Copyright Companies Want Memes That Are Legal In The EU Blocked Because They Now Admit Upload Filters Are 'Practically Unworkable'
from the too-much-is-never-enough dept
The passage of the EU Copyright Directive last year represented one of the most disgraceful examples of successful lobbying and lying by the publishing, music, and film industries. In order to convince MEPs to vote for the highly controversial legislation, copyright companies and their political allies insisted repeatedly that the upload filters needed to implement Article 17 (originally Article 13) were optional, and that user rights would of course be respected online. But as Techdirt and many others warned at the time, this was untrue, as even the law's supporters admitted once it had been passed. Now that the EU member states are starting to implement the Directive, it is clear that there is no alternative to upload filters, and that freedom of speech will therefore be massively harmed by the new law. France has even gone so far as ignore the requirement for the few user protections that the Copyright Directive graciously provides.
The EU Copyright Directive represents an almost total victory for copyright maximalists, and a huge defeat for ordinary users of the Internet in the EU. But if there is one thing that we can be sure of, it's that the copyright industries are never satisfied. Despite the massive gains already enshrined in the Directive, a group of industry organizations from the world of publishing, music, cinema and broadcasting have written to the EU Commissioner responsible for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, expressing their "serious concerns regarding the European Commission's consultation on its proposed guidance on the application of Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market ("the Directive")." The industry groups are worried that implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will provide them with too little protection (pdf):
We are very concerned that, in its Consultation Paper, the Commission is going against its original objective of providing a high level of protection for rightsholders and creators and to create a level playing field in the online Digital Single Market. It interprets essential aspects of Article 17 of the Directive in a manner that is incompatible with the wording and the objective of the Article, thus jeopardising the balance of interests achieved by the EU legislature in Article 17.
In an Annex to the letter, the copyright industries raise four "concerns" with the proposed guidance on the implementation of Article 17. The former MEP Julia Reda, who valiantly led the resistance against the worst aspects of the Copyright Directive during its passage through the EU's legislative system, has answered in detail all of the points in a thread on Twitter. It's extremely clearly explained, and I urge you to read it to appreciate the full horror of what the copyright companies are claiming and demanding. But there is one "concern" of the copyright maximalists that is so outrageous that it deserves to be singled out here. Reda writes:
#Article17 clearly says that legal content must not be blocked. #Uploadfilters can't guarantee that, so rightholders claim that this is fulfilled as long as users have the right to complain about wrongful blocking *after* it has already happened.
This completely goes against what users fought for in the negotiations and what #Article17 says, that it "shall in no way affect legitimate uses". Of course, if all legal parodies, quotes etc. get automatically blocked by #uploadfilters, legitimate uses are affected pretty badly.
The copyright companies and their political friends tricked the European Parliament into voting through Article 17 by claiming repeatedly that it did not require upload filters, which were rightly regarded as unacceptable. Now, the companies are happy to admit that the law's requirement to assess whether uploads are infringing before they are posted -- which can only be done using algorithms to filter out infringing material -- is "practically unworkable". Instead, they want blocking to be the default when there is any doubt, forcing users to go through a process of complaining afterwards if they wish their uploads to appear. Since most people will not know how to do this, or won't have the time or energy to do so, this will inevitably lead to vast amounts of legal material being blocked by filters.
As Reda rightly summarizes:
The entertainment industry is joining forces to push for the worst possible implementation of #Article17, which would not only require out-of-control #uploadfilters without any safeguards, but also violate fundamental rights AND the very text of Article 17 itself.
The EU Copyright Directive's Article 17 already promises to be disastrous for user creativity and freedom of speech in the EU; unfortunately, the proposed EU guidance has some additional aspects that are problematic for end users (pdf), as a group of civil society organizations point out in their own letter to the EU Commissioner. What the industry's demands show once again is that no matter how strong copyright is made, no matter how wide its reach, and no matter how disproportionate the enforcement powers are, publishing, music, film and broadcasting companies always want more. Their motto is clearly: "too much is never enough".
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Filed Under: article 13, article 17, automatic filters, eu copyright directive, filters, memes, upload filters
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The legacy publishers are advancing their real objective; which is to ensure that they are the only route to have a work published. That way they decide what few works are actually made available at any time. They are not interested in a flowering of culture, but rather in restricting culture so as to maximize their own profits.
To anyone who claims this will protect creators, they should note that the legacy publishers restrict what is published to a small fraction of that created, and so ensure that most creators will never have their work published.
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So this is basically the entertainment industries saying to the EU citizens "STFU: we make the content and you do not."
I'm sure this is surprising to nobody that was actually paying attention.
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This will greatly decrease the convenience factor, shifting the balance in the piracy function much to the piracy side, where in recent years lawful access has been favored. The industry may think they've now got their ACTA/SOPA/PIPA rammed through, but they've got it without anyone having respect for the law.
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Re:
Those pushing this agenda do not actually create content, although their accounting can be creative. They make money from works that others produce, and hate the Internet because it allows creators to escape their control, and grabbing of most of the profits, for the few works that they publish.
Their whole business model was developed in a world where producing copies, or distributing content was the limiting factor on the works that could be published. The Internet has removed that limitation on publication of works, and that means they lose control over published works unless they can cripple the Internet.
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What this really means is:
All European social media sites will have to export
themselves in order to have a chance at starting up.
Local sites that cannot do so, like news sites, will
probably finish dumping comment sections, which
is probably what those politicians really want.
Of course, it also means that Google and Facebook,
as well as other foreign sites, will remain dominant.
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HTML version of Julia Reda's thread
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1304084452767928326.html
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Give them (the copyright related industries) an inch and they will take a mile out from under you.
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Re: Re:
you are correct: a better phrasing would have been: "STFU we procure the content, you do not"
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And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
...because creative people are, in the end, creative. That the EU has chosen to Red Flag Act the internet only means that from now on the eurozone will be a passive passenger in how the net develops with no say at all in how it evolves.
Shit like this is part of why the EU was a monumentally dumb idea in the first place.
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Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
Hmm if I recall correctly isn't most of the entertainment industry US based? (Although I'm increasing uninterested in what those industries put out, so maybe I overlooked something)
If so doesn't that mean the majority of EU "internet" content will be defacto illegal (since it will have to have bypassed the blocks somehow)?
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The damage to the platforms is intentional, but it may very well initiate something much better: people taking back control of their own data by using their own servers. For a couple of hundred you can have one.
When running my own server from home. I control what goes on it, I control who can get access, no hassle with content id and no privacy concerns; storage only limited by HD space.
Of course, if I publish infringing works on my device, the copyright holders can come after me, but that is as it is supposed to work. May the industry be happy monitoring half a billion individual servers.
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Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
Creative will people find a way around this.
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The big media companys do not care about meme,s ,
user generated content art, comics,
cooment sections will probably have a white list of sites you can link to.eg the gaurdian,daily mail, the verge,pcmag,zdnet, etc
they,ll probably block links to certain websites that host content that may or may not be legal.
We have seen this before on youtube, filters do not see fair use,or parody
or quotations, the filters will overblock legal content if it cannot tell its it legal or infringing or old images ,art that is in the public domain .
the problem is big publishers do not want or deal with an artist or a musician
that has a few 1000 fans or someone that puts up random images with memes as satire or parody .
American websites do not have to comply with eu law re content filters .
Alot of websites could move servers to britain since the uk is leaving
the eu.
i wonder will websites like 4chan be blocked in the eu,
since it has links to content it does not own the rights to.
Will there be a great firewall of the eu,
which will block american websites that do not have filters to block user uploads .
The publishers want the eu to be like cable tv eg you cannot show
content audio or video unless you have the prior permission of the ip
holder .
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Has anybody ever calculated the cost of copyright enforcement?
It is easy for rightsholders to keep throwing ever-increasing demands for what others should do to secure the profits of the copyright industry.
Has anybody ever calculated the cost society pays to secure the monopoly profits of Hollywood & Co? And has anybody ever considered to make rightsholders pay for what they demand? They do have the right to use DRM to stop piracy, and they do have the right to NOT put stuff on the internet that they don't want shares (yes, you, newspaper publishers - you did not invent the internet, you did not pay for it, yet now it is there, you demand a human right to force people to pay for whatever you choose to dump there. Print it on paper if you can't figure out digital business models!)
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If you accept the rightholders' argument as true, then the converse must also be true: it is fulfilled as long as the rightholders have the right to complain about a wrongful failure to block.
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Re: Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
From your lips to God's ear, I pray.
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Reda Says (Again)
"The entertainment industry is joining forces to push for the worst possible implementation of #Article17..."
Not like Reda didn't predict that before the rule was implemented. What makes Reda think that the MEPs who ignored her the first time will take her side this time? Does she truly believe the bribes have already worn off?
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Re:
Sounds like a game only lawyers win if every upload becomes a legal proceeding.
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Re: Re: Re:
Al your contents belongs to us
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Re:
More like you cannot publish content yourself, but only have them publish it, if they decide it fits their markets. To get them to publish it, you have to sign over your copyright, so that they can control when and how it is published, and when to remove its availability.
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Re: Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
But will their audience be able to find them?
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'We have always been as war with eurasia'
Before bill is passed
Parasites: 'The bill absolutely and without question does not require upload filters, and anyone saying otherwise is engaged in baseless fearmongering and lies.'
Bill is passed
Parasites: 'Like we've been saying this whole time upload filters are mandatory, however they don't go nearly far enough so even more restrictive systems should be put in place.'
It's also important to point out for anyone who hasn't yet caught on(in which case hello, you picked a strange time to get internet service for your isolated cave but welcome to hell/2020) the gross dishonesty on display here, as the ones couching all this as 'protecting creators' are in fact the greatest threat to creators in existence. Their actions here have absolutely nothing to do with 'protecting creators' and everything to do with trying to hamstring alternatives to them, to return things to a time where the only creativity allowed is owned by them, the only way to publish through them.
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Re:
Absolutely, if after-the-fact objection is enough to fulfill the law then the current system where users can upload freely and 'rightsholders' get to object and get stuff taken down after it's already up would also be a valid interpretation.
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Re:
Please, this is Europe we're talking about.
Give them a centimeter and they will take a kilometer out from under you. :P
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Re: Re:
If you're French you don't even have a centimeter to give them. Their government claimed all the kilometers eons ago.
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Define “Legal Memes”...
The terms “copyright maximalists” and “legal memes” do not go together well. At. All! It’s in their name: copyright maximalists. To them, any meme based on copyrighted content (you know, nearly ALL of them) must be by their very nature infringing and therefore illegal. Their reasoning is simple, if a prior copyrighted work is used for ANYTHING by a third party, it must be licensed for a good chunk of money.
The consequences are simple: major corporations and media conglomerates will be unfettered by their licensing demands, but the average individual is unable to pay for it. Thus, if it isn’t 100% original, you have no right to post it. Forget fair use/fair dealing. Their view of such policies are so narrow, that they fall afoul of their own rules, but they can afford the monetary hit if they’re in the wrong. The average individual getting it wrong is in worse shape, though, but like they care...
The direct end result? Major corporate publishers, studios, and other gatekeepers get to approve of what gets out there and what doesn’t, and the Internet will be broken by whatever means necessary to ensure that result. Tell me, copyright maximalists, if copyright supposedly exists to incentivize the creation of new works, how does this interpretation of the law not fly in the face of its intended purpose? Go on, I’ll wait...
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Re: Re:
What are you going on about?
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options.
So,
The corps wish to send out notices on anything they can find, no matter if its legal or not.
But the state has figured out that deciding After the fact isnt lawful.
Part of the problem I see, tends to Lean hard to the Corps NOT doing the work of finding Illegal vs Legal. They want others to do the work THEY should do.
Its not hard(any more) to scan and find the data. To Scan files and say they are this Vid/music is allot of work, and can be automated, but it takes time.
So who do you HIRE to do the work? HOW cheap can you make it? Lets get the police to do it.??? Lets get the SITES to do it.
Lets get Storage sites to OPEN every file and every format and scan the vid, to prove it ISNT a legal COPY of music/video. But how do you PROVE legal or illegal? Do they show a Display of the Disk/Tape/Digital receipt ??
Why not just tag any file over a certain size? Its to easy.
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Re: Re: Re:
He's just enforcing the right metrics
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Re: Has anybody ever calculated the cost of copyright enforcemen
The problem with the cost of copyright enforcement is that it's entirely flexible depending on who you ask and when you ask it.
If you ask the RIAA now, they'll claim the cost is easy and all they'd need is Big Tech companies to cooperate. If you asked them during the 2005 lawsuit against Jammie Thomas-Rasset they'd have claimed it's an expensive pursuit and not a moneymaker to convince the judge that they're losing money chasing pirates and therefore deserve sympathy.
The truth is that the cost of copyright enforcement is something that is foisted on everyone else, and that makes any cost of it too big.
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Re: Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
The Darknets will certainly be a thing... but this really will restrict media consumption in the EU. You can maximize profits but that tends to shrink the market.
In completely unrelated news, I subscribed to World of Warcraft Classic the other day and find myself watching no television at all...
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"...this is part of why the EU was a monumentally dumb idea in the first place"
I have to massively disagree. Apart from the '90s conflict in the Balkans, Europe has been free from war since 1945. Generations before me have been called up to fight time and time again but not any more. Hopefully generations after me will continue to know peace.
The EU for all it's problems has brought stability to the continent.
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While some arguments are understandable, a lot of these publishing, music and film industry companies do have copyright – the right for takedown if they are publishing IPs because it is a contract between them and the content creators. Other than that it generally is actual content creators (original copyright) claiming their own products.
You didn't create the content so why should you use it. Free speech had never overrided copyright and usually served as a strategic method in law to prevent government censorship (think about legitimate movements today - BlackLivesMatter, Equal Rights). Not some petty people that want to use someone else's art, music and other things they didn't create in say, a YouTube video, and make money out of it. Worse yet, uploading clips or movies they have no rights over and uploading those REGARDLESS if monetised or not. The same with international license companies, they get a license to stream movies, etc. on their site - forgetting they only have a streamer license contract and no ownership over the actual content whatsoever - that they start posting clips and trailers (which the original companies already did and do) to make extra monetised cash because uploading these clips to YouTube is outside license agreement. Another one is faux news sites—because there streaming service becomes popular in their native region they create news articles based on existing foreign news articles and publish them as a sub-section to their own site. This as well as any generic game 'news' site do not constitute as legitimate news sites and therefore accountable for copyright infringement all over - to which these owners of these sites are trying to find a loophole or jiggle room beyond their license/agreement rights or even as a faux news hoster that they fail to realise does not exist.
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Re:
You should be able to quote other peoples works for reason including:
1) To carry on to refute their ideas.
2)To show where ideas in science came from.
3)To be able to criticize construction and story telling.
4)To ba able to teach story telling etc.
5)In modified form for purposes of satire etc.
6) Because no new work is created in cultural vacuum.
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Re:
Artificial scarcity equals wealth
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Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
This isn't entirely true. Copyright exists to "promote the progress and useful arts", ir says nothing about creation of new works. How it instead works is that authors need to spend more time in the creation process to ensure the quality and originality of the end result. This means that shortcuts that allow creation process to skip important pieces are actually illegal. I.e. if you find some content piece from the internet, it's just illegal to use it, simply because you're supposed to create the content items you use from scratch. That's what it means to be an author -- you create copyrighted content from scratch. The definition of an author does not include people who republishes other people's material. You need to understand that using/publishing "someone elses" material is not generally considered a valid way to author some work.
Memes that use "someone elses" copyrighted work as a base of the material are generally considered illegal.
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Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Thanks for admitting Meshpage isn't useful.
You're really not great at self-promotion, are you? Then again, it's no wonder you think the only way for Meshpage to succeed is for Pixar to die off.
How's that Malibu Media fund coming along, by the way?
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Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
its already implementing star-trek style teleporters (for 3d models). If scifi tv series in 1990s considered it cool enough technology, who am I to argue against that. We tech people will just find ways to implement the technology needed.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
And you have a working demonstration?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Yes, see this url:
https://meshpage.org/meshpage.php?page=2&id=2&label=GVILK@9
My teleporting technology transfers cool animated 3d models from finland to your browser and it works everywhere in the world where URL's and browsers with opengl/webgl support is available.
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Re: Re:
...did someone mention "french lace monopoly"? Truly, it's not enough to just scupper bad ideas and shady cons, we should really start implementing public floggings for every politician even mentioning dredging back crappy 16th-century monopolist legislation to the table.
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Re:
Other than that it generally is actual content creators (original copyright) claiming their own products.
Or, you know, people/companies/agencies claiming content that isn't theirs, or content making use of that pesky 'fair use' thing, impacting creators by forcing them to fight to get their own content back up.
Free speech had never overrided copyright and usually served as a strategic method in law to prevent government censorship
There is just so much wrong in that single sentence it's hard to know where to start...
Let's start with the fact that free speech is the default, it's copyright that starts carving that out by allowing people to 'own' certain expressions of ideas, 'overriding' free speech.
Sticking with the subject of 'free speech vs copyright' as much as certain groups and individuals may hate it 'fair use' is still a thing, providing explicit exceptions to copyright and allowing people to make use of works that they don't own for things such as parody, education and criticism.
And lastly copyright is used to prevent government censorship? Copyright is government backed censorship, allowing someone to tell other people 'you can't say that' and back it up with government backed threats and punishments.
Not some petty people that want to use someone else's art, music and other things they didn't create in say, a YouTube video, and make money out of it. Worse yet, uploading clips or movies they have no rights over and uploading those REGARDLESS if monetised or not.
Nah, you want petty/greedy you need look no further than companies trying to gain all of the profits from a video because a few seconds of one of their movies/songs is in it, despite the fact that that's balanced out by the hours upon hours of work the creator of that video put into it.
The rest of it seems to be various flavors of complaining that fair use exists, and/or that a copyright owner doesn't have complete and utter control over their works, to which I'll just point out that if that total control actually did exist then vast swaths of culture wouldn't, so too damn bad, stop whining that you don't have the impossible and spend your time productively working on how you can better monetize(since that seems to be all you care about) what you do have.
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Re: Re: And so the darknet gains traction in the EU...
"Hmm if I recall correctly isn't most of the entertainment industry US based?"
Not by a long shot. Not anymore. But if you aren't speaking Hindu or Mandarin you are unlikely to be much in the know of todays cultural centers.
But US companies are certainly the loudest by far, and quite a lot of them have subsidiaries, branch headquarters and markets in the EU so naturally they show interest.
Ah, and then there's the somewhat ailing european culture industry which generally makes few waves outside of their own country but may, depending on their national pride, be completely balls-to-the-wall rabid about defending their treasures...and yes, France, we're looking at you there.
"If so doesn't that mean the majority of EU "internet" content will be defacto illegal (since it will have to have bypassed the blocks somehow)?"
Yup.
In fact given the wording of article 11 and 13(17) it's actually hard to envision any content at all which doesn't start out unlawful and has to be proven to be sanctioned. Once member states try to enforce these articles one of two things will happen, depending on country;
1) Everyone ignores it and the government switches gears, allowing some useless agency somewhere to keep running on a shoestring budget while staunchly refusing to utter another word about it (HADOPI anyone?).
2) The nation tries to actively enforce the copyright directive and instantly loses all presence online, with every citizen having to get used to their national domain being a deserted wasteland no one dares use or visit. Every IT worker emigrates and the nation becomes a global "have not" as far as computers and electronics go.
There's a third option - Go full China and let no one operate a computer or go online without government surveillance. I honestly wouldn't put it past the current EU to at least try to spring for this one. At least until they look at the bill China's willing to foot to maintain the Golden Shield.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
That type of animation was not that impressive back when the Video Toaster rules the roost. These days they are decidedly old fashioned.
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Re:
"The EU for all it's problems has brought stability to the continent."
Not really, no. The schengen treaty, and even the old coal-steel union brought the stability and peace. The EU, while it restricted itself to the four freedoms, added to that stability and prosperity.
The current bloated monstrosity, however, is heading down the same road we've seen every would-be uniter of europe walk since Roman times. It's no coincidence that in every EU member nation today the brownshirts are emerging unfurling moth-eaten old banners and gaining traction among moderates simply by having their xenophobia and racist beliefs ride the coattails of the very valid anti-EU sentiment no established party dares bring to the table.
Brexit is a shit-show but Farage's UKIP party would never have gotten anywhere if their hyperbolic fantasies didn't contain at least a kernel of truth which the incumbents simply refused to discuss.
Sweden's extreme right party has swung itself to between second and third largest national party almost entirely grounded on offering EU criticism everyone else shut up over.
We beat the nazis once. They were suppressed. Quiet. A small fringe howling in the wilderness.
Now? All thanks to the EU they are surging like mushrooms in rainy weather all over europe. It's no secret that Brussels has more contempt visavi the citizenry than even the most jaded washington lobbyist. The EU commission alone holds dozens of would-be Trumps, The bureaucracy is an army, tens of thousands strong, in self-perpetuating fiefdoms riding higher than old french courtiers while producing 20,000 word regulations on under what circumstances duck eggs can be imported.
And if you thought the dollar was a jenga tower, just look at the Euro, held aloft by hyperinflation bubbles while the ECB underwrites every toxic debt threatening the european banks by employing the trusty old 1930 solution of printing more fiat currency in the billions and laundering it through lend-lease schemes.
The EU is bedding for a long and brutally toxic series of secession wars. Nothing else.
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Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
"That's what it means to be an author -- you create copyrighted content from scratch."
No you don't, and no one ever has. Sure, at some point in time the first storyteller invented the predecessor of the Arthur saga, but everyone since then has simply built on old existing stories.
Take that away and about 99,95% of human culture is removed, leaving works too abstract to cater to anyone but a handful of avant-garde art critics in a shady parisian suburb.
But given both your long history of self-confessed trolling when it comes to copyright and your very long-winded rants of presenting a fuckton of red herrings to prop up your strawman brigade with I shouldn't be surprised to see you launching a few more false assumptions - that of the purpose of copyright, or that furthering culture shouldn't mean creation of new works.
"Memes that use "someone elses" copyrighted work as a base of the material are generally considered illegal."
Self-evidently false. You will find almost NO meme not based on other people's copyrighted material. You want a picard facepalm to go with that judgment?
Or would you like to learn about why "fair use" had to be invented just for human culture to still exist after copyright was invented and how that actually works?
Pretty obvious you are just aiming for yet another recursive spam thread where you keep launching bait to make people keep replying until the thread is impossible to navigate, so from this point on, here, have your flag, and a tace, inepte to go with it.
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Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Pretty obvious you are just aiming for yet another recursive spam thread where you keep launching bait to make people keep replying until the thread is impossible to navigate, so from this point on, here, have your flag, and a tace, inepte to go with it.
Bloody hell, it is possible for people to refuse to fall for the bait they throw out, never thought I'd see the day...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
the memes that we're talking about in this article are not too impressive either. Some idiot copy-pastes picard's face from a movie and claims they created a new work of art and calls it a meme. The jpg/png technology available in memes has been available since 1990s... its not very impressive as a technology, but still it happens to be the topic at hand...
can you see that the tech doesn't need to be too impressive for it to become popular enough that even techdirt notices...
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Or we could assume(very briefly) that fair use is one of the most vile things ever, and that creators should wield absolute power over their creations: Under that 'insight' we realize that his/her own argument shows he/she is a monster because they aren't the creator of/have a license for the language, the general form of the arguments or the IP packets that were used to submit the comment.
Then we come back to our senses and realize they just look a little silly.
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Re: Re:
you gotta be kidding us. The youtube videos that contain this kind of copyright problems are usually reproducing half of the whole movie and add some idiot's face and dummy soundtrack that ruins the experience. Thus users will start to associate movie clips that cost millions to produce with some idiot talking over the sound track and ruining the experience.
Obviously copyright owners who spent millions producing the movie will want to kill this kind of usage.
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Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Copyright law explicitly states that one of the exclusive actions reserved only for the author and copyright owner/holder is the creation of derived works. QED.
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Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
have your flag, and a tace, inepte to go with it.
I'd translate that myself but I'm not sure what to translate from, mind doing so for me?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Here's the point, genius.
If you're trying to use "impressive" and "useful" as your yardstick for whether the creation of something should be allowed, then your sad excuse for a game/animation engine doesn't even pass the laugh test. It's woefully inadequate. The only reason why Techdirt "notices" is because you keep foisting it on everyone here as an example of... honestly, it's been a few years and nobody has any idea what the point of Meshpage is. It's not used to the extent that Unity and Blender are. It hasn't been responsible for generating any game or animation that's remotely noteworthy. You've had a few years to show how this technology is used by anyone but yourself but all you can do is shake your head and offer pinky promises. Literally the only reason why anyone else knows it exists is because you won't shut the fuck up about it.
Bottom line: if you're using "useful" standards to judge what other people share, Meshpage would have been nuked from orbit years ago.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
I didn't bring it up. someone else decided it is relevant in this discussion.
Obviously when relevancy has been provided, i can fill in the details.
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Re: Re: Has anybody ever calculated the cost of copyright enforc
there's a reason why copyright owners need to do all the enforcement actions, instead of government/police doing the copyright enforcing. It has to do with the cost associated. It is expected that if copyright owner can afford to invest money for creation of the copyrighted works, make the resulting product popular among end users, the copyright owners can easily also handle the enforcement.
So the law clearly considers the cost of copyright enforcement by placing the burden to the copyright owners.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
"Copyright law explicitly states that one of the exclusive actions reserved only for the author and copyright owner/holder is the creation of derived works. QED."
...and either "fair use" actually exists or memes would not, today, exist. So, your assumption is - as usual in matters copyright - self-evidently false.
I repeat, you want a picard facepalm meme with that?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Tace, inepte.
It's latin and roughly means. "Be quiet, idiot".
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Re: Re: Re:
maybe work on reading comprehension? He's not denying that significant infringment occurs, or that it is bad. The part quoted is however describing something different.
See? if you merely read the whole paragraph you can realize That One Guy is talking about a specific type of bad behavior. Coming along and asserting he is talking about something different that what he explicitly limited the scope to just makes you look silly.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
There's 3rd alternative:
1) fair use doesnt exist (in europe)
2) illegal memes exist, but copyright owners do not care enough to enforce
3) meme authors know about illegality of their practices but are young and
stupid enough to ignore that piece of information
4) once the memes are actually hurting sales numbers, the copyright owners
are required to act and if memes still show infringing quality in them, the
meme community will die.
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Re: Re: Re:
Is a meme that originated in some copyrighted work, but has become common parlance.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
we learned our english by comparing movie subtitles with the "hasta la vista, baby" style movie quotes, so obviously some memes slip past our copyright filters.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
" fair use doesnt exist (in europe)"
1) In which case copyright law is failed - because most EU member states already have intrinsic provisions enabling fair use analogues. The UK standing out as a notable exception.
2) Bullshit. If you could make a court case out of memes a thousand copyright trolls would have tried already. Again, it's self-evident that a statement which, if true, would have been seen in ten thousand shady lawyers eagerly throwing out legal fishing attempts, is not true when such attempts have not been observed.
3) Again, bullshit. Once again for the logically deprived, meme authors know damn well they aren't in any more danger than previous centuries of pundits, comedians and political or cultural satirists have been.
4) Bullshit once again. The only thing which is required for a thousand lawyers to start moving on copyright isn't a threat to sales but a profit motive. The fruit may not be as succulent as in the US but the EU still has hefty enough fines on copyright violations to tempt every lawyer in the continent. Or would have, if there was any legal chance of having memes declared unlawful.
And of course, in the OP itself the whole reason the EU is discussing memes being jeopardized as collateral damage under article 13(17) enforcement is because memes are covered by satire and quotation law.
And that's the last troll bait from you I respond to on this thread, spammer.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Gotcha, thanks.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
must be really horrible world where shady lawyers and fbi, cia, nsa, police, neighbours hound and toothfairy is out there to catch you...
maybe if you didn't do illegal actions, you wouldn't need to be scared of these entities that are just doing their jobs...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Define “Legal Memes”...
Do you think this copyright lawyer, Richard Liebowitz, is just doing his job, or is he just using copyright, and the threat of law suites to make himself rich?
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Re:
Not everyone has the time, money, expertise, or interest in running their own server. Which is why more people don't.
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