The European Commission Is Preparing a Frontal Attack On the Hyperlink (juliareda.eu) 220
An anonymous reader writes: Julia Reda, a member of the European parliament, is sounding the alarm on new copyright legislation under development. She says the European Commission is considering copyright protection for hyperlinking. Reda says, "This idea flies in the face of both existing interpretation and spirit of the law as well as common sense. Each weblink would become a legal landmine and would allow press publishers to hold every single actor on the Internet liable." Under this scheme, simply linking to copyrighted material would be legally considered "providing access," and thus require explicit permission of the rightsholder. Reda warns that it could lead to legal expenses for anyone who shares links (read: everybody), and ultimately the fragmentation of the internet.
This is what you get. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you create a super-layer of petty bureaucrats to run your lives, you can't be overly surprised when they create a bunch of petty and stupid rules.
Re:This is what you get. XXX on idea exchange (Score:2)
Government run amok again. Control and tax everything.
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And in this case, the people involved willingly walked into it, basically, demanded that this sort of control be ceded to the faceless unelected bureaucrats. No one to blame but themselves.
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The commission is appointed by the democratic member states, a bit like how in many countries the government is appointed by the elected parliament.
See, outside of the UK you don't need to be a member of parliament to get a seat in the government, get used to it, it works fine.
Re: This is what you get. XXX on idea exchange (Score:2, Insightful)
Any time you make an official's position further from an election (e.g. An election --> parliamentary body --> committee --> appointee) you increase likelihood of corruption with *every* additional step.
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Nonsense. Australia appoints its public law enforcement officials - police chiefs, judges, public prosecutors & defenders, etc - and it works with minimal levels of corruption.
Election of such officials - WITHOUT mandatory voting - just results in interest groups getting their preferred puppet installed, and sets up conditions that encourage corruption. When your continued employment depends on popularity instead of merit, you find ways legal and otherwise to maintain your popularity.
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Election of such officials can also result in the position becoming very over-politicised - you end up with public prosecutors being elected because they promise they will turn a blind eye to certain crimes, or pledge to do whatever it takes to bring down a certain organisation regardless of guilt. Low-level officials end up trying to make policy* rather than simply enforce it.
America is a good example of how this can end, because their government has more layers than most. It's quite common to see the gove
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The problem is, the only known alternative is "whoever has the biggest stick rules", which is even worse.
Re:This is what you get. (Score:5, Interesting)
This comes up every six months. It never gets beyond a proposal.
Re:This is what you get. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is of limited comfort to me. If people keep trying it, they could eventually succeed. They need to stop even trying something so asinine.
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There's probably some group out there who's trying to bring back restrictions on women's rights to vote, slavery, or other sorts of things and doing so every six months. It doesn't mean they'll eventually do it. We just hear about this on Slashdot because, well, it's what we're interested in (and what generates comments and views).
Re:This is what you get. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like terrorists, they only have to succeed once.
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See, outside of the UK you don't need to be a member of parliament to get a seat in the government, get used to it, it works fine.
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See, outside of the UK you don't need to be a member of parliament to get a seat in the government, get used to it, it works fine.
If they are not elected, how can they have a "seat in government", a "seat" is a geographical area where an election is held to find a representative. Washington DC is the only place I can think of in the west where taxpayers are denied a vote, ie: they don't get a "seat".
Ignorants (Score:5, Interesting)
As usual, the people in charge of the law have no idea how technology works.
To make a car analogy... well, this thing is so mind-bogglingly stupid that I can't think of any analogy.
Fight for your bitcoins! [coinbrawl.com]
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Re:Ignorants (Score:5, Informative)
Lemme take a shot at this one:
Maps are illegal - they provide access to the locations of private land. We should ask every landowner if they want to appear on a map.
e.g. I can't tell you where the coffee shop is, because that would be providing access. Lemme ask the owner of the shop first. I'm sure he'll be okay with you knowing but I should check.
We're no longer allowed to talk about things that are illegal? This is the censorship of knowledge.
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Re: Ignorants (Score:5, Insightful)
Car analogy? Ok - I'll give it a shot.
This is like claiming you are trespassing on my land, because some windblown dirt landed on the highway and you drove across it.
Re: Ignorants (Score:4, Insightful)
Car analogy? Ok - I'll give it a shot.
This is like claiming you are trespassing on my land, because some windblown dirt landed on the highway and you drove across it.
Why do you need an analogy?
If you put something onto the Internet then you published it. A hyperlink to what you published is the other party citing you as a source. Not only historically has it not been bad to cite sources, it has been considered good to cite sources and has been considered good to inform others of work that the informer feels should be read.
That anyone anywhere could get into trouble for hyperlinking to something on the Internet is absurd. If the creator of the work doesn't want others to read or reference it then they need to either not publish it for all to read, or they need to use mechanisms like authentication to prevent access to the content. Hell, they could even look at the referrer and if it's not one of their authorized domains, redirect to an entry-point page. Basically there are already ways of avoiding being linked-to if the publisher wants to avoid being linked-to.
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What's more, citing a source is a direct disclaimer that I do not own nor am the creator of the cited work. Here is where you can find the cited work and who is responsible for it. The hyperlink does this, by providing both location and origin of the work linked to. I.e. somesite.com is the origin and work.htm is the location. Or it is a reference to a reference. If the EU wants to forbid hyperlinking without permission of the work creator, they need to ban citations as well. Good luck with that by the way,
Re:Ignorants (Score:5, Insightful)
A car analogy would be, if you are discussing how poor Bob's car got stolen, then you are arrested for stealing Bob's car, even though you've never seen nor touched it, let alone stole it.
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Re:Ignorants (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remove all road signs for cities unless you get explicit written permission of all it's inhabitants.
Re:Ignorants (Score:5, Insightful)
India is years ahead (Score:3, Informative)
Only criminals will use hyperlinks (Score:2, Informative)
I'd read TFA, but I didn't want to do anything illegal by clicking the link.
There is a higher law (Score:5, Informative)
It's called the law of the World Wide Web, and it comes down to us from the writings of the global prophet Tim.
The actual wording of the law is too technical for mere mortals, being as it is written in ancient C code found on an artifact we think was called a hard drive dug up from the buried ruins of a cyclotron in what was once Switzerland.
But the law can be paraphrased as:
If you deposit your writings or your pictures on an HTTP or HTTPS server without access control
- and thus allow your work to be served,
(that is freely transferred by the standard world wide web protocols)
to any of the computers attached to the great public Internet,
- then you implicitly have created a holy URL by which your work can be accessed and copied,
- and should you also allow the URL itself to be discovered over the Internet by the use of standard world wide web protocols,
- THEN it is the law that:
- any person or machine is allowed
(as inherently enabled and implied by the fundamental nature of the technology as Tim intended it)
- to republish that URL on any writings that they also cause to be served by the same standard protocols.
- and to copy and read or view the writings or pictures that you made freely available by your action of publishing it on the World Wide Web.
Thus is created the fundamental Web network nature of creation that we know as the World Wide Web.
This is the first law of the Holy Interwebs. Bookmark it and do not lose it.
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Bookmark it and do not lose it.
But don't forget to get a permission before bookmarking. A bookmark is a link too.
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I wonder if this law is to counter Google News displaying links to news stories and eating e-newspaper's lunch.
OTOH, since google search results is mainly links, won't it have to shut down because it can no longer display links related to your search? Without search, the internet is pretty much useless.
They should do a compromise, and allow some links to be copyrighted while others should be linkable. Private, copyrighted links should be like "http://server/privatepage.html_priv"
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They should do a compromise, and allow some links to be copyrighted while others should be linkable. Private, copyrighted links should be like "http://server/privatepage.html_priv"
Or they shouldn't put their shit on the web when they don't want it linked.
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That's like saying, "if you don't want to be raped, don't leave your house."
Sorry, dear hoster in the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot use your services anymore. Hosting anything on your machines has become a liability and we have to discontinue doing business with you. Fortunately, on the internet it matters jack shit where I put my files, so as long as you have insane politicians, this will be NOT YOU.
If you don't enjoy losing business, get some politicians that think before they act.
Signed,
Former customer
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Dear Former customer, Our Russian and Chinese comrades will welcome you with open arms and a gun to your head, as will countries with piss poor hosting speeds, and countries which will be tapping your cables and feeding all your data back to the NSA borg.
We hope you enjoy your new business partners and look forward to jacking up the price when you come crawling back to us.
Sincerely,
The lesser of evils.
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I hope you didn't e-mail them this. If hyperlinks become covered by copyright and only able to be linked to with the explicit consent of the site owner, then how long until e-mails are copyrighted and you can only type THEM out with the permission of the e-mail owner? (Yes, this sound like it'd reduce spam, but do you really think spammers are going to care about copyright law?)
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But I don't run the webpage. It's my good friend Ali Bengali from Generistan. We moved our whole office there. And we wish to offer your our thanks, for we didn't even know just how much cheaper it is to run operations from there before we were forced to look into it.
signed,
former employer of EU citizens
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But I don't run the webpage. It's my good friend Ali Bengali from Generistan.
Oh, so you're saying you conspired with Ali Bengali across international boundaries?
Tsk tsk, that'll be 20 years all by itself, Mr Opportunist, if that even is your real name.
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Of course it's not my name. It's the name of my corporation. Which is now moving away. You want to jail that loser we used to run it while staying with you? Cool idea, saves us the severance package. Yeah, you do that, of course, we want to cooperate with you fully!
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Only the anal whine and pretend to be upset about simple errors. The rest of us are so fluent in typo that we don't even notice. Hell, most of us don't even have a basic grasp of grammar, are unable to spell, and aren't willing to put much effort into our replies.
I try to do so, not because I care about you but because I care about improving my writing skills. My writing skills are sorely lacking and this gives me something to do in my old age. If anything, I actually appreciate the 'Grammar Nazis." They he
Here's a link with much more detail about the law (Score:4, Informative)
Is this a euromyth (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in the UK I experience a constant trickle of Euromyth nonsense, straight bananas, covering up barmaids breasts, bombay mix, the eurosausage etc etc etc. So maybe this will become a real thing and the eurosceptics will have successfully cried wolf enough time for people to not notice the tiger in the living room. But I doubt it.
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The original story was a lot more amusing than that. The bill actually got entered into the legislative calendar, but nobody could understand it, so they referred it to the committee on swamps, where it died. (And it started when an author(?) of a math textbook offered to donate his royalties to the state if they would just adopt this bill [and, IIRC, make his book the state's official math text].)
I'm sure there was more to the story, but that's all I ever heard the details on. There may even have been a
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Only when you intentionally ignore parts of what it says there.
1 Kings 7:23:
On first glance, that looks like "pi is exactly 3!", but first glances are nearly always wrong. This is no different. There are two details to consider
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Indeed. The bill in question was NOT intended to define pi to be 3.0, the math in the bill actually defined pi to be 9.0. Which is probably why noone understood it....
Squaring the circle (Score:2)
There may even have been a religious angle
Something about "squaring the circle" and an argument between Christians and ancient Greeks, it's been around for centuries. Oddly general relativity dictates a circle drawn around a deep gravity well will significantly reduce the value of Pi, the value for Earth's gravity well makes the circumference of a circular orbit around it about an inch less than expected using Pi.
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No religious angle in this one.
The pi=3 in the bible thing is half-true. There is a circular vessel described in those ratios, but this was a vessel made with ancient techniques, not precision manufacturing. It was just a little misshapen, or the measurements not performed with perfect accuracy.
Is someone bored? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is someone bored? (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't originate with politicians, it comes from corporate lobbyists for publishers, newspapers, etc. Those corporations hold a lot of power in Europe and they are seeing their business models and fortunes destroyed by the Internet. And since politicians in Europe are highly dependent on the goodwill of these publishers (not having a lot of other channels for reaching voters), they respond to this kind of pressure.
Hyperlinks are citations (Score:2)
I view a hyperlink as a form of citation. If European periodical publishers don't want their articles to be cited in other works, let them live with a decrease in their impact factor [wikipedia.org].
Re:Is someone bored? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Corporations" have those rights in the US because individuals have them. That is, I don't lose my right to free speech or campaign contributions or conduct my business according to my religion just because I choose to run my business as a corporation. In Europe, corporations don't have those rights because individuals don't have those rights either; th
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Individuals do have those rights in the EU. The European Convention on Human Rights is just as legally binding as the American Bill of Rights.
It's just as annoying for the governments too - here in the UK the government has spent over a decade dragging their feet over giving voting rights to prisoners, something required under European law but strongly opposed by most in the UK. The EU doesn't actually have much in the way of enforcement powers, so the UK has been able to defy the court ruling simply by agr
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Back home, in the State of Maine, they actively have a sort of voting drive for prisoners. They register to vote, if not already registered, and vote in the town vote where they legally resided before being incarcerated. They vote via absentee ballot. Quite a number of prisoners vote. The prisoners vote at a higher percentage rate than the free citizens vote. I imagine the rate is higher because they're bored but that's conjecture. I don't imagine that anyone has done a study on it.
Anyhow, the vote in local
IMPOSSIBLE!!!! (Score:2)
Europeans and *much* too progressively intelligent to pull a stunt this stupid. (At least that's what Europeans keep saying about themselves when America does something stupid.)
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No, they just can't admit they were wrong, and willingly walked into this buzzsaw.
Walled Gardens (Score:2)
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I don't mind the creation of walled gardens up to a point. The death of AOL taught us that people will migrate to free networks when they're available.
Not always, as people who play video games still tend to buy consoles more often than building a gaming PC for the living room. And as far as I can tell, they buy a Nintendo 3DS rather than a MOGA clip-on gamepad for an existing Android phone. What makes walled gardens so much more acceptable for games than otherwise?
I don't control the other end of a link (Score:5, Insightful)
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I make a legal and permitted link to some content.
Say no more! GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!
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Not that uncommon a situation if the link is to an image and the server admin grows annoyed.
I've used that once - I posted a link to a humorous cartoon on Digg, back before the great exodus. A while later I found some Gaia Online profile that looked like a relic of the nineties had hotlinked to it. So I replaced the image with another image of a moderately offensive nature - nothing illegal, but enough to rather embarrass the profile owner.
If I'd been feeling *really* evil, I'd have gone to the trouble of m
Thats the EU for you (Score:2)
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When did they "make a lot of sense"? I missed it! I must have been in the bathroom.
Technical solution: browser based boycott (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a robots.txt like file in the root which grants linking permission. Then in firefox have an option which flags unlinkable destination, and by default block such sites. Have the option in the first run dialog. Then actively campaign against sites whose copyright is not in the spirit of the open web, gpl style. Have an open web general license which permits only open web general sites to link to it. Word the license carefully. That is my thought.
Re: Technical solution: browser based boycott - my (Score:2)
See http://john.chalisque.net/Link... [chalisque.net]
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I appreciate the spirit of your suggestion, but I feel very strongly that it would be a terrible mistake to give a single inch in the face of this horrible, iniquitous, and unbelievably ignorant proposal.
Permission to follow links to a Web page is clearly implied by the decision to put up a Web page, and to allow access from the World Wide Web. Access to Web pages on a private intranet is forbidden by the same laws that forbid access to everything else on such a private network.
Re: Technical solution: browser based boycott (Score:3)
The best defense is to make the law look stupid, and likewise those trying to take advantage of it. If Stallman refused to deal with copyright law and thus draft the gpl, much of the free software movement will not have happened. The idea of diagonalisation goes back a long way. When faced with silly laws, diagonalise them, as gpl and copyleft diagonalise copyright. I am just suggesting preparing to do likewise. If many immediately prepare such a diagonal response, maybe that will make it clear such a law i
Treat the same as bibliographic references (Score:5, Insightful)
The law should treat hyperlinks as being equivalent to bibliographical references and citations in printed works. After all, that is all a hyperlink is. That browsers automate the retrieval and display of the referenced work, rather than having to search the stacks or ask the librarian to fetch the book/journal, should not affect the status of the hyperlink. As for banning them, I personally think that most web pages do not take enough advantage of hyperlinks within the body of the pages.
A proposal that would destroy the Web (Score:5, Insightful)
The World Wide Web has existed for about 25 years - quarter of a century. When it was first created, Tim Berners-Lee and his collaborators made a careful and considered decision to give the specifications away free (as in speech and as in beer). Not only was that the right thing, the ethical thing to do; it was in the spirit of the (then infant) FOSS movement; and last but not least, it was the best way to give the new-born Web wings and enable it to spread rapidly until it became truly worldwide.
Today the Web has, at the very least, 47 billion pages (based on Google statistics). How many links do you think the average page has? This proposed legislation would destroy all possible confidence in using any one of those links. It would be the Internet equivalent of magically removing the foundations of every building in New York City. The effect on the Web would be similar to the effect of 9/11 on the World Trade Center - except that it would affect over a billion people and virtually every business and government in the world.
If anyone does not wish to have people view his Web pages through links from other pages, he has a simple remedy: DON'T PUT UP A WEB SITE. If you do choose to gain the benefits of putting up a Web site, then DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE WAY IT WORKS.
Here is TBL's considered view of the status of links, posted in 1997:
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues... [w3.org]
TBL wrote: "The ability to refer to a document (or a person or any thing else) is in general a fundamental right of free speech to the same extent that speech is free. Making the reference with a hypertext link is more efficient but changes nothing else... Users and information providers and lawyers have to share this convention. If they do not, people will be frightened to make links for fear of legal implications. I received a mail message asking for "permission" to link to our site. I refused as I insisted that permission was not needed".
And here is his conclusion:
"There are some fundamental principles about links on which the Web is based. These are principles allow the world of distributed hypertext to work. Lawyers, users and technology and content providers must all agree to respect these principles which have been outlined.
"It is difficult to emphasize how important these issues are for society. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for example, addresses the right to speak. The right to make reference to something is inherent in that right. On the web, to make reference without making a link is possible but ineffective - like speaking but with a paper bag over your head".
Self-certified insane (Score:2)
The only logical conclusion one can come to is this:
It's time to abolish the European Union. It has done untold harm, and very little good (if any). When a government body proposes such sheer, raving insanity, it is signing its own suicide note.
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That big rock you've lived under for the past 50-60 years must have damaged your brain.
Do publishers have a hidden agenda? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see from Julia Reda's article that she believes the main pressure for this cretinous measure is coming from publishers. They think, she says, that their income from advertising is shrinking too quickly.
It is immediately obvious that publishers, as a group, would be perfectly delighted if the Web were to vanish tomorrow. They are under continuous severe pressure from Amazon and Google - Amazon sells their books at far lower prices than they would wish, and has established something close to a monopsony where it is the only wholesale purchaser and therefore can set its own terms. Meanwhile, Google Books is exposing vast amounts of what publishers consider their property (they don't have a high opinion of writers) to public scrutiny, without charge. Worst of all, a whole generation has grown up in the earnest belief that books and magazines, as such, are unnecessary; everything worth knowing can (they think) be found, free of charge, on the Web. Of course this isn't true, or even nearly true, but - as they say in business circles - "perception is all".
The publishing industry is certainly going through hard times, and facing very difficult decisions. But taking the Web down with it is certainly not the answer. Everyone who is in a position to do so should let the EU know, in no uncertain terms, how frightful a proposal this is and just what its consequences would be, if implemented.
This is the best possible thing that could happen (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how the Internet works. There is no independent road. The hyperlinks are the road. That is, you do not travel down a road passing by stores. You travel from store to store via hyperlinks. That entire network of hyperlinks connecting the stores is the Internet.
If this law passes, the content industry thinks they can assert copyright over a hyperlink to their site, and the linking site will have to pay them a small copyright fee. In reality what will happen is the linking site will simply delete the hyperlink. The end result will be what happened when they tried to prevent Google News from linking their articles, times a million. Any site exercising copyright control over hyperlinks will be cutting themselves off from the Internet. First their Google Pagerank will plummet since it's based partly on how many other sites link to your site, and they'll disappear from the search engines. Eventually there will no longer be any way to navigate from the Internet at large to those sites, because all the hyperlinks to them have been deleted per their request. Exercising copyright over hyperlinks will be electronic suicide, and the only remaining sites will be ones which include a legal waiver that it is completely legal to link to their site.
Please please please let this law pass!
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I work in the content industry for a major news provider. We understand how the internet works very, very well. Most of the experts work for us, never forget that.
What people like you don't understand is that the content industry would be quite happy to see the internet implode. Our CEOs remember when they made big, big money selling copy (look up the Hearst estate some time). Our editors remember when they were king makers; they used to be called the fourth branch of government. The internet ended that.
My
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So does that mean that google news doesn't honour robots.txt?
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Let's all go back to Compuserve, AOL... (Score:2)
And other closed gardens.
Then again, that might not be a bad idea for some things.
Citation Impossible (Score:2)
I was tempted to cite something interesting, but I realised I didn't have enough money to pay a lawyer to see whether it was legal to do so or whether I could get a license to do so.
In reality I would appreciate a list of the bill's sponsors and then just blacklist them, so we don't accidentally make their content linkable.
Who makes a hyperlink? (Score:4, Insightful)
The person who puts the <a></a> tags around it? Or the person who chooses to interpret (or chooses to use an interpreter that interprets) those tags as a hyperlink?
Sight ... (Score:2)
To make something like this happening you need to rewrite all the existing copyright law, Bern Convention etc.
So: this is never going to happen.
Anyone who had a clue knew: either the story is completely made up or the initiative is doomed to fail because it comes from a wacko.
So Let Me Get This Straight... (Score:2)
People who put their work up on the Internet for the world to see don't like people linking to their work for all the world to see?
Makes perfect sense, got it.
Explicit Permission (Score:2)
So if you would need explicit permission to post links would this link [slashdot.org] be a copyright violation since Slashdot hasn't given me permission? And would Slashdot be inducing infringement by allowing me to infringe on their copyright (without giving me explicit permission)?
Moronic (Score:2)
That's just fucking stupid - a link is a reference, not a copy.
If you can't reference copyrighted works, nobody can legally say "I read **CENSORED** the other day, it was great". Similarly, movie reviews would be banned. and telling people about newspaper or magazine articles they read. and lots of other everyday fair-use references to copyrighted works.
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I believe that TCP/IP was built to assure that markets can't control the network. Additionally the IETF's process has done a pretty good job of protocol ratification and (for the most part) kept the playing field level.
Re:I fart on your links (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty soon just looking at a link without even clicking on it will be an offense. And they'll call it something like "abstracted indirect copyright infringement" or some such baloney.
"You viewed that web page and it had a link on it, therefore we're charging you with potential infringement. You're just lucky you didn't actually click on that link, pal, because that would have been an extra 10 years under the Trans Pacific Partnership Act. Oh, wait- I spoke to soon- your browser preloaded the content under the link, so now you're looking at a solid 20 years here."
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Pretty soon just looking at a link without even clicking on it will be an offense.
Yep. Welcome to the dystopian future world of Minority Report, where computer algorithms based on the profile generated by all the data everyone allowed to be collected on them (from Facebook, Twitter, and other so-called 'social media') will be used to predict future violations of copyright and other laws, which you will then be proactively prosecuted for. Since trade agreements like the TPP and it's descendents will more or less allow corporations to do whatever they want to whoever they want, you'll just
Re: I fart on your links (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure it's the conservative billionaire corporations which are funding this effort...
Nope. On the Internet, the "billionaire corporations" are almost all American, and they almost all oppose the criminalization of hyperlinking. This is being pushed by European governments to protect their media companies from evil Anglo-Saxon hyperlinks.
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Re: I fart on your links (Score:4, Informative)
The term "hyperlink" was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu. So, no. It's not a European invention. It was promoted by Tim heavily. Tim has some responsibility in popularizing it, I would agree.
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Re: Use an url shortening site outside of the EU (Score:2)
Be more crafty. Have a link shortening site that requires easy but non trivial steps to get the right link.
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In this case its mainly the European publishers.
Oh and btw. it's not so much anti-Americanism but being tired of the "We can do what the fuck we want" attitude of your glorious leaders.
I'm sure there are plenty of decent americans. Just not in politics.
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Well, to be fair, we kind of can do what the fuck we want. There's not a whole lot you can do about it. Are you going to send us a strongly worded letter? We fund your defense, medical research, and a goodly amount of science. We've also got a fairly adept, and recently active, combat-efficient military. There's not a whole lot you can do except for whine a little and maybe stop sending us a fruitcake for Christmas.
It's not that I don't agree with you it's just that it's, sadly, true. My country is run by b