Slashdot Mirror
European Court of Justice To Outlaw Net Filtering
jrepin writes "Today, the European Court of Justice gave a preliminary opinion that will have far-reaching implications in the fight against overaggressive copyright monopoly abusers. It is not a final verdict, but the advocate general's position; the Court generally follows this. The Advocate Generals says that no ISP can be required to filter the Internet, and particularly not to enforce the copyright monopoly."
In a shocking development, the famous tech web site "Slashdot" has been found to post misleading headlines *again*. While the european court is moving to ban internet blocking without a law, it clearly states that it would be legal if a specific law would allow and specify the conditions for it.
Hello, Slashdot. I had intended to update this article tomorrow with a more detailed analysis, but given that it's now Slashdot Top Story, I posted the followup immediately. For your convenience:
What this does is say that:
One, no court may impose an ISP with an order to filter, in particular not because of enforcement of copyright monopolies;
Two, such filtering is a reduction of fundamental rights, so
Three, if laws are written requiring an ISP filter or block the internet, such laws must conform to very strict criteria that are applied to laws limiting fundamental rights. They must be effective, they must be proportionate, and they must be defensible in a democratic society. While this sounds like political wishywashing, it has some very specific meanings. It is useful to compare to what laws have been written to prevent terrorism: these laws are held to that standard, which the copyright industry wants badly to supersede. The Attorney General also goes into detail how such laws must be transparent and predictable.
What this does not say is that:
Four, no censorship must ever take place.
Five, no ISP may choose to limit what they present as "The Internet".
In conclusion:
Six, it has been the modus operandi of the copyright industry to threaten ISPs with "block to our wishes or we'll take you to court". This has been their standard operating procedure for the past couple of years, in order to establish enough precendents to get them written into law. Today's verdict, or potential verdict, gives those ISPs the power to say "go play on the highway, parasites, we have an order from the highest possible court saying no court can force us to do that. We care more about our customers than about obsolete irrelevants".
Seven, this is the highest court in Europe, referring to the (equivalent of) Constitution of Europe. Thus, there are no courts and no laws that can supersede this. No EU Directive can change this (potential) verdict. The way forward for the copyright industry appears permanently blocked; I hold it as absolutely improbable that they'll get paragraphs in the referred European Charter of Human Rights that put the copyright monopoly before the sanctity of correspondence, of personal data, and freedom of information.
There. Do I get karma for posting from my own blog when it is TFA?
Oh, and yay - my server is holding. *celebrate*
I rarely pull out the corporate shill card, but I'm pretty sure you neatly fit the category: someone who supports a corporate benefit that directly conflicts with the benefit of society in general - bonus if the UID is near 2M. Let me explain to you why I think that, and it is primarily because you ask a lot of leading questions where your hoped for answer is in conflict with reality.
The engines that brought us basically all music from the 1950s until today are going away, and there isn't really any replacement.
Wrong. Those engines were radio and pressed media. They didn't go away, they were replaced by a better distribution medium: the Internet.
Your comments about publicly supported music ring true in the jazz and classical genres. I doubt if we're going to see subsidies to support music in other areas because there are no education bodies with an interest in that.
Wrong. The most common education bodies teach guitar (local music shops), and the big music departments cover everything from medieval string music to jazz to grunge rock to avant-guarde atonal music. The educational support is broad and deep, as is the demand for music. The only place where demand is narrow and shallow is in the big record labels. If it doesn't fit the Justin Bieber/Britney Spears template, it gets buried.
Another thing is, even if (according to another poster) I own a computer so I should be able to produce music at just as high quality as anyone has ever produced, if I'm burning CD-Rs and handing them out at shows for $5, what does that really do for music in our cultural consciousness?
And this is why they teach you to always answer your rhetorical questions, just in case someone doesn't follow your lead. I'll tell you what it does for our cultural consciousness: it enriches it. If the record is good, I'll pass it to my friends. Hey, listen to this! This guy/girl rocks. They'll pass it around. They'll buy the next record, evangelize it as well, go to shows - the whole nine yards. If they don't like it, it quietly dies. Will that person make billions from that one record? Probably not - and there is no reason that anyone should make billions from a one time activity.
Is an album great if no one ever hears it?
Let me turn the question around: in the age of instant world-wide distribution, is an album bad if no one wants to hear it or distribute it? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. Otherwise, it would get distributed.
Perhaps, but what has it done for us? What has it done for us versus what could have been done?
This means that your next questions have been answered already as well: it's completely irrelevant what could have happened, because a lot of people decided not to move the record into our general cultural consciousness. That's the definition of an item not being culturally relevant.
Music doesn't change the world by osmosis, it has to enter many millions of ears.
Correct. And the Internet makes sure that everyone can put music into many millions of ears. What has changed from the past 50 years - and where the past 50 years were a complete historical aberration - is that there aren't any more a few dozen people who control what music reaches the ears of millions of people. And it scares the living daylights out of these people, because their jobs have permanently disappeared. Instead, music is back where it should be: in the public consciousness, where it floats to the top based on how many people distribute it.
In short: your entire premise actually goes against the text that you're promoting. The last 50 years were a complete destruction of music as a cultural phenomenon, and were instead the age of music as an industry. The Internet is changing that, and I hope to God that you find a job that doesn't have "destroy culture to monetize it" in its job description.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You know what's making the real music suffer? Not the internet, but large retail chains that only stock the popular shit and out compete the smaller record stores that actually have lesser known works. The whole industry was set to fail sooner or later, the internet did nothing to change that. If you are a budding artist, embrace things like last.fm, those are the future.