The EU's Catastrophic Copyright Directive Can Still Be Stopped, If Governments Of Sweden And Germany Do The Right Thing
from the last-chance-to-save-the-Internet-as-we-know-it dept
Last week, the EU's Copyright Directive was passed by the European Parliament. Its supporters have wasted no time in dropping the mask, and revealing their true intent: installing upload filters on the Internet. First, France's Minister of Culture announced a "mission to promote and supervise content recognition technologies". More recently, EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger has confirmed that upload filters will be unavoidable. It's cold comfort that those who said that Article 13 (now officially Article 17) would inevitably bring in upload filters have now been proved right.
However, it turns out that the situation is not completely hopeless. Even though the vote in the European Parliament was the main hurdle the new copyright law needed to clear, there is one more stamp of approval required before it goes into effect. The little-known EU Council of Ministers must also agree, and it seems that is not a foregone conclusion.
Everything hinges on Sweden. As an article on the Bahnhof site (original in Swedish) explains, Sweden has previously voted in favor of the EU Copyright Directive, but can still change its mind. One way of achieving that is through a special parliamentary committee that helps to formulate Sweden's EU policy. The Swedish government's Web page about the committee says:
According to the rules, the Government is not obliged to act in compliance with the Committee on EU Affairs' opinions. However, the Committee on the Constitution has stated that the Government should act in compliance with the Committee's advice and opinions. The Committee on the Constitution has also stressed that if the Government does not act in compliance with the mandate it has received from the Committee on EU Affairs, it must have very good reasons for its actions.
If the Government does not follow the mandate given to it by the Committee on EU Affairs, it risks criticism, and ultimately, a vote of no confidence in the Chamber of the Riksdag [Swedish parliament].
Bahnhof's blog post is encouraging Swedish citizens to contact MPs on the EU Affairs Committee to ask them to instruct the Swedish government to vote against the EU Copyright Directive when it is discussed on April 15 at a meeting of EU agricultural ministers -- no, really (pdf). Two leading MPs have already said that they will work towards that goal. Tomas Tobé, Second Vice Chairman of Sweden's EU Affairs Committee tweeted (in Swedish, translated here by Microsoft): "We will force the government to say no. They did not have the mandate to say yes." Another key MP, Ilona Waldau, said on the same Twitter thread: "The European Council has not had the opportunity to make a decision, I answer the question how we should be able to get the government to say no. We are working on bringing the issue to the board."
As that indicates, it's not clear yet whether Sweden's EU Council will instruct the Swedish government to vote against the EU Copyright Directive, so nothing is certain. Moreover, as Florian Mueller points out, for the Copyright Directive to be blocked, Germany would also need to vote against it:
Even with Sweden changing its vote from Yes to No, we're still far short of a blocking minority as I'll explain further below. But Germany could single-handedly block the deal (as could the UK, by the way, though there's little hope of that happening). A Swedish reversal would embolden and encourage those who'd like the German government to withdraw its support.
Mueller's blog post goes on to explain why there are good grounds for believing that Germany might do that. Julia Reda of the Pirate Party says that the German parliament will be debating the issue soon. All-in-all, this means that there is still hope that the EU Copyright Directive can be blocked, although it would require a number of pieces of the political puzzle to fall into place perfectly for that to happen.
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Filed Under: article 13, copyright, copyright directive, europe, germany, sweden
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One important reason to block this procedurally:
It was passed by procedural error rather than the expressed intent of the parliament: the vote order was changed in the last minute and several MPs voted differently than they thought they were voting. While they can change the record of their individual vote, they cannot change the outcome.
That is an excellent reason to stop its further progress using whatever unrelated procedural steps are yet to be performed, even if there is no procedure for stopping it for the correct reason.
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Re: One important reason to block this procedurally:
"It was passed by procedural error rather than the expressed intent of the parliament..."
Correct, but I have few hopes we will find anyone with a moral compass or a spine in swedish government.
Germany I'm less clear about. They were instrumental in overturning the data retention directive so there are at least a few german politicians still caring about the opinion of their citizenry.
A citizenry which has recent and ample experience of GEMA censoring half of youtube and are still pretty miffed about that.
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Re: Re: One important reason to block this procedurally:
I predict your bubble being bursted. You may be right about the citizenry and our residual miffedness. And you may be right about some of the politicans' moral compasses regarding this matter.
But these 'at least a few' will neither turn out to be 'many' nor will they be 'enough'.
For hope to spring eternal, hope needs to exist in the first place.
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Re: Re: Re: One important reason to block this procedurally:
"For hope to spring eternal, hope needs to exist in the first place."
Well, you said it yourself:
"You may be right about the citizenry and our residual miffedness. And you may be right about some of the politicans' moral compasses regarding this matter."
The data retention directive was overturned because a very large amount of german politicians delivered a case to the german constitutional courts - which promptly investigated the data retention directive, found it to be in conflict with the german constitution, and kicked the ball to the EU court of justice which then dropped the hammer on the directive as a whole.
We may or may not see enough active will to block article 13 in either sweden or germany right now...but I predict by when article 13 and 11 take effect there will be plenty of such will to actually reform the whole of copyright, let alone the directive.
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Given the two countries involved, your idea of "not hopeless" is a probability of measure zero.
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"If Governments Of Sweden And Germany Do The Right Thing"
Pffff... good luck with that. Wovon träumst Du nachts?
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Re:
Yeah, I for one do not think my government (The Swedish one) will change their minds. And they will most likely implement this disaster in the most draconian way they can, going way beyond what the directives says.
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Democracy is dead in the world.
Stop acting like Europe is any more Democratic than America is. The EU aspires to be just like China and North Korea by establishing mass censorship and surveillance all while a few companies get to profit from it. I have less than zero reasons to believe the EU would ever want to turn away from this path...
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Re: Democracy is dead in the world.
"Stop acting like Europe is any more Democratic than America is. The EU aspires to be just like China and North Korea by establishing mass censorship and surveillance all while a few companies get to profit from it."
No and Yes.
The european member states, flawed as they are, have a working moral compass on many of the relevant issues...
...the EU leadership, though, closely resembles the worst possible hybrid of Prussian autocracy and French napoleonic "everything is forbidden" code, with a few dozen dabs of ultra-nationalism and xenophobic bigotry thrown in.
The EU must be abolished, and will be. The question is just how far we'll have to go before we realize, yet again why the cause of European unification has always been the epic failure acting as the primary cause for large-scale conflict.
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Re: Re: Democracy is dead in the world.
The problem is not necessarily the concept of the EU, but the structure where the democratic institutions serve no other purpose but to rubber-stamp the will of unelected bureaucrats in the pocket of big corporations. The people of the EU must demand: real democracy or break it all up.
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Re: Re: Re: Democracy is dead in the world.
"The problem is not necessarily the concept of the EU"
The "four freedoms" were nice. Free movement across borders, common market, joint rules for workers moving across countries, etc...
Any expansion beyond that, however, was where the rot set in. Bear in mind we have NO historical precedence, anywhere, where this type of federation survived beyond the strongman empire builder to cobble it together with force.
Hell, the US could only do that by being populated exclusively by immigrants who chose to abandon their homelands - and even then had to beat down the Opposing View in an extremely cruel and long-lasting civil war.
In europe it's pretty telling that every major war (or set of wars back when transportation didn't allow for country-wide fronts) can be traced back to a unification attempt failing miserably.
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The Right Thing
Yes, this harm can be fixed if they will do The Right Thing.
The Right Thing, like any valuable resource is a marketable commodity in the best traditions of capitalism.
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If Mussolini’s granddaughter can get in parliament in europe I’m not very hopeful on the local side of things.
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Re:
(disclaimer, I know nothing about his granddaughter)
I don't think we should be judging someone based on the actions of a relative. I certainly wouldn't want to be judged based on the actions of either of my grandfathers.
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Re: Re:
It’s more a jab at parliament itself not that but she’s got the same issues grandfather did.
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Re:
Blame her for the sins of a man she never met, and without looking at her actual political career. I suppose that saves the effort of research and thinking.
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Re: Re:
If you're defending her, I'm pretty sure you're the one who hasn't looked at her actual political career.
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Re: Re: Re:
Or he just doesn't like a smear tactic.
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Re:
Weird, eh? Because if there's one thing democracies hinge on, it's that leadership traits (e.g., a tendency towards dictatorship) are hereditary. Not to mention that the social democracies of Europe are infamous for their harsh stance towards criminals, believing they can never reform. "By Rights, Nothing is Ever Forgotten", we call it.
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Imagine how much more money Google is projecting they'll have to pay for music to be protesting like this. They just got fined 1.7 billion and didn't blink.
That must mean that they're looking at paying musicians many more billions every year now.
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Re:
Fixed that for you.
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Re: Re:
Well, if the average duration of copyright is much longer than the life of the artist after its creation, isn't it obvious that the artist is not the principal recipient of royalties?
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Re:
Apart from the false equivalence that "Google" is the only one protesting against this, when it was criticized by almost every expert that was instrumental in building the Internet in the first place, by a petition with more than 5 million signatures and by more than 200.000 people in the streets, by the same token where is the money that middlemen and gatekeepers from the music industry have kept for themselves instead of paying musicians? Where is the money that labels have "forgotten" to pay to the creators of the things they sell?
Even if I am not a fanboy of Google by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm pretty sure they took many incredibly dumb and shortsighted decisions over the years, at least they actually pay musicians, while the same can't absolutely be said of labels, collection societies and all those kinds of human middlemen and parasites, that seem to have a vested interest in scamming artists at all costs
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Re: Re:
Uh, no. Google doesn't pay squat to musicians. Musicians make far more from labels, publishers and collection societies.
That's why musicians banded together to fight Google, instead of fighting labels, publishers and collection societies.
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Re: Re: Re:
Musicians like David Guetta? LOL yeah sure...
Look, I am a musician myself who even sold in top charts and it's exactly labels, publishers and collection societies which didn't pay squat to me. Not only that, they censored me and all the others who were speaking against them and their scammy contracts and behavior. We even wanted to band together to put a class action against them.
This situation is more common than anyone thinks.
Those musicians you speak of are probably deluded and they don't know the shenanigans of the system (there is a sucker born every minute it seems) or they are those few ones at the top who are the only ones able to make something out of their music in this corrupted state of things, often through underhand schemes.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Sorry, but this flies in the face of everyone else's experience- that's why musicians banded together to fight Google, instead of fighting labels, publishers and collection societies.
But I'm curious, what is you and your friend's names? I'd like to look up what you're are talking about.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
Here you go bro. This should help you in future make less garbage fire arguments.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
that's why musicians banded together to fight Google
Ignoring for the moment that 11/13 are not even remotely 'anti-Google' laws, [Citation Needed] for this. Which musicians, be exact.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://www.musicweek.com/talent/read/hundreds-of-cultural-bodies-lead-final-push-for-copyright-direc tive/075668
http://www.musicweek.com/talent/read/the-value-gap-jeopardises-the-music-ecosystem-paul- mccartney-leads-last-ditch-appeal-on-eu-vote/073049
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/m ar/22/musician-shocked-opposition-eu-copyright-law-youtube-debbie-harry-blondie
And of course this was about Google. Being misinformed will do you no favors, so I suggest reading all of the above.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Let's see...
Laughable strawman in claiming that it's meant to 'stand up to tech giants' when in fact it will entrench them...
Repeating the bullshit 'value gap' argument...
More 'value gap' garbage from self-entitled musicians talking about how the platform offered to them for free should pay them more while running with the laughably wrong idea that Google/Youtube are the main opposition...
Oh yeah, really convincing evidence there, but at least now I have an idea of who was stupid enough to shoot themselves in the back in their greed, and therefore aren't people I want to be giving any of my money to.
As for the 'it was all about Google' bit, repeating a lie does not make it true, no matter how many times you do it. Google(and similarly sized companies) can afford the required filters, smaller companies and platforms can not. If you meant that it was all about making sure that Google was the only game in town, then that would be accurate, but ignoring the massive collateral damage that will hit basically everyone but Google does not an honest argument make, whether you or the politicians involved did it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Repeating a lie, indeed- if Article 13 was so good for Google, then why did they spend millions trying to stop it?
I can play your silly game all day.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Because while it's good overall for them in cutting down on competition and keeping any from popping up it will still be expensive to deal with? Seriously, not exactly a difficult concept for anyone not obsessed with the company and ignoring everyone else objecting to the trainwreck.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Anyone objecting to it is doing so based on Google's bullshit talking points.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As noted above repeating a lie does not make it true, no matter how many times you do it, and the fact that you are still banging on the 'Google is behind everything' drum just shows how utterly weak your position is.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
https://www.eff.org/files/2018/06/13/article13letter.pdf
How's this for Google's bullshit talking points? Impressive, right?
Even the Inventor of the World Wide Web himself is objecting to it. He must be surely on the payroll of Google.
The primary developer of the Apache Web Server, which serves most of the web and also this very website that you seem so keen to be posting on, is objecting to it.
The founder of the Internet Archive is also objecting to it, a website that could save your important logical fallacies and spurious arguments to be read for future generations, were it not for Article 13.
Cryptography experts are also objecting to it, and they developed systems so that you could avoid being a target of hackers and being spied on. But of course only hackers and pirates are against Article 13.
Developers of some of the most popular software programming languages, software solutions and the inventors of the hardware technologies that run underneath them are objecting to it. Languages and technologies that run the backbone of the Internet by the way, an Internet that you seem so keen to destroy.
Wikipedia is objecting to it, but with Article 13 of course we will get our information only from "approved" sources.
Mozilla is objecting to it, so that eventually the only real competitor browser to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, can go to hell... but that's what Google wants no? Yet Google is objecting to it. Hmm, doesn't compute? Brain meltdown from you I guess.
The Production Engineer of Facebook is objecting to it. But Facebook must be on the payroll of Google, right? :-D
The Bill Gates & Melinda Gates Chair is objecting to it. But Microsoft is paid by Google, yes.
The lead designer and programmer of worldwide-famous games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake is objecting to it. But he must be just spouting Google's bullshit talking points, right.
The creator of Ghostscript is objecting to it, which enables to print your important logical fallacies and spurious arguments on paper. Come to think of it, that might come in handy, after the Internet has been fully destroyed.
The head of product and founder of GarageBand.com, a very popular website and community which enabled independent musicians and music fans to come together, is objecting to it. But surely we must believe the supporters of Article 13 and the music industry when they say they are not against websites like this one. Yeah.
And so on...
But the real litmus test on Article 13 is this: would you trust the creators of the technologies that you use and enjoy everyday to mandate and dictate on the Internet, or do you prefer that those who are hell-bent on destroying it will do that job?
The choice has been made it seems, and it surely ain't pretty if it can't be reversed.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"But the real litmus test on Article 13 is this: would you trust the creators of the technologies that you use and enjoy everyday to mandate and dictate on the Internet, or do you prefer that those who are hell-bent on destroying it will do that job?"
"The choice has been made it seems, and it surely ain't pretty if it can't be reversed."
After we've rolled the internet back to 1990 in the eurozone and the only way left for the legal actors will be to use pirate-style circumvention what happens will be simple - the european internet will grow once again, the same way it grew in the 90's...only that this time around it will be, by default, impossible to utilize the open venues, and so the european internet will be entirely underground where law can't reach unless the plug is pulled on the net as a whole.
Perhaps that will be the time governments discover, again, that regulating human communication is only possible to a certain point and when you go beyond it, all control is lost.
It seems we have to go through this process at least once every time a technological paradigm shift in communication rolls around.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The problem is that I see no viable solutions for the Internet to be fully underground. Do you? Things like TOR are slow as hell and peer-to-peer is useless if the content is not popular, so back to square one. And they are starting to crack down on VPNs and the like.
But the thing I don't understand is why the population of an entire continent and the "legal actors" should be censored with spurious reasons, and should therefore use the means of darkness and be lumped together with the mostly unsavory people who scour them, just to communicate, create, share, have fun, and make this existence a little less bleak than it currently is. And all of this for the idiotic whims of some legislators who probably have never done anything creative with their own lives, while the real MAFIAA behind them salivates and almost can't believe what it has been served, on a silver platter.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The problem is that I see no viable solutions for the Internet to be fully underground. Do you?"
Fully? No.
Sufficiently? Hell, yes.
They can "start" to crack down on VPN's as much as they like but by the time a VPN won't allow a citizen full and untrammeled use, the economy online is dead.
"But the thing I don't understand is why the population of an entire continent and the "legal actors" should be censored with spurious reasons, and should therefore use the means of darkness and be lumped together with the mostly unsavory people who scour them, just to communicate, create, share, have fun, and make this existence a little less bleak than it currently is."
Google the "Red Flag Act". This shit has happened before.
Hell, google the "protestant reformation" for a wider view.
We are talking about a small industry with deep pockets and a leverage into the hearts and minds of politicians which, like the catholic church before them, will defend their equivalent of "indulgence sales" until it is no longer profitable.
This is a generational issue which will go away as soon as the young generation having to deal with what copyright does to THEIR internet today rolls into maturity tomorrow.
Until then progress will be guided by the inept and the corrupt. And society will adapt to circumvent those clowns by default. As usual.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Can you make a practical example? Like, an average Joe connecting from Europe could use a VPN that will present an IP address from the US, and hope that this will be enough for the services he wants to use, but when this shitty law gets exported to US too, then what will the average Joe do? Seems like a continuous game of whack-a-mole to me.
Or if we are talking about the "special access" parts of the net, so-called deep web, how will the average Joe partake in them?
Also, as I said, dark web solutions like TOR are too slow to make any real sense at the moment. Plus, who wants to be lumped together with drug-dealers, pedophiles and terrorists?
Didn't know of the red flag act by the way. Will check that out, thanks.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hey bro, you didn’t happen to google those articles did you?
Of course you did, you fucking monster.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Would never use Google. Been happy with Bing for years.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As if Microsoft is any better than Google.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You mean you used a search engine? The things that take food from the mouths of babes? What are you, fucked in the head?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And speaking of monsters, how music have you illegally downloaded in your life?
I can say none for me. Can you?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rut roh someone dragged up a antique strawman out of the basement. Be careful bro those tend to fall apart quite easily.
Or using your logic:
Anyone who says they’ve never used google are massive pirates and funded by NAMBLA.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So a ton?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yeah that’s about how much your strawman weighted in metric. Good guess bro.
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Re: Re: Re: how to trigger John
Musicians make more from piracy then labels lol
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Re:
artists rights are very important to me. That's because I am a successful writer myself, with many important mailing lists.
here is some of my completely original writing, that I, John the Plagiarist, wrote myself, and definitely did not get from another source and then copy and paste without attribution:
brilliant right? I know. It is brilliant because I am a true artist, who cares about artists rights. Not like Google, who disrespects artists. Google should be more like me, John the Plagiarist, and respect creators and give them their due.
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Not if our resources outlast the pirates, which is a very real possibility.
Pirates like Masnick don't know the value of hard work, such as getting down on your knees and ignoring the gag reflex.
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Re:
Go fuck yourself.
Signed, a European citizen.
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Re:
Ok, I was going to respond to your first statement but I just re-read the last line and now I'm wondering if I almost missed an implied /s.
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Re:
You say that on a site that contains Mikes own work for free. Talk about slotting people into silos where they do not belong.
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Re:
"Pirates like Masnick don't know the value of hard work, such as getting down on your knees and ignoring the gag reflex."
I'm certain there are some corporate types who agree with the above.
Why do so many think that sexual abuse is ok in the workplace?
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Re: Re:
Because Section 230 protects revenge porn, which is why the Supreme Court will destroy it.
We got Article 13 passed. We got the voting system to change. This is something pirates will never be able to do or understand.
You Aspies are next. I hope you brought lube.
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Re: Re: Re:
Keep dreaming, asshat!
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Re: Re: Re:
Oh dear Jhon boy is going to have to call SAWT team the on himself for implied threats and criminal defamation.
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Re: IMPOTENT threats
Don’t make threats you can’t keep. We all know you can’t get it up without a crane and a team of engineers.
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Re: Re: Re:
"You Aspies are next. I hope you brought lube."
I'd say this was the work of someone trying to impersonate old Baghdad Bob/Bobmail/Blue/Jhon/sock puppet #5...but he's been a bit too persistent about this, so I'm guessing this must be the real McCoy.
Why am I not surprised to find, once again, the the most telling characteristics about the most persistent pro-copyright tool on Techdirt and Torrentfreak both is that he's both the first to complain about people being mean and the first to drop a promise to sexually assault people with a functional disability?
Does he wear a white sheet and dance around a burning cross in his spare time as well, or does he just like to pretend at being the lowest grade of white trailer-park trash?
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Re: Can’t stop won’t stop
“Pirates like Masnick don't know the value of hard work, such as getting down on your knees and ignoring the gag reflex”
Good ol Jhon boy is an expert at swallowing that baby gravy, aren’t you boy?
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Re: Re: Can’t stop won’t stop
Was there ever any doubt?
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The voting order was changed,
10 eu mps said they did not know what they were voting for.
It would help if some websites went black for a day
as a protest,
if Youtube in the eu for a day just showed videos
from the bbc, fox, cbs, etc large media companys ,
and had a banner on the front page,
saying if this law is in force,
we will have to block millions of users uploads ,
it would help.
Contact your euro mp to say you are against article 13 .
This law is about handing control of the eu web
to old media companys ,
its not about piracy,
Gatekeepers and filters will rule the eu internet .
This law is a direct attack on fair use and free speech
in the EU .
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Forget it, Glyn. Both Angela Merkel (CDU) and Katarina Barley (SPD) already stated they won't give a fuck about violating the coalition agreement that said they would oppose upload filters. None of them will interfere against that directives being passed.
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i doubt if Germany will change tack as it was coerced by France into changing from 'NO' to 'YES' just before the vote, so as to secure gas supplies. as for Sweden, it is so far up the entertainment industries ring, it can be seen in the mirror when the industries have mouths open (look at how it stitched up TPB trial), it daren't change it's mind for fear of doing what the people that are supposed to be represented want!
the whole vote was been done in a completely underhanded way and before very long i think there are going to be a lot of changes in MEPs, simply because of those who ignored the people and voted how told by the industries!
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Apparently I need to say it AGAIN...
Fight and you might lose.
Give up and you will lose.
The odds may be low but giving up and treating it as a waste of time to fight because 'it's impossible to change' ensures a loss, even if there was a chance, albeit small, for a win if people did fight.
Those pushing the trainwreck had to stack the deck by changing vote order mid-session, so they certainly didn't think it was a done deal, and with the 'no filters required' lie exposed as a lie now there's an extra angle to go with to protest, in addition to the everything else.
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Unless there are massive protests in those countries, I predict that they will pass it. Even if they don't, the EU will just change the wording a little and try again. And again after that, and again after that...
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