Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet
from the bad-news-for-memes dept
When last we checked in on the EU Copyright Directive it had been put on hold when the European Council (with representatives from all the member states) didn’t have enough votes to move forward on a so-called “compromise” draft. Most of the council rejected it for the right reasons — though a few (including France) were holding out to make the law worse. Since then there has been an ongoing back channel negotiation between France and Germany over whose vision would win out. Both of them support very problematic versions of the Directive, though France’s is worse. Specifically, France doesn’t want any exemptions for smaller internet websites in Article 13 (which will effectively make internet filters mandatory), while Germany wanted to include at least some safe harbors for smaller sites. After a bunch of back and forth, it’s now being reported that Germany has caved to France and will now support the Directive, with very little in the way of protections for smaller sites. This is on top of all the other awful stuff in the Directive, including mandatory filtering (that they pretend is not mandatory filtering), huge fines, and liability for any site allowing infringement. The draft apparently still includes a weird and mostly useless safe harbor for sites hosting user-generated content — which is what made the legacy entertainment industry bail out on its support of the Directive.
So, to be clear, there is now a draft that is worse than the draft that couldn’t get the Council’s approval a few weeks ago, and that will have an even bigger impact on the internet by sweeping up tons of smaller sites as well as the larger ones, which will do serious harm to any sites that host user-generated content. And you can’t find anyone — outside of the company selling internet filters — who supports this. The internet companies are all still against the bill. The legacy entertainment companies are whining that it doesn’t go far enough.
And, yet, this draft is likely to be added back on the schedule for a meeting this Friday.
There is nothing good about this. The EU bureaucrats negotiating this get really, really annoyed by anyone suggesting that this bill will kill off “memes,” but that’s not an exaggeration. The bill is literally designed to make it impossible for a site that has not purchased licenses from everyone to allow users to post new content. Meme culture was built almost entirely on free and open message boards and social media, without licenses. But hosting such a site in the EU will now be effectively impossible — or very, very expensive, with massive restrictions, filters and lockdowns. In such a world, it is difficult to see how new memes can take off, outside of a narrowly prescribed set of “officially sanctioned/licensed” memes — and we all know what kind of quality that will bring.
This whole thing is an exercise in stupidity, brought about by a cynical legacy entertainment industry that made up a fake concept called “the value gap” that they insisted needed to be closed. And the only way to “close” it, according to the very same lobbyists, was to effectively turn off what made the internet great: the fact that it is, and has always been, an open medium for communication and sharing.
This can still be stopped, but it’s going to rely on the EU Parliament actually having a backbone and saying that this is not acceptable. And that is going to require people in Europe to contact their MEPs and telling them not to wreck the internet.
Filed Under: article 11, article 13, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, eu council, filters, france, germany, intermediary liability, mandatory filters, memes, safe harbors, trilogue negotiations
Comments on “Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet”
Gaps in logic
As the content monopolists push to close the “value gap” I’m reminded of the “Analog Hole” that absolutely had to be closed to stop piracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
We still have piracy – but we also have mandated DRM on our computers – right down to the cables. Does this help creators or support the public commons?
"In the EU" being the applicable words. They can claim extraterritorial jurisdiction until they’re blue in the face, but if they don’t have servers or employees in the EU, and the US or other country where they actually are located doesn’t want to play along, what exactly are they going to do about it?
At this point the EU ought to just rename it "the footgun directive."
Re: Re:
The only practical thing to do is start banning the EU from even connecting to your site. Especially anyone smaller than the few BIG companies that can afford a few big old fines, up to a point until they say screw this.
Better off having nothing to do with the EU.
Re: Re:
But even if it’s just the EU, once it passes, lobbyist will use it as a precedent for every major trade deal being negotiated, that other countries need to conform to the new "standard". It’s what they did for copyright, patents and the DMCA. And so it always ends up being bundled into a larger agreement, often without public input.
So, the precedent is very disturbing. They need to kill this right now or 10 years from now, we’ll nearly all be stuck with versions of this directive.
Re: Re: Re:
Or it goes the other way and sees how much of the Internet it’s killed off. Sees how much control the Big American companies now have and do the right thing,..oh wait!
Re: Re: Re:
"They" is not just the EU. More than often, it’s the USA.
so who in France is being paid how much by who to get this shit shaped proposal through?
Re: Re:
They wouldn’t need to be paid off, merely threatened.
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys strike again!
Re: Re: Re:
Per Rick Falkvinge they’re being hammered on all sides by lobbyists. If they only hear from lobbyists they’ll go with the lobbyists but each lobbyist only has one vote, so if they hear more from the people than from the lobbyists…
At this point the EU Government believes Google search is piracy and subject to a link tax or high crimes while surfing the web.
Re: Re:
Google is an automated link site which will serve up illegal links unless enjoined by money or law.
Re: Re: Re:
Google is an automated index site that does not know, and cannot determine the legality of the content it indexes.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And judging by the 99.9+% fraudulent tens of millions of DMCA requests Google gets monthly, it cannot rely on third parties to determine the legality of the content it indexes, either.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yet one cannot find child porn in Google.
An automated site which enables criminal activity should not be allowed to exist.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
So your answer to criminal activity on the Internet is to destroy the very tools that make it such a powerful tool for human good. Do you really want a world in which individuals have to ask companies to publish their works, with all that goes with traditional publishing, such as most works never getting published?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
as well as cars because they can be used as getaway vehicles, knives because they can be used for assault and so on…
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Have you wondered WHY there is no child porn on Google?
If you engaged your brain you would have realized that the very nature of peddling child porn means any sites doing it will not advertise that fact and are in most cases invite only so Google wont find anything when crawling the sites.
But I guess, using grey matter is hard these days because it means you may come to the realization that you don’t know jack shit so it’s more convenient just to be ignorant fool.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Also – CP is by its very nature illegal. There is no grey area – if your website displays CP, it is illegal. Therefore, those sites do not advertise themselves on the open web – which means that Google do not index them.
On the other hand, infringing material can very much be legal or illegal depending on where it originates. The same file can be infringing or not depending on context. Therefore Google cannot make the distinction.
Anyone who think that this is a good argument, does not understand the argument.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
That is correct, you can’t find child porn in Google.
You do realize that all websites are more or less automated and pretty much all websites can be used by criminals for criminal activity, right? But hold on! Let’s run with that! Hmm, the FCC public comment submission site is automated and someone used it commit identity fraud against thousands of people. Oh gee, the FCC website is enabling criminal activity, therefore it shouldn’t exist. Or wait! Here’s one better! The IRS site is automated and allows criminals to file false tax returns, thereby enabling their criminal activity, so the IRS website shouldn’t exist!
I could go on.
Re: Re: Re:
…and removal of those links will not make any different as to whether the sites that break the law exist. In fact, the waste of time and resources going after Google, combined with the effect of pushing illegal activity further underground, actually makes the job of catching the . lawbreakers much easier and keeps the illegal sites online longer.
Why not go after the people actually breaking the law, rather than the people telling you where the criminals are?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Piracy is the excuse the use to attack the Internet on as many fronts as possible. The flood of notices allows them to take down quite a bit more than just infringing content, and the more they send the harder it is for Google to detect the the bad notices.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Of course piracy is just an excuse. They want to kill thf internet because they are black hearted parasites who want to inflict as much human misery as possible. Passing this will so so twofold by not just killing the internet, but by telling the world that democracy doesn’t mean shit. They hate you, they hate me, and want to ruin our lives. This is a personal attack on our lives and there is only way to fight back. Go out and wear a yellow vest.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Given the number of right-wing weirdos who have co-opted the movement, I’ll pass. This is not about making us unhappy it’s about inserting themselves as gatekeepers. The orderly, logical, problem-solving way of dealing with this is to contact your MEP and ask him or her to vote against this.
Last time we did that over ACTA the House was full of flowers bought by the grateful public. Those MEPs who are still in office since 2012 will have remembered that. Remember also that copyright on the left is about rewarding creators’ efforts of hand and brain so that’s your angle of attack: the copyright holder isn’t always the creator and the public interest is being harmed. On the right it’s about property; your angle of attack is to advise your MEP that copyright is a temporary monopoly privilege and that the "own it now on DVD, etc." trope is a lie. We don’t own it, we only licence it, and even then it can be grabbed off us or rendered useless by the rightsholder at any time. What about our property rights?
The more thoughtful and considerate you are the more likely it is that your argument will be considered. They will reject out of hand any comments that seem threatening or boilerplate. Make them personal.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Yeah, no, I don’t think so. The more I look at this, the more this looks exactly like Net Neutrality mess back here in America. Ajit Pai deliberately lied to our faces about how repealing NN won’t allow ISPs ruin the internet. He had such a shit-eating grin while doing so, claiming that he had public support despite millions of fake comments and went as far as to preempt states. It became clear that Ajit Pai either wanted to destroy the internet, or cared more about that paycheck from Verizon to care about us.
The EU is being run by dozens of Ajit Pais. They are being malicious, not ignorant.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Citation?
Do you even know the difference between the EU Commission and the EU Parliament? Do you know who is the boss of either of the two?
The EU is not a monolithic entity, it’s a group of individuals and groups with intersecting and competing interests.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
This whole process is citation enough. No matter how much the people protest, no matter how much experts speak out, they continue to shove this through, and make it worse
"If someone carelessly waves a gun around, and upon calling them on it they quickly put it down and protest by claiming that they had no idea that guns were dangerous because they’d never encountered one before and had no idea how dangerous they were, ignorance might be enough to give them a pass that one time.
If however multiple people had been telling them how dangerous it was, it was not the first time they’d done so, and they continue to wave it around, ‘ignorance of the dangers’ ceases to be a believable excuse, and the assumption switches to at a minimum gross indifference to the possible harm their actions might cause, if not malicious intent."
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190128/17402141482/human-rights-groups-plead-with-eu-not-to-pass-awful-terrorist-content-regulation.shtml
Re: Re: Re: Re:
It would reduce vicarious infringement, though Perfect 10 lost that battle with the very argument you gave. Another case left open the possibility of search engine liability but in such a way that there was no point in the case not settling.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Section 230 exists for a reason. Go after the people who actually did the crime, rather than wasting time going after a large target who had nothing to do with it.
If what the EU does rains the attempted world dominance of all internet traffic and the possess of all user personal information by the Silicon Valley all hate companies like Face Book and Google dedicated to world dominance, world slavery, and world control it in can only be considered as good. As bad as the EU laws and actions are they are a tempest in a teapot compared to the political correct version of world control under these elitist people haters.
Re: Slavery
Citation needed on this.
Article 13 will abolish competition to Google and Facebook, not rein it in. Only the largest players can deal with these regulations.
Smaller sites in the EU will be forced to shut down. Upload filters are mass government mandated censorship.
Please explain how this relates to “political correctness?” (Did you read the article?)
Re: Re: Slavery
Clearly, the person didn’t. This keeps the big players locked in even better. No one else can afford to do business in the EU. The way it’s going, the BIG players will have to also pull out at some point.
Re: Re: Re: Slavery
Upload filters make you a slave to copyright monopolists, maybe he meant that?
Guessing aside, I await a clarification from the OP.
Re: Re: Slavery
H1B Visa
Re: Re: Slavery
Yeah, like Google doesn’t already purchase or squash any of its competition as is.
How fucking stupid do you think people are, asshole?
lets try something
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190128/12533441477/fcc-accused-colluding-with-big-carriers-5g-policy.shtml
Re: lets try something
There are a few ways to post links..
1 of them is just a copy/paste of the text, and not a direct link..
Its the old way. And some browsers dont/wont do it anymore..
Then it should not be considered a link..
France??
So the one time in modern history the France doesn’t surrender to Germany and THIS is what they choose?
Re: France??
They are French, that is why they have their outrageous arguments
-Spoken with an outrageous accent like in Monty Python
Notice how Masnick never addresses what YouTube pays per stream versus what Apple Music, etc pay? Yeah. He really doesn’t want to discuss what Article 13 is actually about. He just wants to yell about “breaking the internet” for the millionth time.
Sorry Mike, but breaking Google’s grifter business model isn’t “breaking the internet”.
Re: Re:
Even if that were 100% true, the massive amounts of collateral damage that this is likely to cause, as currently written, absolutely is "breaking the internet."
Re: Re:
Notice how Masnick never addresses what YouTube pays per stream versus what Apple Music, etc pay? Yeah. He really doesn’t want to discuss what Article 13 is actually about. He just wants to yell about “breaking the internet” for the millionth time.
I’ve addressed it plenty of times. And it’s bullshit. On comparable services (i.e., YouTube Music), YouTube tends to pay similar rates to other services (Apple, Spotify). In cases where those are not the same, it is because the labels negotiated a bad deal. Not sure how that’s Google’s fault.
The "complaint" from you and your friends is that Google doesn’t pay that kind of rate for music that users themselves upload to the regular part of YouTube. And that’s because that’s not a licensed service in the same manner as the others. And there’s an easy solution there: copyright holders are free to have that music taken down via a DMCA claim and/or ContentID match. The fact that they don’t do that… suggests that the copyright holders clearly believe they are actually getting value from those songs being there.
Either way, the larger point is that the general public doesn’t use general YouTube in the same way as they use dedicated music services, and thus, it’s no surprise that the payout rates for streams are not the same. That’s not a "value gap." That’s the market working appropriately.
Sorry Mike, but breaking Google’s grifter business model isn’t “breaking the internet”.
This also makes no sense at all. Look, if you want to tax Google, then write a fucking law that just says "tax Google because we’re jealous hacks who can’t adapt" and be transparent about it (I mean, at least the Article 11 guys were closer to that kind of setup with the news publishers). Article 13 will impact basically EVERY SINGLE SITE on the internet just because you and your buddies want some of Google’s money. That’s fucked up. Even if we take as given your silly assertion that Google’s business model is grift, then why must you write and pass a law that (1) will put Google in even greater control and (2) fuck over every other site on the internet?
Seriously: why?
Re: Re: Re:
This could fuck YouTube, because of the huge risks involved, and the fact that this law does not accommodate fair use. Also, it would not take that much effort to hurt them by claiming derivative work at every opportunity.
Re: Re:
And looks how this commenter glosses over the fact that youtube is host to a lot of content and not all of it is music. Then there is the legal issue with youtube regarding background noise and other noise that isn’t the main content.
It’s almost like this commenter can’t consider that internet culture cannot be one size fits all.
The pirates are the ones who caused this by stealing everything they could get their hands on.
There needs to be a way to stop mass infringement of copyrighted works. Is this the only way? If not, provide an alternative that doesn’t require people to surrender their protection (practically or legally).
Harsh prison sentences for uploaders and probation for downloaders would be a good start.
We have "copyright maximalists" against "internet maximalists" here. Each thinks the other should pay the freight. The government is siding with revenuge-generating copyright holders rather than revenue-taking UGC and pirate sites. Can’t imagine why…
Re: Re:
The pirates are the ones who caused this by stealing everything they could get their hands on.
Nah, dawg. As we’ve shown over and over again, piracy is just a sign of a market ineffeciency. Smart content creators learned how to use them to their advantage. It’s only the bad businesses that failed, and are now scrambling and whining to the gov’t for help.
We have "copyright maximalists" against "internet maximalists" here. Each thinks the other should pay the freight. The government is siding with revenuge-generating copyright holders rather than revenue-taking UGC and pirate sites. Can’t imagine why…
Uh, nope. This is a few lobbied up industries who failed to adapt demanding that the public pay the full freight by effectively converting the internet from an open platform for everyone to a closed licensed platform with gatekeepers in the form of themselves in partnership with Google and Facebook.
This is not a good idea. It’s a very, very stupid one.
Re: Re: Re:
Piracy is stealing, not "market inefficiency" except to the extent the ISPs can’t stop it.
The smartest content creators who used piracy to their advantage were the ones who rehashed what was in every self-help book in a given niche, deliberately placed the "ebooks" (stealth marketing copy) into the sites with the intent of being pirated, and with the thieves thinking they were getting good content rather than a disguised advertisement for a $5,000 "premium" seminar with tailored advice over the general advice in the books. This wiped out those who wanted to distribute the same information at $20 a copy and not bilk the "whales" via seminars.
Those who create should not be forced to become hourly laborers to compensate. The work is valuable enough. Arguing against the business model has little to do with piracy being a federal crime, as well as grounds for a civil action. The question is how do we build an internet where piracy is not possible, and the internet has punted time and again.
If these new business models work, people would flock to them in a piracy-free environment. One has very little to do with the other. Piracy is not justified because a potential audience (now they are potential sales if we change our business model but not if we let them steal it?).
I’ve been on all sides of these business models. Some of them can work for a few people, but the old way was the best and the most profitable way. I’ve seen the value of many works literally destroyed by piracy, while others have to adapt not by choice, but by force of crime.
Like I said, it’s internet maximalists versus copyright maximalists. Count me among the later. I believe those who create work should own that work and that anything which allows for the theft of that work should be abolished.
I never saw a comment on my idea for making downloading (not plagiarism) a triple-the-price penalty. Either that or just lock up all the pirates until they get the hint. They are causing incredible damage to the internet, to the point where one could argue that the CFAA kicks in due to the collective damage you cite in your opposition to Articles 11/13.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I believe the damage caused by piracy is real but also not to the levels you believe. No doubt, the trade off between piracy vs paying full price for content is one that many people debate each time they look for things on the internet.
But you have to also remember price is not the only factor when people want to consume or have something. It may be a large portion of the decision but not the only thing.
For example:
are just some of the many factors consumers take into account when purchasing something.
If your business model is only satisfying some of these issues while piracy satisfies most, maybe you should change your business model.
Studies by Copia and others show that people will pay instead of pirate if it is considered a fair price and if the manner to obtain the item is not burdensome. So companies like Netflix have found a way to adapt to the new market consumers and provide a service at a reasonable price that consumers enjoy. While companies like major record labels didn’t adapt and don’t provide a good enough reason all the time so naturally customers don’t enjoy using their services at the price points they offer.
No matter how high a penalty you place on pirating content someone somewhere will still do it. You may get most of the population to stop pirating but that doesn’t guarantee that those same consumers will, by default, still use a bad service or pay the prices for a digital item just as much as they did in previous years. Most likely they will just not consume your digital goods and the old business model won’t work. So my list should also include a factor for how badly someone desires the item as a consideration.
Your suggestion to make the internet 100% pirate free will never happen. For it to be implemented would require a rewrite of protocols and network controls to such a degree that essentially you will replace the majority of the internet. So yes it would break the internet.
If the world corporations and governments did create that environment I can bet you people would not follow en masse nor willingly.
No one here says piracy is the way to go for obtaining digital goods. But they do recognize that piracy will happen and if you don’t establish a business model that accounts for that variable your company will not be able to compete.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Whether or not my business model is good has nothing to do with legal protection for my work.
"Breaking" an internet which enables crime and costs creators and governments money and jobs might be necessary, though less draconian measures could be adopted. It might reduce anonymity which of course some people wouldn’t like but piracy cannot be tolerated (by those who share this view, and who have law to back them up).
We stopped the spread of child porn online pretty effectively (at least in the mainstream internet) and the internet didn’t "break."
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
And you ignore all the people who would lose their way of making a living if the Internet is broken. You are also ignoring that child porn is defined by content, while infringement requires more than just looking at the content, but also looking at ownership, licensing and fair use..
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Nobody said it was. But you support an expansion of legal protection that breaks both your business model AND others. Is that fair?
As with all laws they have to weigh the positive and negative effects on society. If the negative effects outweigh the positive – is the law something we want to implement?
You are arguing that the negative effects of piracy outweigh ALL the positive effects that make the internet function for our society.
Yeah, because child porn is extremely easy to classify. It’s like carrying a huge neon sign saying "child porn" around, nobody is going to miss it. Now, take a piece of digital art – can you just by looking at it tell me who holds the copyright and under which license it’s published and if the posting of it is an infringement?
If you can’t, shut up and GTFO.
Re: Re:
Really? This is the legacy industries trying to close the value gap, that is the value they do not get from self published content. Publishing without assigning them the copyright so they can keep most of the profit is what they object to. They will only be happy when everybody has to submit content to them for publication, so that then select the fraction of a percent of submitted content that they can maximize their income from.
Have you not seen the size of modern micro sd cards, a matchbox full in the post will have a terrific bandwidth. The only way to stop people sharing content is for the industry to ensure that people cannot own any means of copying content, and remember a pen allow copying of a book.
Re: Re: Re:
There has to be a way to stop piracy without burdening internet companies. If not, the internet is fatally flawed.
College textbooks are part of this market that has been harmed, making it more difficult to produce quality education materials as well. I saw books I paid a lot for on sale illicitly for $3 a copy nothing justifies that.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That is as possible as stopping young people exploring their sexuality.
It may come as a surprise to you, but people are social animals, and like pleasing each other, sharing the things that they enjoy.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Pointing to one of the most notoriously corrupt monopolistic sub-industries in the publishing world, who have been blatantly preying on starving students with every unethical tactic in the book for decades now, is seriously not helping your case here.
Just sayin’…
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Nothing is stopping "good" publishers from producing low-cost textbooks.
Fact is, the best teaching materials come at a price. Piracy destroys that.
Then there’s trade writing, marketing materials, and many other works which would also lose protection. Stuff that never becomes mainstream but which is very high value to its owners.
Should we eliminate the protection for proprietary software? The only reason software companies don’t care is that they obliterated DOS (which still works just fine btw for many applications) because DOS programs can be pirated by copying a single directory. Ever wonder why Windows 10 does not have a 16-bit emulator? I still use DOS for a proprietary database program I wrote that uses all of 4mb of RAM and was written a very long time ago. By far the most memory-efficient program and that saves real time when a database gets large enough.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Because it’s technically infeasible to do so on a 64-bit Windows version in the same way that they did on a 32-bit windows. On 32-bit, Windows handles did not contain more than 16 bits of significant information, but on 64-bit, they do, so trying to emulate it would have been a huge undertaking that would have basically involved rewriting Windows 3.11 from scratch and then testing everything to make sure they didn’t break any of it.
That, and why would they even want to? Microsoft’s messaging on the subject has literally been "DOS is dead" since the days of Windows 95, and there’s already DOSBox for ultra-legacy stuff like your 4 MB database. The rest of the world has moved on, and piracy has nothing to do with the reasons why.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
No, because the answer is self evident – there is no point in supporting a legacy architecture that’s over 30 years old out of the box since the amount of users needing it is less than microscopic..
Those that has the need can install emulation and/or virtualization software where they can play with archaic systems.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Why not port it to Windows? If it is written in a high level language, and is reasonably well structured, that should not be too hard. (I speak from experience having ported K&R C under CPM, via ANSI C under DOS, to c++ under Win 32; which runs under Win 10.)
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
You’re absolutely right. As evidenced by lots of quality low-cost, self published, textbooks. It’s only the textbooks published by major publishers that are "high-cost". Gee, wonder why.
[Citation needed]
[Citation needed]
Yeah, see, that’s the problem, the value to the owner means jack shit if no one is willing to buy it. It’s the other way around, stuff becomes mainstream because of the high value to the customer, regardless of what the owner values it at.
Hahahahahaha!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh I’m dying! Name one modern application that would run under DOS. I don’t care if it’s open source or proprietary, just name one. I’ll wait.
Some could, some couldn’t. Misleading.
Because it’s a nightmare to support such obsolete computing methods. 64-bit is far more useful and robust than 16-bit.
This actually does not surprise me since you don’t understand even the basics of how the world works. No modern software would EVER be able to use your database, it’s too old, too small, too incompatible, and likely too broken to be of any actual use to anyone other than someone who lives in the past and refuses to accept reality.
[Citation needed]
You mean by crashing if the database goes over 10 MB? I guess that’s one way to save time. If you can’t work, time saved.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Then it’s fatally flawed. Though I disagree that it is fatally so. It is impossible to EVER stop piracy. Piracy has been around for hundreds of years in one form or another and so far no one has been able to stop it. Don’t be Captain Ahab.
[Citation needed]
You mean people reselling their old useless textbooks because since they bought them for classes a year ago the new edition has come out and switched up all the pages so you can’t use the old editions for classes anymore so they are, in essence, worthless? Or do you mean the legitimately licensed international versions that you can buy for a fraction of the cost of the US versions that have identical content but because they can get away with it in the US they overprice them like crazy to shaft college students?
I laugh in your general direction.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
The "useless textbooks" used to sell for half the cover price. The $3 copies were clearly pirated.
They did get around to suing.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Because everyone has a commercial grade printing press to exactly copy textbooks. Right.
Again, most textbooks are absolutely worthless after one year. The more time passes, the more worthless they become, especially as the information becomes outdated. So no, $3 textbooks are not pirated, they are accurately reflecting their worth as a doorstop or booster seat for a small child.
You’re delusional.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And the outrageous price charged for textbooks in the US is what is also prompting many professors to either write their own, not require a textbook, or supplement the lack of a textbook with other legal, cheaper/free sources.
The greed of the old business model creating artificial demand by the publishers is causing them to lose business. Slowly at first but the trend is rapidly spreading.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
that’s all they’re worth now
Re: Re:
I could live with this IF the penalties in the other direction were at least as onerous.
False claim of ownership of copyright = life in prison for the person claiming ownership, if a bot… then all executives of the company are guilty.
Third offence by a company all of their works become public domain internationally no matter how recent.
Re: Because
The government is siding with revenuge-generating copyright holders rather than revenue-taking UGC and pirate sites. Can’t imagine why…
If the government works for corporations instead of the people, that’s called "Corruption." Thanks for asking!
Re: Re: Because
That rings a bell!
Isn’t that the definition of fascism? ; ]
Re: Re: Because
Corporations are people too. At least according to the Supreme Court, yes I know thats not in the EU.
Just a lot bigger, better funded, politically connected, etc.
Wonder when the first corporation human marriage will be legally performed.
Re: Re:
Knowledge is strength.
Copyright is theft.
Piracy is freedom.
Google has made many people very wealthy by spreading the revenue around through AdSense and AdWords. I’d hardly call that evil.
A company might have to be huge to pay all the license fees, but their users can offset or absorb that cost by generating revenue which is beyond the infrastructure of the platform.
I doubt memes are going anywhere.
The "pirates don’t buy" stuff is also nebulous. Piracy is a cancer on copyright, and the right to protect new works is not "legacy."
The internet isn’t some magic genie who made copyright irrelevant. Real money has been lost, and those who pay are unfairly taxed by those who take. There’s NO reason to pirate any work one does not like, nor to worry about a business not having its "new model" imposed on them by threat of theft.
The entire construct of articles like this is bogus. Copyright deserves the most vigorous protections.
Re: Re:
As originally conceived, yes. In its current, corrupted form, perverted almost a full 180 degrees from its original meaning, though? No way no how. Let’s get our priorities straight. Fix copyright first, then figure out how to protect it.
Re: Re:
Yeah, because apparently they do according to several research papers.
So, how are you going to be able to post new works if article 13 comes into effect? Google doesn’t know what copyrights you own, Facebook doesn’t either. For that matter, not one site on the internet generally knows who holds what copyright.
Did you know that it’s not uncommon for some types of posted content to be claimed to be owned by several entities. Even original works where the author has to fight tooth and nail to gain control of his own works.
Nobody said internet made copyright irrelevant, what people are saying is that to accommodate some content creators zeal for total control it’s going to break the internet for everyone else. In essence article 13 will stop all smaller content creators ability to post and promote their own material. Since the latest proposal want to do away with safe harbor for smaller sites it also means very few would dare to run their own site posting their own creations because just one instance where their creation is too like someone else could mean they are sued for copyright infringement – or it can be arbitrarily claimed by some nebulous entities.
Does it? At the expense of every user of the internet? Boil article 13 down to its core and it basically means that anyone using the internet is an infringer that has not been catched yet and woe to the site that misses someone posting infringing content – even if it is fair use.
Because that is what it means. Anyone not understanding this is either a blithering idiot, a shill for the legacy media or someone with an ax to grind – and I wouldn’t be surprised that some people matches all those "qualifications".
Also, those who pirate will just shrug and go dark while the rest of us gets a functionally broken internet.
Re: Re: Re:
Copyright vs. internet (round 110)
I don’t need a gatekeeper to post my own work to my own website, to which I can drive traffic on my own.
UGC may be the problem here. Aggregation another problem. Every techdirt article is read as a headline even by those who do not click through for the articles and the comments. It winds up on the landscape as a compete, unrebutted thought for many.
How does one "fix copyright?" I’m for lower penalties and treating anything but plagiarism as an ASCAP-style violation. I wouldn’t even care if the life of a copyright were shortened to twenty years.
Rebuilding the internet is not impossible, and on a historical time frame, what we’ve had now is a blip.
If we keep the status quo than those who break the law should be locked up. Your post also shows just how much damage pirates are causing because they are prompting governments to impose ridiculous burdens on internet companies. That should be sufficient to trigger the CFAA and let pirates be prosecuted there.
The Article 11/13 directives won’t change much. YouTube will pay the royalties and licenses and their users will make money without having to worry about losing their right to do memes or whatever.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
But how will you generate that traffic without the search engines and an ability to post links on social media sites?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
He doesn’t get it.
Enforcing copyright on the level he wants means that copyright law itself becomes the gatekeeper for hosting your own content.
He doesn’t understand that if he manages to host his own content someone with deeper pockets can just hit him with a copyright infringement claim on his works if it just bear a likeness. Either he gets fined or he has to pour huge amounts of money into litigation defending his copyright at which point that claiming entity just says ‘ Ops! My bad!’ and concedes they where wrong and scamper off. If he is extremely lucky he may get some money back, otherwise he has had to finance the litigation all the while he can’t earn a dime on his content.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
They can do that now, but don’t.
The endgame for Article 11/13 is that Google et al. become the umbrella that protects creators, in exchange for a relatively small cut. Given that YouTube pays 68 percent of its revenue to creators, for something requiring so much bandwidth, it is not clear this power would be abused.
In your scenario, a motion to dismiss is pretty cheap to file. Lawyers of course would step in to hep would they not?
If you REALLY want to stop Article 11/13, change the law so that nonattorney "advocates" can represent people accused of copyright infringement.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
What it will do is take money and opportunity away from self publishers to benefit the legacy industries.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Because currently it’s free to dirt cheap to have a hosted site or blog where you self publish. How much do you think it will cost when the liabilities due to article 13 increases?
They don’t really protect creators today unless you have some clout, why do you believe they will do it if article 13 comes into effect. Also, there are people who have lost their Youtube channels due to bogus copyright strikes. If you get 3 strikes your account AND content is just deleted. There are examples of people getting copyright claims from a multitude of entities on completely original content. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523
How you an inkling how much it costs to hire a lawyer?
And they promptly get steamrolled in court by a real lawyer.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
There will still be search engines, link farms, link exchanges, or — gasp! — advertising in print media and on television! Wouldn’t mind seeing those industries take money from Google, that’s for sure.
Not everyone is going to fold just because of Article 11/13. "New business models" will emerge!
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
So you are advocating stealing from successful companies so you can prop up failing companies?
Also, who in their right mind would want to PAY to provide a service. Why don’t you come over and wash my car to prove your point, I’ll charge you $5 for the privilege – it’s just a pittance really.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Alice More: Arrest him!
Sir Thomas More: Why, what has he done?
Margaret More: He’s bad!
Thomas More: There is no law against that.
Will Roper: There is! God’s law!
Thomas More: Then God can arrest him.
Alice: While you talk, he’s gone!
Thomas More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
Thomas More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.
~ from A Man for All Seasons (1966 film)
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Stephen, once Article 13 is in place, you won’t be able to infringe on movies by quoting them like that any more…
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
That is not exactly clear.
Perhaps some rightsholders will use your new business model idea and tell the EU not to enforce Articles 11/13 when it comes to their work! I have at least three books I would make exempt from the law without a second thought, but they are mostly advertisements for a much more expensive product (though the books still have useful info).
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Oh, so you’re one of those “I’ll teach you to get rich if you pay me enough to make me rich” pyramid scheme motherfuckers, huh?
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
He’s actually stated in other threads that he’s incapable of considering any other kind of publishing. No wonder he’s so wrong, he’ll reject 99.99% of human literature, then pretend everyone else is wrong when they want to protect it.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
What is cheaper, ignore small self publishers and only work with large publishers OR hire a bunch of people who will handle all the license negotiations for small creators?
In other words, your self publishing days will be over and you have to go through large publishers who may just ignore you or take a majority of any profit made on the content they graciously agreed to publish on your behalf.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Perhaps some rightsholders will use your new business model idea and tell the EU not to enforce Articles 11/13 when it comes to their work! I have at least three books I would make exempt from the law without a second thought
Just as a point of fact: Article 11 does not appear to have an opt-out provision. It is mandatory. So, you can’t do that.
And similarly there is no such possibility under Article 13 as it does not require the content providers to do anything, but rather requires the platforms to block materials via filters. So you "opting out" is meaningless under the context of Article 13 as it is not directed at you (rather it’s designed to force companies to just throw money at legacy copyright holders).
Re: Cancer
Copyright monopolies are a cancer on the commons. Copyright only exists to promote the public good. Copyright isn’t a license to inspect all data passing across the interwebs just in case a much faster now. Textbooks are out of date in 5 years. Hollywood blockbusters should have made a fine return in five years.
Lowering the monopoly protection would surely incentivize more creations, not less.
It would demonstrably put more works in the public domain for the common good.
Re: Re: Cancer
Probable cause, not copyright, is the license to inspect internet traffic.
Re: Re: Re:
You browse the Internet. Your browser has a cache. Your cache has a copy of content from sites you visited. Now I have probable cause to inspect your computer for possible infringement of other people’s copyrights. And under your plan to jail infringers, if I can prove my case, you go to jail because your infringement — no matter how “incidental” — is still infringement.
Beware the Devil, you anonymous coward; one day, you may find him at your doorstep waiting to deliver the punishment you would have visited upon those you deem wicked and evil. Woe be unto you on that day.
…as for me, I’ll be enjoying the schadenfreude. ????
Re: Re: Re: Cancer
That’s just plain idiotic. I have to ask though, what is the probable cause? Because just saying "probable cause" doesn’t mean jack shit.
This isn't about Google
Google will survive and thrive, with or without Yerrup. This law is simply a prop for the European corporatist monopolies, to enable them to crush any new competition and maintain complete control over the creative workers.
The natural result would be for the creative types to emigrate, impoverishing European culture. But that doesn’t matter, so long as the Big European Media Corporations continue to get the kind of income they’ve come to expect.
Re: This isn't about Google
If the legacy industries get this law passed in Europe, how long before they get it spread world wide via trade treaties harmonizing copyright law?
Re: This isn't about Google
Except Google’s near-monopoly on internet video has enabled hundreds of thousands of creators to make money under its licensing umbrella.
Re: Re: This isn't about Google
And this is a bad thing?
The EU is simply being run by evil people who hate us
Once again, the EU wants to do this because they’re sociopathic freaks with black hearts, black souls and black minds. Germany was always going to support Article 13 without the SMEs. They have simply been playing mind games with us to trick us into thinking the Democratic System still works, only to stab us in the back in the end. The only thing the media companies have done was give the EU an excuse hide behind so they can carry out their depraved desires. If that fails, they would simply find another excuse to ruin the internet, like terrorism.
Re: The EU is simply being run by evil people who hate us
Didn’t Margaret Thatcher oppose the reunification of Germany because (paraphrased) "every time Germany is unified it immediately starts to conquer the rest of Europe"? Looks like she was right, dood! Only this time it’s an economic conquest rather than a military one!
Re: Re: The EU is simply being run by evil people who hate us
This is not just about Germany. The entire EU has turned fascistic and it is worse than just authoritarianism. These people basically have the exact same motivation as Captain Planet villains who like to pollute the world, not simply for profit or any gain, but simply for shits and giggles. They are bad people.
Re: Re: Re: The EU is simply being run by evil people who hate u
Erm… no. That’s not the way anything works. Get to know the Pirate MEP Julia Reda. She does a better job of representing my interests than the British ones.
Re: The EU is simply being run by evil people who hate us
I’d prefer if you chose some other allegory than "black" this black that. Nothing wrong with being black.
Theres articles that say some pirates buy more content than the average consumer.
Some creators upload say book 1 of a series to pirate sites ,
read my book,if you like it buy book,2 ,3 etc
AS Mike says they could tax google or facebook,
this law will break the internet,
,one example ,facebook might block all eu users from watching all video,s from us users or creators ,as it might otherwise risk being sued by some one in the eu.
This basically wipes out meme,s remix culture , in the eu.
Small eu websites will simply have to block all user uploads ,
if you want to upload videos in the eu you might have only facebook
or youtube as a outlet .
The people that made this law are either stupid or just want to help
legacy corporations, It,S a big F U to small websites who do not
have millions to build filters .
Re: Re:
[I]The people that made this law are either stupid or just want to help legacy corporations[/i]
Those people just wanted an excuse to obliterate the internet in Europe. They are evil and depraved on the same level as Ajit Pai here in America. They are actively trying to undermine democracy by shoving this law in as a means to tell people that their voices do not matter. This is an act of malicious moral depravity than any kind of ignorance. They deserve to be tarred and feathered for crimes against humanity.
Re: Re:
If that is true then let the creators decide when to release free copies of their work. Many authors do this when they go on talk shows and announce that their new release will be free for X period of time.
If you want to abolish copyright enforcement, fine. Let me aggregate the content of the media companies with playlists etc. (links to hosted copies not owned by the creators). Of course, they don’t want that, but rather want a scenario where the big rip off the small but the small cannot fight back.
Re: Re: Re:
Umm, they already do (except when they are signed by legacy industry publishing/recording companies and have no rights over their works anymore). I’m confused.
But you just said they couldn’t do that! Make up your mind, which is it?
And legacy entertainment industries trying to destroy the means for people to self publish is different how, exactly?
"…Germany Caves To France…"
Those words have never been written before, and will never be written again.
Gee thanks for helping destroy the Internet Germany
How to block or overcome horrid legislation
When I read about such legislation, I have to ask myself how one might block or protest its passage. Some options that come to mind include:
1) Pick a day and encourage the temporary mass shutdown of as many sites and services as possible in order to raise awareness of the rules’ impact. Make people truly realize the impact such rules would have on the internet they use today. Google gave the legislators a taste earlier when they showed a sample news page without content snippets. I think that idea needs to be expanded. How long could the EU hold out with a true internet shutdown? When the EU was looking to pass ACTA, internet sites flagged their home pages with banners warning users of the treaty’s potential harm. This resulted in many people marching or contacting their political representatives in protest. This, in turn, caused the EU to reject the treaty. Awareness of the issue among the masses is needed to fight it.
2) If banners and sample pages don’t work, pick a point in time and alert your uses that you will block or withdraw your site/service from all EU countries if the rules pass. Then do it. If enough companies do this, even for a day, you might have enough pressure for a repeal.
3) Take to the streets in protest. You already have the Yellow Vests in France marching to remind those in office that they have an obligation to listen to the people they (supposedly) represent. I imagine more people would turn out for such marches if these rules were passed.
4) Push for your country to quit the EU. The new rules can be used as examples for why staying in the union is not in your country’s best interest. If your country is not in the EU,ltheir rules don’t apply to you. There is already a burning movement among the citizens of certain countries (like Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, etc.) to exit the union. Rules like these would certainly add to that fire.
In the end, it is the people most effected by these rules who must make their voices heard as to what they want. The people making these rules think they have the power to put their own interests ahead of anyone else’s. Actually, they only have that power IF the masses GIVE it to them. If the masses don’t want these rules, they must make that fact known by joining together and speaking up as they did with ACTA.
Not Available In Your Country
I imagine a world in which Google, Facebook, etc would say this to the entire EU. The backlash would have this nonsense gone in a day.
Probably not in this world.
I still say the ISPs and web sites could kill this in a heartbeat if they all banded together and shut down until the politicians agreed to shelve this proposal.
I know this is showing my naivete on this..
But isn’t there some sort of provision in the trade area of the United Nations charter that can be used to stop this shit dead in it’s tracks? I seem to remember reading a few months ago that the UN had issued some sort of edict or proclamation that they were wholly against the EU enacting either Article – so can’t this mostly completely toothless organization find some balls, find a provision that they can make stick, then actually step up and block this crap?
Like I said, i’m showing my naivete here, but there has to be some LEGAL means for stopping a small group of less than 500 people, all arrogant know it all bastards, from enacting something that will affect the entire planet and the way the internet is comprised therein…especially since it will affect the livelihood of literally MILLIONS of people…
OK, have at it…heh heh
Re: I know this is showing my naivete on this..
The biggest damage will be to "culture", which is a very touchy-feely thing that is very hard to legislate around.
But, in the end, if this goes ahead, we’ll all be able to say "I told you so" as the big players dominate and independent artists get screwed even harder.
Re: Re: I know this is showing my naivete on this..
"The biggest damage will be to "culture", which is a very touchy-feely thing that is very hard to legislate around."
then… it should not be legislated around and you instead legislate around hard facts like PROVEN infringers and PROVEN losses rather than the random crap you spew around to make you feel better?
"we’ll all be able to say "I told you so" a"
No, you won’t because your random nonsense would be blocked from the open web lest you infringe on some other idiot.
Re: I know this is showing my naivete on this..
If the publishers had their way copyright would be enshrined in law as a human right. https://www.internationalpublishers.org/images/Copyright.pdf
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121019/12333120767/no-copyright-is-not-human-right.shtml
I hope they understand
Re: I hope they understand
I hope they get the idea..
You cant aim a law/regulation towards 1 company..
ANd how in hell are you going to charge GOOGLE for a link on an amazon server, thats inside a forum that was never created by any of the above.
Big/excite/ducky/google/yahoo/MSN/…/…/… to name a few…all do the same..
AND STILL, it is not going to be the little syndicates that get ANY MONEY….they are only aggregates, they Copy the OTHER major corps data….SO THEY ARE LINKING ALSO..
The Common Good
Wow, you guys really sound like communists, with your focus on the “common good”. Are you Russian, or do you work for the Russians?
Are any of you actual Americans, or are you traitors to your own heritage and your own history?
Re: The Common Good
"Are any of you actual Americans"
Lots of us aren’t, no. Why would you expect people on a site read internationally, on a story about the EU, to be solely populated by people from your patch of ground?
Re: Re: The Common Good
Is that YOU, Wendy?
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
Wendy who? I’m all about the common good. Belief in the commons is about as conservative as you can get given that it pre-dates capitalism by thousands of years.
Re: Re: Re:2 The Common Good
Exclude europe from the internet, an American original invention.
Re: Re: Re:3 The Common Good
Only if we can exclude you from the parts of the web that were invented in Europe. Your tiny xenophobic mind might be surprised at how much you lose.
Re: Re: Re:3 The Common Good
Ever heard of Tim Berners-Lee?
Right-wing extremism is a mental illness, people.
Re: The Common Good
It seems you have no clue what "common good" means even though you benefit from it every day. And I bet that you can’t tell me what communism means without looking it up even if your life depended on it (remember, using Wikipedia is using the fruits of the common good).
You pay taxes for the common good of the society.
You go to school for the common good of the society.
You can use public transportation because of the common good of your city.
You have the right to legal representation because of the common good of the society.
I can go on with more example, but I expect even you could get the gist by now.
You mean those who fled their countries to avoid persecution, poverty, hunger or just to make buck? The same who stole land from the natives already living there at gun point? You means those "actual Americans"?
Re: Re: The Common Good
And you are another communist fucking foreigner, right?
Fess up.
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
I can honestly say that I’m not like a knuckle dragging internet troll of dubious parentage that don’t have the wherewithal to post a snappy riposte with a modicum of intelligence interjected.
An accidental reply by a cat walking over a keyboard would have possessed more originality than your attempt at baiting.
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
Why are you so obsessed with the nationality of people who post on an internationally read forum? Shouldn’t you be somewhere more inbred if you’re offended by differing points of views?
Re: Re: Re:2 The Common Good
I hear InfoWars has a comments section.
Re: The Common Good
The Russians have swung hard to the right, genius.
The idea of the commons is as old as the hills. Or do you believe that heritage and history began and ended with the greatest capitalists, the British East India Company?
Re: Re: The Common Good
Ok, PaulT – quick question – why do you masquerade as multiple people? Your writing style and comment timing is so obvious.
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
So when are you going to challenge the three Billy Goats Gruff? I’d watch out for the eldest, he’s a scrapper.
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
Eh? PaulT and I are different people. I’m a woman living in the UK, and I’m fairly certain he resides in Spain. We sometimes disagree but I respect him because he’s often right.
If you want to spend your life being all paranoid and stuff knock yourself out. I’ve got better things to do. Oh, if it helps any, I used to do web design for a living, then got out due to the market being saturated for the small and medium-sized businesses I was aiming at. I got into TD and politics over SOPA when I realised that any random sod could accuse me of copyright infringement and get my site blocked on that alone. I still keep my hand in by helping out my friends as and when required. I joined the Pirate Party about that time and have been a supporter ever since, but since I tend towards traditional conservatism I disagree with some of my party’s stances on things like UBI. I’m most active on Twitter these days, banging on about how stupid Brexit is.
Re: Re: Re: The Common Good
That’s actually too dumb to dignify with a real answer, but when you insist on posting anonymously and then complain about other people hiding their identity, you’ve pretty much lost any argument you could have had. Even if you were remotely correct about what you just stated, you’d still be in the wrong.
Re: Re: Re:2 The Common Good
Government employees that fuck society over enjoy anonymity.
As I eat my pie, I cannot recall why all the shenanigans in the EU sound so familiar.
This is why it's being called "ACTA 2"
This can still be stopped, but it’s going to rely on the EU Parliament actually having a backbone and saying that this is not acceptable. And that is going to require people in Europe to contact their MEPs and telling them not to wreck the internet.
On July 04 2012 we the people defeated ACTA by contacting our MEPs and asking them to vote against it. The result was spectacular, to say the least.
The people: 478
Pro-ACTA: 39
I remind people of this glorious fact every once in a while because, as I’ve often said, pressure works. So pile on the damn pressure and give me another democratic win to gloat about!
Here you go: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/en/your-meps/uk_meps.html
Those are the UK ones. If every citizen of every member state emails and calls their MEPs to ask them to vote against Articles 11 and 13 we will defeat the maximalists again. What are you waiting for?
Oh, and it might be worth asking if they’re allergic to flowers. Wink
Re: This is why it's being called "ACTA 2"
In some fashion, I wish I were in Europe, so I could reach out to an MEP.
On the other hand, I’m also glad I’m not in Europe, so I don’t have to directly deal with this fuckery.
My hat’s off to you over there who are fighting this. Godspeed.
Re: Re: This is why it's being called "ACTA 2"
I got involved in writing to American Congressmen and Senators over SOPA. You could contact our MEPs if you wanted to, advising that you’re American with European friends and explaining how this would affect you. We need all the help we can get.
Re: Re: Re: This is why it's being called "ACTA 2"
Your link up above is a good way to find contact information for MEPs, I take it?
Re: Re: Re:2 This is why it's being called "ACTA 2"
Yep. As I’ve already said it’s best to personalise your comments to match their biases. I asked the UKIP MEP’s not to sell us out to the Yanks during the ACTA campaign because they’re xenophobic little sods.
These days you’d be asking them not to let the EU dictate what we can or can’t do online as this would affect British people even when we’re out of the EU.
Pro-EU MEPs would be asked to vote against it in the name of encouraging faith in the EU as an organisation that works for the public good. Be creatively manipulative — the lobbyists are.
When did sharing links to copyrighted works for noncommercial purposes become illegal? We need to go back to days when copying works for personal archival purposes was legal.
Re: Re:
We need to separate the commercial internet from personal private internet interests. Let the corporations, laqyers, government fight amongst themselves and let us have our old internet back.