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Comment by nmstoker | Hacker News Reader

Have the concerns raised by CC received attention from serious lawyers? I'm no lawyer, but I fail to see how this:

... an “inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses.” suggests that I must get paid whether I want it or not, as the CC post seems to rely on for stoking up concern.

Surely it's the same as an inalienable right to free speech - you're not obliged to actually go round speaking freely, it's inalienable in the sense that you can't get rid of that right, not that you must exercise it!

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The back story of the law may shed some light.

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.

Google (and the other portals) would probably shut down a service across all of Europe if it were losing money.

That might be the outcome publishers want. They might imagine that if they eliminate outside links to individual stories, people would be forced to use publisher's sites as portals to the news.

You're exactly right: The big publishers lobbying for this aren't particularly scared of that outcome. They'd prefer to just receive millions from FB & Google, but if those platforms get out of the news sector entirely, they expect their consolation prize to be regaining control over how people find news, renewed brand loyalty, increased front page traffic and an advantage over smaller and new competitors.

Couldn't I or a million other individuals that aren't multinationals with holdings in Europe just start a news site while thumbing my nose at their inalienable rights?

You could. And then you could get blocked by the ISPs after the courts order it.

Lets see if we can teach Europe that they need to pay US companies for vpns in order to get around the right to be forgotten AND link copyrights.

Is the threat specifically Google News? I feel it's very rarely mentioned anywhere, at least compared to Facebook's news feature. If I didn't know better, I would've thought Google News was one of the services Google closed down.

The German law was targeted only at news aggregators. The legal text of the proposed EU version has no such limitation.

As for clear (ahem) statements who this is actually aimed at -- here's Commissioner Oettinger, who was responsible for the first edition of this proposal:

"If we don't act now, there will be fewer and fewer news articles to link to." "Even iPhone, tablets and Facebook are offering news feeds nowadays. We want to strengthen publishers not least in relation to these new providers" Translated from German https://twitter.com/GOettingerEU/status/772785182550159360

In this context, it means you cannot waive that right. I. e. there could not be a license saying "use this freely, I don't want to be paid". The "no payment" part would be null and void and anyone using CC content would be in danger of being contacted by the author requesting "fair" payment any time later. (But I would say this would not be a completely unprecedented case, CC licenses brush aside a few unalienable rights already.)

How can I use your CC licensed content commercially if you'll always have an inalienable right to collect license fees from me?

The proposal (linked PDF) says the payment is obligatory.

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.

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