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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> The law clearly states that the size of the company and the costs of the "measures" should be taken into account

Text: "should be effective but remain proportionate, in particular with regard to the size of the online content sharing service provider."

But this is exactly the wrong level of detail; it's not a reassurance because you and I and startups can have no idea what the level actually is. If they'd said "less than X employees or turnover less than X" it would be a specification. Instead it's horrible, expensive vagueness.

>> All the site does is share links to content.

> You kind of answered your own question there.

So we should expect HN to block Europe if this goes through, because otherwise they're liable for all copyright infringement of any linked page?

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Americans tend to freak out at EU style regulation, becuase they have a pathological relationship to their own regulators.

Here's a UK case where a large chain was serving beer using glasses that were too small.

That chain hasn't been shut down, nor fined huge amounts. They weren't even prosecuted. They recalled all the glasses nationwide and replaced them with the correct size.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/03/pint-scam-major-...

This kind of regulation is not unusual.

EDIT just for clarification: I think this is a lousy law, and I hope it doesn't pass in its current form.

That's more Trading Standards though than EU-originated regulation - I think it's a bad example because weights and measures is extremely old and well-understood.

It is meaningfully different: with the glass example the company can take concrete action and get back into compliance, and no longer have ongoing issues.

With any website (hackernews included) the only way they can actually completely prevent there from being copyrighted content in the comments that they host and publish is to not offer the ability to comment at all.

Or just remove all the links from comments...

We don't really need to link something to express an opinion

BTW HN have to check anyway, if I post a link to an obscure video sharing platform containing copyrighted material, that's an infringement

Even if the domain is whitelisted, say github.com, I could host copyrighted material there

They simply don't do it and rely on users's good faith

The text of a comment itself is user generated content that can contain copyrighted material.

The law regulates linked content

Web sites are already responsible for copyright infringements committed by their users

> Americans tend to freak out at EU style regulation, becuase they have a pathological relationship to their own regulators

I’m Swiss American. My fellow Swissmen are similarly sceptical.

The realistic risk isn’t someone fining everyone a billion dollars. It’s that you didn’t curry sufficient political favour with the right regulator and now get to see their capricious side. These are a legitimate concerns for anyone considering doing business in Europe.

> otherwise they're liable for all copyright infringement of any linked page?

No, of course not. Like I said above, the "link tax" part (article 11) has nothing to do with linking. But even if it would, it still wouldn't have anything to do with the content filter law part (article 13). They're two completely separate things.

The level is "are you actually making an effort".

It's intentionally vague, because these laws only ever come into play if someone really messes up or is intentionally being deceptive..

If you set an exact limit or try and set exact definitions, people try and use them to create loopholes.. which I personally find to be a very American thing to do.

If you're actively making an effort trying to filter content, you have nothing to worry about. If it can be shown that you're intentionally trying to game the system, you can land in trouble.

It's pretty simple, really.

> actively making an effort trying to filter content, you have nothing to worry about.

But you do: you have to worry about filtering content. And you can never know whether you've made enough effort.

You have to have a process, and devote human time to it, and (as I understand it) do so proactively rather than just responding to takedown requests.

So now bureaucrats can pass out political favors through selective enforcement.

Vague laws are clearly and obviously tyranny because then you are subject to laws that nobody can clearly define and the only remaining question is if you are on the right parties good side and the usual way of remaining so is political favors.

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