The future of the Internet in the EU

[iansjack]

I think it goes against the ideals of democracy for a government body to attempt to reduce public knowledge of unpopular legislation.

I certainly agree with that, but the EU is probably the most open legislative body in the world. There is a wealth of detail available on their web sites about this, and all other, legislation.

I have to disagree with the idea that copyright protects the corporation rather than the individual. To my mind the situation is exactly the opposite. Take the current case (article 13) - without this legislation the onus is on the copyright holder to sue the offender, which is easy for corporations but not for individuals. This law will mean that big corporations like Google, FaceBook, etc. will be responsible for breaches of copyright on their sites, just as hard copy publishers are. This shifts the responsibility from the copyright holder to any publisher hosting breaches of copyright, which surely offers enhanced protection to individuals who produce original material.

It will, of course, make life harder for those who take no heed of copyright.

[glauxosdever]

Hi,


Again, I'm not against copyright protection. Copyrights (of reasonable length) are here to protect the rights of the authors. What I'm against is copyfraud.

Google, Facebook and other (social) media corporations will be responsible for making sure their platforms don't have infringing content, as you say. But they can't manually check every upload, as the upload rates are way bigger than validation rates would be. Therefore they resort to automatic filtering which, while more efficient for them, isn't intelligent like people usually are and thus can't identify obvious false alarms. But they also can't identify obvious true alarms, at least not fast enough. I sorted a Youtube search query yesterday "by upload date" and the second result was a video titled "Get X book for free here" or something. Today it isn't there, hopefully, someone probably reported it manually or something.

But I'm probably repeating myself at this point, so I'm out of this discussion, at least temporarily.


Regards,
glauxosdever

[iansjack]

Google, Facebook and other (social) media corporations will be responsible for making sure their platforms don't have infringing content, as you say. But they can't manually check every upload, as the upload rates are way bigger than validation rates would be. Therefore they resort to automatic filtering

Well, perhaps it's time they changed their business model? Infringing on the rights of the individual so that life is more convenient, and more profitable, for the giant Internet companies is possibly not the most equitable way to run things.

[Solar]

iansjack:

I understand you come from a background that is directly concerned about protection of copyrights.

But have you even bothered to read into the concerns fielded, not only by some forum users here but by some very knowledgeable individuals commenting on the subject?

You've been fielding some rather dismissive one-liners here that suggest you didn't...

[Brendan]

Hi,

As far as I can tell...

a) Almost everyone agrees that creators should be able to protect their work, and almost nobody thinks copyrights themselves are bad.

b) In the past it's been incredibly difficult for creators to uphold their copyrights, especially for the small creators, because nobody can monitor the entire internet to determine if/when their work has been copied.

c) The intent of proposition 13 is to make it more practical for creators (especially small creators) to uphold their copyrights, by forcing large hosts to help creators determine if/when their work has been copied. This in itself is not unreasonable at all.

d) People are worried about how different large hosts will implement "proposition 13 compliance" and aren't (or shouldn't be) worried about the underlying intent of proposition 13.

e) Proposition 13 allows large hosts to implement "proposition 13 compliance" in a good way - e.g. with algorithmic matching followed by thorough human review to avoid false positives, with a (mandatory) appeals process, and "proportionate measures" and "best effort" safeguards; however it doesn't necessarily prevent large hosts from implementing "proposition 13 compliance" in a bad way either, so there is at least some valid reason for concern.

f) In theory, hosts that do implement "proposition 13 compliance" in a bad way will become less popular and die because people will shift to better hosts that implement "proposition 13 compliance" in a better way. In practice, the fundamental principles of capitalism (competition ensuring good stuff makes profit while bad stuff doesn't) have been so broken for so long that hosts who implement "proposition 13 compliance" in a bad way may not die.

In other words; I think the people who are worried about proposition 13 need to worry about lack of effective competition instead.


Cheers,

Brendan

[iansjack]

You have nicely summed up my take on this, Brendan. I think people should consider more carefully the responsibilities that mega corporations such as Google should have. The problem is not with the EU legislation but with the circumstances that have necessitied it.

I realize that this is an unpopular view. Most users of the internet are consumers rather than creators, and they prefer to consume without paying. And who profits from this - Google, etc. Just because creators are a minority does not detract from their right to have others respect their creations.

[glauxosdever]

Hi,

Google, Facebook and other (social) media corporations will be responsible for making sure their platforms don't have infringing content, as you say. But they can't manually check every upload, as the upload rates are way bigger than validation rates would be. Therefore they resort to automatic filtering

Well, perhaps it's time they changed their business model? Infringing on the rights of the individual so that life is more convenient, and more profitable, for the giant Internet companies is possibly not the most equitable way to run things.

It's probably the first thing said here we both agree on. Assuming platforms won't employ automatic filtering and won't operate in favour of big media companies, it won't probably be that bad. But, unless applicable laws (or public pressure) will exist, I'm not sure they will move away from automatic filtering any time soon.

Perhaps it's not really the Article 13 to blame, but the implementation of the compliance mechanisms. But perhaps Article 13 will cause more platforms to implement automatic filtering? I don't really know at this point.


Regards,
glauxosdever

[Schol-R-LEA]

This video giving an overview of the status of the lawmaking process might be relevant here about just what the 'approval' this past week actually was. TL;DR: the 'approval' was of some changes to the wording in the proposed bill. It won't be actually voted on until January 2019 at the earliest, and even if actually voted into law, it most likely won't go into effect for a year or more afterwards.

[Combuster]

One of the concerns not yet listed here is that as Article 13 places the burden on the hosting party, that burden can be insurmountable if you gross less than a million a year as a company.

The current abuse is also ingrained at a much higher level than you'd expect. Are you a big company? No problem, you just make the naysayers vanish come election times.


How copyright as a whole is handled right now is all about barking up the wrong tree. If you want the copyright violators, you should go for the violators and not shoot the messenger. The system can be so much lighter - and fairer - if hosters are required to identify uploaders rather than uploads, because it means that legal disputes go back to the judicary system where due process is constitutionally guaranteed, than having the megacorps pass judgement on their biased whims.

An other alternative is to abolish copyright altogether, and let the industry finally learn to be post-industrial and run on service. Your screen can never capture a physical presence at a concert, nor is there any art to copy in the first place if you didn't pay the commission fee to have it made for you.

[sortie]

The system can be so much lighter - and fairer - if hosters are required to identify uploaders rather than uploads

Forcing sites to know the real name of people also comes with a whole slew of problems, which can be very bad as well.

[Combuster]

For about every abuse-sensitive service in real life, you are already asked to show your ID, so why not online? You could even have third party authenticators that give you a certificate with "this here is a real person, if you give us this code and a lawsuit, we'll append it with the actual personal details"

The government already runs such a system in my country.

[iansjack]

The system can be so much lighter - and fairer - if hosters are required to identify uploaders rather than uploads, because it means that legal disputes go back to the judicary system where due process is constitutionally guaranteed, than having the megacorps pass judgement on their biased whims.

That rather presupposes that it is easier to verify people than to verify data. I'm not sure that is true. It is easy to disguise yourself as a person. If you successfully disguise a creative work then you probably change it so much that it is no longer subject to the original copyright. Also, I think that people overlook the very reasonable provisions that copyright laws make for "fair use".

An other alternative is to abolish copyright altogether, and let the industry finally learn to be post-industrial and run on service. Your screen can never capture a physical presence at a concert, nor is there any art to copy in the first place if you didn't pay the commission fee to have it made for you.

That sounds a bit to me like saying that you should abolish the concept of ownership altogether. If someone cares about your car enough to steal it, and you don't care enough to make that impossible, then perhaps the thief deserves the vehicle more than you. Why go to all the complications of police, courts, judges and juries when we can just say that no-one has the right to exclusive ownership of things? It would save a lot of money and make life so much simpler.

[Combuster]

That sounds a bit to me like saying that you should abolish the concept of ownership altogether.

That sounds like a variation of a very common non-sequiteur on the subject: If someone takes your car, you do not have a car. If someone takes your art online, you do still have the original. That's why it's called copyright.

The point was that the onset of the information age has nullified many a foundational assumption on the matter. Information is no longer scarce, the copy operations are the most fundamental building block in every computer. Revolutions start with "I have a dream", and why would we discuss the road there if there is no goal?

[iansjack]

That's a common fallacy. If I produce data for a living and someone publishes that data without paying me then they are depriving me of my livelihood. This is actually far more serious than depriving me of - for example - my car. I can buy another car - provided I still have the means to earn money.

[Combuster]

I don't see a fallacy here? Payment is done for the finite resource, i.e. the work, not for the data. I did mention commissions in the opening, did I?

Of course yours was a bad example; there are certainly jobs to be found that have no existence without copyright, but most cases are covered by changing business models and continuing to do the same work. After all, are we supposed to be mourning the people from the industrial age that lost a job because they couldn't compete with weaving machines? I'm sure people back then complained.