Europe Passes Controversial Online Copyright Reforms (venturebeat.com) 380
EU lawmakers today endorsed an overhaul of the bloc's two-decade old copyright rules, which will force Google and Facebook to pay publishers for use of news snippets and make them filter out protected content. From a report: The set of copyright rules known as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, but more succinctly as the EU Copyright Directive, has been debated and discussed for several years. While it is broadly uncontroversial in many regards, there are two facets to the directive that has caused the internet to freak out. Article 11, which has been dubbed the "link tax," stipulates that websites pay publishers a fee if they display excerpts of copyrighted content -- or even link to it. This obviously could have big ramifications for services such as Google News. Then there is Article 13, dubbed the "upload filter," which would effectively make digital platforms legally liable for any copyright infringements on their platform, which has stoked fears that it would stop people from sharing content -- such as GIF-infused memes -- on social networks. In a statement, EFF said, "In a stunning rejection of the will five million online petitioners, and over 100,000 protestors this weekend, the European Parliament has abandoned common-sense and the advice of academics, technologists, and UN human rights experts, and approved the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive in its entirety."
See guys? (Score:5, Funny)
I told you this is what would happen if we let regular people use computers.
Not democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Laws not written by the people for the people, the EU showing it doesn't give a fuck about democracy.
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I don't understand. If I post music on my website, allowing others to download it free of charge, and the artists don't get paid for their work, I get in trouble. Why shouldn't a corporation?
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It means nobody will take your money to let you host a website in the first place because any company that hosts your website risks getting in trouble should you upload someone else's work without permission.
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That's ok. The people also don't give a fuck about the EU anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much pro-Europe. I'm just also very anti-EU.
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Probably you don't know how a democracy works. ... for the people.
So I explain it to you.
People vote for "members of the parliament".
The parliament decides about issues
Got it?
Oh, I'm against the new EU laws, but I at least know hoe a democracy in our times works.
Re: Democracy is a dumb idea anyway (Score:3)
Why should we let you decide who is the scholar and who is the fool?
Turns out lots of really complex social problems are addressed by the wisdom of crowds. The educated elite came up with eugenics. I think it's safe to say the educated elite should not be in charge of things.
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How about a test to see if someone is fit for voting? Nothing complex. Like asking for the difference between first-past-the-post and proportional representation. How about "what are we voting on today?" (and I mean the office or body we're voting for. And with body I don't mean what warm body to put in the position). Or "name three parties and their main candidates?" (of course only in countries that actually have three parties that anyone might know). I'd even exclude trick question like "name 3 politicia
Re: Democracy is a dumb idea anyway (Score:2)
How will the contracts be enforced?
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Those artists are going to have a hell of a time when nobody links to their work
Exactly (Score:2)
Those artists are going to have a hell of a time when nobody links to their work
Stop indexing links from companies that want money for them.
Problem solved.
Copyright exists to HARM artists! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? You still believe that Copyright "protects artists"?
We had such a law in Germany. The Urheberrecht! An author's privilege law! Implicit and non-transferable too!
Copyright is a *distributor's privilege*! To take power *away* from artists. By the same distributors that regularly try to *lower* the meaningless peanuts that artists get from the cake.
If you had ever been an artist, you'll know that they get their money from gigs and merchandising, and it has been shown time and time again, that if they just share all their works as a form of marketing, they make *more* money, than they ever did from copyright!
I've worked in the organized crime called "media industry" for two decades now. My mentor did since the 60s. We've personally seen it all. EMI bosses *requiring* hookers and blow to even consider negoating contracts. Band after band hooked on contracts, sucked dry, and thrown away. Designer after designer used, madr money from, and laughing in his face when he has to go buy his own work in the shop and license it, to be even able to play with it. Even parties that turned into "Wolf of Wall Street"-style "basically mass-rape" orgies.
And we both agree that the ENTIRE "media industry" thing is just cokehead paranoia and overconfidence turned into a "business", and is, will be, and has always been solely for the purpose of leeching on artists and their fans without doing any value-adding work whatsoever yourself.
So excuse me if I, in the name of all artists ever, give you a big fat FUCK YOU from the middle of my fingers.
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I'm alt right now? Wow, yesterday I was accused of being a SJW.
In other words, go play with something poisonous, shill.
Re: Not democracy (Score:4, Informative)
As an artist with multiple music projects, fuck you. I now have to worry about when my music will get falsely registered with ContentID & friends and I get blackmailed for it. Oh, or I can register with a local RIAA alternative, which doesn't actually redistribute money to anyone not signed to a major deal while completely killing any chance for a tour.
Yeah, I'm thrilled to be "protected".
Re: Not democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government deciding it doesn't like the results of democratic elections has led to a lot of authoritarian governments.
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This article is about the EU, not America.
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No, that's called a distraction.
Re:Not democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, EU countries can still reach Google, but without servers there in those countries, it might be milliseconds slower, but not noticeable by most humans using them?
Hell, if Brexit happens, Google could move them all to England, eh?
I don't think they can (Score:3)
That said, these are mostly American (i.e. foreign) countries. I don't think they care if they leave. I could see the EU wanting their own, home grown alternative services. The whole point of the EU was to make a large market to stand up
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Europe's strong privacy laws usually require servers in an EU country.
If Google removes all it's operation from the EU, the EU has no recourse. They won't, of course, as their business would shrink as a result, and they care about money above all, but they could.
A more reasonable move would be to spin off all EU-related business into its own set of corporations, and let them go their separate ways. Of course, any company that has billions sitting around in a Irish subsidiary for tax reasons won't be able to do that, for which I have no sympathy at all.
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What are you gabbing about. There are no EU laws that restrict Europeans from accessing services outside of their political domain, and no laws forcing outside companies/people to provide services inside of the EU.
If you meant to say laws requiring EU based companies to keep servers inside the EU, then you may have a point. Except the logical extension of the parent posts position about moving the servers would be to remove the associated services from falling under their EU subsidiaries. If you tried to
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No. A republic is a country which is not ruled by a monarch. All countries are either monarchies or republics.
China is a republic, even though it's clearly not a democracy.
The EU is not even a country, but yes, if it was one, it would be a republic. And a democracy.
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There are also Federations, although those usually devolve into Republics with a strong central government and single leader, as we're seeing in the federation formerly known as the United States today.
That's why there is widespread resistance to giving the United Nations any more authority than they already have; the path to one world government is a slippery slope.
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No, that's called a republic.
A Republic and a Democracy are not mutually exclusive concepts. The US for example is a federal republic that also has a democratically elected assembly of representatives of the people that do the legislating and governing. That is why it is called the United States House of Representatives in case you ever wondered. The Senate is these days also democratically elected.
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Wrong. The EU -does- have a parliament elected by the people directly.
Get your facts straight.
Having said that, I believe this is a dark day for an open internet in the EU.
Re:No there's not. This is the EU. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, that's why the EU parliament is essentially powerless. It's mostly a dump for politicians you can't keep at home because they're a liability and you can't just fire because they know too much. Essentially, it's what we came up with when political murder went out of fashion.
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Most parliaments don't propose laws, or at least have very limited powers to do so. In most countries laws are almost universally proposed by the executive to be either passed or rejected by the parliament.
Not sure about the EU (Score:2)
Re:Not democracy (Score:5, Informative)
The parliament is democratically elected. Next election being in May.
The council is composed of elected ministers, one from each member state.
The commissioners are civil servants (and civil servants are not elected in any country I have ever heard of) that are appointed by the council.
More either uninformed or deliberate misinformation.
Re:Not democracy (Score:5, Informative)
An unseen group of unelected bureaucrats that are not under any elected control. Who runs them? Who knows?
Laws a proposed by the Commission, which is made up of representatives appointed by each member state's government, which in turn is made up of people you elect.
They are a civil service, similar to how politicians on most member states don't actually write the laws themselves, they have civil servants write them and then review and ask for changes.
The idea is that the Commission takes direction from the Council, which is made up of member states' leaders (i.e. people you elected), comes up with proposals that they think will make things better and puts them to the Parliament. The Parliament can reject them or ask for changes if necessary.
In addition, member states have vetoes in many cases, including anything which requires a new treaty to implement.
Also, if the Parliament doesn't like what the Commission or the Council is doing, it can get rid of them. That happened in 1999. The Parliament is DIRECTLY elected by citizens of member states.
If you don't know this it's because you are wilfully ignorant.
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Laws not written by the people for the people, the EU showing it doesn't give a fuck about democracy.
And yet, morons still think BREXIT is stupid.
This situation might be fucked up but brexit is fucking stupid.
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Brexit is a bit like pulling out of a war too early. It might have been a horrible idea to enter, it might be a really crappy position you're in, but leaving at the wrong moment may be even worse.
For reference, see Iraq.
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It might have been a horrible idea to enter, it might be a really crappy position you're in, but leaving at the wrong moment may be even worse.
And there will never be a right moment. The EU will make sure of that.
Re: Not democracy (Score:2)
Russia won't stay small but we will certainly be pushed around by the USA and China in a way that they can't do to the EU. Unless of course you think Mr Trump is a very nice man who'll give us a wonderful deal.
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Using comparison algorithms, it is possible to pre-filter content that gets uploaded to large platforms like YouTube, etc and have it automatically blocked. So if an image was used to create a meme, it could be cross-referenced with a database and blocked.
To implement a system to do this today may not be cost effective but in 5 years time it could be a lot cheaper with advances in technology and software.
There are all kinds of ways to quickly detect even small parts of copyrighted media now. If something is modified to the extent that it doesn't at all resemble the original content, it could get past these comparison filters.
All of these changes to EU laws will result in censorship. If it's successful in the EU it will spread to all countries.
How long do you want to wait as the picture you want to post is crosschecked against every frame of media ever produced?
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The EU is the most incorruptable institution on the planet.
Ummmm, no.
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What good is free speech to people who can't think? How does not being able to re-upload something someone else made restrict the actual speech of a person?
Artists should be careful of giving up their copyright, and if they can afford it, release things into the public domain. When they do that, and still get fucked with, we have something to talk about. As it is, it's a self-created problem by morons for morons, especially considering what crap all sorts of industries pump out. Fans could actually spend mo
Goodbye suckerberg! (Score:4, Insightful)
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...like this would be the bad outcome of this law....
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Far more likely you'll see content companies like YouTube leave.
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Facebook is lucky, as it is not a European company. It can just laugh and walk away. Companies in Europe must cause a blackout themselves or be blacked out.
Your naivety is adoring. Facebook will have to comply, as any other company doing business in EU.
But for that to happen local governments would need to adopt the laws.
What kind of business does Facebook really do "in" the EU? Facebook is a US company, and as such all they really need to do is move any servers they have out of Europe and tell them to go screw themselves. It's the EU's responsibility to filter what comes across their borders, not the other way around. Same goes for the personal info they collect. If you don't want your citizens information collected in a data mine outside of your boarders, then it's up to you to stop your citizens from giving that info
So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think EU citizens should force the issue by bombarding the governments and the biggest social sites with copyrighted works which have been altered enough to evade filters.
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All works are copyrighted, like this post I'm sending you :P
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You do realise that youtube had upload filtering for quite a while and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the EU?
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You also realize that those upload filters were but a token effort on YouTube's end? They were trivial to circumvent, mostly because all that was required to appease the laws that existed was a token effort.
This is a very different beast.
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Maybe trivial to circumvent, but with a shitload of false positives and since it is impossible to talk with a human at Google, it might be even worse.
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Might? It will. Google/YouTube will do what they can to err on the safe side and simply auto-filter anything that could remotely even have a whiff of "copyrighted material". In other words, no commentary, no parody, no citation.
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We'll soon get to see. Though I doubt that this is what I'd consider "better".
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You do realise that youtube had upload filtering for quite a while and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the EU?
So reversed images and pitch shifted audio from here on out then?
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I guess so. In a more sane world this directive would break apart the German government (since a no to upload filters is a part of the coalition contract) and would be found unconstitutional due to censorship, alas the world isn't sane at all.
Who knows, maybe that directive will help bring back the libraries.
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After all it's their job to clean up the mess our politicians do on a regular basis.
If that part of the separation of powers doen't work any more maybe it's time for pitchforks, torches, and nooses again.
Re:So long and thanks for all the fish (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, they could just pull their servers out of the EU countries, and host whatever content they want.
The EU countries could still access those servers, but jurisdiction would no longer be there since there is no physical presence there.
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Yeppers. Shame that Google news won't ever refer to EU newspapers/magazines/etc anymore. Which was about the only way I ever saw EU news for the past few years. Alas, it's not worth subscription fees for EU papers/magazines, since there's so little EU news I care about.
And before you get all excited about me not caring about anything outside the USA, I don't care all that much about most US news either....
If you can't Tax em, Fine em. part 2 (Score:2)
We all know how this will end. Google, Facebook et al are going to just drop all EU content and depending on how aggressive the individual laws are may even just block entire countries outright.
Every major web property needs to do this right now especially if it's a search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo), a social network of any kind (Facebook, Twitter, private webforums, blogs) or a user hosted content provider (Wikipedia, YouTube, SoundCloud). Pull out of all EU countries and explicitly block access to them. I mean, how do you do business in these countries when they've effectively banned hyperlinking.
Frankly, when GDPR happened they should've pulled out right then and there, but they didn't
It doesn't affect fake news (Score:5, Funny)
This means that I can't link to any legitimate news site. However, fake news sites are fair game ...
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No, it's about the copyright, not the truthfulness. Fake news is just as copyrighted as real news.
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No, it's about the copyright, not the truthfulness. Fake news is just as copyrighted as real news.
But the people creating fake news want it to spread. If this ruling makes their stuff more available than mainstream news, so much better for them. Why would they file a takedown?
Re:It doesn't affect fake news (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, as works of fiction, fake news is still protected by copyright.
UK here (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't blame any company for completely blocking all uploads of anything including text / comments, this law simply isn't workable, it's complete censorship. Fucking idiot politicians and yes I contacted my meps about this more than once.
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It's obviously censorship... but even complete censorship does not mean it is unworkable. There's no real technological barriers that would prevent a government from limiting and controling general public access to information from outside. It's entirely doable... and any notion of living in a "free" society will likely have to be abandoned in favor of whatever definition of "free" the government convinces its citizens to buy into.
Re: UK here (Score:2)
It's unworkable in a society which is already free. It's technically not workable to control the use of the Internet. If you can't convince the people to go along, you can't impose these types of rules.
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You don't need to convince people to go along with it... you just start doing it.
People who are dissatisfied with it will have to leave to get away from it, but most people will be indifferent, and within a generation it will be accepted as "normal".
Re:UK here (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the EU parliament basically is that everyone who is not smart enough to be allowed to run for a local government (regional, like a City or a federal state), not influencing enough to run for a country parliament (France, Germany etc.) but pestering enough is put on the list for the EU elections.
Basically 90% of all people in the EU parliament are failed wanna be parlimentarians for regional or country parliaments.
Usually you would assume, you have a strict ladder of competence, city civilian servant first, then regional parliament, then federal state parliament, then state parliament then EU parliament.
Fact is: in the EU parliament only idiots end up ... because no one want them on the voting lists for the parliaments below.
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Yeah, but now with A13 and Brexit the UK is destined to become a meme powerhouse, and may soon grow to host thousands of VPN's for Europeans who need to get their illegal meme fix on the sly, all whist sporting good RTT.
Wish American companies would gtfo of EU (Score:2, Interesting)
I really wish American companies would juet abandon the EU and let them try to make their own tech. It's worked well for Russia and China. That's where the EU is headed, and I don't want them to drag the American web behind them with their giant market.
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You will probably get your wish more and more. I follow a lot of companies. When they talk about opportunities, they never mention Europe. If Europe is mentioned at all, it's usually when they discuss the headwinds they face in their business.
Business leaders have a lot of places they want to to do business. Increasingly those places don't include Europe because Europe is expensive and stagnant.
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What about Canada, eh?
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Canada is country with a low population. Canada will do fine. Maybe even good. It will never be in the category of India or Latin America or China or Europe or other large blocks (unless Canada joins into an economic union of some sort with the U.K. and/or some other regional countries).
Goodbye, EU (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet was built around two basic principles: links are free and you can upload everything and sort out the mess later.
Now really, what's the rationale behind charging for a hyperlink, even if no content is displayed? Greed? Stupidity? Idiocy?
I suppose this is European content providers trying to build a wall around their "internet?"
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Now really, what's the rationale behind charging for a hyperlink, even if no content is displayed? Greed? Stupidity? Idiocy?
To kill off search engines and force everyone to consume content from the top down at each news site.
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And how the fuck are we supposed to find those fucking websites? Via old-school media? Good luck with that.
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And how the fuck are we supposed to find those fucking websites?
How did you find Google?
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How did you find Google?
It was difficult for people to find Google in the early days. But once you had it you had the entire internet.
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The internet was built around two basic principles: links are free and you can upload everything and sort out the mess later. ...
You are mixing up the internet with the "world wide web".
No worries, it is common mistake
Mod parent up as informative about the law (Score:3)
Whatever one thinks of the law, it is good to understand how the European Parliament is promoting it, as at that link: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/... [europa.eu]
This is not in any way to defend that law, just to say it is useful to try to understand the mindset and world view behind it -- and how it was spun and sold.
While I agree a tax to link to something risks breaking the web (or at least the European part), here are some positive spins from the article about other aspects of copyright reform in the EU probably
Very easy fix. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very easy to fix. All search engines and websites in general boycott publishers that backed this and that would demand payment for linking/snipping by simply removing all links to them, period. No search results. No links from other websites. Let's see how long publishers survive when nobody can find their shit.
The end result? The publishers will be begging the EU to reverse this.
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+1
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Way to bite the hand, ya'll! (Score:2)
This is like a guy relocating his store to the middle of the ocean to reduce theft.
As a copyright holder, this is awful (Score:5, Interesting)
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By "art", do you mean "furry porn"? ... asking for a friend.
Re:As a copyright holder, this is awful (Score:4, Interesting)
From the official press release http://www.europarl.europa.eu/... [europa.eu]
The issues that you may have to face is how much of your work would be free to use by platforms like google. After all, the press release says nothing about images. It only talks about hyperlinks, which are allowed and short texts. But of course for your case that won't be helpful. You'd like previews of your art to be displayed. What category would that fall under? I can't say. If you're in doubt you'd probably have to declare somewhere that all your stuff is free to use by anyone.
The Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
The inventor of the World Wide Web, hypertext, and linking was European, and invented it all at CERN in Europe. And now Europe effectively destroys the entire thing by taxing the very item (hyperlink) that created it all...
Truly, it is just a matter of time before the EU taxes air and sunshine...
It's about time ... (Score:2)
... journalists got paid for their work.
No one owes Google or Facebook a free ride. Those mega corporations are making money with the links.
Let them pay for the links.
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I think the majority of people go to Google and type in search queries, hit the Google News Feed, or look to news aggregators like
Few people go directly to joebobs247news.com to read up on the latest political scandals.
Now, if a news aggregator copy and pastes the entire article, then yeah, they should be liable for some copyright infringement. A quick summary of said article or the first couple sentences wi
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you are confused. please tell me what news corporation doesn't pay their journalists? reuters? abcnews? cnn? fox? times?
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Journalist won't be seeing a cent, because they sign over the copyright to the mega news corp they are working for.
INB4 (Score:3)
Easy Way To Solve The Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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Google / FB just requires a new HTML header that explicitly gives them permission.
Don't even need a header, you can borrow the robots.txt idea to make a privilege.txt, stating what may be indexed, what may be copied, and what may not.
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The EU will find that Google is abusing its monopoly power and create and enforce "must carry" rules.
Embrace Balkanism (Score:2)
Such companies Hosting in the EU would become a thing of the past, giving a small boost to business in other places.
The traffic would still flow, of course, but Doing Business in the EU would become problematic. Users there will just get their pages
served from elsewhere, at least until the EU enacts a Great Firewall of their own. Probably implemented by Huawei, of course.
I would be fine with this, if... (Score:3)
You know, I would actually be fine with strengthening some aspects of copyright protection - if there were softening in other respects. Media producers want paid for snippets? Fine, absolutely fine. But their copyright expires in 12 months, after which the material enters the public domain.
What is actually likely to happen: Media companies will be shocked, shocked when companies like Google simply stop linking to them. Their business will collapse, until they see the solution: issuing a general public license allowing anyone to link to their content with no fees whatsoever. At which time, Google&Co. will start linking to them again. We've been here before, more or less. And we'll be here again in a few years, when the next generation of clueless MBAs decides to try to monetize links.
The liability of platforms for copyright infringement by their users? I'm not seeing a great solution to that one. Stupid politicians, this is why we can't have nice things...
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Or did they think about this, or think anything through at all?
This is pretty shit but it's not worth burning everything to the ground over, and if you don't expect the uk gov to follow suit under the smallest amount if pressure then you're as deluded as farage et al.
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Who cares? It's off topic.