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European Governments Approve Controversial New Copyright Law (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A controversial overhaul of Europe's copyright laws overcame a key hurdle on Wednesday as a majority of European governments signaled support for the deal. That sets the stage for a pivotal vote by the European Parliament that's expected to occur in March or April. Supporters of the legislation portray it as a benign overhaul of copyright that will strengthen anti-piracy efforts. Opponents, on the other hand, warn that its most controversial provision, known as Article 13, could force Internet platforms to adopt draconian filtering technologies. The cost to develop filtering technology could be particularly burdensome for smaller companies, critics say.
Online service providers have struggled to balance free speech and piracy for close to two decades. Faced with this difficult tradeoff, the authors of Article 13 have taken a rainbows-and-unicorns approach, promising stricter copyright enforcement, no wrongful takedowns of legitimate content, and minimal burdens on smaller technology platforms. But it seems unlikely that any law can achieve all of these objectives simultaneously. And digital-rights groups suspect that users will wind up getting burned -- both due to wrongful takedowns of legitimate content and because the burdens of mandatory filtering will make it harder to start a new online hosting service.
Online service providers have struggled to balance free speech and piracy for close to two decades. Faced with this difficult tradeoff, the authors of Article 13 have taken a rainbows-and-unicorns approach, promising stricter copyright enforcement, no wrongful takedowns of legitimate content, and minimal burdens on smaller technology platforms. But it seems unlikely that any law can achieve all of these objectives simultaneously. And digital-rights groups suspect that users will wind up getting burned -- both due to wrongful takedowns of legitimate content and because the burdens of mandatory filtering will make it harder to start a new online hosting service.
I regularly run into US news sites that block EU visitors because of the GDPR.
What's much worse IMHO is that a lot of sites have these fucking useless popups. Which means I need to allow Javascript or they won't load. With Javascript comes loads of tracking bullshit and security risks. GDPR effectively made it easier to track people who don't want to be tracked.
There were also a few hobbyist sites that shut down their forums, etc because they didn't have the time or resources to deal with it. That's a big consequence of all these EU regulations: they make it harder and harder for small companies and private citizens to be anything but consumers, thus concentrating the Internet in the hands of big corporations.
If the cost of enforcing copyright exceeds the benefit of copyright to society, then the tradeoff is no longer worth it. That is, copyright has outlived its usefulness, and should be abolished. But the simplest way to make this determination is to make sure that the copyright holder bears the full cost of enforcing that copyright. Then they can simply look at how much money they're making from copyright, compare it to how much they're spending to enforce copyright, and decide whether or not copyright is worth it.
If you shift copyright enforcement costs onto someone other than the copyright holder, then you make possible a solution where copyright becomes a net drain on society, yet we retain it because we have no easy way to determine that it has become a net drain on society. So it is imperative that the copyright holder be liable for all enforcement costs. The only two choices here that make sense are the copyright holder bears the enforcement costs, or we abolish copyright.
So shifting enforcement costs onto others is stupid, because it destroys your only direct means of determining if copyright is still worth it. If the copyright holder believes enforcement by ISPs is beneficial to copyright, then they should be paying ISPs to enforce copyright. That will make it obvious if the enforcement costs has exceeded the value of copyright to society, meaning copyright is no longer worth it and should be abolished.
And FINES for FALSE TAKEDOWNs, how about 5,000 if the takedown initiate by a private and 50,000,000 if by a company.
After all, these are budgets to make a video (private) or a movie (company), and 80% of the fine should go to the victim of the false takedown.
If it is in the LAW, it has to be respected.
Anyway. And they don't care.
The fewer the platforms the fewer to enforce their rule on.
Europeans isn't supposed to talk or rule themselves anyway. The elite got better ideas.
Lose memes? GOOD! PeopleÂs post aren't visible or they are removed from the platform? GOOD!
And if you don't agree you're a threat to democracy and Europe!"#ÂRT