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Comment by sebst | Hacker News Reader

This is a decision that will end up benefitting the big players on both sides, i.e. regulatory capture.

Google, Facebook and the like already employ filtering and copyright techniques and they can afford it. So, this law lifts the barrier to entry for smaller internet companies.

On the other side, it's also beneficial almost exclusively for the larger publications or copyright holders as the collected amount of license payments would end up there.

So, while I accept that the benevolent interpretation of this initiative is correct – big internet companies have an unhealthy market share and it's unfair to make money from other peoples' work – I suspect this might be another step towards more corporatism.

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Regulatory capture implies Google and Facebook were in favor of this and made it happen, which I doubt is true.

They are in favor of this. Maybe it's worse for them than in the current legal situation. But when the law comes into effect they are better off than any of their smaller competitors.

Do you have any statements or signaling you can link to from either of these companies to suggest they are in favor of this law? I know Google, for example, has fought strongly against similar link tax and other laws related to Google News in the past. There is also a statement from them referenced in this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/plan-to-make-google-pay-for-...

> The Commission’s proposal “would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news — including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online,” Google said in a statement.

> Do you have any statements or signaling you can link to from either of these companies to suggest they are in favor of this law?

No, but I have to correct myself. I don't assume they are actively "in favor" but that they will passively benefit in a post-law time.

I think it may be true that they may suffer the law better than their competitors. But I think if it was likely that they would benefit absolutely, they'd be in favor of the law, or at least ambivalent, rather than strongly opposed. Don't you?

I personally believe (without any evidence) that they are ambivalent, maybe slightly opposed. However, they needed to oppose in public, otherwise, this would have been a PR disaster:

Publishers: "You steal our content and are unwilling to pay, so we need a law!"

Google: "You're right, please do the law, because it would harm our competitors!"

They could easily couch the statement in such a way that they would appear blameless, if they really wanted to make a positive statement. E.g. "We recognize the critical contribution of publishing companies to our society and want to do our part to ensure the continued existence of a strong publishing industry."

But then why did they not pay voluntarily when publishing companies asked for this prior to lobbying for this law?

Same reason I don't pay extra money to the treasury even though I think my tax rates should be raised.

They are probably against the link tax, but in favour of the content filtering.

I have the feeling that EU is intentionally doing it. Sooner or later only big tech will be able to comply with all regulations.

I sometimes have the same feeling,but I'm not sure it's true.

From an economical point of view it makes no sense to put legislation in place that will strengthen the market position of mostly US, non-EU companies.

Another reasoning could be to "prepare" a censorship infrastructure, but I can't find any hard evidences to this.

>From an economical point of view it makes no sense to put legislation in place that will strengthen the market position of mostly US, non-EU companies.

The EU is failing in both the tech sector and the media sector. This is just sacrificing one to slow down the other's decline. Censorship is a bonus but it's not the goal, just like privacy was a bonus and not a goal of GDPR.

>Another reasoning could be to "prepare" a censorship infrastructure, but I can't find any hard evidences to this.

The only thing you need to watch for right now, and what will be seen in the future, is uneven enforcement. You'll have a choice to either censor material Europeans [are bound by law to] find offensive, or face a nice fine. Again, much like GDPR (though that law is also designed to get big tech companies to pay their taxes). This probably will come in the form of a deal with companies that won't be disclosed to the general public, but it's a nice backdoor way to get around US law which correctly doesn't require such censorship.

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