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> the UK, which is generally pretty low on violent crimes, has a specific problem with knife crimes and is therefore tackling the problem heads-on.

Sadly neither the problem nor the solution is new - the ban on knives in public dates to at least 1953.

It's interesting (and very Brexity) that people blame these things on the EU when they're both very much British criminal law independent of the EU.

To clarify: I find the UK’s knife ban stupid, and it affects me personally (I often cook at friends’ places and, if these friends have no proper knives, I bring my chef’s knife; I also own two valuable antique swords but the rules for bringing them into the country are so complicated that they are indefintely stored at my parents’ place in another country). But like you said, it has nothing to do with EU legislation. And there’s a specific historical context which at least gives some explanation as to why the rule exists in the first place.

>To clarify: I find the UK’s knife ban stupid, and it affects me personally (I often cook at friends’ places and, if these friends have no proper knives, I bring my chef’s knife

There's nothing in UK law that prevents you from doing this. Bring along a cook book and store the knife securely (and keep it in your bag) and you're going to be fine. If you get stopped by the police mention it straightaway and move from there.

The legislation is written broad enough that discretion is possible in cases like this. Where it's going to look funny is when you're stopped with it in a pub at 9pm on a Saturday night.

So yeah I see both sides (I might go for a beer down the local after cooking on the way home with the knife for example), but really there's not much wrong with your knife laws IMO.

Broad discretion in such laws is the problem. It puts you at the mercy of an individual police officer's whim. More broadly it facilitates discrimination. This isn't a theoretical problem: I know people in London who, due to stop and search, would never dare to carry knives, no matter the reason.

>More broadly it facilitates discrimination.

This is also true, I certainly think if you're a white middle class person taking a knife to a friends you're going to get off easier than an someone from a ethnic minority in Tower Hamlets.

It also results in insane things like this [1]. I'm not sure if there's a better way though, it seems much like democracy it's the best of a bad bunch.

1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3165489/Gardener-arr...

"Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament"

-> Article 13 has not been rejected by the EP.

What has been rejected is a proposal to fast-track the proposal with no debate.

See https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/

"The Legal Affairs Committee narrowly approved the plans (with slight changes) – but in a surprise move, the Parliament then refused to rubber-stamp the Committee’s position, opening it up for further debate."

We’re saying the same thing. The Legal Affairs Committee isn’t the Parliament, it’s merely a committee. The EP only had two options here: either vote in favour of the article (“rubber-stamping”) or rejecting it. That’s what they did. The procedure in this case is to revise the proposal, which is exactly what’s happening here. This is working as intended. Of course the fact that the defeat was rather narrow is cause for concern, don’t get me wrong.

> First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against (but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, good on Mozilla).

As they say, don't count your chickens before they're hatched

I’m not — I’m actually contacting my MEP.

Rejected by a very close vote, must I say. That's ridiculous, imo

> First off, the Article 13 in question was already rejected once by Parliament and is expected to be repealed against

It was rejected rather narrowly (278-318) a few months ago, and only because some of the coalition that voted against it wants to pass a slightly weaker version of the other clauses instead.

>The man was arrested for hate speech

And the hate speech he was convicted for was training his dog to do a "Bellamy salute".

This is simply wrong. The judgement clarifies explicitly that the hate speech in question was the antisemitic slogans that were used as cues, and which were audible on the video.

You seem to have intentionally ignored "and its member states."

What am I supposed to take away from that quality of life ranking? Yes, the US is below a few EU countries and above others. And it's an average, which means it doesn't mean you can't have a better quality of life in the US than you would in Denmark depending on your individual situation. I for one would be much less happy having to deal with more than doubled gas prices and restricted individual freedoms.

> You seem to have intentionally ignored "and its member states."

I didn’t, but your comment insinuates that it’s all the same. As for restricted individual freedoms, this betrays a lot about your background. EU contries value equal opportunity over individual freedom for a select few. For minorities and poor people, the EU fares a lot better on individual freedoms than the US does.

> For minorities and poor people, the EU fares a lot better on individual freedoms than the US does

That's not true at all. All you have to do is go to France to see how far Europeans are willing to go to restrict the individual freedoms of minorities.

Of course, you won't get data on just how much those groups are in the minority, because France has also conveniently made it illegal to collect this data, but you don't have to have exact numbers to see that the French government has no problem passing laws that directly curtail minorities' freedoms.

> All you have to do is go to France

I’ve lived in France for several years. And yes, I agree that France unduly restricts individual freedoms (and protested against it). I’m not claiming that any single country is perfect. I’m claiming that they are, on balance, better than the US (when you’re poor and/or a minority). Basic personal safety is a prerequisite for freedom: If you can’t even be sure that you can afford medical care keeping you alive, or if you need to worry that institutionalised racism means you get shot by police or thrown in jail for a trivial misdemeanour that earns a white person a slap on the wrist … then “freedom” is simply a theoretical concept.

And yes, institutional racism also exists in France (and in every other European country) but it’s much less normalised than in the US.

> And yes, institutional racism also exists in France (and in every other European country) but it’s much less normalised than in the US.

This is the line that white people in France often say, but it's completely wrong. Racism is much more institutionalized in France than it is in the US. Racism is so institutionalized in France that it's almost impossible to talk about it, because it's woven into the legal and societal fabric and so deeply embedded.

> Basic personal safety is a prerequisite for freedom

You are dramatically overestimating the extent to which it is safe to exist in France as someone who is Black, Arab, or Muslim. Which is a common mistake, given that France has literally made it illegal to collect data on police brutality and incarceration rates of minorities in France, the way we can in the US. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, or that France isn't also an incredibly dangerous place for minorities - and arguably much more so - as anyone (like myself) who looks Black, Arab, or Muslim and has so much as traveled to France or lived there can attest.

I remember in high school, my French teacher said racism was much more overt over there and in Europe in general.

> France has literally made it illegal to collect data on police brutality and incarceration rates of minorities in France

You’ll need to provide a good reference for that because this is completely wrong as far as I know (AI doesn’t mention it, for instance [1]).

Again, don’t get me wrong: I deeply disagree with the way police acts and is organised in France.

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2009/04/france-pol...

> You’ll need to provide a good reference for that because this is completely wrong as far as I know (AI doesn’t mention it, for instance [1]).

Since 1978, it's been illegal in France to collect census information on race. This is done under the guise of providing "equality under the law". In practice, as pretty much any minority could predict, all it does is make it impossible to actually talk about the systemic discrimination which happens[0].

You say you lived in France for several years, and yet you're not aware that it's impossible to legally collect data on anything related to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities (including police brutality and incarceration rates). Which, in a way, is my exact point: making it impossible to talk about these issues in France doesn't mean that they don't happen; it just means that people who aren't affected by them aren't aware of them, and so they can continue believing the illusion that this racism somehow doesn't exist, or isn't as bad as it really is.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-french...

Look, I obviously know about this law but this is a completely different thing from what you claimed and it doesn't mean at all that it's forbidden to catalogue police crimes against minorities.

I will concede that it makes it harder to do so by referring to official records (and this is indeed a problem). But your comment sounded like it would be illegal to, for instance, independently collect complaints. And it's emphatically not. Amnesty and others do exactly that, including looking at racial factors.

Ethnic statistics are not totally forbidden, they're very strongly regulated. http://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2018/01/16/est-ce-que-les...

Yet if tomorrow these statistics were allowed and were to show (for example) that 50% of people in jail are Muslim, what would be the use of that number? The far left would use it as proof of discrimination and the far right that muslims are a danger to society.

Societies like the US where there's a "race" checkbox on forms and where ethnic statistics are legal, are far from being less racist or discriminatory...

For someone having no clue on this topic, could you give some examples?