Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad
from the well-that's-messed-up dept
Earlier today we wrote about the terrible vote by the EU Parliament to approve the Copyright Directive including the dangerous Articles 11 and 13. As we noted in the original post, the key vote was whether to allow amendments that could have deleted those two articles. That vote failed by just five votes, 317 to 312. Unfortunately, soon after the vote was finalized, a few of the MEPs who voted against the plan for amendments -- Peter Lundgren and Kristina Winberg -- said they voted incorrectly and meant to vote for the amendments in order to get rid of Articles 11 and 13. Apparently, someone changed the vote order which threw them off:
What happened was that in the middle of a sitting meeting, it was decided to make an adjustment in the order of voting in itself. This did not appear in a clear way where the President was also somewhat confused.
Indeed, soon after that some others admitted to voting incorrectly, believing they were voting for something else.
A few hours later, the EU put out the official voting record which includes an astounding 13 MEPs who said they voted incorrectly. Ten of them said they meant to vote for amendments. Two of them said they wanted to vote against it. And one did not want to vote. As you can see in the screenshot below, everyone next to the "+" would have voted for the amendments if they had actually realized what they were voting on.
All told, that would have shifted the vote and allowed for a vote on amendments. By a slim majority, the law would have been opened up to deleting Articles 11 and 13. In other words, whoever changed the order of the vote pulled a fast one and got the EU Copyright Directive approved... despite the EU Parliament not clearly agreeing on that. If you're wondering what can be done now... the answer is not much. According to the EU:
MEPs may still issue corrections to their vote in case of mistakes, which will however not change the outcome
The vote the clicked on is the vote they got. It is frustrating beyond all belief that we ended up killing the open internet through tricking a bunch of MEPs by switching the voting order. Incredible.
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Filed Under: article 11, article 13, changed votes, copyright, eu, eu parliament, votes
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The only solution is a true peer to peer internet, no more gatekeepers. They killed their own cash cow with greed.
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I'm gonna go find that Swedish MEP right now and say "You were at my wedding, Denise."
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Go try and download a TV torrent that's a year old to see how well a truly peer to peer internet would work.
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Re: Re:
Do we all have to install software we don't want/need or can you elaborate?
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Re: Re: Re:
I'm guessing he's saying that older torrents tend to have less seeds and therefore be less available. So, a "truly" peer to peer internet would gradually lose access to all older and unpopular content.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Organizations like archive.org could help with that, and likely would, if it were legal.
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Re: Archive.org
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Re: Re: Archive.org
LOL "Enter our culture"
Go sit in the corner, it's time to throw things at you and laugh.
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Terms are terms
john I have bad news.
Unfortunately depending on where you are you are going to need to be banned so as not to run afoul with the glorious European directives 13 and 11 becuase you can’t stop posting material that is not yours on this website.
This is non negotiable.
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Re: Re: Archive.org
While I'm in favor of decreasing copyright duration, I don't see how a 15-year copyright term is going to help archive.org index content that's only a year old.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes, but not "less" seeds, no seeds.
For example (and yes, I'm aware this is copyright infringement, but it makes a perfect example); Go to the RARBG site and search for any 720p movie with the RARBG tag that's a year old and isn't a major blockbuster. The site will claim that there's one seeder. There isn't. Try to download that movie and it will never finish. Try to download a copy of any TV show that's more than 6 months old and isn't super popular and although the site will tell you that there's one seeder, there isn't.
Now obviously with movies and TV shows, you can almost always find some copy of what you're looking for even if it isn't the exact copy you want, but it illustrates the way specific items become unavailable due to people no longer sharing them.
Which is what would happen in a peer to peer internet. Sure, you'd be able to find major news stories and such, but lesser stuff will just disappear.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's not exactly accurate. There are plenty of either private trackers that have plenty enough people seeding everything, or there are public trackers like RuTracker, that do the same thing. Fact is, no matter what the show or movie, it's easily found on torrent sites.
So please don't try to misrepresent things.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Private trackers/sites that not everyone has or can get access to.
You may be able to get A copy of Big Bob's Adventure, but if you're looking for a specific copy of it, like "Big.Bobs.Adventure.2020.720p.BDRip.x264.AAC-TheRipper" You may be SOL.
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Torrents and magnets
My experience has been that even crazy-uninteresting media is available if you're willing to wait long enough. That is, installed the magnet link and sit on it for months or even more than a year.
If one seeder halfway across the world has it, and his torrent client detects you want it, it may not be the first thing on his priority queue, but sooner or later it'll get there.
Also, thanks to the strike systems in place, VPNs are way common, but the wreck the ability for indexes to detect what seeders or leechers are consistent, so even if your torrent is 0/0 for weeks, let it ride.
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Re: Torrents and magnets
Back in 2012, I added a file to my eMule downloads, which got to 76.1% and then stopped. Despite running eMule nearly 24/7 for more than a year, it never downloaded any more of the file and I was never able to find a copy of that specific file anywhere else.
In the case of RARBG, it pisses me off that the site always lists at least one seeder for every torrent, even when there are none. Additionally, sometimes uTorrent will say there's one seeder, but nobody can connect to them. How do I know that? Because there may be 10 other peers trying to download the same torrent and they'll all be stuck at the exact same percentage for weeks. If any of them were able to connect to the seeder, they would eventually finish and become seeders themselves.
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And sometimes it doesn't work.
Yep. This is one of the difficulties of grey-zone ad-hoc internet mechanisms whose functioning includes preserving as much anonymity as possible. Sometimes it won't work.
But it does quite a lot given that we have entire industries willing to tear the web apart to kill it.
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Re: Torrents and magnets
"even if your torrent is 0/0 for weeks, let it ride"
Well, that's fine for downloading occasional media. But, the original point was a response to saying that such a system should work for every website. I think everyone's just demonstrated why that could be a bad idea.
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Seeding your own website
This all is assuming that people are not invested in the order of what they seed.
If you're seeding your own website, you prioritize it, and can even prioritize the segments that have been least-sent so that the leechers can trade them.
Yes, a 100% peer-to-peer system would need some tuning, but I don't think it's unfeasible at all.
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Re: Seeding your own website
The net is littered with personal web sites that have been abandoned for years. Someone pays the hosting fees or they paid them in advance, but the content hasn't been updated in many years. If they weren't hosted on professional companies, they probably would have disappeared long ago.
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Re: Re: Seeding your own website
Exactly. There's a reason why archive.org exists, and it's not just to catch people out lying when they try to scrub something from their website.
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Torrents are a true peer to peer example. The data for the contents of the torrents is only stored on users' systems and not on a central server anywhere. Any torrent that contains less popular or more obscure content will be completely dead within 6 months to a year. In some cases, torrents die in as little as a month.
"Die" as in there's nobody left seeding them, so it becomes impossible to download that torrent. The files it points to have effectively disappeared.
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I have seen folks bump into this problem on legit torrents (such things exist: how else are you going to distribute a multi-GB game as an indie game dev group?). Fortunately, the dev group in question still exists, so they are reviving the torrent with community help, but it still goes to show your point.
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Bait and switch politics, they're practicing American politics in Europe.. oh fuck.
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The only way I can imagine this being done is because the pro A11/13 people knew they didn't have enough votes so they decided to pull a dirty trick to get their votes and hope it didn't backfire.
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Almost certainly nailed it in one. They didn't think they had enough votes to get it through legitimately, so they stacked the deck in their favor to force it. As I understand it the same tactic was attempted with ACTA, where they attempted to slip the vote in with some completely unrelated subject(something to do with fish I think?)
As I noted in a comment recently, 'if the truth is on your side, you've no need to lie. If it's not however...'
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"When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table."
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Agammamon comment.
That kind of logic could win you a democratic Presidential nomination!
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Why do you say Democrats, instead of the party that is actively attacking facts and law while pounding the table.
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Re: Fish
Around 2005, "The Software Patent Directive has been withdrawn from the Agenda of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. Poland's Minister of Science and Informatisation, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, firmly requested the item be withdrawn from the agenda. The Fisheries Commissioner expressed regret, but the A-item was deleted and will not now be adopted this year." https://kwiki.ffii.org/Cons041221En
Found through https://thankpoland.info/
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Re: Re: Fish
They did the same with ACTA, trying to sneak it into a session supposed to mainly deal with north sea cod fishing quotas.
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Sneaking it in
Isn't that how we have FOSTA?
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Well, you have idiots on office voting for this type of garbage in the first place. They don't seem to be bright enough to figure out they were being tricked in this way also.
I say let the chips fall into place and have the Internet destroyed as we know it in the EU. I personally think it's a lame excuse. They knew what they were voting for, but saying this makes them look like they made a mistake, which is not nearly as bad as voting for this garbage like they actually wanted to.
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Yeah, because it's not like this will affect anyone outside the EU since all the internet companies are going to jump through tons of hoops to make sure that the new filters they'll be forced to implement will only affect European IP addresses. After all, it's not like that's a logistical nightmare or anything...
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"After all, it's not like that's a logistical nightmare or anything..."
It's not. Putting every ip address located in the EU on a blacklist isn't going to be hard at all.
Which is why I predict there'll be a surge in VPN subscriptions in every nation to finalize article 11/13(17) legislation.
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Mistake or not, not being much more likely, its still a european debacle that europe should pay for soley not the rest of the free planet.
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Who do you figure was smart enough to pull that off?
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Don't mistake deviousness with intelligence.
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"Who do you figure was smart enough to pull that off?"
Doesn't take much intelligence when the MEP's voting for the damn thing were auto-clicking their "yeas" and "nays" without even reading which topic they were voting on.
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So, is there anything that can be done to preserve an open Internet here in the United States, short of blocking all connections from European countries?
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Blocking won't work
Blocking connections will not work, as long as proxies and VPN exist
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Re: Blocking won't work
That is true from a user standpoint, but not from a platform perspective.
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Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Before anyone says anything about CFAA or DMCA, there are reasons why those laws do not apply to bypassing geoblocking
For it to be a felony under the CFAA, they have to prove that you intended to damage the network, and bypassing geoblocking does not damage their network, so CFAA does not apply
DMCA does not apply because you have to have done it for some kind of financial gain, any bypassing geoblocking do not come under that. You have to be doing to for the purpose of making money, and bypassing geoblocking does not rise to that. The anti-circumvention cluase of the DMCA was written that way, otherwise there would be so many criminals, we would have enough jails to hold them all.
That is also why the Klobuchar's Commercian Felony Streaming Act was written to require that it be for some kind of financial gain. Without it, there would be so many criminals there would be not be enough jails to hold them all. That fact that SOPA attempted to remove that require is a lot of why the Commercial Felony Streaming Act SOPA went down.
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Re: Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Up until now, this has been true, but with the new regime I'm not so sure. I could see a case being made for the notion that knowingly, deliberately introducing legal liability to a site where none existed before does real, actionable damage.
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Re: Blocking won't work
The site is not legally liable, if someone does use a VPN to bypass geoblocking, so that that would not work. A website is not liable if someone does bypass IP blocking.
And when I used to travel the world, when I ran an online radio station, I always wiped my devices before entering any of the "fives eyes" countries (UK, USA, Britain, Australia, and NZ), so any evidence against me regarding that would not be there.
It was station policy to wipe all station equipment and reinstall everything before travelling into those countries, and we broke no laws in any of those countries when we did not. This is just in case there was anything illegal on there we did not know about,
And there are companies that do wipe their devices, before letting anyone travel with them internationally, and they are breaking no laws when they do that.
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Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Another good use for VPN is when using any unsecured WiFi when travelling
While using any unsecured Wifi you find, to access the Net does not break either the CFAA, or any California law, the law may be different in other states.
When I go to my favourite campground in Nevada, and have to drive 65 miles to the nearest town to get on the Internet, I sit in the parking lot at the local Chevron station in town, and access the open WiFi of a nearly motel, about a mile down the road with a 10-watt wifi adapter I have.
To avoid any problems with state law in Nevada, I use an offshore VPN, so where I went cannot be determined. The only thing that will show on the logs of the WiFi is that went to a VPN in a foreign country, but I could not be identified by where I went, because the VPN encrypts and hides what I am doing.
Using a VPN to concreal evidence like that does not break any Nevada laws, or any Federal laws.
I also pay cash when I gas up my car, before heading the 65 miles back to the campground, so they there is no bank records to ever prove I was at that Chevron station, at that particular time.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Blocking won't work
This is where having your own private VPN has its advantages. The website you are accessing cannot be held legally liable, because they would not have no way of knowing you are bypassing geoblocking, as it would look like you were at home.
Since you are not bringing any legal liablity to the company, by using your own private VPN, they cannot argue that you are causing any damage by using a VPN to bypass their IP blocking.
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Re: Blocking won't work
There just needs to be enough deniability that Europeans whole 'you publish where the reader is' thing their law has (its the opposite in the US) thing can't get traction in their courts.
If nothing else, it can keep US courts from ever considering enforcing an EU court decision in these matters.
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Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Until the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement is eventuall ratified. I know that Obama wanted to take NAFTA and expand it into TAFTA, where Canada, Mexico, and the USA would become EU members.
The next Democratic President will probably try to get TAFTA agreed to.
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Re: Re: Re: Blocking won't work
That is not what TAFTA would do.
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Re: Blocking won't work
MAFIAA are working on that.
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Re: Re: Blocking won't work
Sure, the might outlaw commercial VPN services, but having your own private VPN cannot be outlawed, as it would screw the ability of business travellers to access their offices networks while travelling.
Those that can afford either higher priced Static IP connections at home, or who can afford the cost of putting a server in a colocation center and setting up their own private VPN will always have VPNs.
In other words, the rich will always have VPN access.
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Bah, just shut it down.
There's so much tech baggage we'd all be better off (in 60 years) if we we just take a year or ten off to really plan out robust, scalable protocols, and infrastructure.
Remind me again when has human civilation done something like that before?
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The problem is not the protocols, or the infrastructure but that distributed systems have problems at large scale, and so gravitate to centralized services. Another impediment in many parts of the world is that domestic users do not get fixed IP addresses Also many people would not be confident in setting up peer based services and severs.
A similar fight took place over use of the printing press, which threatened church and Aristocracy, and eventually after much violence broke their powers.
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you say that the protocols are not the problem then turn around and say that people not getting static IP addresses is a issue.
The need for static IPs IS a problem with protocols, infrostruct (and also the humans that use/make them).
Also, incase it's not blindly obvious IPv4, is a wonder, simple protocol that works very VERY well. But it's simply terrible for our (humans) use case. It was greate for test campuses of a couple thousand (which is what it was more or less designed for). It also scaled extreamly well. However now that we have all the experiance, and knowledge we do now. And know how far we have scaled beyond what the procotol was even designed to cope with, we could make something so much better (and yes IPv6 IS better...it has issues as well).
Obviously my original message was not supposed to be taken completly seriously. However it is true that if we could some how stop it all, and redesign things from the ground up many of the issue you issues (problems with static IPs or their lack for one) could be resolved at design time
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Re: Re: Re:
I don't know enough about how this stuff works, but I have wondered since the first mention of running out of IPv4 numbers why they didn't just add a couple more sets to the end of the current structure. Ex: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.yyy.zzz.nnn or something (enough for 30 or 40 numbers for everyone on the planet at the end of this century or something). The changeover might have been a little painful, but a little pain for a short time that gets a long term, or maybe even a permanent solutions seems like a small price to pay.
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IP V6 is that number increase, but world wide the ISPs are dragging their feet on implementing it. I think an address space that would allow everybody to have an IP4 (that is current Internet) size address space is fairly future proof.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"why they didn't just add a couple more sets to the end of the current structure"
There's a few reasons.
First off, the reason why the number of figures in an IP address is what it is is due to binary maths. Each octet (the bit between the dots) is 8 bits, and each IP address (4 octets) is 32 bits. When routing these around a network, these are organised using subnets which work with binary arithmetic to specify the individual group of hosts. While the adding of a few more octets might seem simple enough on the human-readable version, it could make the underlying arithmetic way more complicated and harder to manage. A competent network engineer can calculate IPv4 in their head if they need to, larger blocks of data wouldn't be as easy.
The reasons why we have run out of IPs are twofold - IPv4 addressing only used 32 bits, and allocation was somewhat mismanaged at the beginning when people didn't conceive of how many people would eventually be using the internet. IPv6 is an attempt to correct the first issue, with 128 bit addressing. But, because it's so different to read and manage than IPv4 and because it's not backwardly compatible, people have been reluctant to move.
On top of that, because the issues related to IPv4 were recognised relatively early, NAT was developed so that large networks of machines are able to "hide" behind a single IPv4 address. Because this tech is mature and familiar, the move to IPv6 has been very slow. It is happening to a degree, and IPv6 still has a lot of problems, but things are happening behind the scenes.
I hope that helps clarify things!
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It's also worth noting that the IPv6 effort started in earnest in 1992, before CIDR and NAT extended the lifetime of IPv4 and before most people had Internet connections. So it should have been relatively easy to switch back then, but the need was less pressing than expected.
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That is certainly true. But, it wasn't formalised until the late 90s, at which point the speed of growth of the internet had caught everybody off guard and the majority of consumer grade equipment didn't support it.
It's one of those things where hindsight is great. But, even at the point where the need for IPv6 was properly understood and prioritised, they couldn't have predicted the speed and scale of change. By the time that was understood, people were more willing to put in a quick fix rather than rebuild everything from the ground up, and that kludge works well enough that people are still reluctant to change.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"but I have wondered since the first mention of running out of IPv4 numbers why they didn't just add a couple more sets to the end of the current structure."
Because math.
IPv4 uses a 32-bit address space so the limit on how many addresses CAN exist is 2^32 = 4,29 billion addresses and spare change. To address ip address shortage extensive use of NAT and intranet routing has been used, but it's still given that we're scraping the bottom of the barrel of the 32-bit address namespace.
IPv6 uses a 128-bit address space. 2^128 = enough addresses to last...for quite a while, unless the "internet of things" goes critical.
So they couldn't just add to the current structure since the entire protocol couldn't count any more addresses, basically. Hence the need for a new one.
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Re: Re: Re:
No its not, its a hack on top of a protocol based on static IP addresses. besides which how do you connect to someone who knows where the destination you want is if you do not have an IP address to use. There are services that will provide DNS for dynamic addresses, but they can lag behind changes, as the computer relying on those services has to not that its address has changed, and then update the service. Also, at least one DNS server level need to be on a static address, otherwise the network gets flooded with broadcast queries to find a DNS server.
The problem for human interfacing is the directory level, that is DNS, which is built on top of IP protocols. If you can design a better one it can run alongside the existing DNS until it takes over the directory function.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
the DNS system was a replacement for the hosts files witch FidoNet still uses.
the Internet Engineering Task Force knew there was going to be to issues, but because the internet was small and there were not any bad actors in the 1980s.
if we go back to the host files setup say hello to the yellow pages phone directory
my feeling, the next generation of the DNS system will be built upon a Distributed hash table
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Re:
The problem is that no one in the history of history has ever been able to have the forsight to make significant plans for things 10+ years into the future.
We don't know what we'll be able to do tomorrow let alone that far off.
Take self-driving cars for example.
less than 20 years ago the paradigm was V2I - vehicle to infrastructure. Meaning that specialized road infrastructure would need to be rolled out for cars to communicate with to self-drive.
10 years ago it was V2V - cars would talk to each other. Again, through specialized protcols.
Today its obvious that when self-driving finally rolls out it will be nearly completely self-contained needing only the GPS infrastructure - and likely soon not even that.
Planners are still insisting trains are needed in low-density cities and that high-speed-rail will be competitive with airlines and autonomous vehicles despite clear evidence that they will be utterly obsolete (and not just ridiculously uneconomical) in 20-30 years tops.
Those guys are going to be your planners for that new internet.
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Re: Re:
Because the problem with 'rule by expert' is that we're not smart enough to know who the experts really are. And if we were, we wouldn't need them.
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"Because the problem with 'rule by expert' is that we're not smart enough to know who the experts really are. And if we were, we wouldn't need them."
Not really...the problem with "rule by experts" can be summed up in two words.
Steve Jobs.
I.e. you get a cranky old BOFH at the wheel who views every consumer/user as a concussed lemming who should be allowed a very limited range of options on what to do and how to do it. It'll work, but essentially you just get that one button which is supposed to do everything. And if that doesn't do it for you, tough.
It is, in my mind, still vastly preferable to the current alternative we have in politics - which is that a sock puppet carefully vetted by all stakeholders to hold not a single thought his/her own will sit down and make decisions they don't understand about systems they refuse to learn about, with consequences they do not give a single fuck over since those will show up long after they've moved out of office.
And that still assumes we're only talking about the generally inept default rather than the actively malicious and/or corrupt.
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To dumb to choose an expert / too smart to need one.
Wow. This may be best argument I've heard for government by sortition.
Or to suggest that civilization is impossible beyond a certain point.
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Re: Re: Re:
Also it implies that we trust not only the expertise of the "experts" but their motivations and morals.
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Re: Re:
I think V2V/V2I still make sense because of the extra bandwidth that can be used:
the current issues are the Channel access methods are unsuitable
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Re: Re:
Depends on who you listen to. I heard one guy recently lay out a scarily plausible scenario in which the easy availability of small, cheap drones puts an end to commercial aviation entirely within the next 20-ish years, because of how ridiculously easy it will become for any bad actor anywhere to use one to create a "bird strike".
If we don't come up with a good, solid countermeasure to this, trains (or Hyperloops!) may well be the future of transportation.
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Re: Re: Re:
"If we don't come up with a good, solid countermeasure to this, trains (or Hyperloops!) may well be the future of transportation."
Because those bad actors who are willing take down aircraft aren't able to work out how to derail a train?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, because it's not about willingness; it's about convenience.
There are several orders of magnitude more people who would be willing to bring down a plane, (or even to simply present a credible threat of being able to do so, for purposes of extortion, terror, or purely for the lulz,) than people who have the capability to actually do so. To put it simply, if drones reach a point where 1) they're as easy to obtain as guns and 2) they're capable of reliably attacking a jet engine... then it's hard to escape the conclusion that that, in the absence of reliable defensive technology, (which does not currently exist,) plane-killings will become approximately as common as mass shootings are today. And condition #1 has already been satisfied.
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Re: Re: Re:
That is typical scare mongering so that governments can restrict peoples freedoms further. It has been possible for an individual who so desired to bring down an aircraft during take off and landing for a long time, as radio controled aircraft have existed for a long time.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
This has nothing to do with "governments restricting people's freedoms," and everything to do with technological progress. Radio-controlled aircraft have existed for a long time, but it's only recently that their range and agility are increasing to the point where they could reliably 1) be a credible threat to aircraft and 2) be deployed as such with a reasonable expectation that the person doing so could avoid being caught.
Plenty of things "exist for a long time" before they really take off. Karl Benz invented the automobile almost a quarter-century before the Model T Ford made them mainstream, to give just one obvious example. But once the right change occurs, a product can explode from obscurity to ubiquity practically overnight. (Look up a book called The Tipping Point for some good discussion into how this all works.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"This has nothing to do with "governments restricting people's freedoms," and everything to do with technological progress."
Yes and then again, no. A commercial aircraft is, at either takeoff or landing, frighteningly easy to bring down catastrophically.
Take the US, for instance. Many states allow for the purchase of a .50 caliber Barrett. Even a novice marksman will be able to target and bring down an airliner in fire from a kilometer away. To my knowledge there really is no plausible way to prevent this danger. A drone is just another way to accomplish, in much the same manner, something which can already be done.
Hell, a drone is a lesser danger since by definition they'll be moving radio beacons which will be hard for the airport radar operators to miss.
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Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
What happened was that in the middle of a sitting meeting, it was decided to make an adjustment in the order of voting in itself. This did not appear in a clear way where the President was also somewhat confused.
As if it wasn't obvious enough that those pushing for this crap will do anything in order to cram it through, say any lie, game any system, if that's what it takes.
MEPs may still issue corrections to their vote in case of mistakes, which will however not change the outcome.
And this is complete and utter garbage. 'You can issue a correction if you made a mistake... but the original vote stands regardless.' There's no reason to even have the ability to issue corrections if it doesn't actually do anything.
If they actually care enough they should demand either a do-over on the votes with no mid-session changes and a clear indicator which vote goes to what, on the grounds that the mid-session change which resulted in confusion even in the gorram president invalidates those votes, and/or call for a new vote to nullify the current one.
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Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
Agreed. What's the point of clarifying the record if it has no effect. This whole thing is laughably bad.
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Re: Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
Easy, you vote one way to appease the lobbyist paying you, then afterwards you issue a clarification that you voted the wrong way to appease the voters that voted you into office. That way you get your bribe money and avoid the backlash from your voters so that you can do it all again next year.
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Re: Re: Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
I somehow wish that didn't make any sense.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
Yupp.. Egg on your face, check in the bank...
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Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
The cynical would say that it allows them to vote one way but later claim that they didn't mean it - "see, it says that I made a mistake, but sadly they don't take that into account..."
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Re: Could you GET any more blatantly corrupt?
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"Say any lie, game any system, if that's what it takes."
The very shape of the M25 forms the sigh odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds. The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.
It was one of Crowley's better achievements. It had taken years to achieve, and had involved three computer hacks, two break-ins, one minor bribery and, on one wet night when all else had failed, two hours in a squelchy field shifting the marker pegs a few but occultly incredibly significant meters.
--Good Omens
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I hate so much about the modern Internet and living in the modern era. Endless heartbreak and depression. This just adds one more reason to the pile.
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Re:
I know what you mean, but try to focus on the good things like real time driving directions and free porn.
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Re: Re:
Well, one of those things made him blind, and the other drove him off the road.
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They might just be saying this to appease the protestors.
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Re:
Entirely possible, however given the mid-session vote shuffle confusion actually is a believable excuse.
Ultimately though the question should be, 'regardless of whether or not they voted to allow/disallow amendments, what did they vote on the whole package?' Because whether or not they might have voted to remove 11 and 13 matters less than whether or not they did vote in favor of a bill that included those two.
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Re: Re:
Personally I'm not sure how much appeasing this is supposed to do.
This smacks of the judge in the Pirate Bay trial admitting that yes, he was on a very close copyright-based basis with the prosecution, but claiming that he honestly believed this relationship wasn't damning enough for a recusal.
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Re: Re: Re:
Personally I'm not sure how much appeasing this is supposed to do.
No idea how much it will, but for how much it should?
None whatsoever.
Regardless of what they might have voted for, what ultimately matters in the end is whether or not they did vote for the whole package, knowing that 11 and 13 were still within it.
To use a rough analogy: Whether or not someone says they are opposed to a company sticking randomly poisoned candy into bags of good candy matters, but not nearly as much as whether or not they give the okay for the company to sell those bags knowing the poisoned candy is in them. Some things are bad enough that it doesn't matter how good the rest of it is, so long as those parts are included that should be complete justification to toss the whole thing out.
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Re:
A politician? Ya think?
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I called it...
I thought they would wait a while before slipping in the 'overnight change by an intern' but it actually happened right on time (right after all the discussion, before the big vote... no better time to trick the politicratocricity...
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...Good, good, then it's all going to plan.
Article 11 was frankly unnecessary collateral damage, a link tax is idiocy when the linkers are de-facto providing free marketing for you.
Article 13, though, that might be an abomination, but it's a useful abomination.
It's quite simple, really; the current internet landscape is dominated by companies that host content. With Article 13 in play, only the biggest companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, will be able to legally function.
This creates a pressure for smaller sites to move away from hosting content, and move towards displaying content.
Mike's advocated this before; like Usenet and IRC, protocols and display apps rather than hosting platforms.
While Article 13 will hurt the internet in the short run, in the long run the web will adapt, and strengthen itself against copyfraud and censorship.
As they say, the Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it...mua-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa!
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Re:
This creates a pressure for smaller sites to move away from hosting content, and move towards displaying content.
... what? Going to need an explanation for how you're differentiating those two. Do you mean that sites that currently host the content itself will instead shift to embedding it, such that it's hosted somewhere else? Because if nothing else that still leaves the original host liable under 13, and potentially opens up the 'displaying' site for liability under 11 and/or 13 depending on how embeds are treated.
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Re: Re:right the guy is a fool
The internet is broke period. However from what I heard it still has to be voted on in the governments of the 27 EU nations to be ratified, so is there still a chance to stop it if it has to go through the 27 nations in order to become law techdirt?
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Re: Re: Re:right the guy is a fool
It is my understanding that they all have to pass it in some form or else risk economic sanctions.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:right the guy is a fool
"It is my understanding that they all have to pass it in some form or else risk economic sanctions."
True, but...
...there are a few mitigators en route. The data retention directive was, for instance, implemented and rolled out in every national legislation.
Then multiple national supreme courts judged the data retention directive as unconstitutional which meant it was suddenly completely invalid in those countries.
After which the EU supreme court ruled the directive to be in violation of the EU charter which eliminated it as a whole.
Article 13 and 11 both make for a compelling free speech case.
And is likely to be raised as such once countries implementing it start seeing that "This video is not available in your area" screens and find the only news available online is through a VPN set with an exit node outside europe.
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Re: Re: Re:right the guy is a fool
All laws passed by the EU must be implemented by member states with no changes. And they don't have the option to vote 'no'.
'Ratification' means noting here. They must approve it straight into local law whether they want to or not.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:right the guy is a fool
John Prowd is half correct, the correct half being the one that matters here; there very much is an option to vote 'no'. After being passed by the European Parliament, the law has to be passed by the Council of the European Union, which consists of one minister or some other representative of the government of each member state. Before that happens, there is no law for member states to implement, as it has in fact not yet been passed by the EU as a whole.
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Re: Re:
As in, you know web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox and Chrome and Safari and such? They're all different browsers, but they don't host content, they're merely a means for you to access it; the actual content is spread across millions of servers across the globe, and is the same regardless of what browser you choose to use.
What I'm talking about is a transition from the contents of whatever being hosted on one website, one server, to having content that's decentralised over millions of computers, organised under an internet protocol that allows all that decentralised information to be easily accessed, sorted, and displayed via a browser. Er, basically how web pages already function.
...Or something! I'm not an expert when it comes to telecommunication structures and whatnot. Is there a Mike Masnick who can explain it better somewhere around here?
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Bloody hell that's even worse than I was thinking... you're essentially talking about everyone who wants to post something being required to have their own servers to host it. To call that 'unrealistic' or even 'insanely complex' would be putting it mildly.
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To be charitable, he might be referring to something like a CDN, but he clearly doesn't know what he's trying to say≥
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Which, in layman’s terms, means the Internet becomes television.
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Re:
Exactly. You can't trust the Public to put anything on your site as you are risking a big fine. So you become a one-way street. Even THIS place. it can't exist under the EU. One wrong thing from someone and out of business they go. Filters don't work. Hell, it wouldn't take much for a competitor to take a site down.
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Your logic would dictate that the Internet cease being a communications network and become a broadcast medium where only the biggest, well-known sites — such as the ones Articles 11 and 13 were meant to target in the first place — would be the ones people visit. Independent artists would be shut out of the “broadcast Internet” by default, since no one would have a way of finding out about them through services such as Soundcloud or sites such as DeviantArt, since those services and sites will have either shut down or stopped accepting UGC altogether (which will effectively shut them down anyway).
The Internet, for better or worse, has allowed millions upon millions of people to express themselves and find an audience. All that comes crashing to a halt if the Internet turns into the equivalent of cable television. Dominant media corporations might enjoy that, but the rest of us regular jackoffs will not. That is why we protest. That is why we speak out. That is why we are doing whatever we can to spread the word about Articles 11 and 13: Because we like the Internet as it is right now, warts and all, and people like you will not have the final say on whether the Internet remains the Internet.
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Re:
"Your logic would dictate that the Internet cease being a communications network and become a broadcast medium"
And, at this point, myself and many others will simply stop using it.
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Re: Re:
But duplex communication is hard to manage and control. SIMPLEX is much easier, as we just have to locate the few available sources and "encourage" or co-opt them.
Even if we don't there's so many less arguments floating around. And you won't view? That's what all of the camera around you are for, you ungrateful citizen.
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Re: Re:
"And, at this point, myself and many others will simply stop using it."
Or, more likely, turn to the dark net where most of what is missing due to article 13 will still be found in some form or other.
Essentially this legislation tries to roll the internet back to the 1990's when the only way to find entertainment online was piracy.
So piracy will surge once again, while every legitimate use of the internet gets taken out back and shot.
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I can easily envision competitors posting anonymously or with throw away accounts to get copyrighted content on a site just to file a complaint, hoping to sink the competition. EASILY. We already see dirty tricks on the net, and this just makes it even easier.
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Isn’t that more or less what Viacom did to YouTube?
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Re:
Thanks so absolutely much for explaining that in layman's terms. I just couldn't get it any other way.
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What makes you think the EU would not seek to apply the law to Usenet providers? Peer to peer would be more difficult, but any company with a legal presence would most likely have to abide by the law or risk going bankrupt.
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Re: Re:
The Usenet provider I use is in the United States, has no servers in Europe, so they are not subject to EU laws
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Re: Re:
"...any company with a legal presence would most likely have to abide by the law or risk going bankrupt."
Which means usenet and P2P will both be completely immune unless a usenet provider starts a server in europe.
Any company which allows User-Generated content though, is up shit creek with no paddle.
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read the fine print
Growing up, we are all told repeatedly, "read the fine print"
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Re: read the fine print
Bit different when that fine print changes while you're looking at the ad.
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What's sad is that these people are tasked with creating legislation that can affect millions of their constituents, and they don't have enough ability to read the damn layout of the voting ballot and not have the ability to recognize the correct way to vote how they wanted?
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I'm glad I don't live in that shithole.
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Re:
You shouldn't be glad that they often supply content you enjoy on content platforms nor should you be glad that companies will be financially incentivized to find a baseline set of rules that works for everyone. Which will very likely impact you.
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Liars. Bought and paid for liars.
Hang them all high. This isn't a suggestion, this is a moral imperative.
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Re: Liars. Bought and paid for liars.
They were blatant with this and showed contempt for not just the democratic process but had the nerve to put a smile on through the whole thing.
It’s illegitimate. Nothing more nothing less.
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Then it’s unjust
The vote is illegitimate then.
This farce may pass to autocrats but not to anyone else. Regardless of what they say.
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Measurement
It will be interesting to watch some of the internet analytics sites as this progresses. Will torrenting go up or down? Will VPN usage go up or down. With a VPN one won't be able to determine the country of origin, but the rate of torrents is probably still recognizable. Maybe there will be no impact, which will show that this entire effort was not worth their time.
Then we should watch box office, book sales, vinyl record, DVD, CD sales, both before and after these actions, especially independents. I wouldn't look for a quick change, as each country still needs to implement a local law, and that will take time. However, once those laws are in place I suspect marketplace changes might happen quickly, and build, one way or another over time.
There is also that small chance that the EU Counsel will deny this, and maybe a smaller chance that down the road some EU court nullifies it all together.
What won't be easily measured is the loss of an individuals ability to post comments, like this one, anywhere in the EU. This won't be because there is anything wrong with such comments (though those that thirst for power and control hate the ability) but that sites that have up till now allowed such comments in the EU will be forced to stop due to the now outrageous burdens place upon them.
Then there is still the possibility that some new protocol or implementation (such as Mike's idea about protocols rather than platforms, something I am still trying to get my head around how little old me might interact with such a system) or something not yet thought of yet will come along and make the kinds of controls authoritarian's have wet dreams about not just impracticable, but impossible.
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One example is Mastodon: It is a social interaction network protocol where any instance can (theoretically¹) federate with any other instance and interact accordingly, and local installations of the protocol can be customized to the instance owner’s tastes. (For example: While Masto defaults to a 500-character limit for individual posts, instance owners can change that limit to pretty much whatever they want.)
¹ — I say “theoretically” because some instances may choose not to federate, and defederation with instances due to differences in rules/morals/whatever is possible as well.
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Re:
Since I don't do social media I am more concerned with other kinds of sites, news sites for example, that now allow comments, but won't be able to in the future. I don't do Reddit either, but I understand that they have some issues with some posting infringing content there.
The Mastadon concept is intriguing, I looked into it briefly when it was first mentioned. How that might apply to, well lets consider Techdirt, just as an example, is not entirely clear. Another site that is well known would be YouTube. How might the Mastadon concept apply to that?
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PeerTube would fit that bill, I believe.
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Re:
The problem here is that connections (especially in the US) are asymmetric. People rely on youtube to host their video because there's no way they could possible stream the video to more than one or two viewers at a time on any reasonably priced connection. Relying on youtube's servers means hundreds to thousands can watch your video at once, even with your cheap low-bandwidth connection.
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Re: Re:
Same with Twitch.
I've seen "small" streamers with up to 400 simultaneous viewers.
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Re:
The problems with federated systems, like Mastadon, or PeerTube, a YouTube competitor, are how do you find anything without the big search engines Like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc. Also, they can only deal with high volume traffic by acting as CDN servers for each other.
Also, even with good indexing by the search engines, they create a fractured landscape, as it is not possible for each instance to track all instance that might have similar content, which weakens the linking and communities of people with similar interest which Make YouTube and Facebook etc. such useful.services.
If some content gets popular, then distributed delivery, like bit torrent is required, as a single server would buckle under the demand, but that exposes those servers helping deliver the content open to the risk of delivering infringing content and the legal demands that follow. The system become fragile, because people can be bullied into consuming only because of those risks. A fully distributed system can also be blocked by ISP's not allowing connection requests to private IP addresses.
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Re: Re:
Human-run portals.
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Re: Re: Re:
That is how to reduce the Internet to the equivalent of medieval villages, along with granting a lot of power to people prepared to curate selectively to support their agenda.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Better that than a bull-in-a-china-shop "bot."
Film reviewers have no copyright power yet they have tremendous "gatekeeper" influence. Why is that?
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Because people want to know if a movie is worth seeing and their favorite reviewer — ostensibly one who shares enough of a person’s taste in movies to seem “trustworthy” for this purpose — can typically resolve that issue via their reviews.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
A reviewer is not a gatekeeper since he or she has no power to stop anyone watching a movie if they wanted to - he can only influence.
Comparing a reviewer to someone who can stop or hinder content being published is disingenuous.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Comparing a reviewer to someone who can stop or hinder content being published is disingenuous."
Also complete bunk. Some of the most successful movies of all time have had terrible reviews. There are hundreds of movies that made less than their production budget that have close to 100% approval.
Good reviews can be a boon, especially to independent movies without much of a marketing budget, but to say that they can cause a production to live or die on their own is utter tripe.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I've gone to movies that have been utter trash which I knew beforehand which was the whole point of going to see it. Some movies are so incredibly bad and stereotypical that they actually become fun and enjoyable to watch because of it.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Human-run portals."
Try this on for scale...you need HOW many humans to analyze a few hundred thousands of daily uploads, all of which those humans will then manually have to view and check against a database of copyrighted works which they must know by rote...
We're talking about having to employ more humans than live in the US, looking at youtube and vimeo alone.
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"Hi, you're being arrested under Article 13."
"The one that MEPs mistakenly voted for? Sorry, I mistakenly triggered an Article 13-relevant offense, that still means I'm innocent."
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Of course there's nothing to be done.
Here's the way the EU works - if 'The People' vote wrong, then you have another vote. And another vote and another vote. You have votes until the vote goes the way the people in power want it to go.
And then the matter is settled and there can be no further votes.
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Re:
As I keep saying, Brexit may be a bad idea economically but that doesn't mean there aren't serious problems with the way the EU works. Britain should say they're willing to remain in the EU but if it won't give more freedom to the member countries, it must become truly democratic. No country should be willing to give up any of their sovereignty to an entity run of, by, and for the corporations by its very structure (not just because of corporations exploiting flaws in the structure).
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Re: Re:
Somehow the USA functions just fine.
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Re: Re: Re:
You forgot the sarcasm tags
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Re: Re: Re:
"Somehow the USA functions just fine."
Operative word being "function".
Just what do you mean when you say function?
If it means that the rich get richer and the poor pay for it all then I suppose you are correct but that is hardly functioning.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Exactly. You can function on a diet of water and gruel. Most people would hope for a higher quality of life than that.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Somehow the USA functions just fine."
Not sure if serious...
...but there's a reason the US could ONLY become a semi-cohesive entity by importing all of it's citizenry out of people who willingly left their homelands behind for something new...and even then had to have a massive and extremely bloody civil war to ensure anyone objecting was put six feet under.
The EU? Europe has tried unification multiple times, by many methods. All of which have failed, usually while triggering either a world war or some high-intensity century-long set of skirmishes.
The federalization of europe was dead before it got off the ground. And given the "leadership" - which is more obviously corrupt than we've seen this side of the 18th century - it's a matter of time before the member states start their own brexits.
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So who changed the vote order, and why (well we have a pretty good idea why, but I'd still like to hear the excuse)?
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Re:
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Course of action?
I'm curious what would happen if the big tech companies just shut off access to their sites tomorrow for anyone in the EU?
Google, facebook, youtube, etc. Would that be enough pressure to immediately reverse the direction this is heading?
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Re: Course of action?
This would greatly increase the value of internet content. I'd love to see that happen.
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Re: Re: Course of action?
And we all know how artificial scarcity is a boon for the public...
/s
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Re: Re: Course of action?
“That would greatly increase the value of internet content I would love to see that happen.
I have said the same thing about movies and music for years /s
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Re: Course of action?
That would be collusion and governments would seize those corporations by force. Google doesn't have the balls!
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Re: Re: Course of action?
It's not collusion, it's a business reality.
Any business that find that the cost for operating in a regional market to high will take their business elsewhere.
And I find your suggestion that the EU governments could size Google et al by force to be extremely naive and laughable.
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Honestly, were I an MEP there is no way I would admit to this. It strikes me as trying to mitigate backlash by making it worse.
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Re:
Unless the Parliament comes to it's senses and declares the vote null and does a do over, the actual vote is recorded. The next test for the MEP's is the upcoming election. There are two things to watch there, the first is which MEP's lose their seats (compared with how they voted) and the second is what job they get after getting kicked out of office.
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Re: Re:
it's
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Re: Re: Re:
..... Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6UaU_Dzysc
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Re:
"Sorry, but you shouldn't vote against me just because I am stupid."
That's going to be their campaign slogan?
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Sounds a lot like ballot tampering. Is this something that happens a lot over there? Also sounds perfect for a legal challenge in their so-called Court of Justice.
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What kind of double-handed BS is this?
"MEPs may still issue corrections to their vote in case of mistakes, which will however not change the outcome"
If people voted on something not knowing what it was about, and want to correct their votes accordingly, the outcome could and SHOULD be changed.
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Time to lawyer up, justice is blind, not deaf and dumb.
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Re:
"justice is blind"
No it is not.
That is an old saying that simply does not ring true for many reasons that should be obvious to the casual observer.
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Core of Article 11 and Article 13 that they used to sell them
I just had an interesting conversation with someone about Articles 11 and 13. Put simply they are bad authoritarian solutions for problems that arise from differences between US and European cultures.
Put simply the core of Article 11 is about the fact that news aggregators use precises for their aggregation and that search engines tend to on accident also use a type of precises when linking to news sites. In Europe it is expected to pay for the copyright to make a precis of an article.
What this means for Article 11 as it is written now is that any search engine and/or news aggregator that removes all precises from their links (and has deep enough pockets) will have some form of standing to go to court for any Article 11 tax given to it and a chance at defeating it. If such a company wins such a challenge they will get a monopoly (or oligopoly if it is multiple companies) on searching/aggregation.
As for Article 13 it's core can simply be put as know and edit what your printer is printing. Yes seriously the people in the EU that wanted this in the copyright reform before the old legacy industries got involved and made it so much worse were going for an Article that is the opposite of Section 230.
I don't know how this will get unfucked other than on human rights ground in some of EU's higher courts.
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Re: Core of Article 11 and Article 13 that they used to sell the
it's....
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Re: Re: Core of Article 11 and Article 13 that they used to sell
See https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/%22It's%22_man
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Re: Core of Article 11 and Article 13 that they used to sell the
“Human rights grounds”
Struck Down on Human rights grounds in the WEST?
We will see Chinese democracy before that.
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Re: Core of Article 11 and Article 13 that they used to sell the
"I don't know how this will get unfucked other than on human rights ground in some of EU's higher courts."
It's highly likely to linger as a highly embarrassing piece of legislation which renders the eurozone itself into a barren online wasteland while attracting a swarm of copyright trolls on any platform unwise enough to allow user-uploaded content at all.
Meanwhile one VPN away will be the rest of the world with all those youtube videos which in the EU will just show the youtube sadface.
It's possible to turn this into a freedom of speech issue in one or more national supreme courts and get it axed the same way the data retention directive was...
...but the problem is that in order to have a stakeholder you actually need to first let the damn thing run for quite a while until you can point to a pile of broken independents.
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What is even more incredible is that these are the people who have been entrusted to look after the rights of the people and whose votes shape not just how things will be done in future in the EU but, in this instance, in the entire world. It shows how much attention they pay to what they are actually doing or not, as in this case! It also shows the level of grovelling they are going to go to to try to justify keeping their jobs at the soon to be held elections!
This monumental fuck up also shows the deviousness and lengths those who were desperate to get this vote in went to to achieve their goal! They are the ones who need to be shown the wrath of the public! Voted out of office and criminally investigated!!
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Re:
By voted out you mean walked out the door to the city square and have a heart to heart discussion with madam guillotine right?
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Re: Re:
So I just heard about the French Revolution: Robespierre was the only person guillotined facing upwards. But it's apparently just rumor.
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Fake news
Okay, that's a little harsh, but:
I fail to see how professional legislators "messed up" their vote. It's their job to know and understand the bills they're passing. Okay, maybe they don't understand the technical details of what happens next, but they better know the legalese that goes into "this amendment passes".
Basically, I think this is a case of some legislators voting along with everyone else because of party lines or peer pressure, then getting blowback from the public, so now they're claiming they voted the wrong way.
It didn't work for England voting for Brexit and it didn't work the US voting for Trump: there is no do-over.
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Re: Fake news
The MEP's aren't professional legislators, they are just politicians that got voted in to the EU parliament.
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Re: Re: Fake news
To legislate. Professionally.
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Re: Re: Fake news
Oh. So they aren't receiving any monetary compensation for being in office?
Since that's the usual way to delineate Professional vs non-professional: "Did you get paid for it?"
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Re: Re: Fake news
"The MEP's aren't professional legislators, they are just politicians ..."
So, "rulers" then?
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Re: Fake news
Well, according to most recent news it was because some Swedish MEPs misunderstood the vote and pressed the wrong button. Which only raises questions about the whole voting process on everything else, really.
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"It is frustrating beyond all belief that we ended up killing the open internet through tricking a bunch of MEPs by switching the voting order. Incredible."
I love the smell of democracy in the morning.
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The EU has just replaced the USSR in Europe.
It had never anything democratic and is controlled by an oligarchy called the commission.
Like the Kommissars of old USSR, who decided evrything, the EUSSR also has it's politburo: the mock of a parliament called "eu parliament".
Lobbies, foreign powers, global corporations and their lackeys the EU commissars are the ones who decide of everything in the EUSSR...
The British people are not stupid and want out of this dictatorship even though their "elite" is betraying them righ now
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Someone should mistakenly forget to issue them their pay-cheques. Perhaps then they'll be more careful.
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WHAT TOTAL BULLSHIT. They saw the public reaction and are trying to stay in the warm, high paying seats. Fuck 'em. Vote them out!
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EU-selessness ...
I am a US computer technologist, so my commentary is couched from that perspective. And note that there's no intent at fingerpointing; indeed the US has equivalents to many of these issues and more of this crap will likely wash across the pond.
If the rehearsals in the posts on this forum are relatively on-point regarding this Art 11/13 mess, then it seems that one or more of the following apply:
(1) EU legislative process is deeply compromised,
(2) EU legislative process is a bit of a sham,
(3) The general EU populace is grossly uninformed about what the internet represents,
(4) The 'frogs' are just getting warm,
(5) Copyright is broken,
(6) People need to use a number of means of redress.
To avoid super-TL;DR-itis, I'm breaking this into sub-posts.
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Re: EU-selessness ...
Point 1 - Compromised Process -
Some of perhaps many puppeteers at work here are the established rightsholder mafias and the platform spookettes. In the US for example, the former have quite thoroughly conscripted a segment of the federal government (e.g. FBI) to be their mercenaries; and jiggered the laws to extend coverage to laughable lengths. The punishments for 'piracy' are vastly bloated w/r/t societal seriousness and hence are likely juiced by moneyed incentives.
The platform NGOs (e.g. Giggle, Zuckbook, Beezoar-zon, TimApple) have become instruments of centralized data warehousing like unto governmental intelligence agencies. Citizens (even government and military personnel) are self-bugged with devices which can locate, listen-in and see what's occuring on location, paw through all communications, etc. The lot will do whatever it takes to keep their catheters in the arteries of data - it's probably the case that these data hogs are service providers to Five / Nine / Fourteen Eyes, sans legal oversight. And many of these platforms have their sights set on becoming big-time 'content providers' as well (YoobToob TV, Beezoar Prime, TimApple TV++.)
The influence on the political landscape is vast, sometimes blatant sometimes subtle. The direction is clearly NOT toward openness nor personal freedom however.
In the US, we also have the telecom duopolies who, like the Colossus of Rhodes, span the gulf between govermental overlordship and corporate greed. They too are similarly focused away from the good of the populace. (I don't personally know the equivalent landscape in the EU.)
It would be important to expose the money trail between these backroom directors and the legislative processes at work.
(Was Herr Voss gifted a season pass on the Weinstein Memorial Casting Couch for his yeoman's work here?)
Blatantly-compromised 'representatives' should have an appropriate symbol (e.g. the 'one finger salute') tattooed onto their T-zones. Many have likely already charted a path out the revolving door, so EUros could hope to ENCOURAGE them to move to wherever their masters reside. (The Hollywood phrase "will never work in this town again" comes to mind; only w/r/t EU government.)
Come to think, this might be a good beta test for the survivability of the meme in the EU: presumably these legis-critters are considered public figures, meaning that their likenesses can be used, for example, as the basis for meme. So someone with creative skills could take each of their mugshots, emblazon their foreheads, and add an appropriate caption. (EUrope's Most Wanted?) The abovementioned 'one finger salute' might be grounds for censorship, so perhaps better a 'full moon', or maybe just an orange dot (orange being the Mark of the new Yuge Trumpkin).
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Re: EU-selessness ...
Point 2 - Legislative Sham -
If the mere act of an intern can change the outcome of something as widely contested as this issue, any notion of 'but I would have voted otherwise' is doubly-broken. First, anysuch REAL representatives should be SCREAMING for a re-vote, so that the issue can at least be legitimately resolved. Second, a process which doesn't allow for serious representational error to be promptly corrected is vacuous. (Were there a proper re-vote, those votes should now be known and worn on their sleeves.)
This flimsy excuse is about as factually satifying as the Experian fiasco being trouted as "one IT person who failed to patch". (By a company who offers 'credit protection' for such leakage? "Nice credit score you have there - be a shame if something were to happen to it...")
At minimum, these 'representatives' are not paying attention and are hence incompetent. Were it legally available, they should be recalled by their constituents. They should not hold further office - anywhere. But they seem to want it both ways: no tattoo on the forehead yet continuing to serve as proper puppets (perhaps their golden parachutes aren't ready?)
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Re: EU-selessness ...
Point 3 - Populace Naivety -
Clearly a global problem. The internet IS a communications medium, as revolutionary as the printing press at sub-second speed. And it panicks the established big business and governmental bodies as much as did Gutenberg's invention to the Big Businesses of his day. Burning books and smashing presses should cause more than vague reminiscence.
I personally think it's a mistake to consistently envision that it's just the legal operatives alone who are uninformed. TD's own initiative to engage and educate, while a valiant effort, can also miss the mark if it doesn't target the general populace in tandem. And 'trainings' with leaders should be memorialized, so that citizens can evaluate the leaders' understanding and work to 'address' the gaps.
Ever notice how, shortly before some process of legal finality (e.g. a vote) is to occur, the puppetmasters or their trusted puppets will issue missives which declare whatever falsehoods they wish to establish? Or that when a fact-finding process is forced, a meeting will occur with the 'professional stakeholders' before and perhaps instead of the public ones? Why is that? It is to establish the Definitive Word as a script for those who preside. At that point the decisionmaking entity is forced to the brink of a dilemma, which is: to go against the input of The Professionals in this matter? And the public loses so that moneyed interests don't? (Plus: "Ka-ching!")
THAT naivety is what needs to be reduced.
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Re: EU-selessness ...
Point 4 - Stay Tuned -
I'd predict this is just the nose of the camel for the EU. Count on the same cast of clowns tendering laws to backdoor encryption, ban VPNs, and other means by which to spy upon and suppress content - in order to enforce this nonsense - oh, and fight terrorism...
Point 5 - Copyright is Broken -
Copyright as the Golden BB by which to put the smack-down on freedoms is a sick, sick situation. When crafted, copyright was to protect and reward authors and other creators. But it sure seems like copyright should to be (re-)restricted to protect actual creators, with other business arrangements handled in a far less draconian and wet-blanket fashion.
To be sure, digital media have made it rather trivial to make copies; that's fundamentally required in, for example, networking infrastructures. But similar is the case for xerography, audio and video recording, and movable type.
The broadening of copyright to basically any form of expression is JUST PLAIN STUPID. Every emission (from a human) isn't something with which to lawyer-up. In fact, the flock of vampires-with-law-degrees who pursue blood money rather than serving as officers of real justice are, well, accomplices to and enablers of this problem. Gravel in the gears.
Require registration of 'whatever', just make it faster and easier. If you don't register it, by definition it's not yours.
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Re: EU-selessness ...
oint 6 - Redress & Action -
We WILL have to Nerd Harder, but not as 'they' might imagine. Admitting defeat at the hands of those empowered by means, not mind nor morals, just isn't the Human Way.
Free citizens need the means to CONTROL their representatives. Technology can and should facilitate a timely closing of the loop between inauguration and accountability.
It's reasonably clear that the filtering thing is FAIL. So why not hack that? Figure out how to make them false-fail NEARLY EVERY TIME. (Like unto the feeble copy protection racket in video games, this should be spammed and damned.) Force the content owners to provide filtering and make its failures proportionally costly FOR THEM.
The internet IS fundamentally a means of communication, but it has conveniently become a means of mass-distribution of infotainment. If need be, these two functions should be bifurcated so that communication can persist, and by which freedoms can expand (survive, even).
Awaken from the fog of infotainment (duplication of bulk content), to see instead how things like mesh networks can complement distribution of information, even fostering some privacy and anonymity along the way. Vive' journalism! Vive' communication!
Some of the gatekeeper entities are extremely vulnerable to organized public action. The so-called 'entertainment' so-called 'industries' in particular offer largely non-essential products and services. EU citizens should now take just cause to totally boycott these money sinks, starting with those which feed monsters outside their jurisdiction. And not just a multi-day blackout - as long as it takes. Spend your time and money elsewhere, and locally.
We in the US should do likewise, in order that we can deconstruct verticalized control over communication, platform and content. For example, Comcrap, Cheater (Speculum), The Death Star (ATT), etc. are in bed with regulators in the communications arena at every level. Okaaaayyy... just don't use any of their 'other' services. For Comcrap: swear-off Universal, (MS)NBC, their home security, their 'wireless', etc. For TDS: if you're in their clutches for telecom, don't watch their sports, use their wireless, etc. - if you're not using them for communications, maybe watch their sports but don't use them to communicate; specifically, don't use their wireless - period. And just avoid GTE cum Vor-I-zone wireless altogether.
Push for municipal, multi-provider FTTP. Fiber is vastly harder to snoop. Broad, localized public ownership of the cable plant limits successful spook skullduggery.
Self-hosted, self-publication systems can bypass the gatekeepers' dragons. Systems like Mastodon versus the horror that is the Anti-social Network. Self-defined 'economies' based on creator-minted vouchers could enable creators to sell directly.
So too the situation in the EU seems ripe for the beginnings of a new 'collection society', one created by the creators and whose membership embodies solidarity (think Creative Commons with remuneration). It seems that if such a society could provide registration of works, collection and distribution of royalties, et.al., the need to pay anyone else to publish one's work is rendered non-existent yet passes muster amidst these new, misguided (and hopefully temporary) legal frameworks. Members of said society pay dues and are officially registered; whatever they publish therefrom they must own, completely. Only plagiarized work should thence be subject to legal process from without - and the plagiarist be fully-exposed thereto. The society should be able to run a tidy side business, punishing the legacy gluttons' indiscretions based on unfair competition, fraud, misrepresentation, THEIR plagiarism, SLAPP, etc.
Work for legislation to disconnect your data from Their Data. Start with vital services such as government, banking, utilities, etc. And if a Data Hog screws up (e.g. Experian here in the US), be able to legally and fully disconnect from them (e.g. be able to tell your bank "I opt out of anything to do with Experian; if you ask or tell them anything about me, you've broken the law".) Data cribbing is cyber-stalking; it's 'casing' you and yours for future unknown assaults.
Back the creation of standardized terms of service which are vetted through bonafide legal channels (e.g. the EFF). No more custom clickware and EULAs - clickware == trickware. Landing and login pages should simply contain designations of the standard T&Cs which apply. Just avoid everything else 'til it goes away.
Lay siege to the lot of them!!
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Re: EU-selessness ...
Epilogue -
Following these proceedings on TD have exposed me to some individuals in the EU-verse. In particular I've come to know about Julia Reda, whom I consider a steely-eyed missilewoman with regard to these issues. I've read some of her writings which resemble a platform. A bit of it seems screwy, partly I suspect because I lack context. The name Pirate Party gives off a certain vibe that doesn't instill rationality. (I wouldn't reanimate the whoring, gambling, blood-thirsty likes of Doc Holiday and The Earps to provide modern law and order.) But, Ms. Reda: Carry On!
A final anecdote about the 'entertainment industry', which illuminates the carnivorous Thunderdome nature of The Business. Some decades ago I was involved in a technical venture where the principal had engaged a buddy who was primarily an entertainment lawyer. (Vampire Esq. screwed the venture, but as a swabby would say: "that's a sea story for another port of call".)
Vampire Esq. desired to pick my brain extensively about a topic of great interest to his main clientele: how soon can Hollywood expect to be able to completely render actor roles without the actors, without said humans' involvement? I said maybe twenty to thirty years - we're now starting to have Deep Fakes so it seems I was in the ballpark.
So envision in the not to distant future viewing a mainstream production which features most of the starring roles credited to Alan Smithee via Renderman 66.6 (a/k/a Sir Not Appearing). Imagine the perhaps-manufactured talent with a heartbeat (which the industry often refers to as 'property') figures out that, despite their seemingly having acted in the product, they're not in the credits so they don't get paid (they signed away the rights to their visage and former characterization.) The fan really gets fecal when their agent, Orange, likewise isn't getting paid. Boot-up said Agent Orange (no heartbeat) to extract vengeance. Popcorn Time!
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