The Whole World Should Be Up in Arms About the EU's Looming Internet Catastrophe
eff.org
eff.org
To mix some farm metaphors, the chickens are coming home now and it's too late to shut the barn door.
1. Whether to regulate the internet.
2. Whether a specific regulation is a good one.
#2 is the debate that happens for every law in a democratic system. If you agree with the democratic system on principle, then you already acknowledge that the democracy may not choose the laws you want.
#1 is what you're talking about. But it's not an all or nothing deal. You can believe that the internet should be regulated and simultaneously believe that any specific regulation is a bad one.
1. Whether to regulate the internet.
2. Whether a specific regulation is a good one.
How often have lawmakers and regulators proposed things that would significantly break the Internet and online communities/activities? It seems to happen continuously, a few times a year.
I think you're somewhat missing the key nuance of a point. There are actually two debates. 1. Whether to text while driving. 2. Whether a specific texting is too distracting.
Here's the thing, though. Is legislation a remedy for bad internet legislation?
Fair point. You can argue that not regulating the internet at all is overall better than dealing with all of the bad proposals. However, bringing it back to the post I was responding to, everyone wasn't celebrating the EU regulating the internet, everyone was celebrating privacy regulation in an instance where the system had gotten to a bad place on its own.
I think you're somewhat missing the key nuance of a point. There are actually two debates. 1. Whether to text while driving. 2. Whether a specific texting is too distracting.
You and I agree that the potential benefits are tiny compared to the harms of allowing texting while driving. On the other hand, you and I disagree that the balance is in favor of deregulating the internet.
That's a crucial difference. We never get to question 2 with texting while driving. We get to question 2 with internet legislation all the time.
Here's the thing, though. Is legislation a remedy for bad internet legislation?
Legislation doesn't exist in a vacuum, and bad legislation is remedied in multiple ways, one of which is more legislation.
That said, your question sounded to me like a rhetorical way to say that the risk of bad legislation isn't worth the occasional good one. Fair point. I disagree, but fair point. I don't think it's a useful debate to have because it's too fuzzy to be non-ideological, and, practically speaking, the world has already moved on from the question of whether to regulate the internet.
It's pretty never ending, and legislators and regulators don't seem to clue in over time. The downsides are very often potentially huge, and the upsides are almost always questionable.
We get to question 2 with internet legislation all the time.
Rather like living someplace where you get to kill cockroaches all the time.
Legislation doesn't exist in a vacuum, and bad legislation is remedied in multiple ways, one of which is more legislation.
The solution to violence is more and better violence? The solution to hostility and hate is better backed and more potent hate? Laws and regulations are manipulated by big corporations to their advantage all the time, sometimes in direct contradiction to how the laws are sold to the public. The best move is to refuse them that power.
it's too fuzzy to be non-ideological, and, practically speaking, the world has already moved on from the question of whether to regulate the internet.
The formulation isn't fuzzy or ambiguous. The proper amount to regulate the internet is as little as possible.
-despite the fact that pure Internet anarchy is obviously not the optimal solution, or even a particularly good idea-
-letting the government make well-intentioned and obviously-good laws about it is still worse.
I think it's supposed to allow me to deny cookies or customise them, but enough sites have just looked through to some huge unusable page when I click "more info" that I don't bother anymore.
'Under Article 13 — the "censorship machines" — anyone who allows users to communicate in public by posting audio, video, stills, code, or anything that might be copyrighted — must send those posts to a copyright enforcement algorithm. The algorithm will compare it to all the known copyrighted works (anyone can add anything to the algorithm's database) and censor it if it seems to be a match.'
I would really like a newspaper if it provided decent content. I would even prefer a weekly in depth edition instead of a daily dose of mcNews, we'll-give-two-sides-even-if-one-is-insane, and political opera. Now who can I give my money?
A tax means google pays, not me, and they can continue creating garbage. The market has spoken, newspapers. Please do your job or drop dead.
On the other hand, lots of small rural places deciding, say, whether to frack near their river, don't get the kind of insights into the problem that they used to.
It's the catch-22 though, isn't it? If you want good content, you need newspapers to pay good writers. If you want them to be able to pay for good writers, they need a revenue stream. If you don't want to help provide a revenue stream until they provide good content, where does that leave you?
Note: By "you" I mean "everyone"
The link tax isn't a free speech issue. It's an issue of news companies not adapting to the changing climate. Perhaps monolithic news companies will go extinct and be replaced by distributed individual citizen/contract journalism? Forcing a fee for clicking on news links is ridiculous because a) many companies already paywall their content so it's clearly already possible, b) it's attempting to force people to adapt to the news companies' business model rather than having them adopt to the internet and c) perhaps it's about time the news was democratised anyway.