New EU law incoming

[Kiri]

From what I understand from reading about the law, and I reserve that I've still not read the actual law, that's the thing which is no longer true. A great example to debate here is the OP's post.

• The embedded youtube video. Is that copyright infringement?
  After all, he embedded intellectual property content from another site, made by another person. OP clearly has not asked the video creator permission to publish this video. Yet every reasonable person amongst us would clearly see that youtube embedding is designed to work exactly the way he used it, and in youtube's system the video creator can disallow video embedding. It's implicit consent.
  
  But does the EU law care? Can the content creator sue Curse for millions as a quick cash-grab with the EU law on his side?
  
• The description of Article 13 lifted from EFF's website. Is that copyright infringement?
  I mean, arguably yes. It is verbatim the same words as found within the first link the OP posts. Small enough to be considered a quote, but it lacks attribution.
  It's also not at all the entire article. In norwegian laws at least, the right to quote is strong. This is a perfectly legal thing to do with attribution.
  And given that MMO-champion forums isn't exactly a professional publisher, that lack of attribution isn't something anyone should care about.
  
  But - by EU laws, EFF can now sue Curse into oblivion for wicked, malicious copyright infringement, right?

To be honest, such cases would simply lead to formalizing proper fair use in the EU as well. It's kind of "you could sue, but would you?" Youtube gets their clicks out of their link. It is pretty much free advertising for them. They would not care about it being linked. Similarly, the EFF would definitely not care about their law being circulated.
That is pretty much how it is handled in many EU countries already. While I do not like this law, I do so the positives.
1) It takes responsibility away from the user. If you click a link unknowing that copyrighted stuff is hidden behind it, it is the site's fault, not yours.
2) More action is taken against those who just plagiarize and piggy-back on the work of others. This is a big issue of our time and I believe, thought that is a longer explanation, that it is one of the reasons for the decline of proper journalism we are experiencing.
3) Unified copyright law can be used to establish unified fair use, as noted above.

Now, that are the positives I can see in proper legislation. I don't think the current one perfectly enables this, though. Could and should be better. But in principle, I would welcome some unified language in that regard.

[Yunru]

Are people upset because copyright laws exist, or because they're going to be enforced?

Enforced on a insane lvl. This even means if you use it as parody.

The most recent thing i can think is Whine the pooh thing from china--- got blocked to hell.
Its gona be similar if this law passes.

For example:
I place a parody of our president doing something stupid. Next day this picture/video/post gets removed as it contains a president of my country in a file.

[Noradin]

From what I understand from reading about the law, and I reserve that I've still not read the actual law, that's the thing which is no longer true. A great example to debate here is the OP's post.

• The embedded youtube video. Is that copyright infringement?
• The description of Article 13 lifted from EFF's website. Is that copyright infringement?

• Depends on youtube. If they give permission to embed videos in other sites then no. Why would it be an infringment?
• It is a law. You are allowed to quote it. There is no copyright infringement because the state that owns it gives you permision to use it.

[Slant]

• Depends on youtube. If they give permission to embed videos in other sites then no. Why would it be an infringment?
• It is a law. You are allowed to quote it. There is no copyright infringement because the state that owns it gives you permision to use it.

If you want to be absolutely anal about it, a law isn't even valid until it is publically announced and thus part of the public domain. But hey, these clickbait jockeys don't think that far.

[Danner]

I'm sorry, you are not allowed to post anything on the internet anymore, because every word has been used by someone before.... is that your logic? lol

A machine can't separate between blatant copyright ripoff, parody, quote and educational purposes.
My point is, how is an algorithm to know the difference?

Youtube's contentID is already failing spectacularly on merely identifying copyrighted material. It has false positives which kill entire channels, and you can nonetheless see the entire set of 5000 seasons of simpsons if you just enter simpsons on the youtube search bar. Automated content comparison does stupid erroneous claims things like the one I jokingly ended my last post with, and fail to catch the people who do simple things to avoid detection.

And if youtube can't get it right - and they've sunk $100m into the problem - who can?
Having a law that mandate such a system to work flawlessly - is inherently impossible.

To be honest, such cases would simply lead to formalizing proper fair use in the EU as well. It's kind of "you could sue, but would you?" Youtube gets their clicks out of their link. It is pretty much free advertising for them. They would not care about it being linked. Similarly, the EFF would definitely not care about their law being circulated.
That is pretty much how it is handled in many EU countries already. While I do not like this law, I do so the positives.
1) It takes responsibility away from the user. If you click a link unknowing that copyrighted stuff is hidden behind it, it is the site's fault, not yours.
2) More action is taken against those who just plagiarize and piggy-back on the work of others. This is a big issue of our time and I believe, thought that is a longer explanation, that it is one of the reasons for the decline of proper journalism we are experiencing.
3) Unified copyright law can be used to establish unified fair use, as noted above.

Now, that are the positives I can see in proper legislation. I don't think the current one perfectly enables this, though. Could and should be better. But in principle, I would welcome some unified language in that regard.

I'm not against formalization. I am against laws that are conditionally enforced based on the goodwill of the enforcer.

If any embedding of youtube videos is a legal timebomb where Google's lawyers can screw you over if they desire, then youtube gains a major amount of blackmail power. "If you don't sign this new licencing fee, we'll sue you for 20 years of copyright infringement. You wouldn't like that. It would be a shame if something happened to your business model. Better sign, no?". A proper law doesn't open for such nonsense.

[Slant]

A machine can't separate between blatant copyright ripoff, parody, quote and educational purposes.
My point is, how is an algorithm to know the difference?

Youtube's contentID is already failing spectacularly on merely identifying copyrighted material. It has false positives which kill entire channels, and you can nonetheless see the entire set of 5000 seasons of simpsons if you just enter simpsons on the youtube search bar. Automated content comparison does stupid erroneous claims things like the one I jokingly ended my last post with, and fail to catch the people who do simple things to avoid detection.

And if youtube can't get it right - and they've sunk $100m into the problem - who can?
Having a law that mandate such a system to work flawlessly - is inherently impossible.

Nobody gives a shit if Google can get it right. They can afford to pay billions in fines. Why are you so concerned about bullshit that doesn't affect you? Fair use is not going to be removed, you know?

The worst thing people do, clickbait and don't read legal texts in context.

[Danner]

Nobody gives a shit if Google can get it right. They can afford to pay billions in fines. Why are you so concerned about bullshit that doesn't affect you? Fair use is not going to be removed, you know?

The worst thing people do, clickbait and don't read legal texts in context.

Google can't get it right given infinite money.
Yet everyone is supposed to solve it like Google did.
That is the problem. I don't care about google's plight in this either. They can afford the army of lawyers.

The EU just mandated by law that a technical solution that DOES NOT WORK must solve a technical problem.
And will hold the site owner legally responsible for the situation if when it fails.
Everyone is fucked in this situation. I hope you see the problem with this.

[Slant]

Google can't get it right given infinite money.
Yet everyone is supposed to solve it like Google did.
That is the problem. I don't care about google's plight in this either. They can afford the army of lawyers.

The EU just mandated by law that a technical solution that DOES NOT WORK must solve a technical problem.
And will hold the site owner legally responsible for the situation if when it fails.
Everyone is fucked in this situation. I hope you see the problem with this.

No, not everyone. The law clearly states that. That you choose to ignore to read the law doesn't mean you can come here and talk about the fantasy scenario you have in your head. There are phrases that need fleshing out, but what you're saying is flat out false information. Just like this whole campaign is based on lies and fantasy.

[Bakis]

So its not even up for vote yet and still it's incoming?

[Yunru]

So its not even up for vote yet and still it's incoming?

There is a vote (a prevote already happened) in 22-23 days. It needs to pass via Eu parliament.

But as you have seen what happened in america with their net neutrality, there is a chance it could pass.

[Danner]

No, not everyone. The law clearly states that. That you choose to ignore to read the law doesn't mean you can come here and talk about the fantasy scenario you have in your head. There are phrases that need fleshing out, but what you're saying is flat out false information. Just like this whole campaign is based on lies and fantasy.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation certainly disagree, and have spent a major amount of effort explaining the consequence of this law. The OP did paste that link.
While I have _not_ read the actual law (did you?), I have read their page. So tell me, why should I listen to some random guy on the internet over the EFF? The burden to show I'm wrong is on you, and you just went into ad-hominem mode.

From the EFF's website linked in the OP:

• Everyone need to use ContentID-like technology.
  
  Spoiler: 

  Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The filter technology does not work.
  
  Spoiler: 

  Even under the best of circumstances, this presents huge problems. Algorithms that do content-matching are frankly terrible at it. The Made-in-the-USA version of this is YouTube's Content ID system, which improperly flags legitimate works all the time, but still gets flack from entertainment companies for not doing more.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The filter technology block legitimate uses
  
  Spoiler: 

  There are lots of legitimate reasons for Internet users to upload copyrighted works. You might upload a clip from a nightclub (or a protest, or a technical presentation) that includes some copyrighted music in the background. Or you might just be wearing a t-shirt with your favorite album cover in your Tinder profile. You might upload the cover of a book you're selling on an online auction site, or you might want to post a photo of your sitting room in the rental listing for your flat, including the posters on the wall and the picture on the TV.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The law forbids linking
  
  Spoiler: 

  
  Speaking of references: the problems with the new copyright proposal don't stop there. Under Article 11, each member state will get to create a new copyright in news. If it passes, in order to link to a news website, you will either have to do so in a way that satisfies the limitations and exceptions of all 28 laws, or you will have to get a license. This is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of wiki (obviously), much less Wikipedia.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  

[Deleted]

Nobody gives a shit if Google can get it right. They can afford to pay billions in fines. Why are you so concerned about bullshit that doesn't affect you? Fair use is not going to be removed, you know?

The worst thing people do, clickbait and don't read legal texts in context.

We're giving a massive competitive advantage to companies that already have "effective content recognition technologies", or those who can afford it. The EU defending the creation of monopolies is very concerning.

In general, expecting google to be able to afford it is not a good argument. And neither is dismissing concerns because it doesn't affect some person.
What if I want to be the next google?. It's already a tremendous task to compete with them in any of their services. It'll only be harder if my startup has to face similar hurdles as google does, without access to the billions that Google has.
I suggest you defend the legislation on its merits, not on the google's ability to defend against it.



I know you're responding to concerns about article 13 but, while we're at this "making google pay" thing, we should also explore article 11. Which is drafted from national legislation that is not widespread through the union. Far as I'm aware, similar legislation only exists in Germany and Spain.
I suppose you can shed some light into how this affected publications in Germany. If I recall correctly tabloids like Bild ended up with diminished traffic.
I can tell you how this went in Spain: we don't have google news. They refused to pay and closed shop. Which is an undesirable outcome, for google, for the newspapers, and for the readers.

[Slant]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation certainly disagree, and have spent a major amount of effort explaining the consequence of this law. The OP did paste that link.
While I have _not_ read the actual law (did you?), I have read their page. So tell me, why should I listen to some random guy on the internet over the EFF? The burden to show I'm wrong is on you, and you just went into ad-hominem mode.

From the EFF's website linked in the OP:

• Everyone need to use ContentID-like technology.
  
  Spoiler: 

  Under Article 13 of the proposal, sites that allow users to post text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will have to filter all their users' submissions against a database of copyrighted works. Sites will have to pay to license the technology to match submissions to the database, and to identify near matches as well as exact ones. Sites will be required to have a process to allow rightsholders to update this list with more copyrighted works.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The filter technology does not work.
  
  Spoiler: 

  Even under the best of circumstances, this presents huge problems. Algorithms that do content-matching are frankly terrible at it. The Made-in-the-USA version of this is YouTube's Content ID system, which improperly flags legitimate works all the time, but still gets flack from entertainment companies for not doing more.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The filter technology block legitimate uses
  
  Spoiler: 

  There are lots of legitimate reasons for Internet users to upload copyrighted works. You might upload a clip from a nightclub (or a protest, or a technical presentation) that includes some copyrighted music in the background. Or you might just be wearing a t-shirt with your favorite album cover in your Tinder profile. You might upload the cover of a book you're selling on an online auction site, or you might want to post a photo of your sitting room in the rental listing for your flat, including the posters on the wall and the picture on the TV.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  
  
  
• The law forbids linking
  
  Spoiler: 

  
  Speaking of references: the problems with the new copyright proposal don't stop there. Under Article 11, each member state will get to create a new copyright in news. If it passes, in order to link to a news website, you will either have to do so in a way that satisfies the limitations and exceptions of all 28 laws, or you will have to get a license. This is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of wiki (obviously), much less Wikipedia.
  Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/0...ally-wikipedia
  

Ok, since you clearly won't do the legwork and keep quoting bullshit secondary sites... here's the actual article 13, the most important primary source:

Article 13
Use of protected content by information society service providers storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users

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

2.Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1.

3.Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments.

Fair Use has not been mentioned once. It's not being abolished. You can still generate your shitty memes. Where exactly is fair use limited? And remember, since Fair Use is a thing in all national legislations that I know of, you'll need to actually mention it and abolish it specifically for it to be gone. So tell me, where do they kill it?

Ah, right. They aren't.

See that "large amounts of works" bit? That's the one that tells you it's aimed at Google (and the likes) specifically. MMO-C is not required to do anything, because frankly, MMO-C isn't big enough to show up on this particular radar.

Those filters working or not working isn't an excuse not to regulate it. It's not the EU's task to tell companies how to run their business. It's their job to make sure that companies comply with EU legislation and in this case, take adequate steps (it even says so in the text, right there!) to protect copyrights of content creators. That isn't new, that's already part of every national legislation that I know of. Whether or not filters don't work doesn't matter.

And filter technology blocking legit uses? Well, that's something to improve then, isn't it? Our copyright protection agency in Germany also had a lot of videos banned from Youtube that shouldn't have been banned. Mostly, because smaller music bands tend to upload their music on their own video channel. That wasn't even filtered by Youtube, that was manually requested and enforced by GEMA. Shit like this happens. You gotta deal with it, but Article 13 really has nothing to do with incompetence of people.

Btw, where exactly is that linking prohibition? What Article 11 prohibits is reproduction not linking.

Here's the Directive Art 11 refers to:

Article 2

Reproduction right

Member States shall provide for the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit direct or indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means and in any form, in whole or in part:

(a) for authors, of their works;

(b) for performers, of fixations of their performances;

(c) for phonogram producers, of their phonograms;

(d) for the producers of the first fixations of films, in respect of the original and copies of their films;

(e) for broadcasting organisations, of fixations of their broadcasts, whether those broadcasts are transmitted by wire or over the air, including by cable or satellite.

Article 3

Right of communication to the public of works and right of making available to the public other subject-matter

1. Member States shall provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.

2. Member States shall provide for the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the making available to the public, by wire or wireless means, in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them:

(a) for performers, of fixations of their performances;

(b) for phonogram producers, of their phonograms;

(c) for the producers of the first fixations of films, of the original and copies of their films;

(d) for broadcasting organisations, of fixations of their broadcasts, whether these broadcasts are transmitted by wire or over the air, including by cable or satellite.

3. The rights referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not be exhausted by any act of communication to the public or making available to the public as set out in this Article.

See that headline? It says Reproduction. And the whole section speaks about basically making works available. That doesn't mean "link to it" but "incorporate the work on a publically available website".

You need to do the groundworks before you come here and make outrageously stupid claims based on the mad ravings on conspiracy theory websites. Jesus fuck, this is annoying.

- - - Updated - - -

We're giving a massive competitive advantage to companies that already have "effective content recognition technologies", or those who can afford it. The EU defending the creation of monopolies is very concerning.

In general, expecting google to be able to afford it is not a good argument. And neither is dismissing concerns because it doesn't affect some person.
What if I want to be the next google?. It's already a tremendous task to compete with them in any of their services. It'll only be harder if my startup has to face similar hurdles as google does, without access to the billions that Google has.
I suggest you defend the legislation on its merits, not on the google's ability to defend against it.



I know you're responding to concerns about article 13 but, while we're at this "making google pay" thing, we should also explore article 11. Which is drafted from national legislation that is not widespread through the union. Far as I'm aware, similar legislation only exists in Germany and Spain.
I suppose you can shed some light into how this affected publications in Germany. If I recall correctly tabloids like Bild ended up with diminished traffic.
I can tell you how this went in Spain: we don't have google news. They refused to pay and closed shop. Which is an undesirable outcome, for google, for the newspapers, and for the readers.

The EU doesn't intend for this to give anyone a competetive advantage. The point is to protect copyright across the borders with one ruleset, instead of 28. That companies that are not Google (who had to have their arms twisted by quite a bit) to deal with these things doesn't concern the EU at this stage. Once you're big enough, you should absolutely have to follow the same rules that Google does. And why not? That's what fair competition is about. Anything else would be, in fact, unfair. To Google and to the next company that figures out a niche and becomes a big star. It's not the EU's job to tell companies how to run their business. It's the EU's job to do that everyone plays under the same rules. And those rules mainly serve to protect the interests of weaker parties, usually the consumers but in this case also the copyright holders. This is a good thing.

If you want to be the next Google, you better fucking oblige with EU legislation. We're done with US companies romping over our national laws because they pick and choose the country they like most due to taxes or legal loopholes they may have. I have defended the legislation on its merits, but as is usually the case when I get into the gritty bits of it, people phase out because they don't actually understand what they're speaking about.

Article 11 really aims at Google News. There has been a huge controversy over Google News not just linking to articles, but quoting entire sections from newspapers. Google being smart people, they quoted the interesting passages and as someone who uses Google News a lot, I can assert that skimming over Google News really gets you the big picture without ever having to actually follow the link to a newspaper's website.

You can imagine the financial damage that does to papers. Now, personally, I say fuck 'em, because they drown my browser in bad ads. But I can see why they're upset that Google gets to quote the relevant information straight from their website with a crawler (read: no editorial work, no huge money investment) and reduces their traffic (the only way you can survive on the internet if you live off ads).

See the people whinging about paywalls all the time? Thank Google News for that. Because Paywalls are really the only way for newspapers to actually enforce getting paid for their work, as good or bad as one may think it is.

Right now, German courts have limited Google News, but under Fair Use they still get to "borrow" a line or two, I think. So yes, that the EU is taking this up and tries to deal with it is a good thing. And as usually is the case, they won't get it perfectly right the first time. But that's fine, we can fix details later. And this really has nothing to do with memes at all.

[Danner]

See that "large amounts of works" bit? That's the one that tells you it's aimed at Google (and the likes) specifically. MMO-C is not required to do anything, because frankly, MMO-C isn't big enough to show up on this particular radar.

Define "large amount of works".
A gaming forum with 25000 posts / day isn't large?
Is IMDB large? Is twitter large? Is Tumblr large? Is Reddit large? Facebook? Where is the line? Who defines the line?
Is the just subjectively enforced as a way to screw over companies who step on the wrong toes?

Fair Use has not been mentioned once. It's not being abolished. You can still generate your shitty memes. Where exactly is fair use limited? And remember, since Fair Use is a thing in all national legislations that I know of, you'll need to actually mention it and abolish it specifically for it to be gone. So tell me, where do they kill it?

From your primary source -

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

The bolded technology is required. The bolded technology does not exist.
Google ContentID is amongst the most advanced systems in the world to do this thing, and it sucks.
It has false positives, and misses a significant amount of actual positives.

If Google can't get it right, who will?
Any such (now required) system will flag the post you just made as ripping off intellectual property from EU websites, and prevent you from posting that post.
Despite the fact that your post is entirely within fair use.

You are simply not able to make the argument that this law won't impact fair use, when your post making that point would be accidentally banned by automation.

Those filters working or not working isn't an excuse not to regulate it. It's not the EU's task to tell companies how to run their business. It's their job to make sure that companies comply with EU legislation and in this case, take adequate steps (it even says so in the text, right there!) to protect copyrights of content creators. That isn't new, that's already part of every national legislation that I know of. Whether or not filters don't work doesn't matter.

I strongly disagree.
It's like regulating that all cars must not make noise. Great idea, noble goal, will make traffic so much nicer. Impossible to implement. "It will only be used to screw over big car manufacturers" is not a selling point. You can't write that off as car manufacturers just being incompetent when it is literally impossible to do perfectly.

Btw, where exactly is that linking prohibition? What Article 11 prohibits is reproduction not linking.

"1. Member States shall provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them."

Your source.

[Slant]

Define "large amount of works".
A gaming forum with 25000 posts / day isn't large?
Is IMDB large? Is twitter large? Is Tumblr large? Is Reddit large? Facebook? Where is the line? Who defines the line?
Is the just subjectively enforced as a way to screw over companies who step on the wrong toes?

From your primary source -


The bolded technology is required. The bolded technology does not exist.
Google ContentID is amongst the most advanced systems in the world to do this thing, and it sucks.
It has false positives, and misses a significant amount of actual positives.

If Google can't get it right, who will?
Any such (now required) system will flag the post you just made as ripping off intellectual property from EU websites, and prevent you from posting that post.
Despite the fact that your post is entirely within fair use.

You are simply not able to make the argument that this law won't impact fair use, when your post making that point would be accidentally banned by automation.

I strongly disagree.
It's like regulating that all cars must not make noise. Great idea, noble goal, will make traffic so much nicer. Impossible to implement. "It will only be used to screw over big car manufacturers" is not a selling point. You can't write that off as car manufacturers just being incompetent when it is literally impossible to do perfectly.

"1. Member States shall provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them."

Your source.

"Large amount of works" is going to be defined when the national acts are being ratified. What some dunces don't get is that a directive has zero legal binding power in itself. What it does is require national Governments to convert it into national legislation. Why? Because every country has slightly different requirements or history and cultural customs. These directives are meant to be a bit vague in certain places, so that the nations can adjust these things according to their individual needs.

Don't get hung up on "duh, large isn't defined!" This directive is aimed at the global players the size of Alphabet/Google/Youtube and Facebook. It's not aimed at MMO-C. I would say Imgur would fall under this, so they'll have to start paying attention. But as fair use is not a problem, any meme stored on imgur is fine. Because memes are pretty much a textbook example of Fair Use. You take a cute cat picture... slap a witty line underneath, and you have now altered the picture significantly enough to make it fair use.

Google has the technology, Facebook as the technology. The companies that don't have the technology should absofuckinglutely get it as soon as possible. And most of all, content hosters like whatstheirname... "freeuploads.whatever" or how they're called, they'll definitely need to start paying attention. Because this law is absolutely the right tool to take the entire website down for pirated software. No, we do not give a shit that it's a lot of data that you store. What we do care about is that somehow 90% of it is pirated content. Imagine that, huh?

Laws are not copyrighted. Did you know that? No, of course you did not. Why did I even ask...

And even if they were, they would be part of the public domain, as without that criteria, laws... would... not... be... binding. Imagine that. For a law to be applicable to you as a private person, it has to be known to you. How... interesting.

Now, if I was to quote the entire text of GRR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books... Just to illustrate to you how complicated politics can be. He would probably bust my ass. And rightly so. No, that would not be a fair use case. But that's not your trivial point, is it? Because I'm almost willing to bet you have no idea what Fair Use is.

As for the last part... Read that again, out loud, slowly... "provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise OR prohibit any communication to the public of their works." Gee, fancy that... game companies that have you sign an NDA can actually, legally do that. This is a novel concept. I wonder... where does it say "you are generally prohibited from refering (communicating, blabla, what it says there) to someone else's work unless they authorise you"? Oh right... nowhere!

What this would affect is NDAs. Newspapers probably wouldn't even generally prohibit communication unless it's the big ones like NYT or so. But they sit in the US and as such have no rights in the EU. So, it'll probably be Axel Springer throwing a fit. Whoopdeedoo, I have them blocked on Google News anyway what with their paywalls and shit. I'm getting a lot of the same news (copied from a news agency like Reuters, just like AS publications do) from regional papers these days. It's funny how the text is actually the same. :P

- - - Updated - - -

Btw, because this is relevant... look at point 33 of the preamble:

(33)For the purposes of this Directive, it is necessary to define the concept of press publication in a way that embraces only journalistic publications, published by a service provider, periodically or regularly updated in any media, for the purpose of informing or entertaining. Such publications would include, for instance, daily newspapers, weekly or monthly magazines of general or special interest and news websites. Periodical publications which are published for scientific or academic purposes, such as scientific journals, should not be covered by the protection granted to press publications under this Directive. This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public.

For the linguistically challenged, this translates to: Linking.

[Danner]

@Slant:

I wrote a big reply, but you know what, let's just cut to the chase here. I'm just repeating arguments here, and you're ignoring them anyway while barely able to hold your ridicule of topics you deliberately misinterpret. I am not your enemy, but you are certainly far too combative for my taste.

Assume there exists only one piece of Intellectual Property in the world.
The sentence "My Hovercraft is full of Eels", as written and performed by John Cleese in the Monty Python.
Let's for the sake of argument also assume he is the copyright holder.

Will this legislation force the Google search engine to blacklist sites featuring the sentence "My hovercraft is full of Eels"?

Options:
- Google must remove any site featuring this phrase.
- Google must remove any site lacking explicit allowance to host this sentence, as authorized by John Cleese
- Google is just providing a link. Any copyright breach is done by the site google links to. Google don't need to do anything.

My understanding of the law is option 1 is the correct answer.

If Google has not gotten permission from John Cleese to indirectly making the sentence (tm) available, they cannot provide the link to any site that has it, whether that site is hosting the sentence legally or illegally. The legislation makes no difference between the two. IMO it should, as one of them is akin to referring to a shop, while the other is akin to pointing to the shady back-street dealer selling stuff he looted from that shop. But this law, does to my understanding, not separate the two. And this is the part that makes Google have to pay newspapers to link to their articles.

And given this understanding, the discussion is really just down to semantics of whether there is "one rule for google, another for MMO-champion". Because if Google can't offer that link, why should MMO-champion? If that's all down to a series of individual nation's definition of "large", then it's gonna be incredibly hard to navigate for a poor site. I don't like laws that aren't enforceable.

You are free to think this state of affairs is fine.
I am free to think otherwise.

[Deleted]

The EU doesn't intend for this to give anyone a competetive advantage.
Once you're big enough, you should absolutely have to follow the same rules that Google does.
And those rules mainly serve to protect the interests of weaker parties
If you want to be the next Google, you better fucking oblige with EU legislation. We're done with US companies romping over our national laws because they pick and choose the country they like most due to taxes or legal loopholes they may have.

I don't think anyone is questioning the intention. But the results.
Yes, making common front against the abuse by american companies is a good goal. But we must be cautious as to what results we get from our intentions.
The concern, as I delineated, is not so much a question of following the same standards as Google once you're big enough. It's rather the possibility of even getting to be sufficiently big to even compete with them. If I need to develop an "effective content recognition technologies", that's an extra cost upfront that Google didn't need to invest when they were starting: it is increasingly harder to compete with Google.

Article 11 really aims at Google News. There has been a huge controversy over Google News not just linking to articles, but quoting entire sections from newspapers. Google being smart people, they quoted the interesting passages and as someone who uses Google News a lot, I can assert that skimming over Google News really gets you the big picture without ever having to actually follow the link to a newspaper's website.

You can imagine the financial damage that does to papers. Now, personally, I say fuck 'em, because they drown my browser in bad ads. But I can see why they're upset that Google gets to quote the relevant information straight from their website with a crawler

Right. The concern was clear from the get go.
Our papers were all essentially in support of ancillary copyright. They were ecstatic, actually. Ever since they closed google news here, they're not that happy about it.
The large publications because, for them, it was simply extra revenue. People were regularly visiting their sites regardless.
And the small publications, because google news was free publicity for them.
Google news wasn't very popular here anyway. Most people started to know about it when they found out that we don't have it.
To me, that's a fairly good example of good intentions, questionable results.

Right now, German courts have limited Google News, but under Fair Use they still get to "borrow" a line or two, I think. So yes, that the EU is taking this up and tries to deal with it is a good thing. And as usually is the case, they won't get it perfectly right the first time. But that's fine, we can fix details later. And this really has nothing to do with memes at all.

See, that's the thing. I'm all for the EU taking it up. I'm conflicted in that it's too easy to get it wrong.
The over-the-top campaigns don't help. But they're to be expected when the stakes are high.

The iterative nature of the EU used to be fine. Since Lisbon, it's all more subject to democratic supervision. More iteration needs to happen at the drafting process, rather than after approval: because the citizen expects something more fleshed out.
This piece of legislation is facing a divided parliament. Which is fine for a democratic institution. But it's also a testament to how not everything is as clearly positive.

[Slant]

@Slant:

I wrote a big reply, but you know what, let's just cut to the chase here. I'm just repeating arguments here, and you're ignoring them anyway while barely able to hold your ridicule of topics you deliberately misinterpret. I am not your enemy, but you are certainly far too combative for my taste.

Assume there exists only one piece of Intellectual Property in the world.
The sentence "My Hovercraft is full of Eels", as written and performed by John Cleese in the Monty Python.
Let's for the sake of argument also assume he is the copyright holder.

Will this legislation force the Google search engine to blacklist sites featuring the sentence "My hovercraft is full of Eels"?

Options:
- Google must remove any site featuring this phrase.
- Google must remove any site lacking explicit allowance to host this sentence, as authorized by John Cleese
- Google is just providing a link. Any copyright breach is done by the site google links to. Google don't need to do anything.

My understanding of the law is option 1 is the correct answer.

If Google has not gotten permission from John Cleese to indirectly making the sentence (tm) available, they cannot provide the link to any site that has it, whether that site is hosting the sentence legally or illegally. The legislation makes no difference between the two. IMO it should, as one of them is akin to referring to a shop, while the other is akin to pointing to the shady back-street dealer selling stuff he looted from that shop. But this law, does to my understanding, not separate the two. And this is the part that makes Google have to pay newspapers to link to their articles.

And given this understanding, the discussion is really just down to semantics of whether there is "one rule for google, another for MMO-champion". Because if Google can't offer that link, why should MMO-champion? If that's all down to a series of individual nation's definition of "large", then it's gonna be incredibly hard to navigate for a poor site. I don't like laws that aren't enforceable.

You are free to think this state of affairs is fine.
I am free to think otherwise.

I keep pointing out text passages from the actual proposition of the directive to you, you keep telling me what you feel. Do you see why I can't take you or any other serious when they simply parrot this clickbait bullshit?

[Danner]

I keep pointing out text passages from the actual proposition of the directive to you, you keep telling me what you feel. Do you see why I can't take you or any other serious when they simply parrot this clickbait bullshit?

Well, you call the EFF "clickbait bullshit", so I can't really take you particularly seriously either.
So I guess that's that. Have a nice day.

[Slant]

Well, you call the EFF "clickbait bullshit", so I can't really take you particularly seriously either.
So I guess that's that. Have a nice day.

It's a blog, ffs. Of course it's clickbait bullshit. And it overtly ignores the words in the directive proposal. How serious do you want me to take it? I get it, you're upset that I don't agree with you and call you out on what is clearly an unfounded fearmongering campaign, but please, if you come here, at least defend your position properly.