I was so excited over how the EU managed to get GDPR so right, that I couldn't believe that the EU would get something else about the internet so wrong immediately afterwards.
This new Copyright Directive seems to be an accident in the opposite direction, with Axel Voss as rapporteur.
It's not an accident. Look who will profit from the link tax the most... the Axel Springer Verlag, owner of many large publications in Germany, especially the tabloid BILD. The boss of ASV is Friede Springer... who happens to be good friends with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Axel Voss is in the same party (CDU). Now add in that for a very long time the BILD was considered to be the "inofficial voice" of the CDU/CSU (the refugee influx changed that a bit, as BILD heavily went down the racist route and attacking Merkel's refugee politics but still, the paper is leaning heavily conservative).
Sascha Lobo, German journalist for SPIEGEL, has outlined the entire stuff here (in German, though): http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/leistungsschutzre...
If it’s “racist” to debate that, then racism as a word has lost all meaning. If anything Syrian refugees have been granted greater privileges than Bosnian-Serbs. It would seem that policy could, be considered racist. Folks have bent over backwards to be as “unracist” as possible and thus, bad policy has happened because any debate on the topic is automatically shut down as racism. You can’t have a legitimate policy debate without being called a racist anymore.
The narrative pushed by BILD was that for anything from antisemitism over rising housing costs to "rises" in criminality was caused by refugees (and refugees alone, never mind still dominant Nazi antisemitism, capitalism and fabricated statistics), that refugees are dangerous, that Islam is dangerous and other stuff that basically echoed what the local right-wing extremist party AfD also said.
It's perfectly valid to debate refugee (or other) politics, but if one crosses that thin line of feeding the population outright lies or incite hatred, one deserves to be called a racist hate monger.
There is nothing wrong in calling out the bullshit represented in certain Islamic groups (e.g. Salafism or Wahhabism).
What BILD (and a boatload of other racist outlets) do, however, is throwing all the millions of Turks, the refugees and other Muslims in Germany, in the same boat as ISIS, Saudi-Arabia and al-Quaeda. This is the hate mongering that's really dangerous for societies.
It promotes apathy.
Because my browser rejects all third-party cookies (obviously), they keep losing these preferences and I have to keep telling them that I don't want these cookies.
The newspaper, sporting event, TV, and movie library companies went to their buddies at the EU and got GDPR passed which banned modern adtech under the guise of privacy and data nationalism. Now they've changed copyright law to place restrictions on social, search, and aggregators.
Might as well call it the FIFA Fucks FAANG Act of 2018.
Agreed, though I could really have done without every damn site having an extra popup that gives me a choice that isn't a choice...click accept.
It's not "blackmailing" and it's not "forcing your consent." The EU looks like it's turning more and more into a non-free regime. And your comment, among many others, signals that it's exactly what many Europeans want. Which is sad.
That would be a violation of the GDPR, this is the site owners actively ignoring the rule and just being a dick.
Also, since opting-out has to be as easy as opting-in those popups should be displayed on every page view after you've accepted.