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EU Wants To Require Platforms To Filter Uploaded Content (Including Code) (github.com)
A new copyright proposal in the EU would require code-sharing platforms like GitHub and SourceForge to monitor all content that users upload for potential copyright infringement. "The proposal is aimed at music and videos on streaming platforms, based on a theory of a 'value gap' between the profits those platforms make from uploaded works and what copyright holders of some uploaded works receive," reports The GitHub Blog. "However, the way it's written captures many other types of content, including code."
Upload filters, also known as "censorship machines," are some of the most controversial elements of the copyright proposal, raising a number of concerns including: -Privacy: Upload filters are a form of surveillance, effectively a "general monitoring obligation" prohibited by EU law
-Free speech: Requiring platforms to monitor content contradicts intermediary liability protections in EU law and creates incentives to remove content
-Ineffectiveness: Content detection tools are flawed (generate false positives, don't fit all kinds of content) and overly burdensome, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that might not be able to afford them or the resulting litigation Upload filters are especially concerning for software developers given that: -Software developers create copyrightable works -- their code -- and those who choose an open source license want to allow that code to be shared
-False positives (and negatives) are especially likely for software code because code often has many contributors and layers, often with different licensing for different components
-Requiring code-hosting platforms to scan and automatically remove content could drastically impact software developers when their dependencies are removed due to false positives The EU Parliament continues to introduce new proposals for Article 13 but these issues remain. MEP Julia Reda explains further in a recent proposal from Parliament.
Upload filters, also known as "censorship machines," are some of the most controversial elements of the copyright proposal, raising a number of concerns including: -Privacy: Upload filters are a form of surveillance, effectively a "general monitoring obligation" prohibited by EU law
-Free speech: Requiring platforms to monitor content contradicts intermediary liability protections in EU law and creates incentives to remove content
-Ineffectiveness: Content detection tools are flawed (generate false positives, don't fit all kinds of content) and overly burdensome, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that might not be able to afford them or the resulting litigation Upload filters are especially concerning for software developers given that: -Software developers create copyrightable works -- their code -- and those who choose an open source license want to allow that code to be shared
-False positives (and negatives) are especially likely for software code because code often has many contributors and layers, often with different licensing for different components
-Requiring code-hosting platforms to scan and automatically remove content could drastically impact software developers when their dependencies are removed due to false positives The EU Parliament continues to introduce new proposals for Article 13 but these issues remain. MEP Julia Reda explains further in a recent proposal from Parliament.
The US encourages free speech...so it can illegally monitor it, surveil it, wiretap it, store it in a datacenter, catalog it, and index it.
Free speech? Yes, keep speaking please.
Indeed, because:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Hello, someone who actually works at the European Commission here. The EU in general loves the idea of open source, but they love the idea of 'consumer protection' even more.
Consumer protection is a fancy way of confusing the protection of citizens rights against large corporations, while simultaneously allowing those corporations to define the laws that protect the citizens.
This legislations is the EPITOME of the sorts of problems we see in the EC. A good intentioned protection written by 'consumer protection groups' (media companies in this case) handed off to clueless functionaires who don't know what source code actually is...or worse, the consumer protection groups go directly to the parliamentary parties and convince them to pass legislation requiring the EC to do this, and then rinse and repeat the situation.
Intentions are good. Its not a conspiracy, unless you think a ship of fools is a conspiracy. Its a damn shame and will be looked back on as one of the primary things that COULD have stopped the next war... :(
It doesn't matter. The goal is not to stop copyright infringement; the goal is to stop the free flow of information across the 'unregulated' internet. And that especially includes political information: communication between people who don't approve of the EU, who oppose immigration, etc. So what if the only way to create such a filter is by having a person check every upload? That will mean the goal is reached: instead of being able to freely post ones opinion anywhere, every little piece of 'content' must be checked manually first, thus vastly reducing volume and flow of information of any kind. That effectively disables the free communication between people, and is precisely what the EU is going for.
The US has civil asset forfeiture. ;-).
The US has citizens, that did nothing wrong, barred from voting.
The US has TSA and constitution free zone.
The US does not have universal health care.
The US has gerrymandering.
The US does not mandate paid parental leave.
The US has trigger happy cops with tanks.
The US has death penalty.
The US has for profit private jails.
And even if all of that was resolved, you still have Trump for president
And, contrary to you, I can back all that with links.
Call me an idiot, but I'd take banned holocaust denial over that any day.