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The EU Could Vote To Wreck the Internet Tomorrow (vice.com)
The EU is preparing to vote Wednesday on sweeping new copyright guidelines that could dramatically reshape the internet and potentially harm your ability to share content online. From a report: As noted previously, the proposal is being driven by rights holders frightened by technological change, including brick and mortar publishers eager to blame companies like Google for their failure to evolve in the modern internet era. And while the EU's new Copyright Directive may be a well intentioned effort to modernize EU copyright rules, it still contains numerous provisions that could significantly harm the open internet. Most of those provisions remain largely intact despite a July vote that sent the proposal back to the drawing board in the wake of widespread activist backlash. The most problematic provisions of the plan include new licensing fees for sharing anything more than "insubstantial" portions of content. Such a "link tax" could prove costly for small news outlets, and, depending on final wording, could put volunteer-centric organizations like Wikipedia at risk since the original proposal failed to include a noncommercial exception.
The most controversial component of the plan mandates that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption (read: most of them) would need to employ automated copyright systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works at the website owner's expense. As we've consistently highlighted, such filters routinely don't work very well.
The most controversial component of the plan mandates that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption (read: most of them) would need to employ automated copyright systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works at the website owner's expense. As we've consistently highlighted, such filters routinely don't work very well.
If that doesn't get my fellow EU-citizens up in arms against the EU, well, then what will?
The only thing that upsets EU subjects is taking away their free stuff. They'll put up with every other debasement imaginable as long as they keep getting free stuff. They'll accept any level of violence from the invaders their rulers invite in, they'll live in streets filled with trash when being extorted by garbage men, they'll wait for months to see a doctor, they'll stand by while their rulers demean them for lamenting the destruction of their own culture... it's all fine as long as santa clause government keeps them swaddled in free stuff.
Oh, and Donald Trump. Trump makes EU citizens bleed from the ears.
A small but highly amusing part of the reason we elected him.