EU Parliament's Own Website Violates The GDPR

from the whoopsy dept

We've been pointing out for a while that, however well-intentioned the GDPR may be, and however important the general concept of protecting user's private data is, that still doesn't make the GDPR any less ridiculous. Indeed, we've pointed out that the setup of the GDPR is such that it's becoming a regulatory nightmare because the compliance costs are high, and the setup of the rules are so vague that the liability risk remains high. I know that some people keep insisting that the requirements to be compliant aren't actually that difficult. Indeed, EU Commissioner Vera Journova recently claimed that complying with the GDPR was so easy that even she could do it.

Upon hearing that, software engineer Matthias Gliwka wondered if the EU was actually complying with its own "so easy" GDPR rules. Turns out, not so much. As Gilwka noted, the EU Parliament's own website appears to violate the GDPR.

It took me less than five minutes to spot a violation: on the website of the EU Parliament Google Analytics is being used to track the visitors without the neccesary anonymizeIP flag, which in turn causes Google to store the complete IP address without anonymizing the last octet. You can take a look for yourself by checking the source code of this page (archived version in case it gets fixed in the meantime).

This is a violation of the GDPR, since the personal data (IP address) in conjunction with analytics data is being stored on Google’s servers without consent or any other legal basis.

Oops. This, of course, is not to mock the EU Parliament for screwing up, but rather to highlight the fact that when politicians and regulators insist that certain regulations are "easy" to comply with, they often have no idea what they're talking about -- and the GDPR is a case in point. Over the past couple months, nearly every startup company I've spoken to has discussed the GDPR, and for nearly every single one they have no idea if they're actually in compliance. Many have spent ridiculous sums on lawyers and self-described GDPR experts, but still are working almost entirely blind on how the GDPR will play out in practice.

That is not a good recipe for innovation. Nor, frankly, is it a good recipe for protecting your data. No matter how much you think that the GDPR means that websites will better protect your data, it is not particularly helpful when complying with the rules is both expensive and unclear. That the EU Parliament's own website couldn't figure this out is just a shining example of why the GDPR is such a problem.

Related to that, the fallout from the GDPR is already being felt -- and it's not being felt by Google and Facebook and the other internet giants that everyone celebrating the GDPR often point to. Instead, it's hitting smaller sites really, really hard. Google and Facebook are fine. They can handle the GDPR. Everyone else is freaked out.

Filed Under: eu, eu parliament, gdpr, regulations, tracking, vera journova

Forget The GDPR, The EU's New Copyright Proposal Will Be A Complete And Utter Disaster For The Internet

from the wake-up-folks dept

Today is GDPR day, and lots of people are waking up to a world in which EU regulations are having a widespread (and not always positive) impact on how the internet works. As we've detailed over the past couple of years, while there are many good ideas in the GDPR, there are also many ridiculously bad ones, combined with poorly thought out drafting, and we're already seeing some of the fallout from that. But, believe it or not, there's an even larger threat from the EU looming, and it's received precious little attention: the EU's new copyright reform proposal is set to be voted on next month and it will truly be disastrous to the internet. As it currently stands, it will require widespread censorship in the form of mandatory filtering and also link taxes that have already been shown to be harmful to news.

European Parliament member Julia Reda is sounding the alarm and asking people to speak out. As she notes, many of the folks now freaking out about the GDPR wish they got involved over two years ago when it was being debated. And if you're concerned about how problematic this new copyright reform will be for the internet, now is the time to speak out (yes, even if you're not in the EU):

On the topic of copyright, you NOW have the chance to have an influence – a chance that will be long lost in two years, when we’ll all be “suddenly” faced with the challenge of having to implement upload filters and the “link tax” – or running into new limits on what we can do using the web services we rely on.

In stark contrast to the GDPR, experts near-unanimously agree that the copyright reform law, as it stands now, is really bad. Where in the case of the GDPR the EU institutions pushed through many changes against the concerted lobbying efforts of big business interests, in the copyright reform they are about to give them exactly what they want.

Parliament and Council have had over a year and a half to fix the glaring flaws of the Commission proposal – but despite their growing complexity, the latest drafts of both institutions fail to meet basic standards of workability and proportionality

Reda's post goes on to detail the many, many problems of the current copyright proposal -- in which merely linking to a news site may require paying money (link tax) and where concerns about how that might negatively impact the entire internet are being woefully ignored. Perhaps even worse is the mandatory filtering idea. The big record labels and movie studios have, of course, been pushing for this kind of thing for years to get back at Google (mainly) and Facebook (a little bit). But, here's the thing: both Google and Facebook already have those filters (and spent tens of millions of dollars on them). This kind of law fucks over everyone else.

And, it's actually even worse than a mandatory filtering rule -- because the EU realized that such a rule would violate other EU laws. So, instead, it decided to hack away at intermediary liability protections to make mandatory filtering necessary:

Make platforms directly liable for all copyright infringements by their users, and then offer that they can avoid that unreasonable liability if they can show they’ve done everything in their power to prevent copyrighted content from appearing online – namely, by deploying upload filters (Article 13, paragraph 4). Which remain totally optional, of course! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Tragically, the only remaining point of disagreement in Council is whether this proposal is bad enough, or should be made worse.

We've already spent years explaining how this will lead to widespread censorship online, but it will also be a disaster for basically all of the non-Google/Facebook platforms out there. Mid-size companies like Github have already talked about how this could effectively destroy its ability to operate, and lots of other sites would be impacted as well. Any kind of forum site would be at serious risk. Reddit, Pinterest, Twitch, Imgur, Wordpress, Medium, Vimeo. This would create massive liability for all of those sites, making it nearly impossible for many of them to function in the EU.

Reda notes that a new draft could make this situation even worse in noting that even having filters won't be enough to avoid liability:

Mr Voss’ latest draft expands the scope of the censorship machines proposal to all web platforms (a) whose purpose is to “give access to copyrighted content uploaded by users” and which (b) “optimise” that content. What counts as optimising? Among a long list of actions, we find that “displaying” the uploads already makes platforms legally liable for any copyright infringement they may include (Recital 37a).

And in his version, web services can’t even avoid liability by implementing upload filters. To protect themselves from being sued, they would need to get licenses from all rightsholders that exist on the planet before allowing user uploads to go online, just in case the upload may contain (parts of) any of their works.

He also claims that checking every new user upload for whether it includes one of hundreds or thousands of specific copyrighted works somehow does not constitute “general monitoring” (Recital 39), which would be forbidden – now that’s some wishful lawmaking.

As Reda also points out, most of the EU member states appear to be supportive of these horrible ideas (or even pushing to make it worse). What now stands between this horrible law making a mess of the internet is just the EU Parliament which is currently scheduled to vote on this in late June (probably the 20th or 21st). If you are in the EU now is absolutely the time to speak up. If you're outside the EU, it also would help to speak up and let the EU Parliament know that this is a horrible idea that will have significant problems for the wider internet, free speech and innovation.

Filed Under: axel voss, censorship, copyright, eu, eu parliament, intermediary liability, julia reda, link tax, mandatory filters

European Parliament Agrees Text For Key ePrivacy Regulation; Online Advertising Industry Hates It

from the how-dare-people-refuse-to-be-tracked-online dept

Techdirt has mentioned a couple of times the EU's important ePrivacy Regulation that is currently working its way through the legislative process. It's designed to complement the EU's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force next year, and which is likely to have far-reaching effects. Where the GDPR is concerned with personal data "at rest" -- how it is stored and processed -- the ePrivacy Regulation can be thought of as dealing with personal data in motion. That is, how it is gathered and flows across networks. Since that goes to the heart of how the Internet works, it will arguably have an even bigger impact than the GDPR on the online world -- not just in the EU, but globally too.

That's led to lobbying on an unprecedented scale. A recent report on the Regulation by Corporate Europe Observatory quoted a source in the European Parliament as saying it was "one of the worst lobby campaigns I have ever seen". Despite that pressure, and a last-minute attempt to derail proceedings, the European Parliament has just agreed a text for the ePrivacy Regulation. That's not the end of the story -- the other parts of the European Union legislative machine will weigh in with their views, and seek to make changes, but it's an important milestone.

The European Parliament has produced an excellent briefing on the background to the ePrivacy Regulation (pdf), and on its main elements. A key feature is that it will apply to every business supplying Internet-based services, not just telecom companies. It will also regulate any service provided to end-users in the EU, no matter where the company offering it may be based. There are strict new rules on tracking services -- including, but not limited to, cookies. Consent to tracking "must be freely given and unambiguous" -- it cannot be assumed by default or hidden away on a Web page that no one ever reads. Cookie walls, which only grant access to a site if the visitor agrees to be tracked online, will be forbidden under the new ePrivacy rules.

IAB Europe, the main European-level association for the digital media and advertising industry, says giving the public the right to refuse to be tracked amounts to "expropriation":

"The European Parliament's text on the ePrivacy Regulation would essentially expropriate advertising-funded businesses by banning them from restricting or refusing access to users who do not agree to the data collection underpinning data-driven advertising," warned Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe.

The press release then goes to make the claim that online advertising simply must use tracking, and that visitors to a site are somehow morally obliged to give up their privacy in order to preserve the advertiser's "fundamental rights":

"Data-driven advertising isn't an optional extra; it is online advertising," explained Feehan. "Forcing businesses to grant access to ad-funded content or services even when users reject the proposed advertising value exchange, basically deprives ad-funded businesses of their fundamental rights to their own property. They would be forced to give something in return for nothing."

However, IAB Europe graciously goes on to say it "will continue to engage constructively with the EU institutions in hopes of meaningfully improving the draft law in the remaining legislative process." Translated, that means it will lobby even harder to get the cookie wall ban removed from the text during the final negotiations. IAB Europe is naturally most concerned with the issues that affect its members. But the European Parliament's text -- not the final one, remember, so things could still change -- includes some other extremely welcome elements. For example, the Regulation in its present form would require EU Member States to promote and even make mandatory the use of end-to-end encryption. Moreover, crypto backdoors would be explicitly banned:

In order to safeguard the security and integrity of networks and services, the use of end-to-end encryption should be promoted and, where necessary, be mandatory in accordance with the principles of security and privacy by design. Member States should not impose any obligation on encryption providers, on providers of electronic communications services or on any other organisations (at any level of the supply chain) that would result in the weakening of the security of their networks and services, such as the creation or facilitation of "backdoors".

As the above extracts indicate, the European Parliament's text offers strong support for the user's right to both encryption and privacy online. For that reason, we can expect it to be attacked fiercely from a number of quarters as haggling over the final text take place within the EU. Unfortunately, unlike the European Parliament's discussions, these negotiations will take place behind closed doors.

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Filed Under: ads, advertising, eprivacy regulation, eu, eu parliament, privacy

Latest EU Parliament Votes On Copyright: Fuck The Public, Give Big Corporations More Copyright

from the that's-not-good dept

The weird and persistently silly copyright reform process in the EU Parliament continues to get more and more bizarre and stupid. Last month, we told you about the first committee vote, which we feared would be terrible, but turned out to be only marginally stupid, as the worst parts of the proposal were rejected. Now, two more committees -- the Culture and Education (CULT) and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committees -- have voted on their own reform proposals and the results are really, really bad if you support things like culture, education, research and the public. And, yes, I get the irony of the fact that the Culture and Education Committee in the EU just declared a giant "fuck you" to culture and education with its vote.

Among the many problematic aspects approved by these committees is a filter requirement that would block users from uploading legally obtained media into the cloud. This makes no sense -- especially given that the EU already has additional "you must be a pirate" taxes on situations where individuals are making copies of their legally acquired works.

And then there's the whole "snippet tax" which legacy newspapers are demanding because they've failed to adapt to the digital age, and they want Google News to send them money for daring to send them traffic without monetary compensation. The whole concept is backwards... and here, it's been expanded. As Copybuzz explains:

The press publishers’ right went from applying to ‘digital’ uses of press to all uses, including print. Aside from the fact that this seems a violation of Article 10(1) of the Bern Convention (which establishes a mandatory exception for ‘press summaries’), the impact of such a massive extension is unfathomable.

The definition of press publications has become so broad that infringements to article 11 are impossible to predict and hence prevent. The ‘exceptions’ to the applications of this new right just add to the potential legal uncertainty, as the CULT text states ‘The [publisher] rights granted under this Directive should be without prejudice to the authors’ rights and should not apply to the legitimate uses of press publications by individual users acting in a private and non-commercial capacity. The protection granted to press publications under this Directive should apply to content automatically generated by an act of hyperlinking related to a press publication without prejudice to the legitimate use of quotations.’ This paragraph alone opens such a Pandora Box of unanswered questions, such as:

• What is a legitimate use of press publications? And who’s the judge of the legitimacy?
• When are you acting in your private and non-commercial capacity?
• Content automatically generated by an act of hyperlinking related to a press publication: so that mean that when you share a link on social media and that triggers automatically the appearance of a snippet, you are now officially in trouble?
• When are you ‘legitimately’ quoting? Is that a new criteria imposed on top of the only mandatory exception globally? And if so, who judges if you comply?

None of that sounds good or well thought out. It sounds like the kind of thing that someone not very knowledgeable about the subject would put together after just hearing one side from a bunch of whining newspaper execs.

And then there's this nonsense, as summarized by Parliament Member Julia Reda:

Incredibly, the ITRE committee – responsible for research and usually a staunch defender of open access – even voted to extend the extra copyright to academic publications, which would make open access publishing virtually impossible. It would stop people from linking to academic content, despite the content itself being free. This would apply to both online publications and print journals. The chilling effects on the spread of academic works and information would be substantial.

Yes, linking to academic content will now require payment -- even if it's open access. That's... nuts.

And, finally, on the "text and data mining" issue -- which is one of the key points that the EU has been fighting over with this new copyright reform effort, ITRE again severely limited who can do data mining to tiny startups. Again from Copybuzz:

The ITRE Committee for example has in its extreme generosity decided to leave the benefit of the Text and Data Mining exception limited to research organisations and ‘start-up companies’, defined as ‘any company with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet below €2 million and which was established not earlier than three years before benefiting from the exception’. The message for European start-ups is clear: don’t dare scale up your first three years of business if you want to mine content and if you do, move away from the EU (and move anyway after 3 years)! Never mind jobs and growth, the EU mantra we keep on hearing. Oh, and please do not be innovative any longer once you are an established player: we would not want our economy to be competitive on the international scene.

This is really a killer for innovation. There's a massive industry now being built up around machine learning and AI and autonomous machines -- and an awful lot of it actually relies on the ability to do text and data mining on the internet. With this proposal, the (of all things) "Industry & Research" committee is basically saying there shall be no such industry or research in Europe. It's pushing one of the most promising up and coming industries out of the EU entirely. Incredible.

It's almost stunning how bad these decisions were. But, of course, some of the legacy copyright industry folks decided to celebrate, claiming that the votes showed that the EU Parliament "would not tolerate free-riding platforms." That's complete nonsense and an insult. Again: things like news aggregators and search engines have been enormously helpful in creating new markets and expanding attention and traffic to sites. If anything, legacy content producers have been "free riding" on those platforms.

Hopefully saner heads will prevail as this process moves forward, but the EU seems to be going down a dark and dangerous road on copyright policy.

Filed Under: copyright, cult, data mining, education, eu, eu parliament, filters, itre, open access, research, snippet tax

EU Copyright Proposal: Not Good, But Not As Blatantly Terrible As It Could Have Been

from the yes,-but...-how-about-doing-it-right? dept

We recently warned that there were efforts underway to make the EU's copyright reform proposal even more draconian and ridiculous. Thankfully, the "compromise," which wasn't a compromise at all and would have made things much worse, was rejected by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) committee, but there was still plenty of bad stuff to be concerned about.

The mandatory filtering (i.e., mandatory censorship) regime for internet platforms was rejected. That's a good thing. But, on the flip side, the so-called "link tax" requiring payments from those who link to and aggregate news to news publishers has moved forward. Two other small bits of good news were also included: the "freedom of panorama" allowing people to photograph buildings and sculptures without violating someone's copyright and also a "remix right" that will protect the public from doing basic remixing of copyright-covered works. There are still concerns about the "text and data mining" rules which limit what content can be acquired.

So, basically, it's a mixed bag. Some, of course, will argue that any "compromise" will involve some good and some bad, but that assumes that we need a compromise here. Why not aim for creating a policy that's actually better overall, rather than a "compromise" solution? Europe has the chance to lead the way, but appears to have little interest in doing so. Either way, there's still more to go in this process, and other committees to approve things, so the policy still has a long way to go. Hopefully, by the end it pushes more and more to being true copyright reform, rather than just "propping up old industries" reform.

Filed Under: copyright, data mining, eu, eu parliament, filters, google tax, link tax, remix right

EU Parliament Report Recommends Throwing Out Something Even Worse Than The Link Tax: Upload Filtering

from the save-the-meme dept

Techdirt has just written about how a report from the European Parliament's "rapporteur" -- basically, the subject lead -- on planned reforms to EU copyright law recommends dumping one of the most stupid ideas in the draft proposals, a link or "snippets" tax. Although that's good news, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. After all, the idea has already been tried in Germany and Spain, and failed dismally both times. The damage that a link tax would cause to the smooth functioning of the Web is so obvious that the only people refusing to acknowledge that fact are the publishers who have been demanding this new "right" as part of their copyright maximalism. But alongside the ridiculous snippets tax, there's another extremely dangerous idea that the European Commission has slipped into its copyright reform. Article 13 of the published draft (pdf) reads as follows:

Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.

That is, those running online sites where users upload large quantities of material would be obliged to filter all those files to check for copyright material by using some unspecified, possibly magical, "content recognition technologies" that can tell when something is illegal or not. The problems with this are many and deep, as a post on the EDRi site explains:

the proposal of the Commission would require private companies to police the internet, in direct contradiction to two separate European Court rulings. The proposal would eliminate our freedoms to remix, to parody and others, in explicit breach of the EU's obligations contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.

The good news is that Therese Comodini Cachia, the rapporteur who wants to drop the link tax, also has some sensible suggestions for how to fix this "censorship machine":

In the leaked proposed amendments [to the new EU copyright law], Ms Comodini has deleted key aspects of the section of the draft Directive and amended the proposal in a way which would minimise the worst aspects of the censorship machine. Moreover, she has correctly restated the liability rules which exist in current EU legislation (the e-Commerce Directive). She advocates for the licensing agreements that were the ostensible goal of the European Commission in the first place.

However, it would be premature to celebrate this outbreak of good sense. Although it seems quite likely that the European Parliament will agree with the recommendations of its rapporteur here, the European Commission and national governments of the member states may disagree, and still try to keep Article 13 in its current form because of pressure from lobbyists. Ultimately, that would lead to EU negotiations behind closed doors and compromises that could see upload filtering retained with some modifications and perhaps token safeguards.

Fortunately, there is still some time to mobilize public opinion here. Although upload filtering seems an obscure, rather technical issue, it threatens some very fundamental Internet freedoms like remixing and creating parodies. As part of an effort to reach a broader audience, the Dutch Bits of Freedom digital rights group has put together a simple site called "Save the Meme," which encourages EU citizens to contact their MEPs to make sure as many as possible vote against Article 13, sending a strong signal to the European Commission and national governments that it has to go -- just like the link tax.

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Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, mandatory filters, notice and staydown

EU Parliament Dumps Link Tax, Invites News Publishers To Sue If They Think Google's Making Them Broke

from the won't-hold-my-breath-for-production-of-evidence dept

Last summer, Mike reported the EU Commission was about to institute a "link tax" on news snippets. In essence, the tax would have punished search engines for sending traffic TO news sites. Not only is that part of it a stupid, backwards idea, but previous attempts by European countries to institute link/Google taxes were abject failures, resulting in Google refusing to list taxed news articles in its search results.

Readers were invited to comment on the proposed tax. It's not clear whether those comments were heard above the overly-confident dull roar of industry lobbyists, but whatever the turning point was, the link tax idea is dead. What's being offered to publishers is something completely different: an opportunity to sue Google, et al for supposed infringement.

The decision by copyright rapporteur and European People’s Party MEP Therese Comodini Cachia is a mixed result for European publishers, who had lobbied for legislation allowing them to charge companies like Google and Yahoo when they display parts of their articles, including headlines and snippets.

While the proposed measure falls short of that ambition, it would create a legal channel through which publishers would be able to attempt to enforce their claims. “Press publishers are given the right to bring proceedings in their own name before tribunals against infringers of the rights held by the authors of the works contained in their press publication,” reads the report.

Say goodbye to ancillary rights and hello to pointless litigation. The latter is the better idea, though. This puts the burden on news agencies to show they've been harmed by increased referral traffic. This proposal isn't making many European publishers happy.

“Comodini’s draft report fails to deliver for press publishers,” said Wout van Wijk, executive director of industry association News Media Europe. “All that this will potentially do is lead to more litigation.”

Publishers don't have to sue. It's not mandatory. They could just sit back and enjoy the additional traffic. As the EU Parliament points out in its proposal, Google's news snippets aren't "necessarily disproportionately harmful" to publishers and may very well increase traffic to their sites and provide them with new subscribers. It's pretty much impossible to present evidence of harm when there's no evidence to be had. The whole "link tax" idea rests on publishers' unfounded claims Google, etc. are responsible for the financial woes of the continent's new agencies. There are multiple factors to consider, but publishers seem to focus solely on Google, as if news publishers and Google were engaged in a zero sum profitability game.

The report also points out a link tax might have a chilling effect on thousands of citizens who have nothing to do with the search engine giant. Its report notes the non-commercial sharing of links is an important part of societal communication and levying a tax on sharing is no way to encourage speech. Shifting the burden of proof to publishers challenges them to put their theoretically "lost" money where their mouths are… which is the way it should be.

Filed Under: ancillary copyright, eu, eu parliament, google tax, link tax, platforms, publishers
Companies: google

Canada-EU Trade Deal Ratified By European Union; Now Needs Approval By All Member States' National Parliaments

from the comes-complete-with-$1-per-person-annual-saving dept

As Techdirt reported last November, while TPP and TAFTA/TTIP appear to be dead, the trade deal between Canada and the European Union (CETA) has been slowly working its way through the system. Today, the European Parliament approved the deal, which means that the European Union has completed the formal ratification process. However, for certain aspects of the agreement, notably the corporate sovereignty chapter, further approval is now needed by the national parliaments of all the EU's member states -- which means another 30+ votes that must all go in CETA's favor. That's by no means certain, as resistance has been mounting in a few countries. One of them is Belgium, where the Walloon region won important additional rights that may still be invoked.

As we wrote last year, CETA's economic effects are likely to be tiny -- the official estimate is just 0.08% extra GDP in total for the EU -- or even negative. The very limited economic impact is confirmed in the official press release from the European Commission, where the only quantified benefit singled out is the following:

CETA creates new opportunities for EU companies. It will save EU businesses over €500 million a year currently paid in tariffs on goods that are exported to Canada. Almost 99% of these savings start from day one.

To put that saving in context, it's worth remembering that the EU population is roughly 500 million, so the only financial benefit that the European Commission mentions works out at around $1 per person per year. Since the European Commission would doubtless have trumpeted bigger benefits if there had been any, It's fairly safe to assume that this is pretty much all it could find. As for the highly-controversial matter of corporate sovereignty, aka investor-state dispute settlement, here's what the press release says:

The current form of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that exists in many bilateral trade agreements negotiated by EU governments has been replaced with a new and improved Investment Court System. The new mechanism will be transparent and not based on ad hoc tribunals.

What it doesn't mention is that the "new and improved" system hasn't been fully worked out yet, and so any claimed advantages are purely theoretical at this stage. In a rather desperate attempt to justify a trade deal that has so few benefits, the Commission adds the following:

There is clear proof that free trade agreements spur European growth and jobs. As an example, EU exports to South Korea have increased by more than 55% since the EU-Korea trade deal entered into force in 2011. Exports of certain agricultural products increased by 70%, and EU car sales in South Korea tripled over this five-year period.

What the European Commission fails to say is that the EU trade deal with South Korea does not have any form of ISDS. If it offers "clear proof" of anything it is that successful trade deals have no need of a corporate sovereignty chapter, whether the old-style ISDS, or the "new and improved" lipstick-on-a-pig Investment Court System found in CETA.

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Filed Under: canada, ceta, eu, eu parliament

EU MEPs Call Again For 'Robot Rules' To Get Ahead Of The AI Revolution

from the beep-boop dept

Questions about how we approach our new robotic friends once the artificial intelligence revolution really kicks off are not new, nor are calls for developing some sort of legal framework that will govern how humanity and robots ought to interact with one another. For the better part of this decade, in fact, there have been some advocating that robots and AI be granted certain rights along the lines of what humanity, or at least animals, enjoy. And, while some of its ideas haven't been stellar, such as a call for robots to be afforded copyright for anything they might create, the EU has been talking for some time about developing policy around the rights and obligations of artificial intelligence and its creators.

With AI being something of a hot topic, as predictions of its eventual widespread emergence mount, it seems EU MEPs are attempting to get out ahead of the revolution.

In a new report, members of the European Parliament have made it clear they think it’s essential that we establish comprehensive rules around artificial intelligence and robots in preparation for a “new industrial revolution.” According to the report, we are on the threshold of an era filled with sophisticated robots and intelligent machines “which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched.” As a result, the need for legislation is greater than ever to ensure societal stability as well as the digital and physical safety of humans.

The report looks into the need to create a legal status just for robots which would see them dubbed “electronic persons.” Having their own legal status would mean robots would have their own legal rights and obligations, including taking responsibility for autonomous decisions or independent interactions.

It's quite easy to make offhand remarks about all of this being science fiction, but this isn't without sense. Something like the artificial intelligence humanity has imagined for a century is going to exist at some point and, with advances beginning to look like that may come sooner rather than later, it only makes sense that we discuss how we're going to handle its implications. After all, technology like this is likely to impact our lives in significant and varied ways, from our jobs and employment, to our interactions with our electronic devices, not to mention warfare.

I think the most interesting philosophical and moral questions surround these MEPs call to grant robots and AI with the designation of "electronic persons." The call has largely focused on saddling robotic "life" with many of the obligations humanity endures, such as tax obligations and being under the jurisdiction of humanity's legal system. But personhood can't only come with obligations; it must too come with rights. And there would be something strange in recognizing a robot's "personhood" while at the same time making use of its output or labor. The specter of slavery begins to rear its head at this point, brought on only by that very designation. Were they electronic "beasts", for instance, the question of slavery wouldn't arise outside of the fringe.

The MEPs report does also deal with the potential danger from AI and robots in its call for designers to "respect human frailty" when developing and programming these machine-lives. And here the report truly does delve into science fiction, but only out of deference to great literature.

Things descend slightly into the realms of science fiction when the report discusses the possibility of the machines we build becoming more intelligent than us posing “a challenge to humanity's capacity to control its own creation and, consequently, perhaps also to its capacity to be in charge of its own destiny.”

However, to stop us getting to this point the MEPs cite the importance of rules like those written by author Isaac Asimov for designers, producers, and operators of robots which state that: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”; “A robot must obey the orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law” and “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.”

While some might laugh this off, this too is sensible. There is simply no reason to refuse to have a discussion about how a life, or a simulacrum of life, that is created by humanity, might pose a danger to that humanity, either at the level of the individual or the community.

But what strikes me most about all of this is how the EU seems to be the ones out in front of this, while any discussion in the Americas has been either muted or occurring behind closed doors. If this is a public discussion worth having in the EU, it is certainly one too worth having here.

Filed Under: ai, eu, eu parliament, legal status, regulations, robots

Another Dumb Idea Out Of The EU: Giving Robots & Computers Copyright

from the ain't-no-monkeying-around dept

It's a good thing to think about the technology of the future. Especially if you're politicians and the future may have a big impact. Considering how frequently we see politicians ignore future technological change, it might be encouraging that the EU Parliament is at least considering what happens when our new robot overlords enslave us. Except that the report that the EU Parliament has come out with... is ridiculous. Most of the headlines are focusing on the ideas raised around making robots "electronic persons" for the purposes of paying social security or taxes, but the part that gets me is the plan to give them access to copyright as well.

Notes that there are no legal provisions that specifically apply to robotics, but that existing legal regimes and doctrines can be readily applied to robotics while some aspects appear to need specific consideration; calls on the Commission to come forward with a balanced approach to intellectual property rights when applied to hardware and software standards, and codes that protect innovation and at the same time foster innovation; calls on the Commission to elaborate criteria for an ‘own intellectual creation’ for copyrightable works produced by computers or robots;

And later:

The resolution calls on the Commission to come forward with a balanced approach to intellectual property rights when applied to hardware and software standards and codes that protect innovation and at the same time foster innovation. Moreover, the elaboration of criteria for "own intellectual creation" for copyrightable works produced by computers or robots is demanded.

The current insufficient legal framework on data protection and ownership is of great concern due to the (expected massive) flow of data arising from the use of robotics and AI.

This is both maddening and pointless. As we've already discussed with regards to the monkey selfie, it's pretty standard under copyright that it only applies to work created by persons, and not animals or machines. That matters quite a bit. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was in a conference session talking about questions about copyright and artificial intelligence, and a point that I made to people there was that the output of an AI is (currently) not subject to copyright and that's a good thing. Yet here we have the EU already proposing adding copyright to the output of AI without bothering to even consider if the concept makes sense or not.

It does not.

Again, the purpose of copyright is to create incentives for creation that benefits the public. It's not as if a robot or an AI is going to say that it won't create something new unless it gets copyright. You can just program it to create. That's the idea. The fact that politicians are already seriously looking at creating special copyright for patents and AI seems like more of the same old thinking of "everything needs copyright protection."

Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu parliament, robots