EU Takes First Step in Passing Controversial Copyright Law That Could 'Censor the Internet' (theverge.com)

The European Union has taken the first step in passing new copyright legislation that critics say will tear the internet apart. From a report: This morning, the EU's Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favor of the legislation, called the Copyright Directive. Although most of the directive simply updates technical language for copyright law in the age of the internet, it includes two highly controversial provisions. These are Article 11, a "link tax," which would force online platforms like Facebook and Google to buy licenses from media companies before linking to their stories; and Article 13, an "upload filter," which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement. (Think of it like YouTube's Content ID system but for the whole internet.) EU lawmakers critical of the legislation say these Articles may have been proposed with good intentions -- like protecting copyright owners -- but are vaguely worded and ripe for abuse.

Comments

Forget "good intentions"

[Nova Express]

Laws that transfer power from citizens to the government are never about "good intentions," they're about control.

One of the first things they'll start censoring is content critical of sacred Eurocratic initiatives. Video opposing unassimilated Muslim immigration into Europe? Sorry, that's banned because we call it "hate speech." Video suggesting Italy should leave the Euro? Sorry, we have to ban that because it endangers "economic stability."

Good intentions have nothing to do with it. It's all about censorship and control.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[Joce640k]

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

The "media companies" are the ones fighting for this law - in the hope Google and Facebook will pay them for the right to link to their stories.

It's going to really funny to watch their faces after Google and Facebook stop linking to them.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[loonycyborg]

It's all lies. You won't automatically become a paedophile if you'll glimpse some child porn, so banning such content is pointless. People will themselves shun such resources. Those laws are primarily aimed at something about what many people disagree whether it is nasty content or not, mostly political dissent. Copyright always existed to ensure religious purity and ideological consistency based on idea that rulers and hereditary elites are owners of nations and people in them, so they can alter ideological colors of their populace for their pleasure.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[Joce640k]

It's like this whole model has been upended and spun around by 180 degrees.

Only in the imaginations of a few deranged old men.

I've seen them arguing, it really doesn't occur to them that Google will simply turn of the links and their web site will vanish from the 'net.

Even funnier: That nobody will want to advertise on a site that Google doesn't link to.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[penandpaper]

the biggest defender of freedom of speech is often the European Court of Human Rights,

How do you quantify that? They have nice exceptions built in to allow the outlawing of "hate speech". I find it hard to believe that any institution that values free speech would allow arbitrary subjective definitions to permeate their interpretations as though they promote freedom when those interpretations are limiting in freedom by design.

The SCOTUS doesn't allow hate speech and has protected the speech of minorities with awful opinions, like the KKK or neo-nazis precisely because freedom of speech means that my rights start where your feelings begin and if you can outlaw arbitrary subjective definitions, like 'hate speech', then you do not have freedom of speech.

SCOTUS: 1
ECHR: 0

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[AmiMoJo]

Actually the ECHR doesn't say anything about hate speech. Here is the entire article relating to freedom of expression:

Article 10 â" Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

This is broadly in line with the position in the US, where there are exceptions for things that may injure others, state secrets, libel, doctor-patient confidentiality and the like.

The anti-hate-speech laws in the UK have been severely limited by the ECHR, which is one of the reasons why the current government wants to get rid of it.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[tepples]

When did the whole model change here?

Sometime around the introduction of "retargeting" or "remarketing", where websites show you ads for sites you have recently visited. Unlike previous ads, which were relevant to the demographics associated with the website or the subject of a particular article, the new crop of ads in the 2010s were intended to be relevant to each individual viewer's browsing history. Previously, this sort of behavioral micro-targeting was seen as a curiosity, such as the "TiVo thinks I'm gay" observation from fourth quarter 2002. But as interest-based advertising became the new normal, viewers became aware of tools to blockintrusive practices and the Internet data use associated with client-side real-time bidding. As more visitors started to block ads, website publishers saw the hit to their primary revenue stream and started putting everything past the abstract behind a paywall, attempting to convert occasional visitors to long-term subscribers.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[penandpaper]

Tell me more about holocaust denial in Europe. I also like that such subjective conditions and restrictions such as "prevention of disorder" or "morals" are reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech yet the ECHR is the biggest defender of freedom of speech. Seems to me rather contradictory. Do you think the government can limit that right based on dubious philosophies like morals and disorder or vague legalities like "necessity in a democratic state"?

How can the ECHR be the biggest defender of freedom of speech when it has arbitrary subjective exceptions to limit that freedom?

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[Anonymous Coward]

This already happened in Germany in 2014. Several newspapers complained that Google should pay them for showing snippets of their articles and links to the source in Google News. They wanted 11% of gross worldwide revenue on any search that showed one of their articles. Google removed them from the service and page views at these publications dropped. Well, these newspapers didn't like that one bit and complained that Google should be required to carry their articles. Fortunately, German regulators shot down the idea of forced publication.

Same the happened in Belgium a few years before. Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[Solandri]

The "media companies" are the ones fighting for this law - in the hope Google and Facebook will pay them for the right to link to their stories.

It's going to really funny to watch their faces after Google and Facebook stop linking to them.

And it's going to result in a bunch of sites currently with small market share explicitly offering a no-fee linking license. Google, Facebook, etc. will link to those sites instead, resulting in those sites gobbling up the market share currently owned by the sites wanting to be paid. And everything will go right back to the way it is now. Except Google et al will now have explicit permission to link for free. And the sites wanting to be paid for linking will have disappeared into obscurity, hoisted by their own petard.

The car analogy is that these media sites think of Internet traffic as cars on a road, and Google as a company which puts up a Google News billboard in front of their store, blocking people who are traveling the road from seeing their actual store. So they're demanding that Google pay them. What they don't realize is that Google isn't putting up a billboard. Google is the road. And if they demand Google et al pay them, those companies are simply going to move the road so it no longer goes in front of their store.

Re:Forget "good intentions"

[Hognoxious]

Seconded.

You can reword it as "If you're malicious, you can get away with it by acting stupid".

Alternatively, "Give bastards and assholes the benefit of the doubt".

Fuck all of that twice.

How

[Anonymous Coward]

...and Article 13, an "upload filter," which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement.

Do the people writing this crap have ANY IDEA how the internet works?

Re:How

[bobbied]

...and Article 13, an "upload filter," which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement.

Do the people writing this crap have ANY IDEA how the internet works?

Do you really want the answer to that question? I mean it's OBVIOUS to me.

However, the politicians of the world are pretty much all in the same boat. Hardly ever do they know anything about the real issues they are trying to "fix" and most don't really care. It's not about actually fixing something, it's about being seen as trying to do something, right or wrong, about seeming to care, about getting covered in the press. So, if you hear a politician making confident assertions about some subject and how it should be fixed, chances are they are dead wrong.

The wonderful EU net tax

[AHuxley]

The link tax :
Link to a newspaper in the EU? Thats a copyright problem that can result in having to pay a company in the EU.
Quote from an EU nation newspaper? Thats copyright. Show the EU payment was made per line quoted.

The upload filter
A cartoon? Is it a political meme? Does it related to Spanish or French politics? No upload for you on social media.
Report the account to French and Spanish authorities. Is the meme funny and political? Could it cause an EU political party to be considered funny? No social media access for that cartoon.
A message about Catalan? No EU freedom for you. Spain gets a report on that social media account and requests an upload ban. The EU bans the image.
An image from a movie? Thats an EU tax for using that copyright frame from a movie.
An image from a movie with a French political leader added in as a meme? Thats going to get reported and banned. A copyright fine must be paid.

SJW want to stop news getting linked and their politics getting turned into a funny meme.
So EU political leaders tax and censor the internet. Thanks for the new tax and internet censorship attempt EU bureaucrats.

Article 15

[KiloByte]

I somehow don't see much uproar against art 15, which is worse than 11 and 13. It pretty much forbids any free software licenses, as it disallows perpetual licenses where payment is deemed to be too cheap.

Re:Article 15

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're looking at a more up to date version, you seem to be wrong. The text of article 15 says:

Member States shall ensure that authors and performers are entitled to request additional, appropriate remuneration from the party with whom they entered into a contract for the exploitation of the rights when the remuneration originally agreed is disproportionately low compared to the subsequent relevant revenues and benefits derived from the exploitation of the works or performances.

Re:Article 15

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this seems aimed at record companies and movie studios who use accounting voodoo to give artists small change compared to what they make. Key words here are "contract for the exploitation of the rights" so doubtful this could be used as kiloByte says.

Re:Article 15

[halivar]

That is absolutely a problem for open-source.
1) Developer A writes free software B under an open-source license.
2) Companies X, Y, and Z incorporate B into their products.
3) X, Y, and Z make a brazillion dollars.

This happens all the time. Now we can add step 4:
4) A asserts his Article 15 rights to extract money from X, Y, and Z.

Maybe that seems fair to you. But if this scenario happens with any regularity, companies will cease using FOSS altogether. People will be putting out free software and the corporate world will say "don't look, don't touch."

Re:Article 15

[halivar]

Article 15 applies regardless of previous agreements, as stated in the very text itself. I must not be much of a programmer, because I actually read the documentation.

Re:Crazy European Privacy Laws...

[Joce640k]

This is where all those crazy European internet laws like GDPR inevitably lead.

Nah, you don't get it.

The media is run by a bunch of old men who imagine that Google needs them, that Google will pay good money to link to them. They've actually been fighting for this law for about a decade.

Yes, it's going to be fucking hilarious when Google stops linking and they disappear from the Internet.

Everything Is Copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I submit all my stuff so it'll become part of what gets reported when scanned? I have about 1tb of home videos and photos as well as all my writing assignments from since high school and I can go through all my old accounts and submit all the posts I've written. I use a desktop email client so submitting all the email I've written should be easy.

Clinton couldn't have stopped DMCA

[tepples]

President Clinton could not have stopped the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from becoming law.

The Constitution allows 20 percent of either house to force a recorded vote or 34 percent to uphold a presidential veto. If a bill lacks enough dissent to force a recorded vote, there certainly isn't enough to uphold a veto.

In 1998, Newtros Newtros-Gingy's crop of Republicans still controlled the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The DMCA passed both houses by unanimous consent, also called a voice vote. Which if any Republican members of Congress went on record as opposing the DMCA?

Re:Crazy European Privacy Laws...

[houghi]

Some laws are good. Some are bad.. Here one gave power to the people, the other takes it away, (not the same thing they gave.) GDPR is a good one, this is a bad one if this is the final form.

Re:Crazy European Privacy Laws...

[Joce640k]

If I were Google I'd be working on my new price list:

How much should they pay me to go back to linking to their news sites ... ?

Re:Trump / Russia - Treason, Propaganda

[cayenne8]

Moreover, Trump has acquiesced to Russia's invasion of Crimea

Look, I"m no huge Trump fan, but didn't the Crimea invasion and occupation take place under Obama's watchful eye?

Re:Trump / Russia - Treason, Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

And Russia was kicked out of the G-8 and sanctioned Russia.

Now Trump, flush with Russian bribes and money laundering wants to let Russia back in the G-7, remove sanctions, and declare that Russia had a right to invade its neighbor (our ally Ukraine) and steal its land.

Treason, bribery, money laundering, and the pee tape have given Russia total control over our country's executive branch. It's time to lock him up!

Nobody anticipated the level of DMCA abuse.Counter

[raymorris]

I was involved in multiple drafts of the DMCA before it became law, discussing the draft with people involved in many different aspects of the internet. People had different concerns and things were changed in the drafts to improve it.

Three major categories of people had different concerns:
Content producers
Hosting companies and ISPs
Web sites using content

Previously, when a content producer saw their content was being unlawfully copied on a web site, they would contact the hosting company. The liability of the hosting company was questionable - probably AFTER having received notice, they would most likely be liable if they didn't take it down, but that was murky. Different hosting companies had different policies. Some shut the site down right away. Some ignored the notices, which meant content producers would contact their upstream providers, who would often put pressure on the hosting company. Different companies had different policies about protecting their customers from invalid complaints (fair use etc). Most would just shut it down - they didn't want to get involved in a legal fight. It was all very inconsistent and messy.

Here's the process we ended up with:

Content provider would notify the site or hosting company, identifying exactly what infringed copyright.

Hosting company would inform the site owner, who had three options:
A. Deny the infringement (counter-notice)
B. Take down the content
C. Ignore the notice

If the site owner / poster denies there is infringement, that's the end of it. The hosting company is not liable, because they've received a statement saying there is no infringement. For some reason we didn't anticipate, very few people choose this option. It's the best and easiest option if you have content that isn't infringing.

Once the site owner or the person who posted the content says it doesn't infringe, the DMCA notice process ends and the content producer has to sue in federal court in order to move forward.

If the site owner sees there is likely infringement and takes the content down, that resolves the complaint process also. (Though the producer *could* still sue in federal court).

If the site owner ignores the notice and doesn't say "nope, not infringing", the web host will take down the content. This is the worst option. We didn't expect it would be the most common. Much better for the web site to respond to the notice somehow - either by taking down infringing content if they agree, or by sending back a note saying it's not infringing (a counter notice).

That seemed like a good, fair process, to most people. It's not exactly what content producers would choose if they got to pick, and not exactly what people re-using content would pick, but it's a fair compromise, we thought.

Two things didn't work out the way we expected. First, very few people send back a counter-notice. I can't explain why this is. It's so easy to just send back an email saying "nope, I disagree. This isn't infringement because it's educational fair use. That essentially nullifies the original DMCA notice.

Secondly, perhaps BECAUSE almost nobody responds to a DMCA notice, some producers started sending out way too many notices, not being sufficiently careful that they are accurate. Nobody anticipated that at the time the law was written. If I had an opportunity to do it over again, I would have suggested adding penalities for recklessly sending noticed, but that possibility never came up in the discussion.

Initially, the law was welcomed by most people in all the different areas. It set up a consistent, fair process that almost everyone used. Most people running sites and posting content were reasonably happy with it - they didn't violate copyright anyway, at least not much (maybe some clip art), and if they received a notice they'd gladly swap out any infringing content. They were glad to know that in a dispute, the hosting company would back them up - as long as they notified the hosting company that there WAS a

Re:If you can't link

[jez9999]

I'll keep watching Youtube videos that report the facts in the articles (perfectly legal since they're facts) from guys like Secular Talk, the Young Turks and the BBC and get my news that way

That'll make you so far left I'm surprised you haven't fallen off yet.

Re:Nobody anticipated the level of DMCA abuse.Coun

[loonycyborg]

Counter notices are rarely sent because existence of such a possibility is rarely advertised. More people would use it if, say, youtube would present you a form to contest the takedown automatically once it started blocking you.

Actually we asked you to participate, on Slashdot

[raymorris]

> I was correct. Of course, nobody asked me.
> It was obviously written by big copyright owners who were writing it for their own purposes, rather than being a general-purpose law

If it were "written by big copyright owners for their own purposes", you wouldn't be able to end it by simply saying "I disagree, I don't think I'm infringing", and have the content stay up.

We DID ask you for input, we DID ask you to participate. Specifically *I* asked right here on Slashdot.

Re:Nobody anticipated the level of DMCA abuse.Coun

[tepples]

One practical problem with the counter-notification process is that the complainant learns the alleged infringer's home address. That sort of breaks operational security for any fan project that isn't 100% certain that its use is a fair use.

Another is hosts being slow to react. I sent a counter-notification back in 2009 for a video reporting on a video game publisher's policy toward fans. YouTube took longer than the legally allowed 14 business days to reinstate my video, though I initially suspected the timing relative to the Memorial Day holiday was partly the culprit. (Three years later, I voluntarily retracted that video after the publisher won a lawsuit against another fan project.)

Re:Popcorn ready...

[Hognoxious]

I doubt it. Maggie II will probably come up with something even worse.