Because Of Course: Rightsholders Pushing To Turn Digital Services Act Into Another Anti-Piracy Tool
from the they-can't-resist dept
It never fails. We’ve been talking about the EU’s Digital Services Act for a few years now, looking at how the EU’s technocratic desire to overregulate the internet is going to cause real problems. And while at least they took a more systematic process to figuring out how to write the law, the end result still struck us as a disaster in waiting. And, because this is how any internet regulation attempt always turns out, after all the back and forth discussions and careful weighing of different ideas, someone always has to come in at the very end and seek to make everything much worse. In this case, the issue is that the EU Parliament, which gave us the terrible and broken Copyright Directive, is now trying to sneak more bad copyright ideas into the DSA.
The note expressed support for the proposal of the European Commission, which defined search engines as an ad hoc category and introduces a notice and action (N&A) mechanism that would be required to take down illegal content once it is flagged to them. At the same time, Didier proposed a few changes to the Commission’s text.
The note asked to remove a part in the text’s preamble providing examples of ‘mere conduit’, ‘caching’ and ‘hosting’ services, categories with different liability regimes established in the eCommerce Directive, the predecessor of the DSA. These examples were overly descriptive for the rightsholders that prefer a case-by-case in court.
Another change would mandate that if illegal content is flagged, not just the relevant web pages but the entire website should be delisted, namely removed by the search results. In the most extreme case, that would mean that if a video is illegally uploaded on YouTube, Google would have to remove the entire platform from its search results.
Finally, a modification to an article would oblige search engines to remove all search results referring to the flagged illegal content, not only the specific website. In other words, the platforms would have to monitor all websites searching for unlawful content.
Basically, throwing out whatever semi-balanced (not really, but they’d like to believe it is) intermediary liability rules they could come up with, and inserting a maximum punishment for sites and content deemed illegal (i.e. infringing). Incredible.
I mean, literally, they want this to say that if content is “flagged” (not adjudicated) as illegal, entire websites should be blocked from search results. That seems extreme, and extremely censorial, effectively giving tremendous power to silence speech to just about anyone who wants to take down some content.
Filed Under: content blocking, copyright, digital services act, dsa, due process, eu, rightsholders, search, site blocking
Comments on “Because Of Course: Rightsholders Pushing To Turn Digital Services Act Into Another Anti-Piracy Tool”
Mike, can you =use something like legacy publishers, instead of rightsholders, as ever self publisher on the Internet is also a rights holder. Crippling the Internet would suite the aims of the legacy industries, but severely damage the interests, and ability to get their works published, of all the self publishers, and the service industries that have grown up to support them.
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Seconded. As a rightsholder, the legacy publishers have never represented me and I find their demands way overboard.
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Rightsholders under copyright law are still operating under a legal umbrella no less obnoxious than old medieval heresy law.
Even if the exception to the rule is that the law can be employed by individuals other than gatekeepers and rentseekers it’s still a piss-poor law.
Thus the term rightsholder is in itself attainted.
Strange ways
To backdoor the Whole of the net, and NOT just your 1%.
Where they able to sneak in the bad copyright ideas into the bill?
There are constantly public domain videos getting dmca notices on YouTube everyday so under this law a websites that has billions of users could be blocked because of one single 5 minute video? Of course this law is being pushed for by old legacy media corporations not by creative users who actually make content video and audio . This law would result in massive overblocking of user uploads and is basically an attack on free speech
Remember it took YouTube months to figure out that some users were claiming ownership and revenue from 1000s of music videos they did not own the rights to. And of course music company’s and Sony NBC Disney actually earn millions of dollars from music videos ad revenue from YouTube music videos
This law could also be used by trolls to maybe remove a website they don’t like from search engines by posting videos and then claiming they are infringing content
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This law could also be used by trolls to maybe remove a website they don’t like from search engines by posting videos and then claiming they are infringing content.
Maybe the law could include wording that says if a rightsholder or any of their representatives uploads a video, then it’s not infringing. That ought to prevent poisoning the well like that.
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No, I think that the original commenter was referring to the abuse of copyright law (similar to abuse of defamation law) to take down criticism in light of the de facto non-existent penalty for filing a false infringement claim.
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Which is my proposal would work. Rightsholder contacts disliked site because one of their works was posted on it, the site’s ensuing investigation shows that an employee of the rightsholder posted it from their home IP address. Website says, “Your representative posted this content. Talk to them about it.”
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Geez, you’re a dumbass. Did you even read the comment?
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My mistake. I’ll be careful next time. I read “this law could also be used by trolls to maybe remove a website they don’t like from search engines” and didn’t read the second half of the sentence properly (i.e. I skipped the “by posting videos and then” in “by posting videos and then claiming they are infringing content”). However, my point still stands that eventually someone will file a false infringement claim to take down criticism of them. In other words, history shows that there’s no need to poison the well for someone to file a false claim.
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Unless the law requires the presence of infringing content. After all, if there’s nothing to ‘Notice’, then there’s nothing to take down.
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“After all, if there’s nothing to ‘Notice’, then there’s nothing to take down.”
Tens of thousands of fully legitimate youtube videos miscategorized by ContentID and taken down under false DMCA claims beg to differ.
Just because there’s nothing to notice doesn’t mean you won’t spend hours every week fending off the recurrent false positives.
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What the OC said that was quoted by Autie: This law could also be used by trolls to maybe remove a website they don’t like from search engines by posting videos and then claiming they are infringing content.
As another AC already said, you’re a dumbass.
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Somebody uploads a file to site x, and the sends a notice to the search engines from the same IP, and the search engines have now way of knowing that, because they do not have site x’s logs.
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Google uses cookies that track you all over the web wherever they have adverts, and even on some sites where they don’t. It’s only privacy respecting search engines like DuckDuckGo that can’t tell what you’ve uploaded where. Nice try, though.
Oh look, another “nuke a website if it has infringing content on any page” provision
So under this regime, any site is considered a “pirate site” just because one page has infringing content. That sounds familiar back in 2011-12. The internet as a whole may very well be considered a “pirate’s haven”. In essence, any user can convert a 100% perfectly legal site into a pirate site with just one illegal upload.
Again and again. That’s like if a city has any criminals, then the entire population of that city should be arrested and are presumed guilty.
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Some would say, “Apples and oranges.” Doesn’t mean your analogy’s not a good one, though. 🙂
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I have a DMCA notice that says HBO has infringing content sent by the ‘rightsholder’ or authorized agent, time to blackhole hbo.com
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More like if anybody simply thinks that the city has a criminal, then that will happen.
It’s the problematic use of word ‘flagged’, which given the lack of penalty for mistaken or malicious use, is very much weaker then ‘accused’ or ‘suspected’, and very close to ‘may’.
Copyright maximalists are insatiable.
A law which is overly descriptive and full of bad policy is infinitely easier to fix than a law which is devastatingly and intentionally deficient in description. Copyright maximalists want copyright law worldwide to be even closer to the following than it already is.
The end goal: no fair use, no cap on punitive damages, no regard for actual damages, no need to prove that the plaintiff legitimately hold the copyrights, no description of which rights copyright doesn’t grant, no regard for freedom of expression, and no regard for the common good. Copyright remains a means to an end for now, but copyright maximalists want to trick people into thinking that copyright should be an end in itself.
The point of courts is to handle cases which legislation fails to address (or may be unable to address, since there will always be edge cases). The EU Parliament would flip this principle on its head. Every case will be an edge case.
“No, don’t bother writing the law. Let the courts write all of it. Let’s have more cases like Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. from across the pond. Let the judge declare “Thou shalt not steal”, deliver whatever punishment the judge sees fit (because why should we define what is proportionate?), and let that be the end of the matter. You there, you who cry “freedom of expression” and “common good” and “negligible actual damages”? You dare oppose the law? You are the one who steals the nourishment from right under the lips of the starving artist.”
In Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy decided with no reasoning that sampling is copyright infringement, equated copyright infringement with stealing, and granted an injunction to Grand Upright Music without citing any law. The decision is quite short and literally begins with “Thou shalt not steal”. “The conduct of the defendants herein, however, violates not only the Seventh Commandment, but also the copyright laws of this country.” Which laws, Judge Duffy? Instead of citing an actual law such as the Copyright Act of 1976 (which codified fair use!), Judge Duffy cited the Bible. Imagine being a judge and declaring “you broke the law” without specifying which law and without even knowing what the law says. Imagine getting away with it. Judge Duffy doesn’t have to imagine it because that’s what happened. Copyright maximalists want more judges to be like Judge Duffy. Too often, US judges mindlessly defer to the desires of copyright maximalists in cases such as Eldred v. Ashcroft, Golan v. Holder, Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records, Inc., and Bridgeport Music Inc. v. Dimension Films. The EU Parliament would have this complacent attitude become the official norm in Europe.
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Shush, you. You’re going to give Tero Pulkkinen/terop ideas.
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It’s nothing TP isn’t already trying. When ACTA was sunk we knew that wasn’t going to be the last of it. One way or the other, this shit will get pushed through. As usual pirates won’t be affected. But the legal part of the net will be brought to its knees in short order.
At which point the bill will be reversed, but not before billions will have been wasted in taxpayer money on senseless enforcement, several sectors of legitimate business will have abandoned Europe, and the online marketplace stifled for decades to come.
The copyright cult, ladies and gents. Along with terrorists and the child porn crowd the reason we can’t have nice things.
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In any other industry, the inability to show any results would have merited expulsion or any sort of penalty. If you’re copyright enforcement, you get to be HADOPI – spend millions in taxpayer money sending out useless letters and notices, only bring in one person to court which you knew was the wrong person, and nail them for several hundred euros that don’t even make it to the artist supposedly stolen from, and then get rewarded with consistent government support despite doing fuck all to deserve it. That’s where we are right now, unfortunately.
It would easy for trolls to rip a dvd or a TV show , than just email NBC, oh look csi miama episode 3 is on YouTube. Do you want to take it down. Is NBC gonna ask for the whole of YouTube to be blocked over 1 video.? Also many reviews on YouTube of TV shows get dmca notices even though they contain maybe 2 minutes of video footage. We have seen the dmca notice system take down 1000s of public domain videos .
And we have seen it used to remove political speech, but at least dmca does not block the entire website.
This is really sopa version 2 being brought in to the back door.
It would give massive powers to old legacy media company’s to censor the Web
Blocking a site like YouTube or twitter would be a direct attack on free speech and political expression.
When bringing in new laws over online media you have to think could this be used by trolls or bad actors to silence free speech
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It would easy for trolls to rip a DVD or a TV show, then just email NBC. “Oh, look. CSI: Miami, Season 2, Episode 3 is on YouTube. Do you want to take it down?”
That would actually work pretty well. I recall a past case where an artist had their Vevo video pulled from YouTube by the record company that had uploaded it there. Imagine the fallout if the publisher had been able to shutter the entire site over a video that wasn’t even infringing. 🙁
If I were a politician in the EU, I’d start a push for a change to copyright law that requires summary execution for the merest accusation of copyright infringement, just to highlight how ridiculous anti-piracy efforts have gotten.
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Heeey! You’re infringing on the copyright of my idea! Oh, wait… I DIDN’T MEAN IT!!!
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So, kind of like the Commissars from Warhammer 40K?
INFRINGEMENT! [BLAM]
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More like Judge Dredd.
You have been found guilty of accusing uploaders of legal content of copyright infringement. The sentence is death. [BLAM]
What is a website?
Do they define what constitutes a website?
Never assume, but I would guess they have realized the IP level blocking would be very problematic, so they are problem thinking something at the DNS level. Maybe they they are thinking a fully qualified domain name would be sufficient? Would they want to include all subdomains as well? Wildcarded? Otherwise a whack-a-mole’s worth of dynamically created names might be problematic, and might even cause on excessive strain on DNS itself.
What if all the links went through a proxy, like a tor router or a VPN, or just a simply reflector. Do they intend to block only the ultimate destination, or all the intermediaries as well.
Does one flagged item on YouTube take down all of YouTube? Do some some sites get exemptions? Who gets paid to maintain the exemption list?
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You keep using that word, “thinking”. I do not think it means what you think it means.
More seriously, I’m pretty sure polititians go “internet = uncontrolled = bad” and don’t actually care how it works.
Censor the censors
Yeah, this law passes and some annoyed people would consider hacking the legacy industry’s websites, post infringing content, then falsely report it to Google after. Poof! Website no longer exists in the eyes of a search engine.
“We’re sorry, but sony.com cannot be shown in search results due to copyright infringement.”
Bad copyright idea is bad copyright idea.
“Another change would mandate that if illegal content is flagged, not just the relevant web pages but the entire website should be delisted, namely removed by the search results”
If passed, can we combine this with some kind of mandatory enforcement to ensure that this actually has to happen even when the legacy industry sends obviously false claims about its own websites, as it does regularly?
I don’t like the collateral damage involved, but it would be hilarious to see the people demanding this start having to scramble to reverse it, and since they’re utterly incompetent it would probably take less than 5 minutes before they send the notices that require Google to nuke them.
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