EU copyright proposal could undermine the use of Creative Commons licenses

First, the Commission (~government) proposes a law. They proposed this "extra copyright for news sites" that covers even tiniest snippets of news content and thus would put a price tag on links to news. In their version, publishers could opt out of it – but it would still cause major problems. Leading IP researchers said it will "deter communication of news", "negatively affect authors" and "hinder European innovation" http://www.create.ac.uk/policy-responses/eu-copyright-reform...

Next, the Parliament and the Council (member state governments) need to approve the plans or suggest changes. The Parliament nominates one MEP to shepherd this process. In this case that's Axel Voss (from Merkel's CDU). His job is to get together with the other parties and then make a proposal that in his assessment enjoys majority support in the Parliament.

This is what this article is about. Not "one individual's proposal", but the lead negotiator's view of what a majority of the Parliament supports: Doubling down on an already bad idea by making the right inalienable.

He may be wrong about that – we'll know when the Legal Affairs Committee votes on it on June 20/21. Other MEPs will file counter-proposals, but one of them winning out would be a rare, unexpected upset. Voss may also make changes to his proposal until then, but so far he's brushed off all opposing arguments. And yes, even if his plan is approved, there's a chance the "inalienable right" addition (the threat to Creative Commons) may not survive final negotiations with the Council and Commission.

The thing is: This vote is the number one chance the public has to affect what will be in this law, and thus whether there'll be a "link tax" in Europe. We need to push our representatives to reject that idea in that vote, not double down on it.

That said, in this particular case, the linked proposal specifies what it means:

"The digital use of press publications should be obligatory remunerated"

Wait a minute, isn't that the opposite of inalienability? That is, isn't an inalienable right one that cannot be given away (or whose exercise cannot be limited by, even consensual, contract)?

But isn't that what "right" already means?

Open source is unfortunately threatened by a different provision, which would force GitHub and other code hosts to implement "ContentID"-like filters trying to detect copyright infringement in commits: https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filter...

Your quote does a similar thing in saying "refusing remuneration" is "sharing a work without getting paid" they are notably different. If no-one offered payment you wouldn't need to refuse; the scope is quite different.

Legal discussion needs (frustratingly) exact language.

Actually, the rule in the US is:

it is illegal to /not/ pay taxes on illegally gotten gains

Failing to declare and pay income tax on income (no matter the source of the income) is what is illegal. And many a criminal (as another poster mentioned in regards to Al Capone) has been ensnared in a "failed to pay income tax" /gotcha/ even though they could not be convicted of the illegal activity itself.

First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content.

After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license.

The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain.

This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.

At least in my European country, the likely result would be that the company will pay the Association of Authors (an organization which collects payment from all kinds of uses of works), which would retain it until the author collected it.

It's a bit murky, especially in an international context. But they generally aim to protect authors, specifically in the author<->publisher relationship.

It may seem counter-intuitive that taking away "your right to relinquish your rights" may be protecting you. But the idea is the same as whatever law stops you from selling yourself into slavery.

But actually, only a few very big publishers have lobbied for this, claiming that this would "save journalism in Europe" when they care mostly about their own bottom line. Limiting how news spreads on social networks and aggregators is not in the interest of and would actually harm smaller publishers, who benefit from competing with the big brands on such sites on an equal footing.

Small, independent and innovative publishers had to get together to form their own lobby organisation to OPPOSE this law that politicians would claim is to their benefit: http://mediapublishers.eu/our-views/

It's totally understandable that the goal is to eliminate the public domain and all free/libre/open publications as a means to the end of funding proprietary stuff.

Say you have a business mowing people's lawns. If you were anti-social, you might support outlawing friendly neighbors mowing others' lawns for free or even outlaw people mowing their own lawns. You might even deceive yourself with some pro-social ideas about how forcing all lawn-mowing to be paid-lawn-mowing will end up with a world of better lawns, better economy, and all the extended benefits of well-paid lawn-mowers besides yourself…

Similarly, if you're a news outlet, you'd be happy to see a price forced on all your competitors. It's easier for you to charge your price if everyone else has to also. Ironically, this could be argued from a pro-social consideration of solidarity and funding journalism.

Of course, deeper pro-social inspection of the situation reveals that sabotaging FLO works and public domain is an unacceptable tragedy that is not a respectable means to the end of funding journalism. But short-sighted folks will try anything since they are freaking out about the valid concern over journalism funding in general.

I would like to see all copyright completely abolished, or at least reduced to max 2 years or so. I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me.

Whenever you start to think that a complex thing was done by a clueless person, you should stop, and consider the possibility you might be lacking a clue yourself. That doesn't mean the other side wasn't missing a clue either, or isn't acting in bad faith, of course. But I find it rare that there's no actual good reason ideas happen.

In this case, it's definitely true that the "right" to refuse renumeration has been abused, on many levels — from free-of-charge press effectively displacing and forcing the rest to follow on the "big guy" scale, to unpaid internships on the "small guy" scale.

There are good reasons to reject the proposal — as outlined in the OP — but that doesn't mean the author was clueless. Whether incoherence comes from a difference in perspective or bad faith we don't know (though you can guess what I - a socialist - am guessing about the good faith of a CDU politician). But there _are_ reasons.

> Can't we, people of HN, draft proposals collaboratively, perhaps with some moderation system?

There aren't "we, people of HN", but if you want to collaboratively draft proposals, join your nearest political entity. My own even has a Discourse forum where you can get all meta about the policy process.

I guess they think that if everyone has to enforce the tax, they are protected from the threat of being unlisted.

I think the US government is sick, but the EU is new and needs to be a benefit for it to survive.

My assumption is that they are entirely incentivized by niche groups in each country that are pushing for reform to help their own goals. I dont see how many of their policies are beneficial to the masses.

Basically it makes CC licenses more risky for distributors of such content as there is always the risk that the previously waived right is now enforceable on a whim.

However, maybe "inalienable right" in EU legal language means that you must enforce it, which seems like quite a legal burden on the license issuer.