A Copyright Vote That Could Change the EU’s Internet

I say we have not seen this recently. DNS and hosting providers are deciding that some websites are too offensive for them to host. DDOS protection providers, for example Cloudflare also the same. Search engines also now downgrade content that they view as extremist. Large social networks will censor user produced content that they find offensive. All these examples could be considered as modern infrastructure between the user and content generated by another user.

With the ongoing centralization of the internet, what is considered as infrastructure is going to have be more than just ISP's and Interconnects. The internet is no longer spread out over a billion websites. Probably 95% of content that people access is probably a few dozen sites at most, and the long tail of other sites is found through a search engine like Google. In addition, the ability to monetize a site is controlled by just a few companies. This has profound implications for the social principle of free speech.

True, these companies are private companies and thus are not bound to the laws of free speech as they are not a government entity. They are fully within their rights to determine who they provide service to. However, in decrying this regulation, they are appealing not to the law, but to the social principle of free speech. If they plan to appeal to the social principle of free speech in decrying certain regulations, they should be adhering to the social principle of free speech, or the public is going to get cynical fast.

We could call it Information Tech but that's already been claimed by people in corporate environments.

This may be a signal that the internet has become way too centralized.

The irony of the centralization of a decentralized platform is suddenly enforcement of regulations like these become feasible. The nuclear-war proof internet is suddenly vulnerable to people sitting behind desks or whatever the hell they do in Europe.

I run a forum with ~1000 users. It costs us ~$60 a month and the corporate infrastructure is me and one other guy. If we were vulnerable to actually being sued for an infringement on a user's part, we would probably just have to shut down; neither of us is up for running a legal battle.

Luckily we're US, not EU, but presumably there are small forum/blog operators in the EU as well.

In simplified terms, all member countries agree on a set a set of shared requirements for a type of product, and any product meeting those requirements is allowed to be sold in all EU countries.

So where you earlier had to meet certifications in each EU country, you now have only one standard to meet with your product. That's a big reduction in red tape, saving a lot of time and money for everyone! (contrary to popular opinion, the EU has reduced bureaucracy more than it increased it)

Individual countries can deviate by have more lax requirements (which is why you can still buy cazu marzu in Sardinia, despite it not meeting EU regulations), but not stronger.

Remember, all EU countries have to agree to sign up, and this is also why it can take many years and tweaks to come to such an agreement.

And the rabbit hole is deeper than you think. It isn't just fire safety regulations for flags, making idiots look like idiots[0], it goes all the way down to agreeing what kind of cardboard is acceptable for sending your mail (IIRC, there were different standards in what chemicals were considered toxic or not).

The thing is, I can't really imagine how one would apply the same kind of principles to the Internet. What is there to unify? The internet doesn't really have borders, does it? I mean I guess the underlying infrastructure could be unified, but that's not really the "market" part, is it?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px_M6weS8gY

This particular blog fits into that pattern, which immediately triggered my skepticism.

You're wrong, but it's an easy mistake to make: the leak concerns the ongoing diplomatic discussions between the nations voting on the proposal:

> According to a new leak, a number of EU Member States share our serious concerns about the proposal for mass surveillance and censorship of uploads to the internet in Europe, included in the European Commission’s proposal for a new copyright Directive. Those Member States seem unwilling to build a censorship machine forcing EU countries to adopt Google’s current practices. They highlight that such practices should not be implemented without making sure of the consequences for fundamental rights and for the rule of law. The leaked document contains a list of questions posed to the internal legal service of the Council of the EU, signed by six EU Member States: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The proposed directive itself is, as with all such proposals, open and available for everyone in every official EU language:

http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016...

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?...