Guy In Charge Of Pushing Draconian EU Copyright Directive, Evasive About His Own Use Of Copyright Protected Images

from the do-as-I-say,-not-as-I-do? dept

There's one person who wields more power than anyone to shape the awful EU Copyright Directive: the MEP Axel Voss. He's the head of the main Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) that is steering the Directive through the European Parliament. Voss took over from the previous MEP leading JURI, Therese Comodini Cachia, after she decided to return to her native Malta as member of the national parliament. Her draft version of the Directive was certainly not perfect, but it did possess the virtue of being broadly acceptable to all sides of the debate. When Voss took over last year, the text took a dramatic turn for the worse thanks to the infamous "snippet tax" (Article 11 of the proposed Directive) and the "upload filter" (Article 13).

As Mike reported a couple of weeks ago, Voss offered a pretty poor defense of his proposals, showing little understanding of the Internet. But he made clear that he thinks respecting copyright law is really important. For example, he said he was particularly concerned that material is being placed online, where "there is no remuneration of the concerned author." Given that background, it will probably come as no surprise to Techdirt readers to learn that questions are now being asked whether Voss himself has paid creators for material that he has used on his social media accounts:

BuzzFeed News Germany ... looked at the posts from the past 24 months on Voss's social media channels. In the two years, BuzzFeed News has found at least 17 copyrighted images from at least eight different image agencies, including the German press agency dpa.

As good journalists, BuzzFeed News Germany naturally contacted Axel Voss to ask whether he had paid to use all these copyrighted images:

Since last Thursday, 5 July, BuzzFeed News Germany has asked Voss's office and his personal assistant a total of five times in writing and several times over the phone whether Axel Voss or his social media team has paid for the use of these copyrighted photos. Voss's staff responded evasively five times. Asked if the office could provide us with licensing evidence, the Voss office responded: "We do not provide invoices to uninvolved third parties."

Such a simple question -- had Voss paid for the images he used? -- and yet one that seemed so hard for the Voss team to answer, even with the single word "yes". The article (original in German) took screenshots of the images the BuzzFeed Germany journalists had found. That's just as well, because shortly afterwards, 12 of the 17 posts with copyrighted images had been deleted. The journalists contacted Axel Voss once more, and asked why they had disappeared (original in German). To which Axel Voss's office replied: anyone can add and remove posts, if they wish. Which is true, but fails to answer the question, yet again. However, Axel Voss's office did offer an additional "explanation":

according to the current legal situation (...), if the right-holder informs us that we have violated their rights, we remove the image in question according to the notice and takedown procedure of the e-commerce directive.

That is, Axel Voss, or his office, seems to believe it's fine to post copyrighted material online provided you take it down if someone complains. But that's not how it works at all. The EU notice and takedown procedure applies to the Internet services hosting material, not to the individual users of those services. The fact that the team of the senior MEP responsible for pushing the deeply-flawed Copyright Directive through the European Parliament is ignorant of the current laws is bad enough. That he may have posted copyrighted material without paying for it while claiming to be worried that creators aren't being remunerated for their work, is beyond ridiculous.

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Filed Under: article 13, axel voss, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu copyright directive, eu parliament, infringement, licensing

European Parliament Turns Up The Pressure On US-EU Privacy Shield Data Transfer Deal A Little More

from the how-much-longer-can-it-last? dept

Many stories on Techdirt seem to grind on forever, with new twists and turns constantly appearing, including unexpected developments -- or small, incremental changes. The transatlantic data transfer saga has seen a bit of both. Back in 2015, the EU's top court ruled that the existing legal framework for moving data across the Atlantic, Safe Harbor, was "invalid". That sounds mild, but it isn't. Safe Harbor was necessary in order for data transfers across the Atlantic to comply with EU data protection laws. A declaration that it was "invalid" meant that it could no longer be used to provide legal cover for huge numbers of commercial data flows that keep the Internet and e-commerce ticking over. The solution was to come up with a replacement, Privacy Shield, that supposedly addressed the shortcomings cited by the EU court.

The problem is that a growing number of influential voices don't believe that Privacy Shield does, in fact, solve the problems of the Safe Harbor deal. For example, in March last year, two leading civil liberties groups -- the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch -- sent a joint letter to the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, and other leading members of the European Commission and Parliament, urging the EU to re-examine the Privacy Shield agreement. In December, an obscure but influential advisory group of EU data protection officials asked the US to fix problems of Privacy Shield or expect the EU's top court to be asked to rule on its validity. In April of this year, the Irish High Court made just such a referral as a result of a complaint by the Austrian privacy expert Max Schrems. Since he was instrumental in getting Safe Harbor struck down, that's not something to be taken lightly.

Lastly, one of the European Parliament's powerful committees, which helps determine policy related to civil liberties, added its voice to the discussion. It called on the European Commission to suspend the Privacy Shield agreement unless the US fixed the problems that the committee discerned in its current implementation. At that point, it was just a committee making the call. However, in a recent plenary session, the European Parliament itself voted to back the idea, and by a healthy margin:

MEPs call on the EU Commission to suspend the EU-US Privacy Shield as it fails to provide enough data protection for EU citizens.

The data exchange deal should be suspended unless the US complies with EU data protection rules by 1 September 2018, say MEPs in a resolution passed on Thursday by 303 votes to 223, with 29 abstentions. MEPs add that the deal should remain suspended until the US authorities comply with its terms in full.

It's important to note that this vote is largely symbolic: if the US refuses to improve the data protection of EU citizens, there's nothing to force the European Commission to comply with the demand of the European Parliament. That said, the call by arguably the most democratic part of the EU -- MEPs are directly elected by European citizens -- piles more pressure on the European Commission, which is appointed by EU governments, not elected. If nothing else, this latest move adds to the general impression that Privacy Shield is not likely to survive in its present form much longer.

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Filed Under: data protection, data transfer, eu, eu parliament, privacy shield, safe harbors, us

EU Parliament Votes To Step Back From The Abyss On Copyright For Now

from the even-against-sir-paul's-support dept

The last few days (and weeks) we've had plenty of articles about the EU's attempt to undermine the fundamental aspects of the internet with its Copyright Directive, including a snippet tax and the requirement of upload filters. Supporters of the Directive have resorted to ever-increasing levels of FUD in trying to get the EU Parliament to move the directive forward without changes -- and they did this despite quietly making the directive much, much worse and only revealing those changes at the last minute. It became quite obvious that the intent of this legislative effort was to fundamentally change the internet, to make it much more like TV -- with a set of gatekeepers only allowing carefully selected and licensed content online.

As the drumbeat got louder from (quite reasonably) concerned people around the world, supporters of the effort kept trying different strategies in support of this nonsense -- including a letter claiming to be written by Sir Paul McCartney.

I have some serious doubts as to whether or not McCartney actually understands these issues. The fact that the letter uses the RIAA's exact talking points -- including the made up phrase "value gap" (not to mention the American English spelling of "jeopardizes" over "jeopardises") -- certainly hints at someone else writing this up and asking McCartney to sign. It certainly reflects pretty poorly on someone as beloved as McCartney (who, in the past, has actually embraced the open internet to more directly connect with fans) that he would weigh in on the wrong side of such an issue.

Either way, the good news is that even with McCartney's silly letter, the EU Parliament voted against moving the current version forward by a narrow tally of 318 to 278.

As noted in that tweet, this means that these issues will be up for amendments and more specific votes in September -- meaning we've got at least a few more months of fighting to save the open internet ahead of us. And you can be sure that, despite the weak efforts by those in favor of these changes over the past few weeks, they'll bulk up their offense as well.

In particular, expect a lot more claims from the recording industry that this is all about "helping artists," which is the same nonsense they pushed around SOPA/PIPA back in the day. But anyone who's actually taken the time to understand Article 13 (and Article 11) will understand that this is the opposite of that. It is not designed to help artists. It will seriously harm many of the platforms that those artists rely on. Sites like Bandcamp and Etsy and Redbubble and Kickstarter would be at risk. This effort is little more than a misguided attempt to force Google to give record labels more money -- and the proposals' backers really don't seem to give a shit if the end result is that smaller internet players are removed from the playing field and Google is put in an even more dominant position. They're just so focused on the (misguided) idea that Google somehow owes them more money, they'll take down the rest of the internet in pursuit of that obsession.

Either way, today's vote is historic. It's extremely rare for a legislative effort that has left committee to get reopened by the wider EU Parliament. As the good folks at EDRi note, this only happened because so many of you spoke up, contacting Members of the EU Parliament and spreading the news about this online (using many of the platforms that this legislation would harm). But, there's still a lot to be done:

We'll continue to report on this and keep people aware, but sites like SaveYourInternet.eu and EDRi will have lots of news, as (I'm sure) will MEP Julia Reda, who has been leading the charge to help preserve the open internet in the EU.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship machines, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu copyright directive, eu parliament, link tax, snippet tax, upload filters

Dear EU Parliament: Why Are You About To Allow US Internet Companies To Decide What EU Citizens Can Say Online?

from the such-a-bizarre-thing dept

We've pointed this out over and over again with regards to all of the various attempts to "regulate" the internet giants of Google and Facebook: nearly every proposal put forth to date creates a regulatory regime that Google and Facebook can totally handle. Sure, they might find it to be a nuisance, but its well within the resources of both companies to handle whatever is thrown their way. However, most other companies are then totally fucked, because they simply cannot comply in any reasonable manner. And, yet, these proposals keep coming -- and people keep celebrating them in the false belief that they will somehow "contain" the two internet giants, when the reality is that it will lock them in as the defacto dominant internet players, making it nearly impossible for upstarts and competitors to enter the market.

This seems particularly bizarre when we're talking about the EU's approach to copyright. As we've been discussing over the past few weeks, the EU Parliaments Legal Affairs Committee is about to vote on the EU Copyright Directive, that has some truly awful provisions in it -- including Article 11's link tax and Article 13's mandatory filters. The rhetoric around both of these tends to focus on just how unfair it is that Google and Facebook have so much power, and are making so much money while legacy companies (news publishers for Article 11 and recording companies for Article 13) aren't making as much as they used to.

But, as more and more people are starting to point out, if the Copyright Directive moves forward as is, it will only serve to lock in those two companies as the controllers of the internet. So why is it that the European Parliament seems hellbent on handing the internet over to American internet companies? In the link above, Cory Doctorow tries to parse out what the hell they're thinking:

These proposals will make starting new internet companies effectively impossible -- Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and the other US giants will be able to negotiate favourable rates and build out the infrastructure to comply with these proposals, but no one else will. The EU's regional tech success stories -- say Seznam.cz, a successful Czech search competitor to Google -- don't have $60-100,000,000 lying around to build out their filters, and lack the leverage to extract favorable linking licenses from news sites.

If Articles 11 and 13 pass, American companies will be in charge of Europe's conversations, deciding which photos and tweets and videos can be seen by the public, and who may speak.

In a (possibly paywalled) article over at Wired looking at the Copyright Directive, Docotorow is also quoted explaining just how massively this system will be abused for censorship of EU citizens:

"Because the directive does not provide penalties for abuse – and because rightsholders will not tolerate delays between claiming copyright over a work and suppressing its public display – it will be trivial to claim copyright over key works at key moments or use bots to claim copyrights on whole corpuses.

The nature of automated systems, particularly if powerful rightsholders insist that they default to initially blocking potentially copyrighted material and then releasing it if a complaint is made, would make it easy for griefers to use copyright claims over, for example, relevant Wikipedia articles on the eve of a Greek debt-default referendum or, more generally, public domain content such as the entirety of Wikipedia or the complete works of Shakespeare.

"Making these claims will be MUCH easier than sorting them out – bots can use cloud providers all over the world to file claims, while companies like Automattic (Wordpress) or Twitter, or even projects like Wikipedia, would have to marshall vast armies to sort through the claims and remove the bad ones – and if they get it wrong and remove a legit copyright claim, they face unbelievable copyright liability."

As we noted yesterday in highlighting a new paper looking at what happened when similar laws were implemented, the increase in censorship is not an idle threat or crying wolf. It happens. Frequently.

And, yet, we still have EU politicians and supporters of the Copyright Directive -- while they complain about Google and Facebook's power over the internet -- turning around and pushing for plans that not only will lock in both of those companies as the dominant internet companies, but also forcing upon them the sole power to censor the speech of EU citizens. And they're about to vote on this in just hours and don't seem to have the first clue about what a dumb idea all of this is.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu parliament
Companies: facebook, google

French Political Party Voting For Mandatory Copyright Filters Is Furious That Its YouTube Channel Deleted By Filter

from the but-we-didn't-mean-for-US dept

It's been a long tradition here on Techdirt to show examples of politicians and political parties pushing for stricter, more draconian, copyright laws are often found violating those same laws. But the French Rassemblemant National (National Rally Point) party is taking this to new levels -- whining about the enforcement of internet filters, just as it's about to vote in favor of making such filters mandatory. Leaving aside that Rassemblemant National, which is the party headed by Marine Le Pen, is highly controversial, and was formerly known as Front National, it is still an extremely popular political party in France. And, boy, is it ever pissed off that YouTube took down its YouTube channel over automatically generated copyright strikes. Le Pen is particularly angry that YouTube's automatic filters were unable to recognize that they were just quoting other works:

Marine Le Pen was quoted as saying, “This measure is completely false; we can easily assert a right of quotation [to illustrate why the material was well within the law to broadcast]”.

Yes, but that's the nature of automated filters. They cannot tell what is "fair use" or what kinds of use are acceptable for commentary or criticism. They can just tell "was this work used?" and if so "take it down."

Given all that, and the fact that Le Pen complained that this was "arbitrary, political and unilateral," you have to think that her party is against the EU Copyright Directive proposal, which includes Article 13, which would make such algorithmic filters mandatory. Except... no. Within the EU Parliament, Rassemblemant National is in a coalition with a bunch of other anti-EU parties known as Europe of Nations and Freedoms or ENF. And how does ENF feel about Article 13? MEP Julia Reda has a handy dandy chart showing that ENF is very much in favor of Article 13 (and the Article 11 link tax).

So... we have a major political party in the EU, whose own YouTube channel has been shut down thanks to automated copyright filters in the form of YouTube's ContentID. And that party is complaining that ContentID, which is the most expensive and the most sophisticated of all the copyright filters out there, was unable to recognize that they were legally "quoting" another work... and their response is to order every other internet platform to install their own filters. Really?

Filed Under: article 13, automated filters, contentid, copyright, copyright directive, copyright filter, enf, eu, eu parliament, fair use, front national, marine le pen, national rally point, rassemblemant national, takedowns
Companies: youtube

EU Politicians Tell European Commission To Suspend Privacy Shield Data Transfer Framework

from the US-must-try-harder dept

A couple of months ago, we wrote about an important case at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the region's highest court. The final judgment is expected to rule on whether the Privacy Shield framework for transferring EU personal data to the US is legal under EU data protection law. Many expect the CJEU to throw out Privacy Shield, which does little to address the earlier criticisms of the preceding US-EU agreement: the Safe Harbor framework, struck down by the same court in 2015. However, that's not the only problem that Privacy Shield is facing. One of the European Parliament's powerful committees, which helps determine policy related to civil liberties, has just issued a call to the European Commission to suspend the Privacy Shield agreement unless the US tries harder:

The data exchange deal should be suspended unless the US complies with it by 1 September 2018, say MEPs, adding that the deal should remain suspended until the US authorities comply with its terms in full.

There are a couple of reasons why the European Parliament's committee has taken this unusual step. One is the recent furore surrounding Cambridge Analytica's use of personal data collected by Facebook, which the EU politicians incorrectly call a "data breach". However, as they correctly point out, both companies were certified under Privacy Shield, which doesn't seem to have prevented the data from being misused:

Following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach, Civil Liberties MEPs emphasize the need for better monitoring of the agreement, given that both companies are certified under the Privacy Shield.

MEPs call on the US authorities to act upon such revelations without delay and if needed, to remove companies that have misused personal data from the Privacy Shield list. EU authorities should also investigate such cases and if appropriate, suspend or ban data transfers under the Privacy Shield, they add.

The other concern is the recently-passed Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), which grants the US and foreign police access to personal data across borders. This undermines the effectiveness of the privacy protections of the data transfer scheme, since it would allow the personal data of EU citizens to be accessed more easily. The head of the civil liberties committee, Claude Moraes, is quoted as saying:

While progress has been made to improve on the Safe Harbor agreement, the Privacy Shield in its current form does not provide the adequate level of protection required by EU data protection law and the EU Charter. It is therefore up to the US authorities to effectively follow the terms of the agreement and for the Commission to take measures to ensure that it will fully comply with the GDPR.

The mention of the new GDPR there is significant, since it raises the bar for the Privacy Shield framework's compliance with EU data protection laws. A greater stringency makes it more likely that the European Commission will suspend the deal, and that the CJEU will strike it down permanently at some point.

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Filed Under: cjeu, data, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, privacy, privacy shield, safe harbor, surveillance, us
Companies: facebook

European Citizens: You Stopped ACTA, But The New Copyright Directive Is Much, Much Worse: Speak Up

from the protect-the-internet dept

It's understandable that people are getting fatigued from all the various attacks on the internet, but as I've noted recently, one of the biggest threats to our open internet is the incredibly bad Copyright Directive that is on the verge of being voted on by the EU Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee. The Directive is horrible on many fronts, and we've been highlighting two key ones. First, the dangerous link tax and, second, the mandatory upload censorship filters. Each of these could have major ramifications for how the internet will function.

Incredibly, both are driven mainly by industry animus towards Google from legacy industries that feel left behind. The link tax is the brainchild of various news publishers, while the upload filters are mainly driven by the recording industry. But, of course, what should be quite obvious at this point is that both of these ideas will only make Google stronger while severely limiting smaller competitors. Google can pay the link tax. Google has already built perhaps the most sophisticated content filtering system (which still sucks). Nearly everyone else cannot. So, these moves don't hurt Google. They hurt all of Google's possible competitors (including many European companies).

Six years ago, there was another threat in the EU for a horrible copyright plan, which was the ACTA "anti-counterfeiting trade agreement" being pushed (note a pattern here) by legacy copyright industries, looking to expand copyright law in a misguided attack on Google. Like this time, the horrible plan was being mainly pushed by the EU Commission. But with ACTA, the EU Parliament stepped up and rejected ACTA. However, that only happened after citizens hit the streets all over Europe to protest ACTA.

It is impossible to expect that every time politicians are about to do something bad on the internet or with copyright law that everyone can take to the streets. That's not going to happen. But the new Copyright Directive is significantly worse than anything that was in ACTA, and if the EU Parliament doesn't realize that by next week, the internet we know and love may be fundamentally changed in a way that we will all come to regret. I mentioned these already, but check out SaveYourInternet.eu, ChangeCopyright.org and SaveTheLink.org.

You can (and should) also follow MEP Julia Reda who has been leading the charge against these awful proposals and who has been posting how to help stop it on her website and on her Twitter feed. You can also listen to Reda discuss all of this on our podcast.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu parliament, link tax, snippet tax, upload filters

EU Explores Making GDPR Apply To EU Government Bodies... But With Much Lower Fines

from the good-for-the-goose,-not-so-good-for-the-gander dept

We recently wrote how various parts of the EU governing bodies were in violation of the GDPR, to which they noted that the GDPR doesn't actually apply to them for "legal reasons." In most of the articles about this, however, EU officials were quick to explain that there would be new similar regulations that did apply to EU governing bodies. Jason Smith at the site Indivigital, who kicked off much of this discussion by discovering loads of personal info on people hosted on EU servers, has a new post up looking at the proposals to apply GDPR-like regulations on the EU governing bodies itself.

There are two interesting points here. First, when this was initially proposed last year, the plan was to have it come into effect on the very same day as the GDPR went into effect: May 25, 2018, and that it was "essential" that the public understand that the EU itself was complying with the same rules as everyone else.

Essential however, from the perspective of the individual, is that the common principles throughout the EU data protection framework be applied consistently irrespective of who happens to be the data controller. It is also essential that the whole framework applies at the same time, that is, in May 2018, deadline for GDPR to be fully applicable.

Guess what didn't happen? Everything in the paragraph above. The EU forced everyone else to comply by May of this year. But gave itself extra time -- time in which it is not complying with the rules and brushing it off as no big deal, while simultaneously telling everyone else that it's easy to comply.

Also, while the GDPR puts incredible fines on those who fail to comply... the fines for if the EU doesn't comply (if this rule ever actually goes into effect) are much more limited. Under the GDPR, companies can be fined 20 million euros or 4% of revenue, whichever is higher, meaning that any smaller company can be put out of business, but the plan for the EU itself is for fines to top out at €50,000 per mistake, with a cap of €500,000 per year.

Must be nice when you're the government and can make different rules for yourself, while mocking anyone who thinks that the rules for everyone else are a bit too aggressive and onerous.

Filed Under: double standards, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, gdpr, high court, low court

EU Parliament Members Play Hardball On Terrible Copyright Policies, Article Highlighting Sketchy Tactics Magically Disappears

from the not-cool dept

Last week we wrote about how the new proposal for the EU Copyright Directive has some really destructive ideas in it, and is very close to becoming official. Last week (on GDPR day) the various EU member states basically gave the proposal their blessing, and the only thing left is that the Legal Affairs Committee in the EU Parliament who will vote on June 20th (or possibly the 21st). Many, many experts have raised serious concerns about elements of the proposal -- including the link tax and the mandatory filters for content, both of which will create tremendous problems for innovation and speech online. We'll have even more on this next week, but for now, it's worth looking at just how messed up the lobbying process has gone as supporters of the bill (including big publishers and legacy copyright industries) want to get it across the finish line, apparently not caring very much how they do so.

Earlier this week, MEP Julia Reda alerted the world to an article in EU Today, which described how the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was using another party, the EPP, to basically shake down other MEPs to get them to vote, saying that if they didn't do so, they will effectively be stripped of all power, blocked from being given reports or parliamentary positions. At one point the article said the following:

But the German EPP party has been accused of “openly lobbying” on behalf of Axel Springer by contacting members of the legal affairs committee and urging them to back the proposals in a vote by the committee on 20 and 21 June.

It is claimed that some committee members have been told of “possible repercussions” if they fail to support the proposal.

They have allegedly been told that to “stay away” from the meeting if they intend to reject the new law, with substitute members, who are more sympathetic to the plans, lined up to vote instead.

British MEP Dan Dalton, a member of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committee (LIBE), said: “I am not surprised by this, given how controversial this issue is, even within the EPP. But it doesn’t reflect well on the EPP that they want to silence their own members on an issue as controversial as this.” Dalton, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group and who opposes the so-called “neighbouring right” in the directive, added, “By resorting to these methods it only further demonstrates that there are huge concerns throughout the European parliament, including within the EPP with the neighbouring right.

In the screenshot that Julia posted, there are other details:

If you can't see that, it says:

A member of the JURI committee, who said he did not wish to be named, said, "I know that several members of our committee have come under huge pressure to vote in favour of this particular proposal. The German CDU, via its EPP affiliate, has been reportedly pressuring them to vote what you might call the 'right' way. As part of their efforts to convince them to do this there have been reports of threats of members not being allocated reports and parliamentary positions if, basically, they don't do as they are told. The alleged involvement of the German publishers gives cause for some concern.

He added, "I understand how things work in this parliament and lobbying is part and parcel of the EU decision making process but when it comes to 'threats and warnings' that is crossing a line."

That part of the article is not in the version I see in the Internet Archive, but rather in Reda's tweeted screenshot. However, the Google cache version I currently see includes the quote that Reda screenshotted. You can also see it on Archive.Today.

And if you're wondering why I have to point to the Internet Archive version, the Archive Today version, and the Google Cache version, it's because EU Today magically decided to entirely memory hole the original article. It does not exist. You don't even get a typical 404 page, but rather the following error message: "Unable to find the template "_layout" in "404" at line 19." Someone was apparently in quite a rush to make that article disappear.

Instead, EU Today published a "similar" article by the same reporter, Martin Banks. Incredibly, the new version, is... well... quite different. It notes in one sentence that "German publishers have strenuously denied knowledge of members being put under any undue pressure on the issue by the EPP" which is an odd statement in the first place, because why would German publishers know what's happening in the EU unless... they were involved in it. But then the EU Today piece gets even odder. Rather than following up on any of what it originally reported, and then memory holed, instead it flips the script and claims that the real heavy handed lobbying is coming from those darn internet companies:

Rather, it is claimed that what lobbying has taken place has been by the "big internet players" with one MEP saying, "Much pressure is being put on MEPs but this is coming from big internet players against the neighbouring rights for the press publishers."

Later, the article posts an entire statement from the German Press Publishers Association, which is pushing for the link tax, and expresses its support with the following utter nonsense:

A spokesman for the German Press Publishers Association also told this website they were unaware of any such pressure being applied.

“We got the impression that there is a very lively and open discussion in the Committee.We support the draft of the European Commission and have welcomed the recent decision in the Council,” added the spokesman.

The publishers go on to state, “To remain competitive and independently financed, Europe’s publishers need to be able to compete on all platforms.

“Whilst publishers have successfully transitioned from analogue to digital, they will only reach their potential with an appropriate and updated legal framework that addresses the complexities of online copyright and licensing and gives publishers the legal resource to protect their investment in the original, professional content that underpins the freedom of the press and democracy.”

They add, "What publishers need is a “publishers’ right” granting publishers the legal protection and clarity already afforded to broadcasters and film and music producers."

Of course this is laughable. We've already seen how this has played out in practice in both Germany (where it flopped and where publishers sheepishly agreed to give a free license to Google after Google stopped including snippets), and in Spain where it did massive damage to independent news providers.

There is no need for this law and basically everyone other than giant legacy publishers are against the link tax, recognizing that it would harm just about everyone else, including everyday internet users, smaller publishers and smaller internet platforms (the big guys can pay). Of course, maybe that's the goal of the big publishers: to harm smaller competitors.

Still, it is quite incredible the EU Today posted details of thuggish threats trying to pressure MEPs on the Legal Affairs Committee to support this, and then disappeared all of those quotes, and appears to have replaced them with a new article that accuses the other side of lobbying too aggressively, though the only evidence given is publishers saying this and then an MEP complaining about receiving some emails. Emails lobbying for a position are quite different than threatening to strip elected officials of power if they don't vote for what is nothing more than a hand-out to a few large publishers.

I wanted to ask EU Today why they did this, but when I click on their "contact us" link it just takes me back to the top of the page. I was also looking for some background on EU Today, and found that their "about us" link also just returned me to the top of the page. The same is true for the privacy policy of the site, which may create some issues with the GDPR, but I guess that's a whole other issue...

Filed Under: ancillary rights, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu parliament, link tax, neighboring rights