EU Parliament Report Recommends Throwing Out Something Even Worse Than The Link Tax: Upload Filtering
from the save-the-meme dept
Techdirt has just written about how a report from the European Parliament's "rapporteur" -- basically, the subject lead -- on planned reforms to EU copyright law recommends dumping one of the most stupid ideas in the draft proposals, a link or "snippets" tax. Although that's good news, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. After all, the idea has already been tried in Germany and Spain, and failed dismally both times. The damage that a link tax would cause to the smooth functioning of the Web is so obvious that the only people refusing to acknowledge that fact are the publishers who have been demanding this new "right" as part of their copyright maximalism. But alongside the ridiculous snippets tax, there's another extremely dangerous idea that the European Commission has slipped into its copyright reform. Article 13 of the published draft (pdf) reads as follows:
Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.
That is, those running online sites where users upload large quantities of material would be obliged to filter all those files to check for copyright material by using some unspecified, possibly magical, "content recognition technologies" that can tell when something is illegal or not. The problems with this are many and deep, as a post on the EDRi site explains:
the proposal of the Commission would require private companies to police the internet, in direct contradiction to two separate European Court rulings. The proposal would eliminate our freedoms to remix, to parody and others, in explicit breach of the EU's obligations contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
The good news is that Therese Comodini Cachia, the rapporteur who wants to drop the link tax, also has some sensible suggestions for how to fix this "censorship machine":
In the leaked proposed amendments [to the new EU copyright law], Ms Comodini has deleted key aspects of the section of the draft Directive and amended the proposal in a way which would minimise the worst aspects of the censorship machine. Moreover, she has correctly restated the liability rules which exist in current EU legislation (the e-Commerce Directive). She advocates for the licensing agreements that were the ostensible goal of the European Commission in the first place.
However, it would be premature to celebrate this outbreak of good sense. Although it seems quite likely that the European Parliament will agree with the recommendations of its rapporteur here, the European Commission and national governments of the member states may disagree, and still try to keep Article 13 in its current form because of pressure from lobbyists. Ultimately, that would lead to EU negotiations behind closed doors and compromises that could see upload filtering retained with some modifications and perhaps token safeguards.
Fortunately, there is still some time to mobilize public opinion here. Although upload filtering seems an obscure, rather technical issue, it threatens some very fundamental Internet freedoms like remixing and creating parodies. As part of an effort to reach a broader audience, the Dutch Bits of Freedom digital rights group has put together a simple site called "Save the Meme," which encourages EU citizens to contact their MEPs to make sure as many as possible vote against Article 13, sending a strong signal to the European Commission and national governments that it has to go -- just like the link tax.
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Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, mandatory filters, notice and staydown
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Fractally stupid
Among the many problems with this idiocy is the idea that it's possible to 'filter' for copyright infringing files, given two important things:
-Whether or not something is infringing very often depends on context, not content. The exact same file can be both infringing and non-infringing depending upon the context of the use, something that cannot be accounted for by filters, which are black or white, yes or no. To say that such a system would be overrun with false positives is an understatement on the same level as saying that the surface of the sun is 'kinda warm'.
-This one may or may not be a problem, depending on how the law works in the EU as opposed to the US, but a filtering system would also require that there be something to check against.
All content that was being filtered for would have to be deposited by the owner at a central repository so that the filters would have something to check against, which is rather close to the idea that if you want your copyright you must register it, and if the pushback I've seen against that idea is any indicator a requirement for essentially the same thing probably wouldn't go over very well.
The idea of a mandatory filtering system isn't just bad, it's colossally stupid and likely to cause immense damage if implemented. Hopefully saner heads will prevail and the idea will be taken down and killed like the abomination that it is.
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Re: Fractally stupid
Even manual review can't entirely fix it. A full copy of a work can be non-infringing for certain uses, but hosting sites can't always know how they're being used—e.g. if someone posts an entire film to Youtube for educational reasons, how does Youtube know whether the viewers are students?
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Re: Fractally stupid
In context the most likely reading of the section would be that Youtube et al. have to work with content owners on a system that preemptively refuse illegal content if the same content has been found illegal before. The op is thus a bit hyperbolic in this context.
EDRi talks about principles: It should never be the duty of the hosting platform to preemptively police content since that would make them directly liable towards both sides (right now Youtube is legally grey with their "not DMCA"-system and their "not responsible for content before made aware" DMCA-protection. Legally Youtube is a ninja at averting responsibility.).
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Re: Fractally stupid
Should help with the ever shrinking public domain issue.
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That kind of system isn't exactly easy to build, and I'm betting google (I'm sorry, alphabet) isn't going to give that technology away to a startup for free.
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A simple thought.
If the RIAA and the MPAA could not create a "Minority Report"-style "pre-infringement" tool, what makes the EU think it can?
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Pointy-haired boss syndrome
"You need to create this filter."
"How? Also, who's paying for this?"
"Those sound like 'not our problem' questions. You're smart, I'm sure you'll figure it out."
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Re: Pointy-haired boss syndrome
Ah yes, the "you nerds need to nerd harder" bit.
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Re: A simple thought.
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Re: Re: A simple thought.
On the one hand I want to vote Funny because that idea is just so crazy it has to be a joke. On the other hand it strikes me as Insightful because that does seem to be fairly close to the mindset some I've seen display, the idea of 'If it's not made/owned by the Professionals then it doesn't count'.
Have both I guess.
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Re: A simple thought.
We need a government that caters to the public interest.
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Re: Re: A simple thought.
and those claiming that copy'right' is a right are also dishonest liars that aren't to be taken seriously. It's a privilege, not a right, and as such it should only be intended to serve the public interest.
Calling a right, as if its purpose should be to serve the 'right' of those that are allegedly entitled to such a right when they're not, just convinces me these laws should be abolished.
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Re: Re: A simple thought.
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Re: Re: Re: A simple thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
Other possible voting systems include the alternative vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE
Single transferable vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI&index=5&list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638
and Mixed-Member Proportional Representation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU&spfreload=5
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When compromising is too great of a compromise...
All this could be avoided if they would just spend a little time actually learning about the subject they are talking about.
Maybe they have and are just that willing to screw it up for greed or power.
No matter the reason, hopefully smarter people will stand up and fight against these worse than useless politicians.
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Something for Nothing
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and math books don't change much yet they keep flipping the problems around a little bit and send new editions. It's really a big big big scam that the old texts are still protected when they should be public domain so we can just print new ones. It's not like calculus books change much or like the subject is moving fast. Calculus (all levels) today is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago.
It's a sham. Supposedly the textbook companies don't make much money off this scam (or so they tell you) but if that were the case they wouldn't keep pulling this scam. What's worse is that the government allows this nonsense and schools keep adopting these very overpriced books.
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Re:
Not to mention how software with patents and copy protection has taken so many ideas and perhaps some code (or has been suspected of doing so, not that they can get in trouble for it) from free and open source software and they benefit from it while contributing nothing back and insisting that they acquire as many patents as they can on the most obvious of ideas and locking everyone else out.
Then the pro-IP crowd says "but Microsoft is better thanks to copy protection laws". While I think that some copy protection can be good (though it lasts way too long) I think part of the reason why these companies are so successful is because of the unfair advantage they have mentioned above. For every idea they take and implement in a piece of software they should be required to contribute one of their patents associated with said software back to the public domain.
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Re: Re:
Subjects should insist that if they are going to volunteer that the proceeds of their volunteer work would yield a limited max price when the drug is released.
It's no wonder why pharmaceutical corporations are having a tougher and tougher time finding volunteers btw, those volunteers know that if that drug is useful it will become too expensive for anyone to afford and they see how the pharmaceutical corporations absolutely exploit these volunteers while contributing as little as possible back in the form of seeking ridiculous prices in exchange for all the risk that the volunteers took. Potential volunteers figure if the pharmaceutical corporations want to be as selfish and self interested about everything as possible why should potential volunteers be any different. How can these purely hedonistic pharmaceutical corporations possibly preach altruism with a straight face and expect potential volunteers to take them seriously.
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Re:
Legislation today requires a phD in international legal history because of "trade agreements" and other "international responsibilities". That is why they are parroting canned responses and saying meaningless gibberish. They don't know if something is possible and would thus try to at least reserve some linguistic wiggle-room so they don't have to rely on "alternative facts"!
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http://www.programvb.com/2017/03/slideme-market.html
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