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Comment by mattsfrey | Hacker News Reader

"The biggest and most worrisome changes are to the "link tax" proposal, which would establish a special copyright-like fee to be paid by websites to news publishers, in exchange for the privilege of using short snippets of quoted text as part of a link to the original news article. Voss's latest amendments would make the link tax an inalienable right, that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to."

"...that news publishers cannot waive even if they choose to."

This is horrendous.

I generally favor: "Do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

However this seems like a blatant attempt to shut down any interpretive or third party news sites in favor of centralized media control.

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That's a strange interpretation, and I say it doesn't seem like you're trying too hard to assume good faith.

The EU is worried about publishers both big and small. Currently, investing half a year's worth of a journalist's work into investigations is a rather bad business decision, because everyone can freely reuse the facts you uncovered: spend a year finding corruption, write it up in a day, 10 minutes later it's on AP.

Ther 'inalienable' is to ensure you're not pressured into giving those rights away by a stronger actor such as Google. The principle is the same that makes it impossible for you to agree to buy something new without warranty.

Your idea also doesn't make much sense because the current crisis of journalism has hit smaller publishers hardest. The New York Times will survive. The Bodunken Tribune is probably long dead already. And the major players for centralization are obviously Google and Facebook, the two largest targets of this legislation.

All this DOES NOT mean I believe this proposal to be a good idea! I think it's too much beaurocracy for too little effect, plus probably unintended consequences.

But it's hard to completely disregard the true motivation and ascribe malice.

The way I look at it is it will constrain the ability to deliver news to those who can afford to produce original content, which will be larger outlets with more resources. This allows a vastly smaller group to control the narrative.

How will this effect google or facebook at all?

Anyone with a blog looking to quote a news outlet and provide commentary is now mandatorily taxed? How do you NOT see this as bad? What good can come of it at all?

> How will this effect google or facebook at all?

Google and Facebook show titles and quotes of linked articles. This legislation is specifically aimed at them. Noncommercial actors (bloggers etc) are supposed to be exempt.

> How do you NOT see this as bad?

It is extremely frustrating how people on HN apparently have no ability to acknowledge a valid argument for a position they oppose. Read the last two paragraphs of my post again. It clearly states, in rule-braking all-caps even, that I do not support this legislation.

> What good can come of it at all?

It will shift (as you note) money from those reprinting news to those producing original content. The former is cheap, commoditized, and in no danger. The latter is fundamental for a functioning democracy.

>Noncommercial actors (bloggers etc) are supposed to be exempt.

Looking at EU's history of jurisdiction in these matters, this usually means almost no one is considered "noncommercial". You better believe this is going to hit small bloggers hard. C&D-happy lawyers are going to have a field day.

> The latter is fundamental for a functioning democracy.

But if distributors have to pay to link to such content, then such content will not contribute to a functioning democracy because nobody will be able to discover this content.

And, it's funny you mention "functioning democracy" -- tell me how Brussels is part of a functioning democracy? The European Commission President and commissioners aren't elected are they? The Commission has the sole right to propose EU legislation -- which is binding on all member states.

So a Commission that isn't elected gets to force it's will on otherwise democratic countries?

How is that "functioning democracy?" A bit ironic that an undemocratic institution's actions are being defended as protecting something fundamental to a functioning democracy.

It's funny to me as an American living in Europe that many people criticize the US Electoral College system to elect the US president, yet see no problem with accepting the regime of the European Commission, despite not getting a vote on the the Commission President or Commissioners.

Actually the majority of people in my country have a problem with that. It's hard to solve when your government is filled with "business"men taking EU dotations though.

>> So a Commission that isn't elected gets to force it's will on otherwise democratic countries?

The Commission is staffed by elected politicians, one for every country of the EU. The Commission's President is elected by members of the European Parliament, themselves elected directly by the people of the EU member states in the European Elections, held every 4 years.

The Commission is a legislative body; it makes legislation, but legislation must be passed into law by voting in the European Parliament by MEPs.

A lot has been made into the eurosceptic press about the "non-democratic" nature of the EU. These news items overlook the difference between an elected politician and an official appointed by elected politicians. For example, US Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the US President and confirmed by the Senate and they are the final arbiters of fedral law, not to mention their appointment is lifelong.

You know, if the claim is "the current system does not lead to a functioning democracy", saying "but you don't have a functioning democracy" is not an opposing argument.

Facebook _users_ do. I highly doubt they are going to try and enforce this on google search results, that would be absurd, and if so it will just hurt the publishers for not getting hits. Where is it detailed that this is aimed at google/fb ?

Despite your condescending rebuttal I actually am disagreeing with your position. I don't think this is good for democracy in that having the cash to produce original content imposes no responsibility and this legislation would stifle third party analysis and criticism of their reporting. Making these arguments and then adding a "but yeah in general I'm not in favor" doesn't shield you from criticism.

Google is more than Search. This is targeted at Google News.

Your entire position revolves around shackling google to serve the political interests of Brussels, to the point where Brussels wants to mandate a business model to the very people they claim to be helping. It's even weirder because Google is not a competitor to the newspapers, so going after them is nonsensical. It's not a compelling position and it brings to mind the old fable of the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Democracy is in danger because publishers, large and small, lack the discipline and expertise to produce objective, quality reporting, and give a voice to people with something interesting to say.

Nobody forced them to chase clickbait or spend their days sourcing stories from Twitter and Tumblr. That's all on them.

And before you think that's an exaggeration, I'm talking about one of my (European) country's major national papers whose daily front page now consists of breathless American political drama, hashtags and gender politics. It's ridiculous, the children are running the show, the writing is atrocious, and their world view is about as sophisticated as a first year pol-sci major who's never held a real job.

Get those people to shut up and we'll be far better off. I look forward to their tears. If their content was worth it, they wouldn't be struggling.

If a newspaper in a town of 1,000 people was devoting half a year of a reporter's work to a single investigation, that newspaper was already going to fail as a business. Even if every link to the eventual story required the linker to pay €100, because in that case people would just refuse to link.

There is nothing good about link taxes. And sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Meanwhile, this cannot help even responsibly-run small news organizations, because it will just direct all the large aggregators and large news companies to make deals with each other, and the small news companies will get zero links and collect zero "link tax", and small/new aggregators will not be able to afford to operate. Result: large organizations stay large, small ones continue going out of business.

Someone on Twitter earlier was saying journalism has a history of relying on rich people who don't mind losing money (the modern example being Bezos and the Washington Post), and that we're trending back that way. Anyone who can't find a patron is probably going to go out of business no matter what.

(unless you'd like to have news organizations be funded by government, which can work but has its own set of problems)

> Someone on Twitter earlier was saying journalism has a history of relying on rich people who don't mind losing money (the modern example being Bezos and the Washington Post), and that we're trending back that way. Anyone who can't find a patron is probably going to go out of business no matter what.

I'm not sure it can (or should) be any other way. If you try to run journalism as a for-profit business, you end up with ads and clickbait. Good journalism is like medicine - very important, and very unable to bring in profit.

> it doesn't seem like you're trying too hard to assume good faith

The same EU that regulated the shape of cucumbers? They regulated shapes of bananas. The EU also launched a kettle and toaster crackdown after the Brexit vote. [1] -- but hid those plans until after the vote.

This is also the EU that hid plans to ban high powered kettles and toasters until after the Brexit vote so they wouldn't fuel the Leave campaign. So the EU says, "Let's keep this unpopular stuff a secret so we don't piss off the British and cause the vote to swing to Leave."

The same EU that banned effective, powerful vacuum cleaners because of climate change? [2] The EU that would have people living in straw huts if it meant a 0.001% decline in CO2?

This manipulative, vindictive EU that hid their intentions from the British public because they knew those intentions would be unpopular?

To assume "good faith" on the part of the EU for any reason, is, itself, an act of faith and more likely, an act of delusion.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/10/eu-to-launch-ket... [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/1104712...

Ah, the old banana myth. How the EU forced banana producers to only produce or sell bananas with the right curvature.

Only... that‘s not true. The EU defined quality classes for all kinds of products. And in the case of bananas these included curvature.

Producers could still sell whatever curved bananas they liked. At whatever price they liked. They just couldn‘t claim it conformed to this specific quality class.

Because free trade includes regulations like that. Traders want to establish a baseline what‘s acceptable to most of them and not specify every product detail in every shipment.

Yup. The usual bullshit spun by British tabloids, that somehow then gets reprinted as facts on continental Europe. There were plenty of other similar cases regarding classification and quality classes of seafood, water, juices, etc.

People seem to be so desperate to believe the government is this big, incompetent force of evil that they'll uncritically accept any story that confirms that belief.

It was such a competent piece of legislation that it was dropped by the EU when commonsense finally penetrated the minds of the 'we're paid to dream up laws so let's get on with it' secretive team in Brussels.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2453204/Be...

Also, the EU didn't invent the idea of quality classes for produce - they already existed in most EU countries, because they are genuinely useful (primarily for wholesale buyers, who benefit from knowing more exactly what they'll get). The class definitions just varied from one country to the next, which was a massive pain for producers wanting to sell internationally - so the idea was that every EU country would agree on a common set of classes, making things simpler for everyone involved.

Appearing 10 minutes later on AP would have nothing to do with the link tax, as AP would be able to paraphrase your results. In fact, it's currently Google that favors the smaller investigator (over what the situation would be without Google): the smaller page would get a pagerank boost from all of the very important websites linking to it. Without Google, AP would have traffic from people who check it manually and nobody else would get anything. Being the first to publish comes with a small advantage in Google's world and no advantage outside.

> spend a year finding corruption, write it up in a day, 10 minutes later it's on AP.

That's not exactly an internet related phenomenon.

If the matter was only about weakening the external monopolies, than the tactics are definitely really really bad.

The pain and trouble that this legislation would generate to Europe and to the whole world is much worse than say Google's monopoly.

I believe if the EU had an honest intention of only undermining monopolies from countries outside the EU (mainly the US), then it should find another way to go with it without disrupting the whole open knowledge concept. Otherwise, it will be truly disasterous.

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