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Google Warns News Sites May Lose 45 Percent of Traffic If EU Passes Its Copyright Reform (thenextweb.com)
Google's SVP of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, laid out Google's opposition to the EU's highly contested copyright reform rules. "Google warns Article 11 and Article 13 could have catastrophic effects on the creative economy in Europe by hampering user uploads and news sharing," reports The Next Web. From the report: Article 11 in its current form will limit news aggregators' abilities to show snippets of articles. According to Google's own experiments, the impact of it only showing URLs, very short fragments of headlines, and no preview images would be a "substantial traffic loss to news publishers." "Even a moderate version of the experiment (where we showed the publication title, URL, and video thumbnails) led to a 45 percent reduction in traffic to news publishers," Walker explained. "Our experiment demonstrated that many users turned instead to non-news sites, social media platforms, and online video sites -- another unintended consequence of legislation that aims to support high-quality journalism." "Article 11, called the 'link tax' by opponents, requires anyone who copies a snippet of text from a publisher's articles to have a license to do so," reports ZDNet. "Article 13 demands that online platforms filter and block uploads of copyright-infringing material." The European Parliament approved Article 11 and Section 13 in September. The finalized version may be passed in March or April of this year.
Censorship is always funny until it happens to you.
After shadow banning comments, demonetizing and deleting channels for wrongthink on Youtube,
Goolag is finding out how unpleasant arbitrary censorship is, especially when masquerading
as good intentions.
The "link tax" is bad for Google and other news aggregators, bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
A publication can just register a waiver with Google. As I see it, it't simply the fact that the power is in the hands of the publisher.
I mean, regardless of whether you think the rules are correct or not, I think it is highly doubtful that publishers will willingly not give a waiver.
The real issue is that they now have collective bargaining power against Google. That's a completely different issue.
Here is why, Spain tried same type of law not to many years back. News sites in spain saw a massive drop in traffic when google removed their sites from their news feeds.
In other news, Eastern European drug lords warn that drug dealers may loose 45 percent of revenue if EU passes anti-drug legislation. This could have could have catastrophic effects on the drug economy in Europe by hampering user access to cocaine and heroin.
Wording straight from Google, just applied to a slightly different product.
Google should be shut out of the EU completely and forever.
As for the GDPR, it's doing its job, and protecting you from shitty americunt websites that didn't respect your privacy, and were full of fungible bullshit anyway.
The internet was way better before it was commercialized, and we should do everything we can to restore it.
For almost all websites, it is very easy to comply with the GDPR. So far I have only seen one site that actually blocks people from the EU (one attached to the earlier ./ article about Google Fiber).
That doesn't mean that this copyright act is a monumentally stupid idea. Brought to you by the people who came up with that other horrible mess: the cookie law.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Brussels is hoping that people will be driven back to print media or their subscription sites for news. You know, to the days when everyone got their daily news from one, prefereably local source.
Yep, Google didn't blink with Spain, I don't think it'll blink with the EU as a whole either. The EU clearly isn't bothered if a few websites overseas - even if they do include some fairly major US newspapers - decide of their own volition to block EU access because of the GDPR, but they'll absolutely be bothered if it's their own media that's getting cut off at the knees. Google know full well how badly the news sites need them to drive traffic in their direction via search, so I fully expec them to just pull the plug as they did with Spain, wait for the publishers to start screaming and shouting about the lost traffic/revenue, and only then open negotiations on exemptions and workarounds. At that point they'll be doing so from a much stronger position and with an industry that's desperate for a quick solution, so a deal more favourable to Google is much more likely.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Depending, on your evaluation the choice is easily made: "lose a likely small non-target audience".
I understand the rationale. I am not angry at them, it is a consequence of a business decision related to GDPR. I also know how to get around these blocks.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
because it's easier for them to block us than to comply with GDPR. Understandable business decision.
No it's not. It's 100% retarded kneejerkism. It would have taken more effort to code the blocking mechanisms than to simply comply with the GDPR requests. It certainly is one thing, but what it isn't is an understandable business decision.
I've seen plenty of sites block EU visitors due to GDPR. None of them do it for any sensible reasons. In fact compliance with the GDPR probably would have been been just as easy (off the shelf management code for GDPR compliance) than flat out blocking.
You see, if you have a website outside of the EU ... snip ... you are liable
I think you don't understand how laws work. No you are not liable.
you still have to do the work
You mean like customised code to identify Europeans and deliver them custom content like apology sites? How is that more difficult than just implementing off the shelf GDPR management code that 99% of sites out there did, or better still just disabling analytics while continue to serve adverts to european customers, or even easier: Just ignoring the law entirely since they wouldn't be liable anyway?
I understand the rationale. I am not angry at them
You should be angry at them. It's always worth being angry at stupidity when there are perfectly sensible solutions to the problem.
You only have to do some work if you collect all sorts of user data you don't need and sell it to advertisers. If you have a small company and run a normal site that doesn't collect metric shittons of data, then there is literally nothing you need to do to be GDPR compliant. Anything GDPR prescribes above that are measures any sane company should do anyway, e.g. ask the user for consent and store the data securely.
this should be an optional thing, if a news site wants to be paid for links, fine, let them decide that on their own. they will probably come to the conclusion that it's not worth it and revert back to 'free' links because of the loss of visitors.
i'm sure there are more enough sites who don't agree with it being enforced.
this will only be valid for EU sites? that means we'll just get more links from sites outside of the EU.
it's all so stupid, because a lot of news sites just recycling news from other news sites, most cases without doing any actual fact checking. not a month goes by that another hoax got played on all the news sites because they didn't bother checking the sources and didn't do much more then a copy-paste with some word changes here and there (if that).
if that is what you call news-reporting, then news-aggregate sites aren't really that much different.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
What everyone seems to forget is that this is a European law, not an American case law, meaning it is open to interpretation, and will be interpreted upon for years to come. The law in Europe is not set in stone.
I mean, you are the kind of person that uses SJW unironically.
Why use news-aggregation at all? You can just go directly to Breitbart.
It may be easy, but this is clearly risk just assessment.
Well, you need to be pretty deep in the unethical end for GDPR to be a problem.
If you don't track your users and don't store more data than the minimum to provide a service to your customers you don't really need to care that much about GDPR.
When the user removes their account you remove the actual data instead of just flagging it as inaccessible.
You don't even have to go through and scrub backups, GDPR is lenient in that way.
GDPR is only a big problem if you track your users habits so that you can sell it to someone else.
Let's say this will go nuclear and Google will be counting on wires services like the AP and Reuters. Many of the EU news media content are part of those wires services and can the EU go after those? EU can propose any news reporting on those wire services falls under this law because they have bureaus in the EU regardless if the reporter was working for NYT.
So how much does those off-the-shelf GDPR management code cost?
And why wouldn't they be liable? They're storing information on Europeans and they may travel to Europe while the site is up.
Wait a minute, how can it be bad news for news aggregators and, specially, for consumers? News sites have RSS subscriptions, which nicely show up notifications whenever the "content creator" puts content online. If the creator has a compelling summary in the RSS and, more importantly, I am interested in it... I will click and go to the "content creator"'s website. RSS feeds are not afected here.
Where is the negative impact there?
Now, if you go to website A (or use non-RSS iApp B) that shows _everything_ in one single place... (whether I am subscribed to a specific outlet or not) equally, as a consumer, I will click and go to the website. It might be okay to have an overview of what's going on, in which case I won't visit the creator's website (so I won't click on those ads that I'm blocking anyway, but other people might like, likely causing loss of revenue for the content creator).
In this case, yeah, website A and iApp B creators will loose the ability to profile my habits and it would be bad for them.
Google know full well how badly the news sites need them to drive traffic in their direction via search, so I fully expec them to just pull the plug as they did with Spain, wait for the publishers to start screaming and shouting about the lost traffic/revenue, and only then open negotiations on exemptions and workarounds. At that point they'll be doing so from a much stronger position and with an industry that's desperate for a quick solution, so a deal more favourable to Google is much more likely.
This seems an unwise strategy.
For comparison, it took the EU four years to do anything about the VAT mess on digital services. During that time some smaller businesses went under or stopped supplying the EU. That was a problem that was only recognised at a very late stage in the original legislative process, because by the admission of various senior officials involved, the EU basically didn't even realise that millions of very small businesses existed, so had made no effort to inform or consult with them earlier, when helpful changes might still have been possible. By the time the danger was starting to be understood, it was too late to stop the process or add extra safeguards. And being EU-based rules, the national governments who also recognised the danger too late couldn't then act at national level to mitigate the damage.
In this case, the potential damage has been clear from the start, and campaigners have been objecting to articles 11 and 13 throughout. If the EU passes them anyway, that's essentially game over. Adversely affected online businesses are going to be hurt, and there won't be much that either they or the sites that previously cited them can do about it.
This foolishness has to be stopped before it gets onto the EU statute books.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I just want stupid google to remove all political and SJW shit news. It is on by default, always at the top of news, and no way to turn it off.
There are those who echo your sentiments on other sites.
Sites you use. Sites with green stripes.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Stupid MRA stuff pops up all the time, even on Slashdot.
The problem here is that, just like it happened in Spain, the EU fully expects that Google will be the one "adversely affected", paying to the news cartels so they can get that juicy free money.
But, again like Spain, those cartels will be the ones actually "adversely affected", when Google will just cuts the cord and leaves them bumbmling "bu..but, where is our money now?"
Any other victims in the crossfire are just collateral damages and they never cared at all about them.
A search engine should have stayed in the EU. .com US site.
The had people in the EU come to a
Search the web from the USA and enjoy the full freedom to get the results found.
Dont become part of EU laws.
EU nations laws are about tax, censorship and who is allowed to publish.
Did a France, Germany, Spain give that ability to control the publication of links and news about history, art, faith. politics? No.
The EU laws, taxes on publication and gov control stayed and are now enforced for the world to enjoy.
Want the freedom of speech and the freedom to publish? Publish in the USA.
Want the freedom to comment on and link to a publication? Use a US network that respects freedom of speech.
All the EU nations can offer is laws about what can be published, taxes and extra gov censorship.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Definitely the preferred option. I've been following Julia Reda's site for updates on this and writing to my MEP at key points like votes, etc., but it looks like the EU has finally decided that Brexit isn't worth any more of their time and is looking to its own business, including trying to get at least some bits of EU legislation through in the current session, this included. That they're trying again with Articles 11 and 13, despite heavy opposition to those specific clauses on previous attempts, indicates that this is probably one of those they really want to pass for some reason (e.g. someone has already been paid), so we can probably expect *something* to get through somehow.
Here's the thing though; the EU isn't listening here, and the implications of this for the average citizen are going to be even more visible than all those cookie consent popups. Having a good chunk of the web go dark because the EU wasn't prepared to listen (regardless of how the EU media spins the coverage so it's not the media's fault) might just make more people aware of the growing disconnect between the MEPs in the EU parliament and the voters and businesses that they're meant to be representing. That disconnect has already got them the train wreck of Brexit, several other EU countries in varying levels of turmoil, and a general rise in extremism and nationalism right across the union. They *need* a wake up call, and if a few media conglomerates have to go to the wall that might actually be a smaller price to pay than a few more xxExits, or a collective swing to the far right (by EU standards) rather than the current level of diversity.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So YOU are the person still pulling an RSS feed. I wondered who that was.
You can certainly make an argument why RSS is better than Google and Betamax Is better than VHS, but it's a bit too late for those arguments to matter.
If the EU wants to destroy their own economy then that's their prerogative is all I have to say. Old news media, the ones who pushed for these laws, are dying anyways. This will merely speed up the process.
the EU basically didn't even realise that millions of very small businesses existed
This time the EU knows they exist and they EXCPLICITELY LOWERED the protections for small businesses in article 13 a couple of days ago.
I'm wondering why Google objects so much. If this shit passes they'll be handed a EU-wide monopoly because nobody else can possible afford to do business here.
It also highlights an unreasonable dependence on Google - how is it than one provider making a small change can cause a 45% drop in traffic?
The 45% figure also presumably assumes that everything else stays the same. What if, for example, Bing (or whoever) decide they will license news content because it drives worthwhile ad revenue for them, and so can provide higher-quality search results for news than Google does?
I expect the EU will take an approach that quality news is a public good and either arrange for providers to be compensated in some way (probably by something crappy like a broadband tax), or fund public media (BBC etc) directly. Or, the news business will adopt a model like the music business, where a single body collects royalties for use of content.
> And being EU-based rules, the national governments who also recognised the danger too late couldn't then act at national level to mitigate the damage
Which is why Brexit is the best thing that the UK has done for a long time !
If you see SJW shit everywhere, maybe the problem is you.
The thing is, this is an *EU* law and most of these jurisdictions have local laws that more or less grant authorization of some limited form of copies.
The "link tax" is bad for Google
Yes, for *google* because it might prevent them from slurping the *whole web* and republishing it.
(Though even then, some countries are extremely lax. Switzerland, though not exactly EU member, but merely partner state signing bilateral agreement, has the "technical ground" exemption. And Google could argue that indexing the web must include making local copies of everything on technical grounds).
and other news aggregators,
You'll have to check every country for the local details, but nearly all country would allow keeping and citing a small excerpt on the grounds of citation.
The only difference being what local laws consider a reasonable short excerpt. Germany has much stricter and precise definition, but republishing only the abstract/first paragraph is definitely within limits.
Any news aggregator physically based in EU would have no problems.
bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
...except in countries where there are strong rules in place already to protect the fair use of information.
(which is the case of most european jurisdiction already).
So, although I tend to be against copyright laws, and would certainly have voted against this law if I had the opportunity (haha... direct democracy in EU. One can dream...), I have to admit that the complaints of Google are pretty much groundless on this one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Here in Germany I already see an ever increasing number of pay-walled news articles popping up from major newspapers. You'll find these listed on google only with their head- and subheadline.
That is also where most the investigative journalism, where you can find original information, has moved to. Of course besides of being available in print. There's also some freemium articles on newspapers like Zeit.de, where free users can read a certain number in a given time interval, but would have to sign up to get access to more. All while the aggregated news that you can find everywhere are free to anyone.
I have no reliable data (except some anecdotal one) on how popular these pay-walled articles are among the public. My hypothesis is that the aggregated news trash which is usually geared towards this current outrage culture generates a lot more clicks and therefore revenue than most balanced investigative story can do.
Therefore I'm not sure if this will work out for them. But it appears that this is the direction we're going for now.
... use a different business model that does not rely upon google's egregious practices.
You may not be liable to the letter of the law, but it is highly probable you will get GDPR related requests. As a company, you'll probably have to pay a lawyer to make a 100% sure you actually aren't liable and you haven't overseen a detail. This costs money. This is money you don't want to spend. Geoblocking is incredibly easy and incredibly cheap.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Does the German Google News still show snippets (e.g. first paragraphs) for non-paywalled articles? Since about a year ago, I see only headlines on Google News, which was a response to pressure from publishers to remove the snippets. That caused me to stop using Google News, and switch to Bing News. Now Bing News has gone the same way.
And yes, Google News includes paywalled articles, and no longer provides notice that they can't be seen without a subscription.
So both Google and Microsoft have already caved to publishers. I suppose they've now drawn the line.
It does not have to be that you're unethical or anything, you just don't want to deal with it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Kneejerk? Sure, if you want... but it also removes *any* possible headache regarding to GDPR. Regardless whether your'e doing anything shady or not.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
My information has been abused for the last 20 years. I have used the GDPR once, in order to bully amazon into submission. Granted, that was fun.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If this gets enacted, Google should simply delist any publication that decides to use their newly acquired "rights".
Also, although not totally on topic, add a filter that hides all paywalled content from search results. And while we're at it, unconditionally hide websites using tricks that hide content after the user has loaded the page.
I've only ever looked at google news on my android phone.
There when I swipe right on the home screen I have not seen snippets for a while whether or not the source is from the EU.
I expect the EU will take an approach that quality news is a public good and either arrange for providers to be compensated in some way (probably by something crappy like a broadband tax), or fund public media (BBC etc) directly. Or, the news business will adopt a model like the music business, where a single body collects royalties for use of content.
You should understand that it doesn't matter if "quality news" providers are funded by whatever means, if no one is accessing the content they're providing.
Effort? Geoblocking is incredibly easy and incredibly cheap.
So is simply not serving tracking scripts to people.
Kneejerk? Sure, if you want... but it also removes *any* possible headache regarding to GDPR.
There is no headache for GDPR. Pretty close to 100% of sites blocking the EU due to GDPR complaints are outside of the EU jurisdiction and have zero headaches as a result. Regardless whether you're doing anything shady or not.
... it would affect Google's bottom line.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So how much does those off-the-shelf GDPR management code cost?
Given that every dodgy shitty site with few visitors uses it, very little.
And why wouldn't they be liable? They're storing information on Europeans
Maybe if you read the GDPR you wouldn't be asking such a silly question. Just storing information on Europeans does not make you liable. It especially doesn't make you liable if you're not in Europe and outside the reach of the law. It even more makes you not liable since personal and corporate ties don't exist like you think they do in Europe, and even if a site was falling afoul of the GDPR it's not possible to arrest some company employee who happens to be on holiday for it.
You may not be liable to the letter of the law,
Actually you'd not be liable to the letter or jurisdiction.
but it is highly probable you will get GDPR related requests.
Just put "no junk mail" on your letter box.
As a company, you'll probably have to pay a lawyer
Companies outside the EU that actually paid lawyers didn't block people in the EU. Or rather they should maybe fire their lawyer and pay another one for a correct opinion.
This costs money.
This is a sunk cost.
Geoblocking is incredibly easy and incredibly cheap.
Indeed. So you geoblock you analytical system while continuing to make profit of clicks. You're all about the money and business decisions, but you seem to be advocating the wrong ones.
For comparison, it took the EU four years to do anything about the VAT mess on digital services. During that time some smaller businesses went under
Good. So let some media companies go under and serve as a lesson to stupid people who think they can get away with rentseeking by screwing around with the legal system.
This foolishness has to be stopped before it gets onto the EU statute books.
This foolishness didn't come from some bored EU bureaucrat, it came from the very people you are defending. Just because Europeans don't list "lobbying" as a line item under OpEx on their quarterly financial reports doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
What are they saving themselves from? You're talking about the country that had to offer promises that it wouldn't screw it's own people over by removing protections afforded to them under EU laws.
If Britain ran out of the EU you can bet your testicles that the'd keep a retarded law like this one.
Google pain here is not that news sites lose viewers, but that in turn Google's user tracking and ad revenue (from those news sites) will go down.
Have we reached the point where what's bad for Google should be viewed as good for the rest of the universe?
If you like the way the Internet currently is, then you should side with Google. Their motivation is to maintain the status quo.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sounds like Brexit for cats.
Have gnu, will travel.
Of most oppressive Internet/web nations. EU should be near the top here shortly. Good job guys!! Keep up the good work.
OK, but what about the rest of the Internet? The proposals in question won't just affect Google. They also affect Slashdot, Reddit, and who knows how many other sites that follow a similar format of linking to some primary source with some sort of headline/caption/summary and then providing a forum for related discussion. And for the filtering part, they'll potentially affect any site with user-supplied content, whether or not based on any other primary source. At least there are now some moves to try to limit this to avoid wiping out smaller businesses, but even if those succeed, it's only a damage limitation exercise.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No they shouldn't. They should be free to do business in the EU while at the same time complying with the laws of the country in which they do business or face fines as a result.
There's an easy technological solution!
Background: News publishers already hold copyright in their works, i.e. they get to decide who can reproduce or make adaptions of them. Google already benefits from "fair use" which allows for extracts/snippets. The proposed EU copyright law says that other people can't reproduce "substantial" extracts but didn't make clear what that means. Google believes that news sources will die without being featured in Google News.
<meta name="licensed-summary" content="The cow jumped over the moon">
<meta name="licensed-picture" content="http://www.myblog.com/pic1.jpg">
<meta name="licensed-autosummary" content="50">
Each HTML page could have some or all of these tags. The "licensed-summary" tag would explicitly grant any news aggregator or anyone the right to reproduce this summary when linking to the article. The "licensed-picture" would explicitly grant them the right to use that picture when linking. The "licensed-autosummary" would explicitly grant them the right to generate their own textual summary of up to (in this case) 50 words.
(It could be accompanied by a legal clarification that every summary consisting of not more than 10 words (?? not sure the exact number) is fair use.)
This way, everyone gets what they want. Google gets to publish summaries from the news publishers that have the wisdom to allow it. Other publishers can decline, up to the limits of fair use.
I'm not sure what you think I was saying, but I suspect you've completely misunderstood my previous comment. In particular, I wasn't defending anyone, and we should be worried about smaller businesses across the EU with this one as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
(I assume you mean increased protections for small businesses rather than lowered them.)
This is a step in the right direction, but only if it makes it into the final version. This area is controversial, with a policy of having no exceptions still strongly backed by some of the parties, including big ones like France.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The big problem here isn't killing off old media with obsolete business models. The problem is killing off new media with innovative business models as collateral damage.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They are hell bent on trying again not because any one was paid but because the news agency lobby has been successful in convincing the majority of the EU members that all opposition are paid Google schills.
I agree with the problem that the EU leadership just doesn't seem to get it when it comes to the tech and creative sectors.
Brexit is an interesting case. I have some businesses in those sectors that are based in the UK, and looking only from a professional standpoint and talking only about those specific businesses, Brexit is almost 100% win and the harder the better. The EU does almost nothing of direct value to any of those businesses, and many things such as these proposals that are/would be directly harmful.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It is possible to want to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Any news service not wanting Google to display their articles in Google News just needs to add robots.txt file to their website which asks Google not to index their site. Google will then not index the site, and they will not show up in any Google News article or web searches. That these news services don't do this with a simple robots.txt file tells you their true motivations.
The only reason this proposed law exists is because these news services want to force Google to index them, and also pay them. That is, they want the service Google is offering, but instead of paying for a desired service (or accepting it for free, which is what Google currently does) like everyone else does for something they want, they instead want Google to pay them for it.
It's like someone building a road to make it easier for people to reach a shopping mall. Then the stores in the shopping mall demanding the road owner pay them because the road would not get the traffic it does if it weren't for the presence of the stores. The correct base level of comparison here is before the road was built. The road results in increasing traffic to the stores, so it is already a benefit to the stores (the road owner is already "paying" them via increased visitors). It's completely backwards from how an economics is supposed to work. And the misguided belief only exists because these copyright holders have been living in a protected bubble provided by the monopoly copyright law gives them, which shields them from normal economic forces.
Considering how lame the those two parts of the laws are, I would strongly consider blocking EU or putting up a one page site explaining why Europe is blocked. I'm really glad I'm not going to be put into such a crazy situation and I feel for the businesses this will hurt or destroy.
The other part of me just wants to laugh because this will really hurt those news sites. I love these news aggregates and use them often. I generally do click through to the site to read the entire article on the site, then return to the comments sections on either slashdot or yahoo. If these two platforms were not allowed to do that, I would likely end up at one news site, perhaps two but then I wouldn't get to talk about the news.
This really just looks like EU shooting itself in the foot. If I was in Europe, I would definitely get a VPN hosted outside of EU so I could still read the news as I currently do.
Also, making platforms police user content just means platforms stop having user content. How many sites will stop having content because they disallow users from posting it? Definitely sounds like Europe wants to make the Internet a one way street that serves only the few.
Oh, I agree the current proposals are still bad, particularly in that they will apply to small sites that have been going a while. Still, even those criteria are better than what was originally proposed, which had no such safeguards or exceptions at all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That may be, but crazy copyright legislation is the opposite of progress.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I don't see too many smaller businesses being affected by this. Especially given this move is mostly major media outlets battling it out for Google dollars.
Are you sure you're considering the whole set of proposed reforms here? Any business that hosts a blog with visitor comments or a discussion forum and that has been online for more than three years would apparently be required to implement filtering technology that may or may not actually exist under the current proposals. These reforms aren't just about news sites extracting royalties from aggregators for reposting snippets (though any fledgling site with the popular news aggregator plus discussion format would potentially be caught by that aspect as well).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Indeed. It is depressing how often European politicians comment, entirely unironically, about how the importance of boosting the tech sector here in Europe, in practically the next breath after introducing yet another measure that hammers all the small businesses. And then they wonder why the Googles and Facebooks and Apples of the world are all based somewhere else. As the saying goes, every successful large business was once a successful small business.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Any business that hosts a blog with visitor comments
You're implying that businesses now need to be completely responsible for content produced by others? Is that expressly laid out in the legislation?
Yes, that is essentially the concern here. The proposed way to avoid that responsibility in safe-harbour fashion is to implement various precautionary measures, which may or may not rely on technologies that do or do not exist and that may or may not be readily available to small organisations at viable cost or otherwise if they do. This, presumably, is what the politicians mean when they say they have been clear about things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.