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Comment by zaarn | Hacker News Reader

Let's not forget that the CEO calling the EU's proposal impossible is also an opinion piece written by someone with an agenda to push.

At the end of the day, I can't help but atleast partially agree with the reasoning behind the proposal; copyright is broken on the internet and it's nearly impossible to have it enforced on even larger sites if you're not one of the bigger players like music labels or hollywood studios or high profile game studios. And the current DMCA process deployed by most platforms is broken as well since all of the burden of proof lands on the creator with no repercussions for those who send them if it turns out to be fraudulent.

That needs to be fixed somehow, though the EU proposal is likely not a perfect approach.

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I agree completely. Copyright is badly broken, and it's broken in favour of the big players. Independent classical musicians are the most severely affected by it. A few of my favourite classical players have received copyright strikes by the likes of Sony, BMG, WB, etc. for their own live performances. And then there are cases such as the video of a guy strolling through a forest, which received copyright claims from the big bullies because of the live bird calls.

EU's proposal would only end up making the already flawed ContentID system more aggressive. Heck, I'd go in the opposite direction. I would be in favour of penalizing those who falsely claim copyright for works that they don't own the rights to.

I totally agree. Claiming copyright over other people's work and using that claim to block other people's work, is a far more serious abuse than merely violating someone's copyright, because it actually takes something away from the victim. It's much closer to actual theft, because the victim loses their 'property'.

And yet there doesn't seem to be any punishment for that. I'd rather see the EU protect the rights of independent artists and regular citizens, than those of large corporations with a tendency to abuse their rights.

Maybe what needs to be fixed is our concept of copyright.

We've spent enormous resources creating a miraculous machine that does one thing: it makes unlimited copies of any information and distributes it all over the world, almost for free. But we can't use it to its full potential because we're stuck in a mindset that dates back centuries.

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