The EU's Controversial Copyright Law Has Been Rejected -- For Now (bbc.com)

Members of the European Parliament have voted to reject a controversial copyright law in its current form, deciding to return to the issue in September. From a report: The law would have put a greater responsibility on individual websites to check for copyright infringements. But the web's inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and others had expressed concerns about the proposed rules, which they said threatened internet freedom. Opponents greeted the decision as a victory. Julia Reda, a Pirate Party MEP who had campaigned against the legislation tweeted: "Great success: Your protests have worked! The European Parliament has sent the copyright law back to the drawing board." BPI Music, which represents UK record labels, had supported the bill and tweeted: "We respect the decision... we will work with MEPs over the next weeks to explain how the proposed directive will benefit not just European creativity, but also internet users and the technology sector."

Comments

Bullshit ...

[Anonymous Coward]

BPI Music, which represents UK record labels, had supported the bill and tweeted: "We respect the decision... we will work with MEPs over the next weeks to explain how the proposed directive will benefit not just European creativity, but also internet users and the technology sector."

Lies, damned lies, and the public statements by the assholes in the copyright cartels.

This will benefit nobody but the copyright people, and greatly harm everyone else.

So much bullshit.

Re:Bullshit ...

[The Cynical Critic]

Even if it wasn't an industry as heavy in lobbying as the record industry, lobbyist pushed bills tend to be like slasher villains. No matter how many times and how gruesomely you kill them, they'll be back before you know it.

The worst part about this bill is the (rather aptly numbered) 13th article and how it forces content platforms to automatically scan content for copyrighted works, but completely forgets about fair use for purposes like satire, criticism, education and how nobody's come up with an even remotely accurate automated way of telling those uses apart from copyright infringement. Not only does this significantly increase the cost of trying to create a social media service in Europe, it's also rife for abuse where people use copyright to stifle free speech.

The second really dumb part, the 11th article, is really just the publishing industry shooting itself in the foot. In Germany the publishing house Springer lobbied in a similar law and all it did was cause companies like Google and Facebook to just become careful and not display links to articles by Springer owned publications, which cause readership and advertisement revenue to drop for these publications.

BMI's explanation

[sconeu]

How will it benefit internet users?

Well, it will make our executives a lot of money, and those executives use the Internet, so it benefits internet users.

Never forget

[Rik Sweeney]

The good guys need to be lucky every time. The bad guy only needs to be lucky once.

It was a proposed law with two bad elements in.

[Sique]

It was not just about turning platform providers into preemptive Copyright cops. There was a second provision: the Ancillary Copyright for press publishers. Similar laws were tried in several EU countries (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Germany), with not much success, as the belgian law is withdrawn, the german version is still enforced, but for EUR 3 million in ligitation cost, it made so far around EUR 20,000 for press editors, and the spanish version caused Google News to no longer listing any spanish publications.

It was always argued that the large U.S. based internet companies like Google and Facebook would profit from being able to list snippeds of online press articles in their search results, news aggregations and timelines, and thus they should pay the press publishers for the priviledge to get those snippets. As it turned out, the true priviledge was for the press publishers to be listed, because as soon as Google delisted press publishers demanding payments according to the Ancillary Copyright, their traffic numbers plummeted. So Belgium withdrew the law, and in Germany, all press publishers gave Google a free license (and with lawsuits managed to drive all competing news aggregators out of business).

Now they attempt the same in the whole EU, hoping to get a critical mass large enough to get Google to agree into payments for the little snippets.