Copyright Industries Reveal Their Ultimate Goal: An Internet Where Everything Online Requires A License From Them
from the now-would-be-a-good-time-to-stop-it-happening dept
Yesterday, Mike took apart an extraordinarily weak attempt by the UK’s music collection society, PRS for Music, to counter what it claimed were “myths” about the deeply-harmful Article 13 of the proposed EU Copyright Directive. On the same day, the Guardian published a letter from the PRS and related organizations entitled “How the EU can make the internet play fair with musicians“. It is essentially a condensed version of the “myth-busting” article, and repeats many of the same fallacious arguments. It also contains some extremely telling passages that are worth highlighting for the insights that they provide into the copyright industries’ thinking and ultimate goal. Here is the main thrust of the letter:
This is not about censorship of the internet, as the likes of Google and Facebook would have you believe. The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace — and currently it doesn’t.
Once again, there is no attempt to demonstrate that Article 13 is not about censorship, merely an assertion that it isn’t, together with the usual claim that it’s all being orchestrated by big US Internet companies. The fact that over two-thirds of a million people have signed an online petition calling for the “censorship machine” of Article 13 to be stopped rather punctures that tired argument.
More interesting is the second sentence, which essentially confirms that for the recording industry, the Copyright Directive — and, indeed, the Internet itself — is purely about getting as much money as possible. There is no sense that there are other important aspects — like encouraging ordinary people to express themselves, and to be creative for the sheer joy of creating, or in order to amuse and engage with friends and strangers. The fact that all these non-commercial uses will be adversely affected by Article 13 is irrelevant to the recording industry, which seems to believe that making a profit takes precedence over everything else. However, even if they choose to ignore this side of the Internet, the signatories of the letter are well-aware that there is a huge backlash against the proposed law precisely because it is a threat to this kind of everyday online use. Attempting to counter this, they go on:
It is important to recognise that article 13 of the proposed EU copyright directive imposes no obligation on users. The obligations relate only to platforms and rightsholders. Contrary to some sensationalist headlines, internet memes will not be affected, as they are already covered by exceptions to copyright, and nothing in the proposed article will allow rightsholders to block the use of them.
Techdirt pointed out yesterday why the first part of that is intellectually dishonest. The Copyright Directive won’t impose obligations on users directly, but on the platforms that people use, which amounts to the same thing in practice. The letter then trots out the claim that Internet memes will not be affected, and specifically says this is because they are already covered by EU exceptions to copyright.
This is simply not true. Article 5 of the EU’s 2001 Directive on the “harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society” lays down that “Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations”, including “for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche”. However, that is optional, not compulsory. In fact, nineteen EU Member States — including the EU’s most populous country, Germany — have chosen not to provide an exception for parody. Even assuming that memes would be covered by parody exceptions — by no means guaranteed — they are in any case illegal in 19 EU nations.
Licensing is not an option here. There are many diverse sources for the material used in memes, most of which have no kind of organization that could give a license. The only way for online companies to comply with Article 13 would be to block all memes using any kind of pre-existing material in those 19 countries without a parody exception. Worse: because it will be hard to apply different censorship rules for each EU nation, it is likely that the upload filters will block all such memes in the whole EU, erring on the side of caution. It will then be up to the person whose meme has been censored to appeal against that decision, using an as-yet undefined appeals mechanism. The chilling effect this “guilty until proven innocent” approach will have on memes and much else is clear.
The blatant misinformation about whether memes would be blocked is bad enough. But in many ways, the most shocking phrase in the letter is the following:
Actually, article 13 makes it easier for users to create, post and share content online, as it requires platforms to get licences, and rightsholders to ensure these licences cover the acts of all individual users acting in a non-commercial capacity.
There, in black and white, is the end-game that the recording industry is seeking: that every online act of individual users, even the non-commercial ones, on the major platforms must be licensed. But the desire to control the online world, and to dictate who may do what there, is not limited to the recording companies: it’s what all the copyright industries want. That can be seen in Article 11 of the Copyright Directive — the so-called “snippet tax” — which will require licensing for the use by online sites of even small excerpts of news material.
It’s also at the root of the core problem with Article 3 of the proposed EU law. This section deals with the important new field of text and data mining (TDM), which takes existing texts and data, and seeks to extract new information by collating them and analyzing them using powerful computers. The current Copyright Directive text allows TDM to be carried out freely by non-profit research organisations, on material to which they have lawful access. However, companies must pay publishers for a new, additional, license to carry out TDM, even on material they have already licensed for traditional uses like reading. That short-sighted double-licensing approach pretty much guarantees that AI startups, which typically require frictionless access to large amounts of training data, won’t choose to set up shop in the EU. But the publishing industry never cares about the collateral damage it inflicts, provided it attains its purely selfish goals.
Although it’s rather breathtaking to see the copyright world openly admit that its ultimate aim is to turn the Internet into a space where everything is licensed, we shouldn’t be surprised. Back in 2013, Techdirt wrote about the first stages of the EU’s revision of its copyright law. One preliminary initiative was called “Licences for Europe”, and its stated aim was to “explore the potential and limits of innovative licensing and technological solutions in making EU copyright law and practice fit for the digital age”. What we are seeing now in the proposed Copyright Directive is simply a fulfillment of these ambitions, long-cherished by the copyright industries. If you aren’t happy about that, now would be a good time to tell the EU Parliament to Save Your Internet. It may be your last chance.
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Filed Under: article 13, broadcast, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu copyright directive, intermediary liability, license
Comments on “Copyright Industries Reveal Their Ultimate Goal: An Internet Where Everything Online Requires A License From Them”
Changing to fit
“making EU copyright law and practice fit for the digital age” should have been opening up the laws to reflect the rapidly changing, fast and flexible world wide web.
Instead, it means changing the internet to conform to restrictive and out of date copyright laws.
Also known as "surveillance." The vast majority of "data mining" is composed of spying on people for one reason or another.
Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing? Discouraging privatized surveillance is a laudable goal, even if it’s not specifically the intent of this law.
Re: Re:
Also known as "surveillance." The vast majority of "data mining" is composed of spying on people for one reason or another.
That’s not even remotely close to accurate. Text and data-mining is incredibly useful for nearly every service you rely on.
Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing? Discouraging privatized surveillance is a laudable goal, even if it’s not specifically the intent of this law.
It’s not privatized surveillance. It’s not about surveilling people, it’s about being able to do useful research.
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Oh please. You are so full of shit.
Thousands of musicians have spoken up in support of this bill. You, on the other hand, shill for the billionaires at the giant tech monopolies.
You’re pure scum.
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You shouldn’t assume. I, for one, oppose the bill. I don’t do any work for and don’t “shill” for any technology companies, and I couldn’t give a fuck what thousands of musicians think. Copyright needs to serve the public at large — authors, artists, musicians, and other creators should have no say in it of more weight than their status as members of the public and should receive no special benefit unless it is in the interests of society to grant it, and then in such amount.
Personally, and professionally (I’m a copyright attorney) I think that preserving the ability of people to post material as they wish, even if it might infringe, is more important than ensuring that musicians get paid, have control over their work, or are otherwise happy. If we can manage both, great, but I won’t hesitate for a second to prioritize the public interest ahead of authors as a special class.
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Oh please. You are so full of shit.
Well, that’s compelling.
Thousands of musicians have spoken up in support of this bill.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. Lots of musicians have also spoken out against the bill — in part because it would harm most of the platforms they use, including Bandcamp, Kickstarter and the like.
Besides, the comment you’re referring to is a discussion about Article 3, about text and data mining. I’m not sure what that has to do with musicians, but please, enlighten me.
You, on the other hand, shill for the billionaires at the giant tech monopolies.
Also not true. I have been, and remain, highly critical of the giant tech companies. But, really if you want to shill for giant tech monopolies, you should SUPPORT the EU Copyright Directive. Google and Facebook can probably afford to deal with it. Everyone else cannot. So you’d lock them in as your only choice and make them more powerful.
How is that going to help your thousands of musicians?
You’re pure scum.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how stupid and inaccurate.
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lol, you’re a shil and a schlemazel
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How’s that John Steele defense fund coming along, bro?
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That would be the thousands contracted to labels, but what about the millions who publish on the Internet and do not want a contract with the labels, or to send more money there way.
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Copyright best and brightest offering their rebuttal right here.
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That’s all? Sounds like a very small minority, then.
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Just the ones signed to major labels, I’m sure. You’ll have to forgive AC up there, he’s been too brainwashed to realise other musicians exist.
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“Thousands of musicians have spoken up in support of this bill. You, on the other hand, shill for the billionaires at the giant tech monopolies.”
But, those musicians are certainly not being paid by major corporations to control what they’re saying by the people who own them, right? No, I’m sure they’re all pure innocent independent artists with no corporate puppetry, while anyone who opposes this shit has to be paid off and can’t have their own opinion.
The lack of self awareness in your arguments is not surprising, but fortunately everyone knows what an idiot looks like here.
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You present "surveilling people" and "being able to do useful research" as mutually exclusive when I’d conjecture that there is an enormous overlap between the two.
FYI I am not a shill for Mason Wheeler. I was just put on alarm by your use of the phrase "lawful access" which I’ve previously, exclusively seen in the context of surveillance.
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“It’s not privatized surveillance. It’s not about surveilling people, it’s about being able to do useful research.”
IMHO your erroneous differentiation of these ‘actions’ according to their claimed ‘intent’ is a major shortcoming Mike= When these ‘research’ datasets are leaked, stolen, sold, or CC’d to the applicable gov agency- the claimed intent of collection/use becomes irrelevant. Data has no conscience. The reductio ad absurdum for this erroneous differentiation is: all spying is fine so long as it’s unintentional by the people who initiate it.
At some point the cognitive dissonance between the concepts of ‘intent’ and ‘potential’ in this context should have become completely palpable. Why hasn’t it become so for you?
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Elsevier will love this law, as they can tax any efforts by academics to better index and catalog academic papers? Also, just how much will they charge to provide poorer results to academic libraries so that papers can be found?
Internet Sales Tax Per Post
The end goal is to get each individual to pay per post a tax online no matter their company or individual capacity.
Re: Internet Sales Tax Per Post
Cool, will I get an individual credit for each unwanted ad that I pay for regardless of whether I want it?
I doubt that this is a surprise, but the European Commission’s been lobbying for the Copyright Directive on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1014131021137285127
But they cited the Commission’s draft instead of the one that’s going to a vote on Thursday. This raises one big question for me: How do they not know what is being voted on? Do they simply not follow their own proposals’ progress or are they deliberately attempting to mislead people?
Licensing the content is already necessary
> There, in black and white, is the end-game that the recording industry is seeking: that every online act of individual users, even the non-commercial ones, on the major platforms must be licensed.
Licensing the content has always been necessary. If your pirate operators fail to do this, they can be sued. If you publish content that has not been licensed, you’re doing copyright infringement.
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Since when did creators have to license content, or insist that their audience pay a license fee to someone else to listen to it.
Re: Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Well, as the poet says, everything has already been written. There are no original stories, merely original re-tellings of the same old story.
Therefore, everything is a derivative work, and the license collection agency should be able to collect a fee for the use of the work, and someone somewhere probably has the rights to the original work, (or will claim to a la Happy Birthday) and thus . . . PAY ME!!!!!!!
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Under that logic, anyone who creates any kind of original content and uploads it to the Internet counts as a copyright infringer because they failed to license their content first.
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Incorrect – Fair Use does not require a license. Automatic filters can’t tell if something is fair use – or even licensed really. Coupled with huge fines, that would damage free speech and fair use.
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Re: Re: Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
You are more delusional that a ward full of psychotics on LSD.
Re: Re: Re:2 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:3 Licensing the content is already necessary
That’s pretty delusional all right.
None of the ‘rules’ you’re suggesting exist. In particular, I’d love to know whether you think that in fictional works, the dialog inside quote marks is actually contributed by a person other than the author.
Fair use is for uses of copyrighted works that would otherwise be infringing, but which cannot be prohibited lest copyright fail in its mission to promote the progress of science.
It has been held to include things like copying entire works without attribution or ‘quote marks’ under the right circumstances, eg time shifting and space shifting.
At best you’re merely ignorant and should try to educate yourself before making pronouncements as you did. More likely you’re a troll.
Re: Re: Re:4 Licensing the content is already necessary
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You didn’t answer the (implied) question.
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Of all the dumb bullshit I have ever read here, this damn near tops the pile.
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That’s a pretty good one alright. Glad I contributed.
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uh… basically the whole point of ‘fiction’ is fun (entertainment) … are you suggesting there’s a way to have fun that’s incorrect (in that I THINK I am enjoying it, but secretly I’m not)?
The purpose for the author to write fiction is at least one of: entertaining themselves and/or entertaining their audience.
I know there are authors who write fiction because they enjoy it, and if no one else on the planet enjoyed it, they’d still write.
There are also authors who write fiction purely for profit…. but their audiance is paying to be entertained so if they are not entertaining people are not really going to buy their books
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So… fiction shouldn’t be made up and based instead on fact? What?
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Copyright is killing the fiction publishing business.
Re: Re: Re:4
Of “Course” I know what quotation “Marks” are FOR! They are “for” the Same thing that Capital LETTERS are For: to “randomly” place Throughout your “posts”.
They are like Seasoning, like the “lead” that Makes my Paint chips so “very” VERY delicious. Or like The “traps” taht I have Hidden throughout my HOUSE to protect “me” from the VOICES I “sometimes” Hear. Stop it “Voices”! Be “quiet”!
Every Nation eats the Paint chips it Deserves!
Re: Re: Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
“It’s only for situations where you accidentally remember quotes from existing works and fail to filter them out while writing your own book”
Do you have a citation for this claim, other than the voices in your head? Because I’m pretty sure that’s not what the law says.
Re: Re: Re:2 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:3 Licensing the content is already necessary
You’re confusing plagiarism and copyright infringement. They’re totally unrelated.
Plagiarism is about honesty because who needs dishonest information. If you presented one of Shakespeare’s sonnets as your original work that would be plagiarism but not copyright infringement, since his works are in the public domain.
On the other hand if you quoted a work so extensively that it could not be considered fair use but you used quotation marks and cited your source properly (see, eg, Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 US 539 (1985)), then you may have infringed a copyright but you didn’t plagiarize.
In any event the advice you claim to have gotten is wrong in numerous respects. In actual fact, fair use is no defense against claims of plagiarism, fair use is not limited to uses of only small parts of a work, and fair use is not required to be in the context of quotations. That, and your bizarre statements about writing, and that you come off as arguing dishonestly, are why we’re making fun of you.
Re: Re: Re:4 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:5 Licensing the content is already necessary
“Copyright infringement is just more serious version of plagiarism”
Apparently there is no such thing as public domain.
Re: Re: Re:6 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
“Basically public domain is not an issue in anything that has a market value”
Once again – absolute, verifiable industrial grade bullshit that can be disproven with the tiniest application of thought, or even a quick search on the very platform you’re using to lie.
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
And just who are the current copyright owners of the works of Shakespeare, Homer, Euclid etc.? (That is the works and not a particular printing of the works)
Re: Re: Re:8 Licensing the content is already necessary
Works based on Homer and Euclid are a tiny minority of the discussion. They pretty much amount to background noise or rounding error. Besides, we already have the likes of Disney who are very effective at taking the public domain and turning it into something they can exert ownership over.
The fact that you have to go back at least 500 years to make your point here kind of validates the other side of the argument.
Re: Re: Re:9 Licensing the content is already necessary
I was responding to the idea:
By pointing a few works that have been in the public domain for a long times, and which still have market value without their being a copyright holder.
As to Disney, where would they have been if the Brothers Grimm had not collected and published in book form all those folk tales that were and still are in the public domain.
Those works are not just noise, but rather well known works that are still inspiring new tellings of the same stories. The fact that you can recognize the names says that they are still relevant to culture and story telling.
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
Like I said, there is no such thing …
according to those who benefit from its demise.
Re: Re: Re:5 Licensing the content is already necessary
“when you copy someone elses work and include it to your own work”
That’s not copyright infringement. It’s plagiarism,. Two totally different things.
“Basically “copying” in copyright laws is one version of “claiming you made the work, even though it isn’t true (because it was copied from someone elses work)””
Except it’s not. If you put up a pirated copy of the new Pixar movie, you’re not claiming you made it. You’re not replacing the original copy or claiming authorship. But, you are committing copyright infringement. One term applies, the other completely does not!
You seriously need to learn that actual definitions of the words you use, because you’re spewing nonsense according to them now.
Re: Re: Re:6 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
“The publishing -operation is not allowed if you didn’t make it yourself”
Yes they are, under section 230 and fair use rules.
Is it tiring being this wrong?
Re: Re: Re:8 Licensing the content is already necessary
I guess one is not allowed to publish anything critical of the works of others because you are not allowed to say what it is they got wrong.
Re: Re: Re:4 Licensing the content is already necessary
Maybe if he had gone to “University” he would’ve known that.
Re: Re: Re:3 Licensing the content is already necessary
So, no you don’t have a citation, only a vague memory of something that you think was dumbed down to begin with – but which can be confirmed with a 2 second Google search, which you can’t be bothered to do?
If that’s the basis of your arguments, then no wonder they’re so faulty.
Re: Re: Re:4 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:5 Licensing the content is already necessary
“I didn’t base my work on someone elses intellectual property.”
No, but you’re completely ignorant of the law you’re trying to claim does things that it doesn’t. Maybe you should look for citations, and work out what things say in the real world for a change.
Re: Re: Re:6 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
So, then why do you have them so completely wrong?
Re: Re: Re:8 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:9 Licensing the content is already necessary
Of legal rules? You’re losing it, I think. Sure, they can evolve over time if that’s what you mean, and of course different places have different laws. But, that has nothing to do with your demonstrated ignorance of what the current situation is in the location that this article is addressing.
Let’s go back to the beginning. You claimed fair use means something that it literally doesn’t mean, and you’re too afraid to either a) admit it or b) educate yourself on what it actually says. Why spend the time acting the fool when you can be honest?
Re: Re: Re:10 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:11 Licensing the content is already necessary
Well, you’re just trying to push your local version of the laws to everyone.
How else do you think we got Life + 70 years to be the global standard?
Re: Re: Re:11 Licensing the content is already necessary
No, I’m trying to use the actual definition of fair use in the US, which is a country thousands of miles from me, which is both the subject of the article and nothing like the nonsense you’re stating.
Re: Re: Re:5 Licensing the content is already necessary
You cannot write software in a high level language without including someone else’s intellectual property, like the code to initialize the machine and stack etc, and standard libraries. The fact that there is an, often implied, license to distribute your work with that code in it does not change the fact you are publishing a work that include the works of others in it.
Re: Re: Re:6 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:7 Licensing the content is already necessary
Intellectual property cannot force humans to do activities that are impossible for humans to perform.
Like scan millions of hours of content just to make sure Fox or Disney isn’t magically being harmed?
Too late. IP law according to the standards that rightsholders demand is impossible. They can’t even police their own shit and have to demand YouTube do it on their behalf, but here you are making excuses for their shitty algorithms. Fuck that.
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Re: Re: Re:9 Licensing the content is already necessary
An individual posting videos will post a few hours of video a week at the most, unless they are deliberately posting their DVD collection online.
YouTube on the other hand gets at least 500 hour of video posted every minute. Users generally know whether they are posting infringing content, while YouTube has a massive task to scan it, and currently only detect music/sound that matches content registered with ContentID.
Just for comparison, Hollywood produces around 500 films a year. I cannot find any figures for TV production, but across all stations it is not going to be more that a few hundred hours of content a day. The output from self publishers exceeds the legacy out by a large margin, as within an hour or two, they will have posted more new content than Hollywood and the Studios produce in a year. So why are laws being proposed which will potentially cut off most of the videos being made in favour of industries who refuse to adapt to easy fast distribution of content, by forcing platforms to police what their users are doing, and to the detriment of the majority of those users.
Re: Re: Re:10 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:11 Licensing the content is already necessary
So your solution is what the RIAA proposed: to sue children and make money off that.
And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously.
Re: Re: Re:12 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:11 Licensing the content is already necessary
“The end users in previous messages meant the users who watch the videos”
That’s even dumber than your previous claim, by an order of magnitude. How the hell are viewers meant to know whether or not a certain platform has bought rights or not?
Re: Re: Re:12 Licensing the content is already necessary
I think his argument could be expressed in somewhat more rigorous form as something like:
And then he apparently tries to use that as a supporting element in a deeper argument, which is something like:
He seems to insist that the thing which must need to change is the platforms’ business (model) – that since doing what they’re trying to do is not possible without breaking the law, they are trying to do the impossible, and therefore they (and anyone else who tries the same thing) should and must either fail or be shut down.
Some people in this debate would probably argue that the thing which must need to change is the idea that the responsibility for performing a license check must lie on either the platform or the end user.
Other people in this debate – and this would probably include me – would probably argue that the thing which must need to change is the need for a license (to do what these platforms do) in the first place. (Whether by a change in licensor business practices, or a change in copyright law, or the abolition of copyright law, or something else.)
Re: Re: Re:9 Licensing the content is already necessary
It’s not an impossible problem. It’s just that enforcement has to be done by the rightsholders, and liability is on the the side of the people actually committing the crime. What’s impossible is forcing people who aren’t creating the content nor uploading the files to know what’s allowed or not. The same principle that allows you to post your stupid ramblings without Techdirt having to hold the comments for weeks for investigation just in case you’re saying something libellous.
Re: Re: Re:10 Licensing the content is already necessary
To be fair, it seems reasonable to argue that it’s just as impossible for the rightsholders to police every upload (anywhere, across the entire Internet) for possible infringement, and that the result when they’ve tried to do that is the type of draconian over-enforcement we complain about.
Re: Re: Re:11 Licensing the content is already necessary
That’s a fair point, but my response to that has always been the same – rightholders have never had the ability to police every possible infringement, and have never been paid for every use of their products. For everybody who bought an album or VHS weekly, there were people whose entire music & movie library consisted of mixtapes and stuff they recorded off the radio or TV. People lent works to friends multiple times without further payment to the studio or publisher. Yet, these industries thrived.
All the internet has really done is open up several things – visibility of just how many people share works, the ability to share with more people than you previously had access to and unbundling (e.g. if you want a song, you can just buy that song, you don’t have to buy the overpriced album with filler surrounding the track you want).
I can understand the freakouts over these, but the answer is certainly not to place the burden on the people least able to make accurate censorship just because the work passes through their platform. Especially when the solutions are designed to further entrench major corporations at the expense of independent artists.
Re: Re: Re:12 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:13 Licensing the content is already necessary
“This way rightowners do not need to sue everyone who infringes, but they can just pick few bad apples”
Or, as in this reality already happens, they just pick the nearest handy target with big pockets who happen to be in the way, not people who are actually guilty of anything. Hence the need for section 230 protections, safe harbours, fair use and so on.
Meanwhile, also in reality, this does absolutely nothing to stop the majority of infringement. Because you’re not addressing the root causes of piracy, it never stops, and you either end up playing the game of whack a mole with the many thousands of pirate sources that pop up all the time, or you end up attacking people who have done nothing wrong and chill innovation in other areas for fear of being shut down before they have had a chance at success.
Your ignorance of the real world is, as even, astounding, as is your support of things proven to have the opposite effect to the one you claim to be attempting.
Re: Re: Re:14 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:15 Licensing the content is already necessary
“This cuts the funding from criminal organisations, and thus will stop the activity.”
The activity from criminal organisations, which is very little of it. It also stops a huge amount of legitimate activity because they start getting sued when other people use their platform for activities over which they have no control.
This may be your misunderstanding, once again assuming I’m talking to a person and not someone pretending to lack common sense
The vast majority of piracy is not committed by criminal gangs, it’s committed by ordinary people who have no other connection to each other. It is committed by them for reasons that have nothing to do with profit.
It is also impossible to create a tool that cannot be used for illegal purposes. Therefore, holding the tool responsible will shut down more legal than illegal activity.
Re: Re: Re:16 Licensing the content is already necessary
Re: Re: Re:17 Licensing the content is already necessary
So, you wish to destroy everything, including the methods by which people legally distribute works, because you’re afraid that the current system isn’t paying 100%.
Back in the early 90s, I could phone someone whose number I could see in the back of a newspaper and get them to deliver a pirated VHS tape. Sometimes this would be from an otherwise legitimate video store.
By your standards, that means we should have been attacking all telephone service, the postal service, the roads and vehicles used to deliver, VHS tapes, VCRs, any store that offered VHS rentals and the free press. I somehow imagine that would have been worse than the potential revenue loss from the pirated tape (which, tbh I only ever did regarding banned “video nasties” that weren’t available legally, but that’s another story).
Do you see why you’re a raging moron yet, or just getting very silly with your trolling (since nobody can honestly be this stupid)?
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Last sentence should read:
If you publish content that has not been licensed, you can be sued for nominal copyright infringement. Whether you were actually infringing depends on whether the copying is covered by fair use/fair dealing or other legal limitations on copyright, but most people cannot afford to fight the recording industry in court, so they pay the industry’s ransom instead, and the industry continues to reap the benefits of pretending that fair use doesn’t even exist, including promulgating the myth that every use of their recordings is necessarily copyright infringement.
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
Agreed. But that’s for the users/publishers to properly license, not the platform; and if not properly licensed or otherwise exempted (fair use, parody, etc.), it is the user/publisher that should be sued, not the platform. What Article 13 appears to be saying on behalf of rightsholders is "We want you, the platform, to pay for a blanket license to our content just in case your users upload something that needs it."
Re: Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
How does one license the characters used in any particular language?
Re: Licensing the content is already necessary
“If you publish content that has not been licensed, you’re doing copyright infringement.”
If only you realised how wrong your statements actually are, and how opposed to reality, you might end up have a real conversation. You do seem to try sometimes, but the basis of your arguments are always so skewed from the truth, you end up looking like a fool, despite the number of times you’re corrected.
The MAFIAA continues to be a plague on the Internet I see.
“The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace — and currently it doesn’t.”
Considering there is content unavailable at any price despite demand and customers ready to pay you… perhaps y’all misunderstand what a marketplace is.
“Actually, article 13 makes it easier for users to create, post and share content online, as it requires platforms to get licences, and rightsholders to ensure these licences cover the acts of all individual users acting in a non-commercial capacity.”
Big tech companies have money, we want it, so this is our way of getting it. Copyright is only to benefit large corporations and ‘rights’ societies that only seem to exist to fill their own coffers while artists have to run GoFundMe’s when they get sick despite having created beloved things. We want the right to demand payment for everything & keep control over everything & make sure only expressions that profit us or support us appear online.
TL;DR
We’re assholes, please pay us more or we’ll take away Grumpy Cat.
Re: Re:
TL;DR
We’re assholes, please pay us more or we’ll take away Grumpy Cat.
umm they want you to pay AND to take away grumpy cat as well… unless of course grumpy cat pays as well nad over and over and over…
It’s the mafia business plan, your options are pay us or pay us.
So we’re trying to rebuild Compuserve / AOL, and replace the internet with it. Empowering anyone in the world to build and promote superior products undermined the business model of those closed ecosystems. Forcing that genie back into the bottle will simple ignite a fire under people to reproduce the unrestricted internet.
Amusing games we humans play against one another.
The death of the EU
This is worse than the most dystopian futures envisioned by science fiction writers. And it’s happening here in the heart of the European Union in the year 2018! How did we get here? If this isn’t a worldwide plan to shut down the internet as we know it to establish a new global dictatorship, I don’t know what it is.
If the EU doesn’t stop this immediately its days are counted: It’s insanity to imagine that the citizens of Europe would ever tolerate such tyranny and interference into the open internet! We’re taring down the whole Union if that’s what it takes to escape this joke of a dictatorship and take back our freedom. They are literally signing their own death sentence and don’t even realize it.
@ "Yesterday, Mike took apart an extraordinarily weak attempt"
LOL.
That’s the only kind he dares attack, and failed anyway.
Re: @ "Yesterday, Mike took apart an extraordinarily weak attempt"
Have you nothing better to do? Just pop in, read the first couple of sentences, point out something you don’t agree with, and run?
Methinks you need another hobby. The dopamine rush you get for “being right” isn’t healthy if you don’t argue how you’re right.
Re: Re: @ "Yesterday, Mike took apart an extraordinarily weak attempt"
And in his stupidity, he also insulted his heroes of Prenda et al.
You Had Me At Hello
I couldn’t get past this:
“The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace”
Is that really what the people of Europe want from their Internet? A “fair and efficient marketplace”. People want the Internet to give them communications, information, access to infinite sites and information, and also to entertain them. No citizens would mention “Fair and efficient marketplace” on their wishlist, only profiteers and businesses would.
There’s nothing wrong with businesses wanting a “fair and efficient marketplace” of the Internet, but it’s not right for their needs to over-rule and dominate what the citizenry actually wants.
Re: You Had Me At Hello
well in fairness I doubt
“The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace”
and suspect the author meant:
“The primary focus of this legislation is to make sure I get as much kickbacks as possible”
Re: You Had Me At Hello
Every single day I use the resources of the internet and the great people who spend their time documenting what they know, just in case somebody else has a need for it.
It is mindboggling just how much knowledge is shared for free and it has helped me more times than I can count, which in turn inspires me to share my knowledge when I can.
That is what saddens me most because as you wrote, the copyright industry would very much like that THEY control how and from whom we learn.
That blog post that someone wrote on a specific subject is also available in a book where the author is paid per word and thus is explained in as long-drawn and convoluted way as possible for $79.99.
In this example, I don’t even have to wonder which would benefit society the most, but I am pretty sure that the “fair and efficient marketplace” would get that blog post shut down.
Re: You Had Me At Hello
EU is NOT a democracy ruled by democratically selected leaders.
Its a oligarchy. We in Europe DON want europe, we want to keep our national borders. Despite EU-nationalists.
Everyone should contact there MEP now.
HOW long
how long did it take to get FREEDOM OF SPEECH??
How many nations REALLY let anyone speak?
The only reason TRUMP won is because he SAID, things that OTHERS wished to hear.(even tho he cant do much about them)
Incomplete answers to Many problems..
There USEd to be many groups in this country with THINGS to say..Most got BOUGHT OUT or Broken up..
Many were Blackballed publicly, derided into Obscurity..
There is a control Factor here..and WHO OWNS IT.
NOW for the internet..ITS REALLY PUBLIC..
Everyone can have a SAY..
Even Trolls..
Even the Dumb
Even the idiots..
Even those that KNOW BETTER then to say anything..
YOU MAY have freedom of speech, but we DONT have freedom of an OPEN FORUM..no one is listening..except those that DONT WANT YOU TO HEAR IT..or see it..
It’s about killing internet freedom.
fair use and fair dealing
Why is it that, when I read the details of the latest attacks on fair use and fair dealing, that Weird Al song “You’re Pitiful” gets stuck in my head and won’t go away?
Could it be that such a parody couldn’t exist without fair use?
Myabe it's time to kill copyright then
It seems like no matter what we say or do, copyright is expanded over and over again, it’s power is extended over and over again. Maybe it once served the creators and authors, but it’s obvious now that in the Age of Information copyright cannot aid them anymore. There are too many pirates works for independent artists to keep them at bay anymore which the best ones have learned to accept and as such gave made more money than they otherwise would have.
Now, copyright’s only purpose is to aid major corporations control others and as a mere side effect, it enables Libre Software to exist. The corporations hate this side effect and implemented potential “solutions” to the “bug” in the TPP, which is being adopted by various nations as we speak.This EU insanity is obvious just one of many crowning moments for them, and it’s what they’ve been waiting for all along. At first these corporations where scared of the Internet, but now they aren’t, because they’ve nearly succeeded in “taming the wild west” that was the Internet.
The only way we can stop this is by completely revoking copyright from these shitheads, make copyright illegal, make drm illegal etc. There will still be incentive to create as there will always be demand for content, and people are usually too lazy to go to third party sources.
Look at the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien couldn’t get copyright in America when he published it because of the restrictions on foreign works, as such an unauthorized version was published close to the time the authorized version was. However, the unauthorized version wasn’t as good as the authorized one and Tolkien made a big stink about it and told people to buy the authorized one instead. In the end, sales of the Lord of The Rings were better than they had originally been because of the awareness that the unauthorized version created.
Or look at the various studies that have been done that show that pirates actually spend *more* on media than those that don’t pirate anything. Piracy is actually good for business if all you care about is selling media. Of course, copyright isn’t about that. It’s about power. As such we should take it back and end copyright. Things won’t be as dire as the media groups claim it will be without it, Artists may even profit off of it if they play their cards right. The only ones that need worry are the assholes wrapping their hands around our throats via copyright, and I say fuck ’em to hell.
Re: Myabe it's time to kill copyright then
Re: Re: Myabe it's time to kill copyright then
“Is he going to sell the book to another publisher who promises to start competing against the illegal copies?”
Every publisher is competing against illegal copies, yet there are many successful publishing companies.
Strange how you skipped over the parts of the comment you’re responding to that explained this and why, and went straight to rambling on about the content, which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
Abolish Copyright
It will only get worse.
MArketplace
“This is not about censorship of the internet, as the likes of Google and Facebook would have you believe. The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace — and currently it doesn’t.”
The internet functioning as a fair and efficient market place is the wrong outlook. The internet is not a Market place, it is an Information source more akin to a Library than a store. But like most modern libraries it does have a commercial side like the Libraries Coffee Shop, Gift Shop, and Sales of books/DVD’s/CD’s that have been removed from circulation.
We will do it anyway
regardless of the EU laws.
Intelectual property is nonesense
I’ll say it again Intelectual property is nonesense all IP laws should be abolished.(period)
Media Companies
It’ll continue to snowball as long as people keep buying music and video from big media labels. If (in the US, for instance) the RIAA and MPAA couldn’t make sales, they couldn’t afford the dump trucks of money they keep backing up to congress, and this would fold and die.
Kinda the same as folks crying about the massive salaries of sports figures while continuing to buy expensive tickets to the arena games.
Hell, sheeple, if you’re gonna roll over, quit whining about it. You have the power for change in your wallet.
Copyright is no longer needed.