I'm currently creating an online platform with user generated content.
I'm based in Belgium, but if this bill passes, it leaves me no choice but to take my company abroad. Funny how the EU tries to compete with US startups and multinationals, with various incentives, and then tries to get this crap enforced on all of these same companies within the EU.
Bunch of idiots.
Although I live within the EU, I hope various companies will block access to their services.
The EU doesn’t really need to compete since they can get as much revenue as they want with regulatory fines. They don’t care if you go abroad since if you get big they will find a way to get their money.
Horrendous law with an incredibly severe consequences to us all. And I'm saying this as the one benefiting most as my company is the ultimate upload filter (we are orders of magnitude larger than Content ID [0]).
We are not going to stand by idly and let it to wipe out all competition because they can't afford to be compliant with this idiotic law. As such, we are making our services free to all rights holders and platforms [1]. This is the best way we, as a company, can fight the law and make sure that it will have the least negative impact as possible.
Well, thanks. But using your service doesn't feel like "fighting the law". It's just
complying with the law by being dependent on one generous external
company.
I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like
youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response to
these kind of laws.
> But if a company is too small to afford licenses, it's also too small to build filters. Google's Content ID for YouTube cost a reported €100 million to build and run, and it only does a fraction of the blocking required under Article 13. That means that they'll have to buy filter services from someone else. The most likely filter vendors are the US Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook, who will have to build and run filters anyway, and could recoup their costs by renting access to these filters to smaller competitors.
What Cory misses is that the proposed legislation is technically impossible to implement. Even giants like Facebook and Google cannot do content violation filtering on every media, like text submitted by text area boxes ("citations" over de copying the minimis limit), sound and video. Maintaining hashes of protected content is also technically impossible. Who's gone decide which data will get processed, and from where?
Only the previous legislation is technically implementable, the current proposal will make user input on all European websites illegal, like Hacker news, reddit, WordPress blogs with comments, wikis like wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook,... you name it.
Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it, leading to risk of becoming a random target, or disable all userinput at all. which will be the death of internet 2.0 in europe.
even a theoretical central filtering service will not be able to solve this problem, because registering and filtering all worldwide protected content is not feasible. there will be 5% of some big studios and press agencies content hashed, but not much else. adding legislation on this idea is just destructive. the previous legislation is the only practical and useful way.
> Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it, leading to risk of becoming a random target
Not random target, it's by design, first make a law that almost all website owners break, then you are free to punish whoever you want.
The future looks bleak for Europe. If this continues, in a few years you woldn't be able to criticize politicians online or uncover corruption they're involved in.
I'm waiting for the inevitable EU firewall that will ultimately be required to aggressively control all Internet usage for anyone in the EU.
It can end no other way than that. Particularly as these draconian regulations continue to get worse. How else will they enforce these policies against foreign entities that can trivially ignore them while still serving EU users? They have to put a stop to that, as it's an easy circumvention.
I can build a service in the US. Allow EU citizens to sign up. Entirely disregard most, if not all, EU laws. Monetize the huge US market first as a cash springboard. Acquire scale. Then turn on EU monetization when it's convenient to deal with the regulatory challenges there. There might be considerable retroactive fines involved for ignoring EU law over time while still taking on EU users (when you attempt to monetize the EU users, requiring business on the ground in the EU, that's when they'd land punches financially; the retroactive approach would be the solution the politicians would come up with as a desperate stop-gap against this approach); so what, I'm now a monopoly platform, I already won, hit me with your speeding ticket. If you make the speeding ticket too large, I'll demonetize the EU users, remove all business from the EU, ignore any fines, retain the EU users anyway to prevent competition, and keep going (come back later and see if I can lobby/bribe the EU politicians in some kind of fine settlement).
The sole means to stop that scenario - which is almost obnoxiously beneficial to furthering US dominance in platforms - is to lock down all Internet usage in the EU and dictate by permission what sites may be used. The tighter they get with Article 13 style regulations, the more likely they have to implement an EU firewall.
The scenario you described, unfortunately, makes too much sense.
Furthermore, I think this type of legislative arbitrage has already been in play, for the current compliance requirements. It sometimes works the other way around too, and I'd say Spotify was a succesful play that bypassed the negative US climate for media streaming startups, left by Napster.
There is other ways to curb that though. I doubt the current POTUS is willing to play ball, but a future one might sign a mutually beneficial agreement that enables the courts of the EU to go after US based companies for things like taxes and fines, and visa versa, for a small well defined set of things. I think this is just as much a possibility since the internet is truly international and require international corporation.
To implement an internet 'firewall' in the EU first they will first have to come up with a less contentious term than firewall. Too many negative connotations re. China and authoritarianism. Even non-tech people in the EU would get riled up about any EU firewall.
I think it's going to be more like a reverse firewall, so to say: non-EU companies geo blocking IP addresses of EU origin. This is already happening because of the GDPR. We might lose access to sites like Reddit and maybe even GitHub from inside the EU. I don't think the parties pushing for this legislation are fully aware of how deeply this might impact the technology sector, directly and especially indirectly.
This "EU firewall" already exists. If a website violates European law but is hosted in a foreign country, ISPs may be ordered to block access to it. The US has a similar system in place, I believe.
What makes you think this would be even remotely reasonable to conclude?
The Great Firewall exists to prevent Chinese citizens from accessing politically subversive content. The only EU equivalent I can think of is Germany blacklisting certain illegal content providers (i.e. nazis and child porn) that can't easily be shut down.
The reason access to child porn (or marketplaces for illegal substances) is prohibited is that possession and distribution is illegal and therefore even mere use of the services may constitute a crime (even if users don't distribute the illegal goods themselves).
The reason access to nazi sites is disrupted is that these sites are actively inciting racial hatred, holocaust denialism etc. So if you want to make a Great Firewall analogy this is probably the closest equivalent.
The GDPR specifically defines human rights and a mechanism to enforce those for EU residents (i.e. reporting violations to supervising data protection agencies which may use fines when the violator refuses to comply or acts too maliciously). Blocking those sites wouldn't make sense as the users aren't doing anything wrong by accessing those sites (it's the sites that are abusing the users).
The copyright reform also doesn't really target users -- article 13 just eliminates the safe harbor provision that allows file sharing services to distance themselves from the content they host. Access to those sites is not illegal and access to illegally hosted content is treated no differently in the EU than in the US.
In other words, aside from the usual anti-consumerist fearmongering about the GDPR your argument could have been made equally well when the US started shutting down the initial wave of file sharing services (from Napster all the way to MEGA). But instead it turned out to be more profitable to just sue people on a case by case basis.
A little off-topic and a real mental leap, but wayback (hundreds of years), the katholic church was the one with a information-monopoly (dome-building, history and mint studies for example) crawled with the years by the principle of syncretism. All the katholic church had to do, was to use their 'Leitungsschutz' (german word) to make their bucks... history... info-bits -sure... ^^
If advisory of German specialists from the either side will make the internet in the EU anything like the internet in Germany, in any regard, people will be really pissed. Kindly bugger off and let decide those from the places were the internet works.
[+] [-] koonsolo|7 years ago|reply
I'm based in Belgium, but if this bill passes, it leaves me no choice but to take my company abroad. Funny how the EU tries to compete with US startups and multinationals, with various incentives, and then tries to get this crap enforced on all of these same companies within the EU.
Bunch of idiots.
Although I live within the EU, I hope various companies will block access to their services.
[+] [-] duado|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterstucco|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eveningcoffee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lstodd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reubeniv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doh|7 years ago|reply
We are not going to stand by idly and let it to wipe out all competition because they can't afford to be compliant with this idiotic law. As such, we are making our services free to all rights holders and platforms [1]. This is the best way we, as a company, can fight the law and make sure that it will have the least negative impact as possible.
[0] https://twitter.com/synopsi/status/1102655191654981632
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CLybxCFg_gz4n62UqVr3XEsy...
[+] [-] jackewiehose|7 years ago|reply
I (as a European consumer) would rather prefer that the big platforms like youtube/reddit/facebook just shut down their European presence in response to these kind of laws.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] I_am_tiberius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Velchronus|7 years ago|reply
> But if a company is too small to afford licenses, it's also too small to build filters. Google's Content ID for YouTube cost a reported €100 million to build and run, and it only does a fraction of the blocking required under Article 13. That means that they'll have to buy filter services from someone else. The most likely filter vendors are the US Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook, who will have to build and run filters anyway, and could recoup their costs by renting access to these filters to smaller competitors.
[+] [-] nerdponx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurban|7 years ago|reply
Only the previous legislation is technically implementable, the current proposal will make user input on all European websites illegal, like Hacker news, reddit, WordPress blogs with comments, wikis like wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook,... you name it. Since Article 13 is such a monumental fuckup people will either ignore it, leading to risk of becoming a random target, or disable all userinput at all. which will be the death of internet 2.0 in europe.
even a theoretical central filtering service will not be able to solve this problem, because registering and filtering all worldwide protected content is not feasible. there will be 5% of some big studios and press agencies content hashed, but not much else. adding legislation on this idea is just destructive. the previous legislation is the only practical and useful way.
[+] [-] type0|7 years ago|reply
Not random target, it's by design, first make a law that almost all website owners break, then you are free to punish whoever you want.
The future looks bleak for Europe. If this continues, in a few years you woldn't be able to criticize politicians online or uncover corruption they're involved in.
[+] [-] adventured|7 years ago|reply
It can end no other way than that. Particularly as these draconian regulations continue to get worse. How else will they enforce these policies against foreign entities that can trivially ignore them while still serving EU users? They have to put a stop to that, as it's an easy circumvention.
I can build a service in the US. Allow EU citizens to sign up. Entirely disregard most, if not all, EU laws. Monetize the huge US market first as a cash springboard. Acquire scale. Then turn on EU monetization when it's convenient to deal with the regulatory challenges there. There might be considerable retroactive fines involved for ignoring EU law over time while still taking on EU users (when you attempt to monetize the EU users, requiring business on the ground in the EU, that's when they'd land punches financially; the retroactive approach would be the solution the politicians would come up with as a desperate stop-gap against this approach); so what, I'm now a monopoly platform, I already won, hit me with your speeding ticket. If you make the speeding ticket too large, I'll demonetize the EU users, remove all business from the EU, ignore any fines, retain the EU users anyway to prevent competition, and keep going (come back later and see if I can lobby/bribe the EU politicians in some kind of fine settlement).
The sole means to stop that scenario - which is almost obnoxiously beneficial to furthering US dominance in platforms - is to lock down all Internet usage in the EU and dictate by permission what sites may be used. The tighter they get with Article 13 style regulations, the more likely they have to implement an EU firewall.
[+] [-] ovi256|7 years ago|reply
Furthermore, I think this type of legislative arbitrage has already been in play, for the current compliance requirements. It sometimes works the other way around too, and I'd say Spotify was a succesful play that bypassed the negative US climate for media streaming startups, left by Napster.
[+] [-] hvidgaard|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] L_226|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_fayer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnonymousPlanet|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yorwba|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pluma|7 years ago|reply
The Great Firewall exists to prevent Chinese citizens from accessing politically subversive content. The only EU equivalent I can think of is Germany blacklisting certain illegal content providers (i.e. nazis and child porn) that can't easily be shut down.
The reason access to child porn (or marketplaces for illegal substances) is prohibited is that possession and distribution is illegal and therefore even mere use of the services may constitute a crime (even if users don't distribute the illegal goods themselves).
The reason access to nazi sites is disrupted is that these sites are actively inciting racial hatred, holocaust denialism etc. So if you want to make a Great Firewall analogy this is probably the closest equivalent.
The GDPR specifically defines human rights and a mechanism to enforce those for EU residents (i.e. reporting violations to supervising data protection agencies which may use fines when the violator refuses to comply or acts too maliciously). Blocking those sites wouldn't make sense as the users aren't doing anything wrong by accessing those sites (it's the sites that are abusing the users).
The copyright reform also doesn't really target users -- article 13 just eliminates the safe harbor provision that allows file sharing services to distance themselves from the content they host. Access to those sites is not illegal and access to illegally hosted content is treated no differently in the EU than in the US.
In other words, aside from the usual anti-consumerist fearmongering about the GDPR your argument could have been made equally well when the US started shutting down the initial wave of file sharing services (from Napster all the way to MEGA). But instead it turned out to be more profitable to just sue people on a case by case basis.
[+] [-] adrianN|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|7 years ago|reply
James Blunt is one of them https://twitter.com/CDU_CSU_EP/status/1098531302490468352 and "helping" the CDU campaign
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterstucco|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 1waYstilltheree|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] expertentipp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahartmetz|7 years ago|reply