business growth and economic innovation.
[+] [-] chrisweekly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SlowRobotAhead|7 years ago|reply
Well, who do you think wrote it? Not the fish.
[+] [-] danijelb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkukul|7 years ago|reply
In this example, Youtube or Facebook will have more resources to (automatically) detect copyright content than a small content-oriented startup.
This only increases "barriers to entry" for new companies and strengthens the position of incumbents.
According to the article, politicians initially addressed the problem:
> TBC Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted from the law.
but this at risk of being dropped:
> This was one of the European Parliament’s main improvements to the text. Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.
[+] [-] jaabe|7 years ago|reply
In many ways the EU is a functioning technocracy, and if you ever read through the actual EU documents it shows. They are almost always sound, they are also massively bureaucratic and around 90% longer than necessary, but I’ve never read through something that wasn’t sound.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read up on article 13, but I do read (and sit through) a good deal of EU standards and proposals for EU wide Enterprise Architectural principles, and they are never thwarted by politics.
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsty|7 years ago|reply
This one's a double edged sword.
[+] [-] kodablah|7 years ago|reply
Punitive measures on information like this rarely encourage anything. The worst part is people look at the intent and potential effects of legislation as though it is the actual, realized result. I have to assume the reason is a mix of naive optimism, anti-big-web-tech, and the inability to take the bad with the good so e feel obligated to keep shaping things. Real, actual teaching and encouraging and efforts and money and motive and all of that is far different from what's happening here.
[+] [-] Nasrudith|7 years ago|reply
At best it will create a divergent protectionist demense while doing nothing to aid viability outside the market - and its help inside is dubious. Even outright banning Google and Facebook won't suddenly make Bing and Yahoo the next big thing. At best they will be the postum to the real coffee.
[+] [-] nkkollaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glenrivard|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zmix|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] squarefoot|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] krona|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
Yes, it' a strategy of their failing commercial entities to wring a profit out of entities like FB and G who they think are profiting.
Of course it's among the worst strategies available.
What they need is more innovation, not more regulation.
[+] [-] felix99|7 years ago|reply
however, it is a good thing. youtube has always been a massive for-profit piracy operation, and they just license and pay the people who are big enough to threaten them. all small content creators get the shaft. even google search is mostly a form of piracy. taking other people's content and slapping ads on it.
google needs to die and it is nice to see the EU helping here.
[+] [-] tpetry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losthobbies|7 years ago|reply
Following a number of important amendments being made to the Copyright Directive since July, the proposal was put to a plenary vote in September, which over 60% of MEPs supported. During further negotiations between Parliament, the Council (EU Member States) and the European Commission, any remaining shortcomings can be addressed.
I am in favour of a balanced Copyright Directive that allows for a free and fair internet, and also ensures the fair remuneration of creators, artists, publishers and journalists who create important jobs, growth and innovation in the EU.
With regard to a stronger right for press publishers, Article 11 allows for: • Fair remuneration for journalists and press publishers for the use of their articles. • Financially independent press (independent from platforms). • Quality journalism. • Journalists to get a share of the press publishers' remuneration. Private use of press articles is allowed. Hyperlinking is allowed.
With regard to the value gap, Article 13 allows for: • Platforms to take more responsibility for the content on their websites. • Fair remuneration for European right holders (artists, musicians, authors etc.) from the platforms that use their works. • Platforms to conclude licenses with the right holders. • Right holders and platforms to find a practical solution to bring copyright and liability in a better balance. The scope of Article 13 has been limited to those platforms which infringe the most copyright. Platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Netflix, eBay, Wikipedia, dating-platforms, software developing platforms, blogs, private homepages, dropbox etc. do not fall under Article 13.
Copyright rules need to reflect the new realities and business models of the 21st century, particularly the rise of digital media. Press publishers and other content producers should receive a fair share for the use of their content on the internet. Currently, most generated revenue goes to the platforms and aggregators, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube.
It is of course a priority that the Internet remains a platform where free speech prevails. The rules will only affect platforms that explicitly make profit from copyrighted works. Private individuals can continue to share content on the internet for non-commercial purpose. Platforms such as universities, scientific databases and online encyclopaedias, which are not dealing with copyright content as their primary purpose, will all be exempt from the new rules.
_________________
[+] [-] radarsat1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DCKing|7 years ago|reply
Article 13 is fundamentally different from the GDPR. The fundamental problem is that I think (and most people hopefully do) user privacy is an ethical good, and I don't believe (much of) copyright law is an ethical good. If you fundamentally believe copyright must be defended vigilantly Article 13 is not an unreasonable consequence at all - I just don't agree with that premise one bit.
Websites that don't want to comply with GDPR, I say good riddance. If you really feel you cannot uphold the basic privacy principles posited, then screw you too. But for Article 13, the laws are only in the interest of big corporations. I don't care about those.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|7 years ago|reply
GDPR did not really change the media landscape in the EU. Business as usual here. Mostly companies went through a brief period where they had to consult lawyers and expensive agencies on how to cover their asses. Mostly good things have started happening after that. Some companies that were doing technically unacceptable things under pre-GDPR legislation have now grudgingly stopped doing those things.
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chunkyslink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Double_a_92|7 years ago|reply
It's like saying that criminal laws prevented people from getting happily scammed.
[+] [-] Timpy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Legogris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marak830|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haywirez|7 years ago|reply
Even if I manage to convince most of the representatives from my region, they will be outvoted by the French who had a big hand in passing the proposal forward the last time... It's like they reside in a completely different universe, with no hope of meaningful communication.
Edit: adding a link to this false-positive emulator script[0] as an example of how stupid the proposal is.
[0]: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1015594170424193024
[+] [-] belorn|7 years ago|reply
I don't think this will happen, but if this is actually made into a liability then this would create a rather interesting situation where a platform could be sued for blocking fair use content and miss-identified content.
[+] [-] josteink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] humanetech|7 years ago|reply
Am I reading correctly that when you have a forum (e.g. Discourse) which is non-commercial i.e. for an open community, that any users uploading stuff or quoting article sections are exempt from this regulation (even though the forum is hosted on Discourse servers on a paid plan)?
[+] [-] zimbatm|7 years ago|reply
If huge content distribution platforms like YouTube and Facebook are not viable anymore, it might put a renewed wind in the sails of self-hosting systems. Getting the Internet back to it's distributed nature would make it more resilient.
[+] [-] shubb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philipps|7 years ago|reply
I wish we had the kind of concerted effort that the copyright lobby is able to launch, but focused on issues that reduce the net benefit of these platform more than copyright infringement: hate speech or intentional misinformation.
[+] [-] yani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmonsen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tikumo|7 years ago|reply
There is also too much content to check and enforce it all.
[+] [-] dotdi|7 years ago|reply
Honest question here: What can I do to influence this decision?
[+] [-] kerng|7 years ago|reply