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The EU Can Still Be Saved From Its Internet-Wrecking Copyright Plan (vice.com) 87

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-not-over-yet dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: While the European Union voted this week to pass its widely-criticized new Copyright Directive, activists and members of European Parliament say there's still a chance of keeping the EU from fully implementing the worst parts of the troubling proposal. The most controversial aspects of the plan remain twofold: Article 11, which would require EU News outlets to pay a "link tax" just to share anything more than "insubstantial" snippets of published content, and Article 13, which would require that EU member countries implement the kind of automated copyright filters that have been a chaotic mess here in the States. Other problematic measures were passed as well, including Article 12a, which prohibits sports fans from posting their own photos or videos of sporting events online, while stating that only event "organizers" have the right to do so.

That said, all hope is not lost. While some variant of Article 11 and Article 13 is likely be approved next spring, public pressure could force inclusion of additional safeguards for end users, Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda told me in an email. "While the overall bill was adopted with a comfortable majority, the outcome was more narrow for the two controversial articles (366:297 and 393:279)," Reda said. "Since the final vote will be close to the next European elections, that leaves open a small chance that massive public protest against these provisions may still convince MEPs to kill the entire bill." If passed, individual EU countries will be able to interpret the Directive as they see fit, though Reda believes they will likely steer toward stricter interpretation. "The real hope for repeal in my opinion is in the courts," author and activist Cory Doctorow said. "There's simply no way this passes EU Constitutional muster -- it's generalized filtering and mass surveillance by another name. The fact that they claim to be looking for 'infringement' doesn't change that."

Longtime Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein adds: [...] These articles now enter a period of negotiation with EU member states, and then are subject to final votes next year, probably in the spring. So now's the time for the rest of the world to show Europe some special "tough love" -- to help them understand what their Internet island universe will look like if these terrible articles are ever actually implemented.
UPDATE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a report slamming the proposal, offering a number of ways people can fight back.
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The EU Can Still Be Saved From Its Internet-Wrecking Copyright Plan More

The EU Can Still Be Saved From Its Internet-Wrecking Copyright Plan

Comments Filter:

  • Why not (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why don't we just remove all EU links and TLDs and just forget them like they want so badly?

  • Let it all go through (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @05:36PM (#57301860)

    Let it all go through. Just let them wreck their own internet, I want to see it. I want to see every popular website out there shut down in the EU because it's no longer worth the money, watch the useless bureaucrats squirm as potentially the entire economy of the EU tanks and takes the rest of the world into a recession.

    Why? Because I'm tired of living in a world where tiny minded little interests can impose their influence on governments that would ruin the world, including their own, just because they believe they can make an extra penny. This stupid shit is everywhere, in every country, all the time. And if sensible people keep trying to "make the best of it" they greedy idiots will just continue shoving their stupid shit down everyone's throats to the detriment of all.

    So let it fail. Let something fail for once, to show just how useless and corrupt this system of placing narrow minded beliefs over reality is. Let something big fail in front of everyone for all to see, so maybe the system is replaced before the failure becomes the entire planet, becomes billions dead because a few coal mining CEOs needed that second yacht. Let the idiots shoot themselves before they take everyone else with them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm tired of living in a world where tiny minded little interests can impose their influence on governments that would ruin the world, including their own, just because they believe they can make an extra penny.

      But this is the only reason governments exist anymore. Corporations have surpassed governments in terms of raw power, but using the existing government structure as the conduit for this power is less disruptive and avoids social unrest by preserving the illusion of democracy.

    • Re:Let it all go through (Score:4, Funny)

      by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @05:51PM (#57301958)
      I agree. When foreign corporations and content owners give the EU a giant middle finger, they will be on the hook to try and suppress the content. Good luck with that. They'll end up looking as bad or worse than China. There's also the uncomfortable fact most content worth fuck-all is in the USA (FYI, we invented the fucking Internet, World). So, if the EU decided to build a giant firewall, they'd basically just be firewalling off a bunch of content leeches. I don't remember the last time I found a useful fact on a server with a EU based TLD. The shows on Netflix produced in the EU all suck dog balls. Of course they want to tax the stuff made in the USA. That's where the good shit is at that people actually want. It's going to be interesting to watch them cut off their nose to spite their face.

    • Things fell before because of tiny minded little interests, but even when had two world wars, in the end, people forgot.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As a European I really hope as many sites as possible will block us. The more Brussels negatively affects the lives of average people the more whose will realize what a shitshow it has become. Let that ivory tower of corruption and ignorance burn!

    • Re:Let it all go through (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @11:20PM (#57303642)

      Remember the Great Recession from 10 years ago? It'd turn out the same way: the little people collapse, and the big players responsible walk away scot-free with huge bailouts while spreading propaganda that things unrelated to them were at fault.

    • In fact if you look at most of the EU economy, the web site are highly local, otherwise the rest of the economy are local service and exports... So your crash and burn would not happen.

    • I want to see every popular website out there shut down in the EU because it's no longer worth the money

      And suddenly the Internet becomes a better place.

    • The worst part is that this practice has been proven to fail in Spain, Germany, Belgium and France. Big corporations have a proven record on just bailing the entire market instead of complying. https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] So yeah, apparently that news hasn't reached Brussels yet.

    • Re:Let it all go through (Score:4, Funny)

      by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Thursday September 13, 2018 @09:22AM (#57305586)

      So let it fail. Let something fail for once, to show just how useless and corrupt this system of placing narrow minded beliefs over reality is. Let something big fail in front of everyone for all to see, so maybe the system is replaced before the failure becomes the entire planet, becomes billions dead because a few coal mining CEOs needed that second yacht. Let the idiots shoot themselves before they take everyone else with them.

      Funny, that's what we thought about Trump but let's see how that one ends.

  • Copyright granted! Now nobody can steal or plagiarize the EU's Plan For Wrecking The Internet (EU-PWTI). If we were to also DRM protect the EU-PWTI... bla bla bla bla...

  • Punctuality action (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @05:42PM (#57301906)

    Just implement the directives in the strictest way possible, to the point that Google/YouTube/everything becomes unusable, before it becomes obligatory, and put a banner there "this service will remain as it is now if EU does not back off". Keep it like that all the time, except for one day a week or so (to make sure people do not forget what they are missing),

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I was thinking along those lines too. "Malicious compliance". Make sure this law is followed VERY closely.

  • activists and members of European Parliament say there's still a chance of keeping the EU from fully implementing the worst parts of the troubling proposal

    Why stop when the EU is having so much fun?

  • Internet-wrecking? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by mi ( 197448 )

    the European Union voted this week to pass its widely-criticized new Copyright Directive

    How exactly will the reduction of plagiarism wreck the Internet? Will the DNS-servers stop working? Will connection latencies increase? What?..

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      reduction of plagiarism wreck the Internet?

      The internet is a network for copying data between computers. If you restrict that, you break the whole thing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        The internet is a network for copying data between computers. If you restrict that, you break the whole thing.

        So, the "whole thing" is already broken — wrecked — by the ban on child pornography?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by astank ( 5529114 )
      While stopping plagiarism isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short term, the more restrictions are placed on the content the more the people 'at the bottom' miss out, and the more out of reach the really valuable content is. To me it looks like the internet is becoming the complete opposite of what it was meant for - a network to facilitate the spread of information. Given how much we now rely on the internet for the proliferation of information, rules like this turn the internet into more of an impeder f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        stopping plagiarism isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short term

        What?! You are merely allowing for it to possibly be a neutral thing — but only in a short term? In a long term, according to you, it is inevitably a bad thing. Wow... Especially for someone, who pretends to worry about "people 'at the bottom'", who'll "miss out"... Just who are these people, and what is it they'll miss, if plagiarism stops tomorrow? I know people — some of whom you'd no doubt consider 'at the bottom' — wh

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by astank ( 5529114 )
          Plagiarism is definitely not worth spreading, however it's a mistake to call all derived works, works that reference others (e.g. for criticism and review) and even copied works "plagiarism" - apologies, you used the term but I was referring to derived/copied works that still give credit to the original author, I should have been clear about that. I'm not saying that people who produce content should have their works immediately copied and shared, that's what I meant when I indicated that copyrighting thes

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            this limit should not be forever, or even a 'long' time.

            I disagree rather strongly on this one, but that's a different topic.

            With the current trend these people will be less equiped to be able to consume and evaluate quality sources of information

            Why?! Suppose, the discussed bill is actually successful in reducing the amount of "derivations", how would that reduce the unfortunate's access to the original content — informational and entertaining alike? Yes, it may become harder for us all — yearn

        • Plagiarism is not the information worth spreading. Not before the Internet, not over the Internet. No way, no how.

          That's a pretty blanket statement.

          It wasn't good that more than one author could write Robin Hood stories?

          It wasn't good that multiple musicians could play and modify folk tunes?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            It wasn't good that more than one author could write Robin Hood stories?

            I don't believe, the legislation being discussed threatens the fanfic genre...

            It wasn't good that multiple musicians could play and modify folk tunes?

            It certainly was not good, that the original composer was not compensated. History — and the literature — is full of heart-rending stories of starving artists. People enjoyed their tunes, but — short of winning support of a rich sponsor — there was no way for them t

  • All you have to do is create a page that continues creating random links. Then when it comes time to quantify the tax, you will get the bill near heat death of the Universe.

    You owe us EUR 2,147,483,647 - I suggest you upgrade your system to contain 64 bit numbers. Okay, you now owe us EUR 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 - I'd suggest you go for a 2048 bit number.

  • Source? (Score:3)

    by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:47PM (#57302978)

    Could someone please post the actual text of the controversial paragraphs before we discuss this any further?

    • YOU could do that...

      Afaik Google is not currently censoring links to EU legislation.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wikipedia has an acceptable coverage, although I find it biased:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market

      They also link the PDF to the actual voted text in the external links, I copy it here:

      http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35373/st09134-en18.pdf

      BTW the text itself is reasonably clear but full understanding, as usual with state laws, requires knowledge of a series of legal principles and knowledge of at least a dozen previous directives and laws referenced in the

  • Outsourced Filtering (Score:3)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @09:45PM (#57303274)

    Article 13 would be a pain, but it'll most likely not wreck the Internet. What'll probably happen is that some company starts offering filtering services for uploaded data. User uploads video/photo/whatever to your site, you then hash that data (with say MD5+SHA256, chance of collision for both is nearly nil). Hash is sent off to 3rd party filtering site, they return back 'Prohibited' or 'Allowed'. They charge your business per unit or per month, costs you a negligible portion of your revenue and you don't have to R&D a solution for yourself. It's considered 'good enough' for compliance with the law, and there's a central place people can go to to challenge misclassified data, which is an improvement over having to go to hundreds of different sites that banned your data.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That would be incredibly compute expensive. Just to cover the costs of user uploaded content checking the ads would have to increase substantially. EU sites would look like 1999 popup spam ad-impression miners. Plus virtually any site that has users uploaded content would be trivial to bankrupt. Simply upload content, any content. White noise even.

      A new type of DDoS would be born out of copyright hashes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mentil ( 1748130 )

        Uploaded content is normally hashed for deduplication purposes. Also, there are ASICs dedicated to hashing data (e.g. cryptocurrency miners). So it'd be cheap/free. The only real problem would be old sites hashing a backlog of old content using the algos required, but they could presumably do it over time if noone yet noticed any of it was infringing.

    • Great, more middlemen. Just what the internet needs!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And for copyrighted text? Do you just send the whole text in case there's a poem or an unauthorized copy of someone else's comment in there?

      Every video/photo/whatever is automatically copyrighted already, how does this 3rd party (with an incredible continent/internet wide monopoly status) know if the user is the owner of it or otherwise licensed to distribute it?

    • "vwith say MD5+SHA256" - no, this would not cover anything with even minute changes to the file (you wouldn't need both hashes btw). You would need to use a CTPH (Context triggered piecewise hashing) or fuzzy model, like SSDeep or photoDNA. Computationally expensive... And that's before you even look at text...

  • In Soviet Europe, the news reports you!

  • Maybe the EFF needs to create a blocked to the EU campaign? This campaign would be hosted by any website for a day or more and illustrate that it may be safer for many sites to simply geoblock the EU, than to try complying. If the message isn’t made in a way people notice, then few people will be making the noise they should.

  • Doctorow will be disappointed the ECJ primarily a political court, when the court thinks it is in the best interest of the EU they'll ignore certain parts of EU law to preserve the political purity of the EU.

    So if the EC bigwigs get behind this stupidity, then the courts are much more likely to side with them even if the law is stupid.

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