Axel Voss, MEP Behind Awful Internet Destroying EU Copyright Directive, Tries To Defend His Plan

from the and-fails-miserably dept

Axel Voss, the German Member of the EU Parliament in charge of pushing through the absolutely awful EU Copyright Directive is apparently (finally) feeling some of the heat from people speaking up about just how terrible Articles 11 (link tax) and 13 (mandatory upload filters) will be for the internet. He's put out a video attempting to defend the plan. Even if you don't speak German, I'd recommend watching the video to see his smirk throughout the whole thing. He does not seem to care, nor does he seem to understand the actual implications of what he's doing. Considering that many have tried to explain this to him already, I doubt that we will change his mind, but it's worth exploring just how clueless he appears to be on this issue, and how that should worry Europeans about the future of their internet.

We have at the moment an extreme imbalance in the whole copyright system, on the platforms everything is up loaded, but there is no remuneration of the concerned author, this is getting more by number and that is why I think it is urgently necessary to adapt the copyright to the digital environment.

What, exactly, is the "imbalance"? This is an important question, because the answer is that there is no "imbalance." We live in a time when more content than ever before in history is being created. But it goes beyond that: thanks to the internet, more content creators than ever before in history are able to create and release their own content. And more creators than ever before in history are able to make money from their creations. The idea that "there is no remuneration" isn't just nonsense, it suggests a level of ignorance so high on the part of Voss that he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near questions related to copyright. Tons of different platforms -- the very platforms which will be hit hardest by this nonsense -- are instrumental in building new audiences for artists and helping them get paid.

Bandcamp, Patreon, Kickstarter, Vimeo, Medium, Etsy, DeviantArt, Shapeways, Wordpress, Wix, Lulu, PledgeMusic, Artistshare, Blurb, Scribd, Smashwords, Redbubble, CreateSpace. These are all platforms that are helping a variety of creators create, build up an audience and make money. Yet all of them will be hit hard by Article 13's ridiculous mandatory upload filters, which will in turn do tremendous harm to artists, taking away or greatly limiting their ability to use these platforms. The idea that there's some "imbalance" that Voss can magically fix is nonsense. He's been hearing too much from a few old school legacy businesses that failed to adapt to the internet and now blame Google. And his response is to saddle tons of internet platforms with an unworkable system that will harm all sorts of content creators. Meanwhile, his main target, Google, already has in place a system that has paid out billions of dollars to creators. Yet he continues to lie and claim there is no "remuneration"?

How does anyone take him seriously?

Meanwhile, nothing in the Copyright Directive is likely to get actual artists paid, so whatever false imbalance he sees isn't "cured" by his plan. Google already has an upload filter for YouTube, so nothing changes there. The link tax has already been proven to be an utter failure in Germany and Spain and hasn't gotten legacy publishers any more money -- but has taken away some of their traffic (making them lose money).

So, again, why can't Axel Voss explain what this mythical "imbalance" is?

After that, Voss talks specifically about upload filters, and claims that people complaining about them are engaged in "fake news." Seriously.

This 'nice' fake news campaign that is done by the big platforms, with key words such as 'censor machine' or upload filter, etc so that everybody jumps up without ever having done a reflection on our systematic we established here. If you really look at it, it only concerns platforms, 1 to 5 per cent at all from the global internet and also only those that actually publish copyright protected content, by the clicks they earn money without dripping a single contribution. That we try now is to establish a recognition software for copyright protected content.

We already discussed much of this in responding to PRS's silly attempt at "myth busting" claims about these upload filters. The fact that the law only targets platforms doesn't mean that it doesn't impact the users of those platforms.

Again, a filter would be a massive expense for many of the platforms I named above, and for many, it would make no sense at all. Yet, under the law, many would be obligated to try to build or buy such a filter. Others might simply stop operating in the EU altogether.

As for his attempt to downplay who it impacts, again, this shows just how incredibly ignorant Voss is of how the internet works. As we've mentioned in the past, under Article 13, a site like Tinder would be required to invest in an expensive copyright filter to scan all the images people upload. After all, it publishes lots of copyright-protected content, and it earns money on those images as a commercial business. But is anyone actually going to Tinder for copyright infringement? Of course not, but Voss doesn't seem to care or notice.

And, thanks to the way copyright is now, every platform that allows for user generated content involves publishing "copyright protected content" and assuming it has ads or collects money in anyway, it's commercial. So, this includes forum sites, for example. Are they going to have to pre-scan every comment to make sure it doesn't infringe on some copyright? Voss seems to think only in terms of the largest platforms, and doesn't even give a second thought to the fact that much of the internet is for communicating with one another - and that will involve platforms where users upload content as part of communicating with others. All of that content needs to be scanned?

Voss then responds to other MEPs speaking out against the Directive, calling it "nonsense."

To 99,9 per cent do I assume that they have not once read article 2 and article 13 together. Then I have to say if you don’t pay attention to what we do here, then I have to declare it as nonsense. When you take a look at what we try to achieve, to apply after all copyright, if we want to abandon this or if the German colleagues want to abandon this all, so they need to say so, but only to harp on about it, because it is now ‘en vogue’ to use that word, this I think is wrong.

This is both insulting and ridiculous. The complaints are well thought out and argued and point out just how little Voss actually understands about the damage he's about to do to the internet, and he insults them and brushes it off pretending that "99.9%" haven't even read the Directive. This is not about what's "en vogue," this is about stopping Voss from fundamentally mucking up key parts of how the internet works because a few legacy industries went crying to him over their own inability to adapt to the changing world.

And that brings us to the whole link tax bit:

Neighbouring rights should in principle support the press work, the work of journalists is in a certain way accompanied, so to say the analogue platform for their content; it is legally and factual secured and there is an economical responsibility.

This now completely put into question, due to the fact that there are platforms that use simply the achievements of the publisher without paying anything. And by this the whole press system in a democratic structure becomes dependent from platforms. This is something we don’t want to accept this. Therefore we need to ask ourselves the question if we want an independent press in our democratic society, also financially independent and does it represent a value. And if we believe in this value we should look into ensuring it.

This... not only misunderstands how the internet works, but also how media works. Again, the target here is Google News, which Voss incorrectly seems to think is somehow responsible for many newspapers' economic struggles. But that's nonsense. Google News drives traffic to these websites. And, if they don't think it's valuable, it literally takes 5 seconds for any publisher to opt-out of having its stories appear in Google News. But they won't do that, because they know it's valuable. Destroying Google News won't save news publishers.

He continues, arguing that the link tax isn't really a link tax:

Everybody that wants to create link for a private purpose can continue to do so, this part we excluded precisely, but those who gain again money through this, by a commercial use, they should ask if they can do it or not.

I don’t understand the whole excitement, this is common and part of our value and justice system and to transfer it to the internet and to get this impression that nothing is allowed now, no single person won’t be touched by this. The contrary, we will make it possible that each one can up load content, can use it without being in a legal obligation and this reform brings this positive aspect.

Got that? If you make money by linking, you need to ask permission first. That's... insane. It completely and fundamentally changes the way the internet works. The whole freaking idea behind the internet is you can link to anywhere on the internet... and Voss just wants to completely toss that out he window. And then complains that he "doesn't understand the whole excitement."

Voss doesn't seem to understand that lots of "amateur" and "hobby" sites put up advertisements, or take donations or crowdfunding, just to fund the site. But, those sites "gain money" and thus are "commercial" under his confused view of the world -- and therefore can no longer link without first getting permission. Again, this is so mind-blowingly backwards, and goes against everything that the internet itself was built around. And for what purpose? Because a few old school newspapers can't adapt and are demanding Google pay them money.

What becomes abundantly clear is that Axel Voss has no business being in charge of copyright reform in the EU. He doesn't understand copyright. He doesn't understand the internet. And yet, he's very, very close to fundamentally changing the thing he doesn't understand, based on ideas he doesn't seem to comprehend.

On Thursday, the EU Parliament will vote on this awful plan, and it's incredibly important to contact MEPs to let them know to not to let Voss's ignorance ruin the internet.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, axel voss, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu copyright directive, link tax, upload filters

Latest Text Of EU Copyright Directive Shows It's Even Worse Than Expected: Must Be Stopped

from the the-internet-is-at-risk dept

One of the oddities of the vote a few weeks back in the EU Parliament's JURI Committee concerning the proposed EU Copyright Directive, was that there was no published text of what they were voting on. There were snippets and earlier proposals released, but the full actual text was only just released, and it's not in the most readable of formats. However, what is now clear is that the JURI Committee not only failed in its attempts to "fix" the many, many, many problems people have been raising about the Directive, but it actually makes many of the problems worse -- including saying that online platforms become legally responsible for any copyright infringement on their platforms. This new text effectively says that the internet should only be a broadcast medium, and no longer allow for open user platforms.

MEP Julia Reda has an excellent analysis of what's problematic about the released text, but I want to focus in on a few of the more bizarre changes in particular. First, on the whole Article 11 "link tax" bit, JURI apparently thought they could quiet down the protests by adding a line that says:

2a. The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall not extend to acts of hyperlinking.

So now supporters of Article 11 will point to this new line and say "see?!? it's not about a link tax." Which would be great... if the rest of the text actually lived up to that. Unfortunately, basically every bit of the rest of Article 11 undermines that. Because it still creates a license requirement on a snippet of any length, and most URLs these days include a "snippet" of the headline of an article within the URL itself. Unless everyone starts stripping the text that includes such snippets -- making URLs significantly less useful -- those links will still run afoul of this licensing/tax requirement. Thus, them declaring that a hyperlink is not covered is meaningless if the rest of the directive can only be read in a manner that would include nearly all links.

Once again, it appears this amendment was written by someone who has no functional understanding of how the internet works, and thus does not realize how badly drafted this proposal is. It's the kind of thing a non-technically-inclined lawyer would write in response to people calling this a "link tax." "Oh," they would say, "well, let's just say it doesn't apply to links," even if any reading of the directive would mean it absolutely must apply to most links -- especially any that use any sort of descriptive text. On top of that if you share a link on a platform like Twitter or Facebook that automatically sucks in some snippet text, you're now violating the law as well.

Another change made by JURI is much, much, much more concerning. This is on Article 13, the part about mandatory upload filters. For unclear and unknown reasons, JURI decided to expand Article 13 to make it even more ridiculous. First, it redefines an "online content sharing services" to completely wipe out any intermediary liability protections for such platforms. The most standard form of protecting platforms from liability is to note (correctly!) that a platform is just a tool and is not the publisher or speaker of works posted/uploaded by third-party users. That's sensible. You can then (as the EU already does) put certain restrictions on those protections, such as requiring a form of a notice-and-takedown regime. But, the fundamental, common sense, idea is that a platform is the tool, and not the actual "speaker" of the third party content.

But JURI wiped that out. Instead, it explicitly states that any content shown via online platforms are the responsibility of those platforms by saying that such platforms "perform an act of communication to the public" in showing the content uploaded by users. This is a massive change and basically wipes out all intermediary liability protections for platforms:

Online content sharing service providers perform an act of communication to the public and therefore are responsible for their content. As a consequence, they should conclude fair and appropriate licensing agreements with rightholders. Therefore they cannot benefit from the liability exemption provided...

That's... bad. It's much, much worse than the original text from the commission, which made it clear that intermediary liability protections in the E-Commerce Directive still applied to such platforms. Here they explicitly remove that exception and say that platforms cannot benefit from such protections. As Reda points out, under this reading of the law almost any user-generated site on the internet will be in violation, and potentially at significantly greater legal liability than the various "pirate" sites people have complained about in the past:

By defining that platforms – and not their users – are the ones “communicating” uploaded works “to the public”, they become as liable for the actions of their users as if they had committed them themselves. Let’s imagine a company that makes an app for people to share videos of their cats. If even one user among millions uses the CatVideoWorld3000 app to record a Hollywood movie off a theater screen rather than their kitty, that’d be legally as bad as if the business’ employees had committed the copyright infringement themselves intentionally to profit off of it. The Pirate Bay, MegaUpload and Napster were all much more innocent than any site with an upload form will now be in the eyes of the law.

And that's not all that JURI did. It also outlawed image search with an amendment. No joke.

Use of protected content by information society services providing automated image referencing

Member States shall ensure that information society service providers that automatically reproduce or refer to significant amounts of copyright-protected visual works and make them available to the public for the purpose of indexing and referencing conclude fair and balanced licensing agreements with any requesting rightholders in order to ensure their fair remuneration. Such remuneration may be managed by the collective management organisation of the rightholders concerned.

This was not discussed previously and not recommended by the EU Commission. But, what the hell, while they're outlawing Google News, why not outlaw Google Images in the same shot.

There's a lot more in the text, but it's really, really bad. Effectively, the document envisions a world in which everything on the internet is "licensed" and any platform will be legally liable for any content on its platform. What you get in that world is not the internet -- the greatest communications medium ever made. What you get is... TV. A limited broadcast medium only for those who are pre-checked by gatekeepers.

It is incredibly important that the EU not move forward with this Directive. Contact the EU Parliament now and tell them to #SaveYourInternet before they vote on this proposal this Thursday.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, broadcast, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu copyright directive, intermediary liability, juri, link tax, platforms, upload filters

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

Top German Publisher Says: 'You Wouldn't Steal A Pound Of Butter... So We Need A Snippet Tax'

from the articles-11-and-13-must-go dept

Last week, Mike provided a virtuoso excoriation of the European publishers' shameless demand to be given even more copyright control over tiny snippets of news stories as part of the awful EU copyright directive. As that post pointed out, the publishers' "mythbuster" did nothing of the sort, but it did indicate a growing panic among the industry as more critical attention is brought to bear on the ridiculous "snippet tax" -- Article 11 of the proposed new EU copyright law -- which has already failed twice elsewhere. The German site Über Medien -- "About Media" -- offers another glimpse of publishers trying desperately to justify the unjustifiable (original in German). Actually, it's one publisher in particular: Mathias Döpfner. He's the CEO of the German company Axel Springer, one of the world's largest publishers, although even his company is unlikely to benefit much from the snippet tax. Speaking on Austrian television, Döpfner made a rather remarkable claim:

It's about the question of whether the intellectual good that is produced is a protected good or not. At the moment it is a good that is not protected in the digital world. Anyone can take an article, a video, a journalistic element that a publisher has prepared, copy it, put it in another context and even market it successfully.

Yes, the boss of one of the biggest and most successful publishers in the world is claiming that digital material is not protected by copyright, and that anyone can take and use it, which is why new laws are needed. Since he was talking about the EU's Article 11, he also seems to be conflating using snippets with taking an entire article. To underline his point, Döpfner offered a homely comparison:

If I can go to the grocery store and just grab a pound of butter or a carton of milk without paying for it, why should anyone come and pay for it, and why would anyone else offer butter or milk?

But that's not what Google is doing when it uses snippets. It's more like it is taking a picture of the pound of butter, and then showing people the photo along with the address of the grocery store when they search for "butter" using Google's search engine. Google is not stealing anything, just sending business to the store. It's the same with displaying snippets that link to the original article. The Über Medien post rightly goes on to note that publishers don't really have a problem with Google showing snippets and sending them traffic. But their sense of entitlement is so great they want to force the US company to pay for the privilege of sending them traffic. Or, to put it in terms of Döpfner's forced analogy:

Publishers do not want Google to stop stealing butter and milk in their supermarkets. The publishers want to oblige Google to steal bread and milk from them and pay for it.

The fact that the head of German's biggest publisher resorts to the old "you wouldn't steal a car/pound of butter/carton of milk" rhetoric shows just how vanishingly thin the argument in favor of a snippet tax really is. It's time for the EU politicians to recognize this, and remove it from the proposed copyright directive, along with Article 13's even-more pernicious upload filter. EU citizens can use the new SaveYourInternet site to contact their representatives. Ahead of the important EU vote on the proposed law early next week, now would be a really good time to do that.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: article 11, copyright, copyright directive, eu, link tax, mathias dopfner, snippet tax
Companies: axel springer, google

EU Publishers Freak Out Now That People Are Realizing Just How Fucked Up Their Link Tax Really Is

from the stop-the-link-tax dept

We recently had Julia Reda, a Member of the EU Parliament, on the podcast to discuss the horrible copyright directive proposal soon to be voted on by the Legal Affairs Committee in the EU Parliament. As we've been explaining, there are two very problematic parts to the copyright proposal: mandatory upload filters and the so-called "link tax." The link tax is also refered to as neighboring right or a snippet tax or a wide variety of similar things. But the crux of it is this: publishers are annoyed that Google and Facebook are successful, while they've been struggling. Ergo, the simplest solution is that Google and Facebook should be giving them money.

To make this happen, for a while now they've been dishonestly screaming that Google and Facebook are somehow unfairly "profiting" off of their work, because those sites link to online published news stories, often including snippets. The theory is that this somehow takes away from those own sites' ability to profit. This... makes no sense. First off, this effort drives valuable traffic to the websites of these publishers. This is obvious from the fact that all of the publishers whining about this (1) have not used robots.txt to block sites like Google from scraping them and (2) employ their own search engine optimization team to appear higher in search results, showing they value traffic driven by search. The "solution" to this made up "problem" then is to say that sites like Google or Facebook are violating a brand new "publisher's right" or "neighboring right" in sending these sites traffic without also paying them, and thus they want to force sites to get a license to send traffic.

Obviously, this goes against basically any reasonable conceptual understanding of how the internet works. And, this concept has been tested in Europe and failed. Germany tried it, and when Google responded by no longer including snippets for the publishers demanding payment, traffic to those publishers declined, and those publishers freaked out, eventually giving Google a free license. Spain then tried the same thing, but to avoid the "free license" issue, included as part of its law that you couldn't offer a free license (more or less making Creative Commons illegal, but that's a whole other issue). The end result there was Google News pulling out of Spain entirely, and traffic to publishers' sites dropping significantly.

Of course, the German (mainly) publishers can't stop pushing this idea, and thanks to some friends in the EU Commission and EU Parliament, it's quite close to becoming law in the EU. People are very vocally protesting and pointing out the problems with this, so the publishers are now trying to push back by putting out a ridiculous "Mythbuster" document that claims to clear up why everyone is wrong about the problems of a link tax. Let's take a look.

Fact #1: A publishers' right is NOT a Google/links tax

​The claim that the publishers' right is a threat to the link is the most misleading scare tactic of all from those who seek to undermine the case for a new publishers' right. There is a material and functional difference between you or me reading something we like and posting a link to Facebook and what commercial aggregators and search engines do. Opponents to the neighbouring right for press publishers like to suggest they're equivalent somehow.

Systematic scraping of content - which involves copying it 'en masse' into a private and permanently retained database, processing it and using extracts in commercial services such as search engines, for the purpose of making available text or images (or any other creative content for that matter) together with hyperlinks for commercial purposes is not equivalent to the activities of individuals browsing the web and posting links to things they are interested in.

This is... an interesting spin on things. Of course, it raises a pretty serious question: if there is a "material and functional difference" based on who does the linking... what is that actual difference, and how do we define it in law in a way that doesn't have serious negative consequences? But, more to the point, if it's such a huge problem, why don't these publishers just block the systematic scraping of content from the likes of Google until Google agrees to pay a license? This is not hard to do. It's actually incredibly easy. But the publishers don't want to do that.

And, really, even if we take the publishers' claims at face value, what they are actually saying is that internet search should require a license from every internet site it links to. That's... quite an astounding argument to make. It would have created a very, very different internet, and not a very good one.

Fact #2: Publishers will NOT use this right to block access to their content

Why would we do that? Popularity of our content has never been greater, particularly with the growth of smartphone readership and multiple access points to out content.

It is in publishers' interest to make their products available as widely as possible, on as many platforms as possible. But if big commercial operators continue to be allowed to reuse publishers' products and content without a licence or asking for authorisation, in the long run there will be less of them available. Even if some products are not available on all platforms users will still have many ways to discover and consumer those products, including on publishers' own websites!

First of all, there is not just no evidence to support the idea that there will be less publishers' product if Google and Facebook don't pay them, there is counter-evidence. There has been an incredible explosion in content creation in the past couple of decades, and much of it is driven by the massive decrease in distribution and discovery costs -- which in large part are due to things like search engines.

But a larger point on this one is that this "fact" is meaningless to the debate. I've not seen many people claiming that publishers will pull back their content. Indeed, part of the argument people are making is to wonder why they're not pulling back their content if search engines and aggregators really are so harmful. Again, it's not hard for them to do.

Data shows that news and press content is the most 'wanted' content on social networks and online platforms (Reuters Digital News Report 2015). When dealing with sometimes very large and powerful operators, it's quite right that publishers should be able to grant permissions in return for agreed conditions and to withold permission when agreement cannot be reached.

So, why not do that now? Again, it would be easy for a publisher to withhold content from Google and only put it back with a licensing agreement of some sort. They're not doing it. Instead, they're investing in SEO which suggests that they know that they actually get value from search. But now they want not just value, but also extra payments on top of that.

Fact 3: This right is NOT unique to publishers; Publishers are NOT asking for special treatment

A publishers' right will be similar to the related rights already enjoyed by broadcasters, music and film producers, whose finished works are protected in their entirety. This is what press publishers are asking for, too.

Since 1991 computer programs have benefited from full copyright protection at EU level. Furthermore, it's the companies, whose employees create these programs, which own all the rights to the programs and who have full exclusive control over how they are managed and enforced, just like film producers or broadcasters.

Whoo boy. Someone could write an entire PhD thesis on just how wrong this is. What the publishers are demanding goes way beyond copyright. Broadcasters, musicians and film producers do get copyright -- but so do publishers. Publishers are now asking for something in addition. They already have copyright protection in their works. Now they're asking for a separate right to link to their content (and, depending on interpretations) to include a snippet of what's in the link.

Fact 4: This is NOT just about Google

It's a sad fact of the internet that there are many companies, large and small, old and new that systematically scrape and re-publish press content for commercial purposes without permission or payment.

Why is this sad? This is what makes the internet useful. And they're not "republishing" press content. They're LINKING TO YOU AND DRIVING YOU TRAFFIC. That's a good thing. If you actually spent 20% of what you've spent over the years lobbying for this awful idea on figuring out how to take advantage of the free traffic that these sites send you, you'd already be doing much better. Instead, you do a classic rent seeking move to demand from the government that which you failed to accomplish as a business.

And, more the point: if this does go into effect, Google may be able to afford it, but the others won't. So in the end, it will be about them. Because you'll have systematically removed everyone else from the market.

Fact 5: Small publishers will NOT be negatively impacted

Currently, even large media corporations are not in the position to negotiate for a fair settlement with dominant players. The hope is that the publishers' right might begin to address this asymmetry of power and make it easier for all publishers - whatever their size - to monetise and share fairly in the value of the content in the future if they would like to.

​As the law currently stands, in order to defend their rights publishers need to attempt to track all uses of their content across the whole internet, issue notices in respect of each individual infringing use they discover, and, frequently, prove the chain of title for tens of thousands of articles and photographs. This is daunting, extremely costly, time consuming and practically impossible except in a small number of cases. The outcome is also rarely better than a takedown of the infringing content; damages and costs are rare.

Well, first off, we have actual evidence of this already in Spain, where studies showed that it DID disproportionately hurt small publishers. This is also why small publishers have come out against your dumb proposal. So, it's great for you to say it will have no impact, but you have no evidence to support that position, and tons of evidence against it. It seems, yet again, that your fact is, in fact, a myth.

Fact 6: Innovation will still be possible - and more accessible!

A publishers' right will help open the way for more innovation. Clarifying the law at EU level will improve press publishers' bargaining position when it comes to third parties' use of their works, and more legal certainty over their rights will help encourage investment and increase the possibilities for publishers of all sizes across Europe to develop new product offerings, to the benefit of their readers.

This isn't "clarifying." This is creating an entirely new right that by your own actions (SEO, failing to use robots.txt) you show is unnecessary. This isn't about "more legal certainty." This is about massively putting your fingers on the scale, such that more successful businesses need to pay you for sending you valuable traffic.

There's a myth that a liberal copyright regime is necessary to encourage innovation, but this is not true. Imagine a situation where tech companies allow others to use their patented or trademarked products or services without authorization or payment. Tech companies fiercely defend and protect their own intellectual property. Why should it be any different when it comes to protecting copyright?

This is hilarious. First, there is tons of evidence to support the idea that a more "liberal copyright regime" helps with innovation. But the really nonsense claim is that this is somehow hypocritical of tech. Now, you can certainly point to some tech companies that over-aggressively enforce various aspects of their patents and trademarks, but the more innovative ones are not exactly known for it. Google is not going out and suing others over patents. Companies like Tesla have even freed up all their patents. The tech industry tends to view patents and trademarks as more of a necessary evil, rather than something they need to "protect" their work. So, no they don't "fiercely defend and protect." This whole claim is just nonsense from some European publishers who don't seem to know what they're talking about.

Fact 7: Users will NOT be criminalised and the internet will NOT be broken

Nothing we are asking for would affect the way that our readers access our content or share links on social media or via apps and email to friends and family. Nor will it change the contractual arrangements with journalists, photographers and other contributors.

Bullshit. You just said that you want large companies to pay up. That will absolutely, by definition, change how readers share content and links on social media. The platforms that are doing this will suddenly have to get licenses, meaning they'd likely block plenty of sharing on content they don't have such a license for. And some, a la Google News in Spain, may drop out altogether.

The only people who will notice any changes at all are those who today free-ride for commercial gain on publishers' investments without permission or payment. Who are they? Well, not the readers, authors or individual users, but commercial organisations whose business models and significant economic benefits depend on the use of publishers' journalistically-produced content.

So... EU Publishers: here's a question. If you consider Google sending you free traffic as "free riding," um... aren't you "free riding" on the traffic Google sends you for free? Isn't this line of reasoning going to get you into deep shit when someone spins around and asks why you're free riding on Google and Facebook and not paying them for the traffic they send you? After all, you're getting commercial gain from Google and Facebook's investment without permission or payment.

Fact 8: An independent, free press that supports diversity and upholds democracy CANNOT survive indefinitely without generating revenues

A free and independent press can only exist if there is adequate revenue to pay journalists, photographers and freelancers and to finance their training and security. Today, the prospect is increasingly reduced, due to declining print revenues that have not been matched by digital despite increased levels of readership. The reasons for this are complex, but in a nutshell large search engines and other distributors make publishers' content available for free to the user without re-investing in its production while making it difficult for publishers to charge users directly for the same content.

This is true! Finally! But what does it have to do with getting this brand new right? Again, the experiments with it in Germany and Spain have not led to any new revenue for publishers. So why do you naturally assume that it will magically happen this time? The decline of print revenues is a big deal. And it is a huge challenge for publishers. But why do you assume that the answer is having governments force other companies to pay you? What a weird approach.

The loss of advertising share is also significant, as much of this now goes directly to search and social networks, which attract larger user groups that include users who are reading publishers' content on their platforms. Finally, unauthorised large-scale re-use of publishers' content and a lack of legal clarity that would enable enforcement against large-scale infringements is a growing problem that needs reversing.

The loss of advertising share... basically sounds like admission that you guys suck at your jobs. And you want a government bailout. And, again, they're not "re-using" your content. They're sending you traffic. Traffic that you could monetize. If you were good at your jobs and not crying to Brussels.

Fact 9: Consumers will still be able to find news and content on different platforms

Publishers actively make their content available on all platforms, accessible on any device of choice. They recognize that consumers benefit from easy access to their content wherever they happen to be, whether this be through publishers' own websites, or on social media or search pages where multiple sources of content are aggregated. Not only do consumers benefit, but so do the hosts of publishers' content who derive value and real benefits through increased traffic, advertising revenues or in some cases subscription fees.

What? I mean, sure, publishers will make their content available if they are getting paid for the links. That's the whole freaking issue. This would mandate fees for those links, and of course then the publishers will make the content available -- they want to get paid. The problem is that many platforms won't post links to their content any more because it won't be cost effective.

Publishers recognise that search and social media platforms are important partners for news organisations and that their traffic brings benefits, although not on the exaggerated scale claimed by some. The current system does not recognise the value third parties get from publishers' content. It is unsustainable for publishers to continue funding high-quality professional journalism without a fair share of the value others derive from their content.

Their traffic brings benefits... which is why we need to get them to also pay us? How does that make any sense?

Fact 10: Publishers are NOT just trying to support 'old' business models

Publishers have made an important transition from analogue to digital over the past decade with high degrees of innovation and enormous growth in audience and popularity. They have embraced the digital age and count as many technical staff as editorial.

You do this after paragraph upon paragraph talking about how you can't survive without this tax on links. Which means you haven't actually embraced digital. It means you're demanding that those who actually have embraced digital subsidize your failures.

The publishers' arguments here are not just weak, they're nonsensical. There is no way to understand the link tax "publishers' rights" proposal as anything other than a massive subsidy from successful internet companies to publishers who failed to adapt to a changing marketplace. It's sad that the EU seems to think that's an appropriate response, and that the powers that be don't seem to care about the existing evidence of how such laws have completely flopped in the past.

This is not evidence-based policy-making. It is corruption. It is corruption in bowing to the will of a few large publishers who have failed to innovate successfully, and are now going to harm the entire internet in response. The EU Parliament should not allow this to happen. If you agree that this is crazy, go check out SaveTheLink.org, which has more details.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, link tax, neighboring rights, publishers

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

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

EU Publishers Acknowledge Snippet Tax Concerns, But Say: 'It's OK, You Can Trust Us'

from the yeah,-sure dept

Techdirt has been following the ridiculous proposal to extend EU copyright even further to include tiny snippets from articles for years now. The idea has already been tried twice in the European Union, and failed dismally on both occasions. In Spain, a study showed the move there caused serious economic damage, especially to smaller companies; German publishers tacitly admitted the law was pointless when they granted Google a free license to use snippets from their titles. More recently, the European Commission's own research confirmed that far from harming publishers, news aggregators have a positive impact on the industry's advertising revenue. Despite the clear indications that a snippet tax is a terrible idea, some want to go even further, and make it apply to hyperlinks too. Writing in the French newspaper Le Monde back in December, large news agencies including Germany's DPA and France's AFP complained that sites:

offer internet users the work done by others, the news media, by freely publishing hypertext links to their stories. […] Solutions must be found. […] We strongly urge our governments, the European parliament and the commission to proceed with this directive.

Now EU publishers have weighed in on the snippet tax, formally known as Article 11 of the proposed Copyright Directive. Their latest position paper, embedded below, makes a confession:

We acknowledge that concerns have been raised that Article 11 as proposed by the Commission may have a negative effect on the legitimate personal non-commercial use of excerpts from press publications by a natural person by way of hyperlinking or sharing.

But there's no reason to worry, they say, for the following reason:

However, we would like to emphasize that it is in publishers' interest to make their products available as widely as possible, on as many platforms as possible and this is why publishers themselves encourage their readers to share articles and news on social media for free.

In other words: trust us, we won't misuse a new right to forbid anyone from sharing even tiny snippets. Except, of course, copyright holders have repeatedly abused their intellectual monopoly to censor material, in precisely this way. EU publishers want this new right to block snippets to apply even to single words:

We therefore question the necessity of introducing in the new [EU] Presidency's compromise text, a reduction of the scope of protection granted to press publishers to acts of reproduction and making available to the public performed by "service providers" and excluding "individual words or very short extracts of text".

They also want to extend the scope of the snippet ban:

In our view it is essential that any commercial entity or organisation, regardless of their business model, including those currently licensed by press publishers, exclusively or collectively, continues to be within scope of protection. Typically these organisations can be aggregators, media monitoring and press clipping agencies, individual companies, or public institutions.

This isn't just about making search engines pay for the privilege of using snippets of text: it would include every company, of whatever size, and every public body, however meritorious or altruistic its activities, that uses them. The new position paper is important because it makes clearer than ever before that the snippet tax is not about stopping a few big players like Google from indexing stories from publications. After all, that could be easily achieved by blocking the crawlers using the robot.txt file. Article 11 is about something much bigger. It is the latest expression of the publishing industry's apparently infinite sense of entitlement -- that it has a right to control even "individual words or very short extracts of text" used by "any commercial entity or organisation, regardless of their business model", as the document puts it. The egotism of publishers is so monstrous that they don't even care if achieving this insane level of control over the Internet goes against their own economic interests, as the evidence shows it will. Power, it seems, is more important than profits.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: aggregation, copyright, copyright directive, eu, link tax, publishers, snippet tax

Push Resumes For An EU Google Tax, With The Bulgarian Government Leading The Way

from the bad-ideas-never-die dept

When an idea fails, legislators resurrect it. The problem must not be with the idea, they reason. It must be with the implementation. So it goes in Europe, where the Bulgarian government is trying to push an idea that has demonstrably failed elsewhere on the continent.

Should the EU introduce an extra copyright for news sites, restricting how we can share news online? The controversy around this plan continues to brew – this time in the Council, where the member state governments are trying to find a consensus.

[...]

The Bulgarian Council Presidency is pushing what it calls a new compromise, instead of the choice of two options that their Estonian predecessors offered.

But upon closer investigation, the “compromise” looks mighty familiar: With exceptions for very short snippets and non-commercial use by individuals, as well as a shorter protection term than the Commission wanted, it looks much like the current German “ancillary copyright”, which almost all experts agree has been an abject failure.

The failure of snippet taxes/Google taxes is well documented, but never seems to deter further legislative efforts in the same direction. Google reacted to the initiative by dropping snippets from German news agencies, a move that produced a noticeable drop in traffic. German publishers called it "blackmail," but the simplest way to comply with bad laws is to opt out. Similar things happened in Spain with its snippet tax. Google nuked its local Google News service, resulting in affected publishers demanding the government force Google to re-open the service and start sending them traffic/money.

This push in the EU Commission for a snippet tax deliberately ignores research showing link taxes don't work, harm publishers, and are opposed by many of the journalists who would supposedly benefit from it. This is more than cherry-picking facts to support a Google tax. Pirate Party EU Parliament member Julia Reda (who wrote the post quoted above) previously uncovered reports the Commission tried to bury, including one that showed news aggregation services like Google News were a net benefit for listed publications.

At this point, it looks as though some form of snippet tax will eventually become EU law. Only half of the member countries oppose snippet taxes, and only a few of those are actively fighting the proposal. If it does become law, it won't work out the way publishers believe it will. Instead, it will harm smaller publishers and smaller aggregators, resulting in a consolidation of power for the largest publishers and platforms. The EU has no leverage in this battle. Google won't hang around for long if the situation is unprofitable and publishers will have to settle for taxing Yahoo, Bing, etc. for whatever traffic these search engines manage to send their way.

Filed Under: aggregators, bad ideas, bulgaria, copyright, eu, google tax, link tax, neighboring rights, snippet tax