You'd think those law makers would learn. Or maybe we're the ones who should learn.
When the original proposal was shot down, we were happy because we thought/hoped it was shot down for our reasons, but even then there were signs that some parties in the EU opposed it because it wasn't quite terrible enough. So now they made it worse.
I hope we can keep getting this shot down, but it seems to be important enough for the copyright monopolists to keep pushing this, and public opinion may eventually tire of this.
The good thing is that EU elections are coming in May. We need to know which parties support this so we can campaign against them. Let them bleed in the elections if they won't listen.
Once an unpopular proposal is shot down backers of said proposal back off for a bit. They bring up the idea repackaged some months/years later. They fight the battle again. Eventually, after enough votes the measure will pass. People can only remain vigilant for so long.
In most of these kinds of situations, the unpopular proposal is actually addressing some real problem that probably should be addressed.
Those who find the proposal terrible rally against it, but usually don't offer alternatives to address the problem. They may win, but then since the underlying problem was not addressed another proposal will arise. And since the opposition to the last one didn't contribute any new ideas to solving the problem this new proposal is usually similar to the old one.
And where is the general public in all this? The first time when they are told the proposed solution is terrible they can get behind that and call and write and sign petitions at the opposition's urging. The proposal is shelved and the public is told they won.
But they know that there still is an underlying problem to be solved, and signed on to oppose the bad proposal with the expectation that a better proposal would be offered, because the general public does actually want the underlying problem solved.
By the second or third time the now modified in small ways original proposal comes around, each time with the same "no to this, but we aren't going to offer an alternative solution" opposition, people are starting to think that maybe the proposal is the only way to solve the underlying problems because that's the only way that ever gets proposed.
This sort of thing happens with laws in a variety of fields, at all levels of government. National security, housing, transportation, crime, healthcare, education...in all of them you can find bad things eventually passed because the people vigilantly fighting those things didn't offer any answers themselves, just reasons not to accept other's proposed answers.
The problem here is that copyright protections are too strong, and the companies who based their business models on it have too much power.
This proposal does not address any of that, this proposal is a symptom of the problem. If we want the symptom to go away, we need to address the real problem.
Of course to the copyright companies, there's not really a problem, they just see people share stuff online that they believe they should be making money on. The problem is that they can't reasonably do that, so they try to do it unreasonably through this proposal. The "problem" they want to address is not really a problem; copyright companies are healthy and powerful and raking in plenty of money. They just want more of it. They see it as a problem that people are creating new content online, some of which is derivative of their content, and they want to stop it. What they see as a problem, most people see as a good thing. That's the fundamental problem here. Giving them what they want is not going to fix anything for us.
Also, by extending the time for copyrights again and again, they're eliminating the possibility of adaptation and remixing, which can fuel creativity and more the culture forward.
> In most of these kinds of situations, the unpopular proposal is actually addressing some real problem that probably should be addressed.
I agree that this happens. But I think the claim is overbroad, and the followup "[the public] know that there still is an underlying problem to be solved" is fundamentally inaccurate.
Sometimes, there's a problem affecting the public, but the laws proposed to fix it are bad. This can come from incompetent drafting, where we'd expect successive bills to improve, but it can also come from conflicting interests, meaning anything from a powerful stakeholder undermining good laws to a party split rendering coherent laws unpassable. Quite a few people have observed that American private-actor, public-mandate laws like the ACA might perform worse than private or public solutions, but are legislatively easier. This is definitely a category worth discussing. Even here, though, I think calling on a law's opponents to give an alternative solution is too restrictive. Sometimes the reason a law is bad is that we don't know how to solve the problem, or the problem is fundamentally not amenable to a legislative remedy.
But sometimes, there simply isn't public benefit available. Talking about what's a "real problem" is of course question-begging, since very few laws have literally no beneficiaries. But there are no shortage of proposed laws which benefit no one but the authors, or a few influential companies, or some unnatural constituency like "retired factory workers in two swing states".
A lot of the Article 13 provisions, like many SOPA/PIPA/CISPA/ACTA/TPP provisions, fall in that second category. They're fundamentally bad law, written only for the protectionist benefit of a few already-monopolistic businesses, or to expand government authority without better serving the public. The public becomes exhausted of these fights, too, and it's not at all a matter of wanting an underlying problem solved. They pit protracted industry lobbying against highly-visible mass action, and the use of money and access as force multipliers for lobbying enormously increases its staying power. Even that might be alright, just as corporate campaign donations sometime lose out to small-donor funding. But the legislative ratchet effect means that unlike with elections, bad laws can be pursued repeatedly with virtually no downside.
I do think your point is worth addressing for activists, though. When campaigning against a law, it's worth talking publicly not just about the law's problems but why those problems exist. Is it simply a botched bill? Is it a problem needing more study (or less gridlock) before a good law can be attempted? Or is it a fundamentally worthless law, of the sort where action is needed to prevent it from coming back like a weed? This stuff isn't easy to convey to a mass audience, but it's an important part of building for a good outcome instead of averting one bad one.
Since this is driven by the entertainment industry, a solution would be to just stop consuming entertainment. They've been fucking with copyright long enough trying to get their old business models to stop failing, why are we still giving them money?
Small labels. All kinds of niche music is not affiliated with the big associations. Ketzer Records is one, for example. That's one from the metal subgenre (Black/Pagan, Death, Doom, Ambient). I assume all niches have their own small labels.
The reason I'm surprised is because the EU must know it is becoming less and less popular by the day, so why would you insist on pushing this? I get the corporate interests, but is it worth slowly disintegrating the EU over?
Historically people either don't vote or vote blindly for a national party that is part of some block in the EU parliament without any regard for the issues. Turn out rates are usually low in any case. So as a consequence, most of the EU parliament is made up of second rate politicians who spend most of their career not interacting with or being scrutinized by voters, press, media, etc. The EU parliament is not where most countries send their best politicians currently (to put it mildly).
Last time the populists barely managed to scrape together enough votes to even form a block (there are some esoteric rules for this). For the past few decades, the christian democrat block and socialist block have dominated decision making. Those two are of course dominated by the leading parties in France and Germany, supported by their smaller sisters in other EU countries. However, both SPD and CDU/CSU in Germany are a lot smaller in the last few years an barely managed a majority nationally. In France, the socialists were completely wiped out and the current president bootstrapped a new party. Across Europe, the parties that make up these two blocks have been in decline.
So, this time, things may end up a bit more chaotic. While I don't necessarily see the rise of populism as progress, I do think shaking up the powers that be a bit may end up being a good thing in the EU.
The key lies in actually campaigning on issues and putting the pressure a bit on EU parliament members that are likely to lose their seat. As far as I understand there are a lot of currently very comfy christian democrats and socialists that are possibly not going to keep their seats due to their national parties doing less well across Europe lately. As soon as they are forced to debate and campaign on these issues, they'll be a lot less likely to commit to voting for something that is fundamentally a hard sell.
So, just start calling out EU parliament members on their voting past and put them on the spot to defend their points of view. Name names. Get them nervous. Remove their ability to hide behind the blocks + national parties they represent and whose party line they blindly toe. Make them work for a living.
The problem is, as important as issues like this are, whichever party you vote for you are likely to disagree with 20+% of their platform, so its just a game of 'best fit'. Minority interests like this lose out in that process because many more people are happy for it to be part of their own personal '20% I disagree with' (or more likely '50% I don't understand') than other big picture issues.
What's worse, theres no guarantee that theres sufficient overlap in everyone's 'parts of the platform I agree with' that ANY of their policies actually have the support of even 50% of the party's own voters. (This is the public choice theory of politics).
Party list systems then make this a bit worse because they make it easier for parties to discourage independent voices since few politicians will have sufficient personal following to be able to buck the machine over the long term.
The only realistic way in my view to get things like this changed is to buy into the system therefore - engage in lobbying of the existing parties, and have sufficient people join those parties, become involved in the party policy development mechanisms and stand for office for those parties to change them from within.
I think that's sadly something that activists for digital rights (for want of a better term) have not fully bought in to, and its why we keep seeing this pattern play out as a 'best case'.
The problem with this is that it only applies to people in some EU countries. The rest of us have to just hope that Germans see the light, because we're completely irrelevant to any German politician.
And in other news, the EU wants to do away with unanimous voting on tax issues.
The problem with this thinking is that google et al will profit! They have the resources to deal with this. Smaller companies will not be able to deal with this so easily.
Thus, we are subsidizing people with the help of google at the expense of smaller competitors (incl those in Europe). That’s a though trade-off
If Google were forced by law to pay the content creator (all revenues from ads on pirated content) times (1+0.1 times (the number of reports of infringement - 1)) and the random people on the Internet who reported the infringement 1USD per report, how long do you think until infringement stops?
How many minutes would you guess? I think less than 100 minutes.
It would stop instantly. Here's how: Google immediately blocks all content from being uploaded from the EU citing too much risk. And pretty much every other website would do the same, including HN.
You forget to point out what will happen immediately after:
EU creative industry gets reset to the 1980s (what they -so desperately- want). The rest of the world doesn't stop. Not the US, not India, not China. Every EU entertainment industry business goes bankrupt because better alternatives exist to TV and EU Movies, most/all creatives in the EU are fired/out of a job ...
2 years later, all that remains of the EU creative industry is 100 vloggers and one film collective that all operate from outside the EU with material "not targeted at EU citizens" and, on rare occassions, EU governments will seriously underfund one or two movies who are mostly made by volunteers (and since every kid in every school is made to watch every such movie thrice - as a bonus these movies are hated with a passion by 90% of the population, their mere mention evokes bad memories of forceful teachers and painful, extremely tense absolute nonsense quizzes afterwards).
Youtube still reigns supreme. Amazon still reigns, Netflix still reigns. Nothing has changed, if anything these have become stronger, it's just that EU material is now never touched with a 10 foot pole by anyone on these platforms. Film students regularly come on TV, in tears, complaining about how EU copyright law means that as soon as anyone finds out where they're from, nobody returns any calls anymore and purges any video received from them from their hard drives and SSDs, drenching them in holy water 5 times afterwards in hopes of appeasing Youtube's enforcement of EU law.
I assume it would actually be worse than that. You're only looking at the entrainment industry, but most other industries would be impacted by this as well.
I know that they added an exception for source code, but that doesn't really cover all the things you would like as a developer, because sometimes you need to include additional stuff with code. Also, good luck trying to separate code from some other types of copyrighted text automatically. It probably wouldn't work.
It already has stopped. Nothing fundamentally has changed on the web in the last 10 years. Apart from the size if the major players making it more restrictive and centralized.
DeepMind is the only innovative project Google has, and that was an acquisition.
How long can they be allowed to steal data from their users and sell it, and steal content from other creators and shove and advert in front it?
Nobody but Google or Apple can push through meaningful changes to software anymore, at least on mobile, and in many ways on the desktop too. Is anyone surprised all we get is more dumb devices whose brains are in a data center?
As much as I'm no fan of Google for the way they treated me when I briefly worked there, along with DeepMind, IMO Waymo is acting as the adult in the room when it comes to self driving cars.
This. People need to understand that the root cause of life being as terrible as it was under Soviet rule was not so much the atrocities that got reported (that, of course, had to do with it too, but it was not the direct cause of daily life being so unbearable).
But day to day, what really killed every initiative, every improvement, every little bit of relief that might have been is that bureaucrats controlling the platforms were forced to take a 0.00000001% chance of terrible personal consequences every time they said "yes you can do that".
The result was: no to EVERYTHING. Absolutely every, every, everything. This law works the same way. Youtube will be forced to do deny everything. So will facebook, reddit, ycombinator, ...
Copyright can only exist if ALL the rest of society is constantly on the lookout for violations. Sorry, but that's just not worth it.
This is really about corporations flagrantly violating people's rights for their own profit.
We aren't sending anyone to the gulag. Just wanting them to fairly compensate those who produce the content they sell ads on and otherwise benefit from.
How much are you willing to pay per post to post on HN? Because that's what you're basically asking for. If you force companies to vet every single post a user makes and they have to take responsibility for it, then they'll have a rather substantial monetary value attached to each post you make.
Copyright is theft. It is theft of people's natural right to expression and sharing. We've seen that if you give publishers an inch, they'll take the whole 9 yards and sue you for there not being 20 yards, because their accountants predicted a 30 yard profit. At this point I don't think I can honestly support any kind of copyright law. Some limited author's right law, one that cannot be reassigned, sublicensed, etc. might work, but I have my reservations for that as well.
Big Content is certainly making a strong case that copyright law is incompatible with the internet, and arguably with any kind of freedom of expression.
This does not in any way diminish my point. If I contract a publisher to print my book or movie is still not right for Google to steal that book or movie and put ads on it.
I don't know why society let's them get away with that.
It doesn't, though. They are obligated to immediately remove this as soon as they attain knowledge of the infringement.
You, however, are cheerleading an obligation to somehow prevent anything infringing on anyone's rights from appearing online in the first place – which is just practically impossible, and any forced attempt is bound to massively cut into free speech.
After all, there's no registry of copyrighted content. Everything creative is copyrighted automatically. If I take a photo of a tree and send it to you, according to Article 13 a service like Instagram now has to (a) make best efforts to acquire a license for that photo from me and (b) prevent you from uploading it there – how on earth should they do either?
Making platforms directly liable for all posts/uploads in practice just means they can no longer accept posts/uploads – not that artists will magically get rich.
You gave instagram a license to share your content.
I'm pretty sure, neither Adam Curtis nor the BBC gave Google a license to share Hypernormalization or sell ads on it. If I buy the DVD of it and show it with a protector outside for free on a summer evening for anyone to watch I could be arrested.
That world makes no sense to me. It's unfair and wrong.
> You gave instagram a license to share your content.
No, in the scenario you're responding to, someone sent you a photo that is not and has never been on Instagram. Instagram is now required by law to prevent you from uploading it, because you are not the copyright owner of the image. How does that make sense?
Right. So, Article 13 apparently requires prescreening material. That's specifically why people are up in arms.
Everyone is pretty much on board with the necessity for providers to take down content in response to infringement reports, albeit with a side argument about how current implementations of this favour big money over small creators.
You could be taken to court and ordered to pay damages if someone reports you – but not the owner of the garden you're projecting it in. And you definitely don't have copyright cops show up at your door pre-emptively everytime you turn on your projector, without whose approval nothing will even play, do you?
"You gave instagram a license to share your content."
No, that's not the flow here. A takes a picture and sends it to B. Whatever method A sends it to B can be presumed to at least have a license to do that much. Let's call it Instagram to be safe, which is a Facebook property. Google, an entirely separate entity which has never heard of this photo before in its life, is now obligated to prevent B from sending it to anybody else.
That requires Google to operate on the basis of knowledge it can't possibly have. That's not good legislation.
The solution the lawmakers will propose is a massive centralized registry. Said massive centralized registry will not be free, because it can't be; it's going to have huge operational costs if nothing else, and if it has any liabilities, it's going to need a massive war chest. (This war chest will basically be a slush fund for Big Media; when it gets big enough, lo and behold, there will be a lawsuit that coincidentally just happens to drain it, and, remarkably, the registry will basically throw the game. This can then be used to say they need even more money for the war chest, and they'll raise their fees, so the slush fund is even bigger for the next lawsuit.) When Instagram is obligated to use it, they're going to have to pass the costs on to the user. Once this all shakes out, A is going to find out that they can't send a photo to B without paying money to the copyright registry, despite their complete lack of desire or need to do so.
Eventually, when it turns out the centralized registry doesn't work either because people will start using the services that are excluded from it, the only solution will be to block people from uploading anything that could be copyrighted.
But given the expansive copyright laws that currently exist, "anything that could be copyrighted" is pretty much "anything". Don't worry, though, Big IP will have a solution to that, too; only their stuff will be worthy of being copyrighted. Probably it'll get a special "media copyright" or something, rather than contracting current copyright laws. Now big media will get special privileges that you can't have.
And copyright law will have come full circle, and instead of promoting innovation, will be 100% dedicated to protecting entrenched incumbents.
I'm don't particularly feel like I'm deploying a lot of rhetoric and trying to be scary about something that isn't going to happen. These are all very high-probability outcomes. I wouldn't be surprised the media companies behind their closed doors are totally gunning for the special privilege end games. They aren't stupid. It would incentivize them to continue to be pissy about violations, even after the registry is in place, and complain about the violations they still see, which will mystify anyone who doesn't understand the end goal.
The really sick part is that I suspect Big Media is overestimating the amount of money it will make doing this. It'll do immense damage to the societal fabric, and recover only a small portion of it, making them very heavily-stupid-trending B2 bandits by the basic laws of human stupidity: http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...
This will be more difficult to get anywhere with in the US, as numerous elements of what I just outlined will have massive conflict with the First Amendment. And while laws often follow the money rather than the logic, it's worth remembering that, technically, should copyright and the First Amendment come into conflict, the latter, as an amendment, would win.
(Nominally, it ought to conflict with a number of European constitutions as well, but Europe appears to believe it unsophisticated and the sign of intellectual inferiority to be too bound by what constitutions say like those vulgar Americans who are always arguing over it.)
This is more like owner of a noticeboard being liable of things posted there.
Either have a human verify everything nailed (the upload filter) or just remove the noticeboard. Which one will happen?
Libaries and bookstores are more comparable to online shops. I have no qualms for Steam being liable for selling a pirated game. Shops should have verification on products being sold.
> Why should companies like Google be allowed to profit off content creators' work
> without complying with those content creators' licenses?
If it's about profit, simply having YouTube pay all revenue from infringing videos to the real owner, might be a much better idea than to block all content.
The process might work like this: A publishes something, gets revenue from it. B claims copyright. YT suspends payment to A until the issue is settled. When B turns out to be right, B gets all the withheld revenue plus however much YT already paid to A, either to be paid by A, or to be withheld by YT from other payments to A.
Or it turns out B was wrong, willfully so, and A just lost their income. Sadly, this was A's most popular content and, since A was living paycheck to paycheck, they were unable to pay their rent and were evicted.
B went on to do the same to many other small content creators, because B has 100 million dollars in the bank.
Then A disputes the claim a YouTube asks B if the they are sure its infringing on their copyright. B lies and says yes, then YouTube sides with B while A gets a copyright strike, 3 of which and you lose your channel.
Scammers are also extorting money from Youtubers using this feature of Youtube's claim process. See: ObbyRaidz
In case of conflict, YouTube shouldn't blindly side with the most powerful party as they're currently doing. Legally the fairest way would be an impartial judge, but in practice small players can't afford the legal representation for that.
Yeah, there does need to be a way to restrict bad actors. And this is already a real problem: major corporations claiming copyright over other people's original content on YouTube, and that original content getting blocked as a result. When a company does that regularly, submits too many false positives, their ability to claim ownership should be restricted somehow. At least there should be some sort of reasonable consequence. But at the very least, the original owner should retain ownership and eventually get their money again, and that's not currently happening.
In one vote in the EP, something similar was proposed as an alternative:
* Make (big) platforms provide APIs with which rightholders can check new posts for their copyrighted content and request either removal or monetisation
* Give uploaders 48 hours to contest removal requests before they are honoured, during which their uploads stay online, but may be removed from search results
* Once an infringement is identified and not contested, all earned revenue goes to the rightholders
That's rather sensible. However, it was voted down in favor of just making platforms legally liable for all uploads. https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-showdown/ (The "EPP group" proposals won – that's the Parliament position, not to be confused with the Council's, which are yet to be fully reconciled).
I'm strongly considering voting straight Pirate Party for the EP from now on. Copyright and internet freedom seems to be by far the most important concern for the Europarliament these days.
The big problem is to get the majority of voters on board.
When the original proposal was shot down, we were happy because we thought/hoped it was shot down for our reasons, but even then there were signs that some parties in the EU opposed it because it wasn't quite terrible enough. So now they made it worse.
I hope we can keep getting this shot down, but it seems to be important enough for the copyright monopolists to keep pushing this, and public opinion may eventually tire of this.
The good thing is that EU elections are coming in May. We need to know which parties support this so we can campaign against them. Let them bleed in the elections if they won't listen.