Latest On EU Copyright Directive: No One's Happy With Article 13, So Maybe Let's Drop It?
from the don't-wreck-the-net dept
Over the last few weeks, the so-called trilogue negotiations between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament on the EU Copyright Directive have continued, and it appears to have created quite a mess. As you'll recall, because the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament all passed somewhat different versions of the Directive, they now have to go through this process to come up with a version that they all agree on -- and based on some of the proposals and discussions that have come out, it's been a total mess. And specifically on Article 13 -- the provision that will mandate upload filters -- the current situation is an total mess.
Seriously, it's so bad that basically no one wants it any more. And, yes, that includes some of the copyright extremists from the legacy copyright industries. Over the weekend, a group of entertainment organizations -- including the MPAA's international branch, the MPA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) and the notoriously aggressive copyright litigant, the Premier League, all got together to send a letter complaining about Article 13 and the direction it's gone in. Hilariously, they're not complaining that it's over-aggressive -- rather they're whining that Article 13 might actually have been made fairer as the negotiations have gone on. Specifically, they're upset that there are now safe harbors proposed for platforms to help them avoid liability. These entertainment groups apparently think safe harbors are some sort of damn loophole:
Recall that the initial goal of Article 13 was to codify the existing case-law in a way that would enable right holders to better control the exploitation of their content vis a vis certain OCSSPs which currently wrongfully claim they benefit from the liability privilege of Article 14 E-Commerce Directive.
However, unfortunately, the Value Gap provision has mutated in such a way that it now strengthens even further the role of OCSSPs to the direct detriment of right holders and completely undermines the status quo in terms of the EU liability regime. Some of the options proposed for discussion at trilogue level indeed wrongfully undermine current law and weaken right holders’ exclusive rights by, among others: creating a new liability privilege for certain platforms that have taken specific steps to avoid the availability of infringing copyright content on their services (but have failed to do so effectively), and conditioning protection of copyright online on right holders bearing the full burden of identifying and notifying copyright infringing content to platforms. These would constitute gifts to already powerful platforms, and would de facto constitute the only real change to the current status quo in legal terms, thus improving the position of platforms, but not of right holders.
Much of this complaint is complete bullshit. Article 13 has never been about "codifying existing case-law." It has always been about upending case law in Europe (and elsewhere) to completely gut intermediary liability protections, end user-generated content platforms, and turn the internet into a TV-like broadcast system, where the legacy company have "control" again (i.e., they get to extract monopoly rents as gatekeepers). The fact that the trilogue negotiations have introduced safe harbors should be seen as a good thing, but obviously not to the signatories of this letter.
Incredibly, the signers of the letter actually ask the negotiators to drop Article 13, or, at the very least limit it to merely applying to musical works. That would still be a problem, but would certainly stop most of the collateral damage that Article 13 would cause in its present state.
Meanwhile, many other companies are recognizing just how damaging Article 13 would be. Reddit has started alerting all of its EU users (and pointing them to our very own DontWreckThe.Net website), pointing out how disastrous the EU Copyright Directive would be for everyone who uses Reddit:
The problem with the Directive lies in Articles 11 (link licensing fees) and 13 (copyright filter requirements), which set sweeping, vague requirements that create enormous liability for platforms like ours. These requirements eliminate the previous safe harbors that allowed us the leeway to give users the benefit of the doubt when they shared content. But under the new Directive, activity that is core to Reddit, like sharing links to news articles, or the use of existing content for creative new purposes (r/photoshopbattles, anyone?) would suddenly become questionable under the law, and it is not clear right now that there are feasible mitigating actions that we could take while preserving core site functionality. Even worse, smaller but similar attempts in various countries in Europe in the past have shown that such efforts have actually harmed publishers and creators...
Accordingly, we hope that today's action will drive the point home that there are grave problems with Articles 11 and 13, and that the current trilogue negotiations will choose to remove both entirely. Barring that, however, we have a number of suggestions for ways to improve both proposals. Engine and the Copia Institute have compiled them here at https://dontwreckthe.net/. We hope you will read them and consider calling your Member of European Parliament (look yours up here). We also hope that EU lawmakers will listen to those who use and understand the internet the most, and reconsider these problematic articles. Protecting rights holders need not come at the cost of silencing European internet users.
Also, the massive video streaming site Twitch has now started alerting users to the harms of Article 13 as well:
Article 13 changes the dynamic of how services like Twitch have to operate, to the detriment of creators.
Because Article 13 makes Twitch liable for any potential copyright infringement activity with uploaded works, Twitch could be forced to impose filters and monitoring measures on all works uploaded by residents of the EU. This means you would need to provide copyright ownership information, clearances, or take other steps to prove that you comply with thorny and complicated copyright laws. Creators would very likely have to contend with the false positives associated with such measures, and it would also limit what content we can make available to viewers in the EU.
Operating under these constraints means that a variety of content would be much more difficult to publish, including commentary, criticism, fan works, and parodies. Communities and viewers everywhere would also suffer, with fewer viewer options for entertainment, critique, and more.
So, at this point, we have the internet platforms calling out how the Copyright Directive will harm all sorts of creators by making the platforms they use impossible. We have the film and sports industries complaining that there might actually be some safe harbors included in Article 13, which would apparently ruin the whole point for them (!?!?!?!?!?). The only one who still thinks Article 13 is a good thing apparently is the legacy recording industry who has been fairly open in that the entire point of Article 13 is to force YouTube to pay them more (even though it wouldn't actually do that).
So, hey, maybe it's time to scrap Articles 11 and 13 and not try to rush through copyright proposals that will have a massive impact on how the internet works, done by bureaucrats who clearly don't understand the impacts of what they're proposing, while in backroom negotiations?
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Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, filters, intermediary liability, link tax, safe harbors, trilogue negotiations, upload filters
Companies: ifta, mpa, premier league, reddit, twitch
Reader Comments
The First Word
“For example, if I want to find news about something that interests me, Google tells me which news sites have posted a story about it, and then I can go to that media company's website to read the article.
If you think that that is copyright infringement, then I hope your house doesn't have windows, because looking out them would cause your eyes to copy the appearances of all the cars and houses and signs out there.
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🎵 D-I-S-N-E-Y yells out loud “FUCK YOU”
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Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
Simply not true. It should however prevent them from posting copyrighted content such as the 10 million Youtube views of some recent contest of two athletic brutes battering each other. Somehow its mighty filters didn't stop that, so let's try imposing stiff fines and see what happens.
But since there's no point to arguing here, I'll just point any hypothetical non-pirates / non-Googlers to The Register, with its far different view that there's no such panic / confusion as Masnick claims.
By the way, Youtube is at present putting up a warning for teen "creators" to nag their parents to try and stop this. That's an outrageous use of supposedly neutral platform to promote its own pecuniary interests.
Now, NO, I'm not responsible for this. -- It won't ruin Europe or Youtube except those parts that rely on stealing copyrighted works -- And if you don't regard that as stealing, it's only because you are thievish. Any content theft steals the actual expended time and money, not just the prospect. The deal is that people can rely on having an EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to control copies of what they make, that's why is directly in US Constitution. And YES, it's a RIGHT, not an optional "grant" from Congress. -- It's definitely entrenched in the body of Western law as a Right even if not explicit enough for you pirates.
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Re: Here I am to save the day
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
This is literally not how it works.
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
Simply not true. It should however prevent them from posting copyrighted content such as the 10 million Youtube views of some recent contest of two athletic brutes battering each other. Somehow its mighty filters didn't stop that, so let's try imposing stiff fines and see what happens.
Actually, your very example shows why it's impossible. Google has spent more than anyone else on its filtering system (over $100 million). No one else can afford to spend that much. And yet, they were apparently still unable to prevent something that you deem to be infringing. That demonstrates how this will make basically every other platform simply impossible to keep online.
In other words, thanks for proving the point in your weak attempt to deny it.
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Does that include reviews of copyrighted content which use images/video from the content being reviewed, media critiques which use images/video/audio from the media being critiqued (as well as other media), and parodies such as YouTube Poops which were created from existing copyrighted content? How strict must this prevention be to make you happy?
If YouTube were in favor of Article 13, how would you feel about it putting up a message in support of Article 13 despite it being, in your words, a “supposedly neutral platform”?
Does Fair Use count as copyright infringement to you? (Also copyright infringement is not theft, or else you would be able to show me what is “stolen” besides hypothetical income.)
…how?
And in return, we were supposed to see their works fall into the public domain within our lifetimes. Funny how you fail to mention the corporate interests that expanded copyright terms such that anything made within our lifetime will never be public domain until our great-grandchildren are well into adulthood. But that would kind of ruin your whole “fuck corporate censorship” schtick, I guess.
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
Lets put the Intent of articles 11 and 13 into context. You create a web site and allow users to post comments. If a user posts a link to a new article, toy owe the newspaper money, and if a user posts a link to infringing content, you are held liable for copyright infringement.
Question, if you create a web site, do you allow user posted comments or content?
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
What will happen is that sites that currently allow users to post information will stop allowing it. And not just for the vast unwashed massses, but everyone. After all, plenty of famous professionals infringe copyrights too, like Robin Thicke and George Harrison.
Without safe harbors, and without the ability to discern what is and isn’t infringing (for a variety of reasons, such as lack of a comprehensive database of works, lack of copies of the contents of those works to compare the potentially infringing copy against, the broad scope of what constitutes infringement, varying legal standards around the world that may result in different outcomes on the same facts, the possibility of works being used lawfully pursuant to licenses that are unknown to the site, the uselessness of indemnification for this problem, and the failure of really amazing artificial intelligence software to exist) no one will risk it. Except for site which are totally cool with piracy, which ironically means that they’ll get more customers and will grow in popularity.
Basically, proponents of this law either are really stupid, haven’t thought it through, or deliberately want to kill the Internet because they hate it and want to turn back the clock.
Who ever said they were neutral?
(Plus copyright is literally nothing other than pecuniary interests, so what’s wrong with that?)
It’s not, not at all, but if you disagree there’s a simple way to prove me wrong. The same “Congress shall have power to” language is used for the issuance of letters of marque and reprisal. Please let me know to whom I should apply to get papers to go privateering, since according to you it’s a ‘shall issue’ right, not an optional grant.
tl;dr — the person to whom I’m replying is a grade-a moron who wishes the Internet didn’t exist. Ignore him and oppose the law, folks!
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
But for some odd reason the Agencies seem to think that ANY use (without paying for it) is Abuse/theft. Quite a few sits on the net, INCLUDING those that had permission, have been taken to court, and had to spend TONS of money..
2. NEUTRAL INTERNET..WONT HAPPEN. Every country wants to make Rues/laws/regulations for The internet. In the end we might as well be China or the middle east.
3. copyrights on the net? Which ones. movies/video/Music? Links to news? Links to forums? Links to others personal sites? Facebook? just saying copyrights, doesnt say much. because each of these groups has its own concerns.
4. Filters?? in a land of freedom of speech? filters on the net, are like Proving something is waterproof under a waterfall or at the bottom of the Ocean..It aint going to happen. you cant even Stop Murder in RL What ability do you have to STOP anything on the net. ASK China and the middle east, how many USA backdoors have been created to let the USA know whats happening..
In all the time that CR has been around there has ALWAYS been another person/group/... that TRIED to ADAPT IT, Change it, IMPROVE IT.. and those rights ARE GIVEN. Otherwise you would be Stuck Pushing a lawn mower around your yard, NOT riding the Lawnmower.. Your Car wouldnt be around, because the FIRST makers would have Sued FORD into the ground..
and Why didnt Tesla and his family, get the money Owed to him..as the Creator of AC POWER??
I know..
Lets remove every song that shows any influence from previous Music/songs/Stories/Classical music..
GOD it would get quiet in this country..
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Reading comprehension failure, as usual.
Here is the Copyright Clause:
This is an enumerated power given to Congress along with the guidelines on how to achieve it. The "exclusive right" that is talked about is a statutory right granted by Congress and can be changed or revoked at any time by Congress.
While it's true copyright is a legal right, it is nowhere near the inalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence (which government cannot revoke) or the rights listed in the Bill of Rights (which cannot be changed without adding additional Amendments).
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TIME..how long does a family get the money?? the original person Died, 1-2-3 generations ago.. this is like an artist whose family keeps getting money AFTER he sold it(sorry RENTED).. Its showing that there IS NO OWNERSHIP..
WHO OWNS WHAT..
Most creations end up being Given/sold to large corps, in the end equal to Less then 1% of its worth.
WHEN do their RIGHTS END.. and just Cause they added, Ad-infinitum to a contract should mean NOTHING..and if Sold to them there is a LIMIT..
The CR was created for individuals..not CORPS.. there were no CORPS around when this was created. And those that created something Created a company to Create more. NOT live on 1 thing the rest of their lives...
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Copyright infringement has cost Google over $100 million dollars in the creation of a filter. Oh, and big copyright cannot find it in themselves to create a comprehensive database of all copyrighted material for them to compare it to. So Google will have to continue spending, but big copyright will see none of that money.
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It took the courts and some powerful stakeholders ...
Does anyone seriously believe that a might algorithm can sort this mess out for 60 hours of video uploaded to Youtube alone? Or that any company, even the ones with really deep pockets like Google or Facebook, can agree fair contracts with anybody queuing up with claims of rights to a few seconds of video or a few lines of texts uploaded anywhere on some platform?
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That's like calling the fire department to report a forest fire after the fire has already burned a few acres of land and is about to spread to several hundred acres. Sure you might be able to stop the fire if you move quick enough, but it would have been a whole lot easier to stop the damn fire if you had shown up before it burned the first couple of acres.
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For example, if I want to find news about something that interests me, Google tells me which news sites have posted a story about it, and then I can go to that media company's website to read the article.
If you think that that is copyright infringement, then I hope your house doesn't have windows, because looking out them would cause your eyes to copy the appearances of all the cars and houses and signs out there.
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Amusingly(and hypocritically), the very ones who like to sling accusations of 'entitlement' seem to display the trait to stunning degrees in demanding that everyone else be responsible for 'protecting' their copyrights, as though it's YT and other sites' job to go infringement hunting, despite the fact they lack crucial information regarding context and licensing/agreements that can be pivotal in determining infringement.
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I'm afraid their content filter stops all the good insults due to copyright concerns...
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Re: It took the courts and some powerful stakeholders ...
Even at smaller scale, such as vimeo's platform, it's very clear why it's nigh impossible to filter it all flawlessly and it's so cost prohibitive as to render the whole exercise moot.
The "problem" is insoluble so maybe the problem needs to be redefined.
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There are two kinds of rights: natural rights and civil rights.
Natural rights exist because of your nature as a human being. The author of the Declaration of Independence called them "inalienable rights". Copyright is not a Natural right.
Civil rights exist because the civil government (ideally as an expression of the will of the governed) has decided to protect them. This includes Constitutional rights and statutory rights. Copyright is a Civil right.
To rebut the OP, your civil rights literally *are* an optional grant, but the body granting them is a variable. The conventions of the original 13 states "granted" us the rights in the Constitution. The state legislatures and the Congress "granted" us the rights in the Bill of Rights and other amendments.
Really, if we're going to parse words, let's talk about "limited times", "useful arts", and "progress"...
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Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
It's not a "downvote" button.
This comment isn't abusive, trolling, or spam. It's not even unhinged rambling. It's just an unpopular opinion. If we purge unpopular opinions, what's the points of a comment section? It just turns into self-congratulatory wankery.
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I don't know what beef you have with google and YT but you're completely off track and lack any understanding of how they operate. I suggest you just stop talking since you clearly know nothing.
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Re: Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
Shunting this dumbass into oblivion isn't doing anything to create an echo chamber. It only improves the discussion. Rational debate is always welcome.
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YouTube’s business model is 100% based on copyright infringement. Google owns YT.
This is objectively false. If it were true, the various lawsuits against YouTube would have resulted in YouTube losses, just as lawsuits against various platforms deemed wholly focused on piracy, lost their cases.
YouTube's business model is almost entirely based on advertisements against people using its platform FOR FREE (mind you) to upload new content creation or uploading content that is properly licensed (and some on people subscribing). Is there some infringing material on YouTube? Yes. Are there some ads on that content? Also yes. But it is a tiny portion of YouTube and nowhere near 100% of YouTube's business model.
You are not a serious person if you think YouTube's business model relies on infringement.
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Re: Re: Here I am for you to project all blame onto, as usual!
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Fact Check. First copyright law, according to the sources I can find, was the Statute of Anne (queen of U.K.), 1710; it was the model for colonial and U.S. copyright law. And, far from being unaware of the (future?) existance of corporations with interests distinguishable from the author, it actually makes provision concerning them!
Turns out corporations go at least as far back as Roman law; some British colonies that became U.S. states were ESTABLISHED by corporations. Big multinational corporations (Dutch East India Company, Hudson's Bay Company, etc.) go back at least to the seventeenth century.
I suspect we'd recognize the trading-associations of 3rd-millennium B.C. Mesopotamia as "corporations." That's a good 3500 years before copyright. But once you're wrong more than 1000 years's worth, what's another millennium or three?
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Oh it's much worse than that.
Even assuming that there was a country-wide or even global database that contained all the relevant information(who owns the copyright, who has a license to use it, in what ways are they licensed to use it...), and assuming a filter that was able to scan new content and check it against the database in a decently quick amount of time, such a system would still not work thanks to that pesky 'fair use'(or whatever the local equivalent is), where context, something no filter is going to be able to make a solid determination on, can be the difference between infringing and non.
The exact same file can be infringing or not infringing based upon who uploaded it and/or how it's being used. Was the person who uploaded it granted the right to do so by the creator, despite the lack of a formal agreement? Are they uploading it for criticism, parody, in an educational manner? The infringement/non-infringement status of a particular file hinges on these questions, and yet they are not something you can check with a filter(at least not yet, and likely not for a good while).
Even ignoring the sheer scope in amount, lack of relevant data and the cost to screen the fact that a factor that cannot be screened for can change the status of an individual upload leaves copyright filters DOA, guaranteed to fail to do what they are claimed they are meant for right from the start.
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Fair enough. I was trying to convey that rights granted by copyright are far less important rights than our inalienable rights or the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and you did a much better job of that than me. Thank you.
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With today's technology I don't understand WHY we don't have a national copyright repository. It could be as simple as filling out a form on a cellphone app and centralized database.
Most of the excuses that were argued in the 70's for not registering copyrights have now become outdated.
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Also you clearly have no idea how torrents work, you know what will really be the best thing since sliced bread? if you help us fight this bill and stop being defeatist.
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Why should they have? It's a humanitarian issue, but "platforms like Twitch" probably haven't said anything about starvation in Yemen, lack of due process in North Korea, abortions in China, druglord gang wars in Mexico, or tobacco smoking in the U.S. either.
Twitch users might be interested in any or all of these issues (on either side). But Twitch stuffed-shirts get to choose their battles, just like any of us. It
s sort of pointless for any of us to approve or disapprove their choice: it's unlikely they're listening.
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I guess that means the RIAA is guilty of copyright infringement since, as you say, all of it isn't original.
Better lock up the RIAA and toss the key, I guess. Because they won't be able to afford the statutory damages of several squintillion.
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some British colonies that became U.S. states were ESTABLISHED by corporations
Yup. They failed, and it eventually became a Royal colony, if memory from my vacation this year serves, but The Virginia Company was what brought the first settlers to Jamestown, and tried to bring more after it.
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Not my problem if you Cary Sherman fanboys all happen to have the intelligence quotient of used toilet paper.
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The Declaration of Independence is exactly what it says it is; while it can be viewed as a statement of principles through which the laws of America should be interpreted, it is not a document that outlines or codifies any actual laws. Just an FYI there.
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What has ancient history got to do with the current business?
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The difference between those things and Article 13 is that Article 13 has a direct impact on those platforms' bottom line.
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Not really sure to be truthful. I would guess the same way that it was when copyright required registration. Don't release the work until registered.
In regards to the mess we've created between 1978 and now with automatic copyright I haven't a clue. I was thinking in terms of going forward into the future, really.
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My reference was in the USA, not the EU... You can also add that it wasnt in 90% of the rest of the world...ALSO..
CR in the USA was created before the FIRST corporation created in the USA...which was in 1813..
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4 million sign "save our internet"
Here's my recent message to my MEP:
Articles 11 and 13 of the copyright reform legislation are
fundamentally dangerous to free speech rights. Additionally,
they will entrench the power of the existing major internet
companies and inhibit native european competition in the space.
On the face of it, it is patently impossible to automate
the identification of copyrighted works at scale. For example,
Google has tried with ContentID, involving at least 60 million
USD of investment, and it repeatedly fails with false positives
(not a copyrighted work blocked) and false negatives (a copyrighted
work published).
How can an algorithm decide if a work is a parody or satire?
Where is the existing searchable database of all copyrighted
works upon which any algorithm would need to be based? It does
not exist.
Article 13 is just insane. It is currently impossible to automate
copyright infringement with an algorithm, and I can not see that
changing anywhere in the near future. It is wishful thinking.
The consequences of it will be dramatic. The big players will be able
to handle it, but smaller ones will just stop allowing user generated
content for risk of legal liability. This will silence many a
small community to no benefit to the major copyright players, but
to the large benefit of the big players where these smaller communities
will need to migrate. It consolidates power.
Article 11 is dangerous as the content indexers (search engines)
will just stop indexing content where there are legal threats
rather than pay licences (see cases in Spain and Germany).
Additionally, if news sites dont want to be indexed they can already
do this. See robots.txt. The search engines are driving traffic
towards news sites. The sites need to work out how to monetize this,
not be given new rights.
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