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Comment by 08-15 | Hacker News Reader

As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we?

Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles.

> So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians

The Eurocrats do not want free speech to establish itself in the EU. That's very important to them.

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German law is relevant here because this is a translation of a law that is already on the books in Germany and Spain onto the EU level. The legal restriction of linking without license and using very short text snippets has been part of German law since 2013, and in fact was an initiative by the same political parties that introduced this. It has been through the German courts numerous times and the courts cannot agree on a reasonable interpretation because of how the law is written. So in a sense this is Germany and Spain exporting their local legislation to the EU level. The way the law works in Germany is very much relevant as it informed this proposal. The core concept of Leistungsschutz is to create a new form of copyright, that applies specifically to short snippets that were legal to use under the "normal" Urheberrecht laws.

> Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles.

There is indeed an exception for quotes (Zitate) and parodies (for the latter cf. https://www.ferner-alsdorf.de/urheberrecht__urheberrecht-zur... since it is not written down explicitly in the law). But, for example, memes fall into neither category and are thus typically illegal under German law, but legal under US copyright because of fair use.

Fair use isn't strictly defined in US Code as well... It's mostly through precedent.

We do have free speech in the EU, claming otherwise would indicate that the European countries are no democracies. While the extent of free speech might vary from country to country, denying it is there goes way to far.

Sure, there are limitations to it, e.g. denying the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in Germany, and with regards to defamation. But otherwise just about any opinion can be voiced freely. Thid doesn't mean that thios particular EU law is any good, it just screams big media corporation lobbyism all over it. And yes, this implies some future potential limitations to free speech,l either by technically limiting the reech of smaller players (regardless of what the law states) and by giving governmants a tool to keep things of the internet. Especially the last part is troubling.

What you are describing is a merged set of other named rights, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association, etc. The US (as far as I am aware) is the only country in the world with the Right to Free Speech. Free being the keyword here, "unconstrained".

Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.

Well, at least in Germany you can say all kinds of negative Things aboiut the government you want as long as you are not personally insulting anybody. In France as well as far as I know. Wether it is part of freedom of Speech or Freedom of Expression, well I'm no constitutional lawyer.

You don't have the right to say anything you want in the US either. Free speech is full of exceptions in US law as well, starting with the most obvious example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" [1] (though the original decision the phrase refers to had nothing to do with someone shouting "fire"...) In other words: speech that would be likely to incite imminent lawless action.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

The U.S. has many exceptions to free speech. Libel, slander, "fighting words" (see Chaplinsky v. N.H.), "imminent lawless action"(Brandenburg v. Ohio), obscenity (Miller v. California), etc. These have all been interpreted in varying ways throughout history, with the general trend being towards more protected speech (compare Brandenburg/"imminent lawless action" to Schenck v. U.S./"clear and present danger"). Additionally, the government can restrict speech further when acting in a special capacity, such as the FCC's regulation of the speech on the airwaves and public schools' regulation of free speech in classrooms.

It's delusional to think that the U.S. has unrestricted free speech, or to think that "free" implies completely "unconstrained".

>Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.

This is a strawman. No EU country restricts free speech to speech criticizing the government.

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