In this example, Youtube or Facebook will have more resources to (automatically) detect copyright content than a small content-oriented startup.
This only increases "barriers to entry" for new companies and strengthens the position of incumbents.
According to the article, politicians initially addressed the problem:
> TBC Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted from the law.
but this at risk of being dropped:
> This was one of the European Parliament’s main improvements to the text. Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.
In many ways the EU is a functioning technocracy, and if you ever read through the actual EU documents it shows. They are almost always sound, they are also massively bureaucratic and around 90% longer than necessary, but I’ve never read through something that wasn’t sound.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read up on article 13, but I do read (and sit through) a good deal of EU standards and proposals for EU wide Enterprise Architectural principles, and they are never thwarted by politics.
Sound in respect to very general interpretations and "common sense". The problem is that general laws can touch topics that are way beyond common sense, the room of interpretation is then just so big that it's like a weapon to take out anybody if you only dig deep enough and frame it as a problem for the common good.
Maybe apple,
They are the winners, not the losers here.
As you say the small start-ups in Berlin & Paris are left in the dust because only the big ones have the resources to take care of this bureaucratic horse-manure.
In the long run we'll continue to dig our own graves while China and the US laughs.
This one's a double edged sword.
Punitive measures on information like this rarely encourage anything. The worst part is people look at the intent and potential effects of legislation as though it is the actual, realized result. I have to assume the reason is a mix of naive optimism, anti-big-web-tech, and the inability to take the bad with the good so e feel obligated to keep shaping things. Real, actual teaching and encouraging and efforts and money and motive and all of that is far different from what's happening here.
At best it will create a divergent protectionist demense while doing nothing to aid viability outside the market - and its help inside is dubious. Even outright banning Google and Facebook won't suddenly make Bing and Yahoo the next big thing. At best they will be the postum to the real coffee.
Yes, it' a strategy of their failing commercial entities to wring a profit out of entities like FB and G who they think are profiting.
Of course it's among the worst strategies available.
What they need is more innovation, not more regulation.
however, it is a good thing. youtube has always been a massive for-profit piracy operation, and they just license and pay the people who are big enough to threaten them. all small content creators get the shaft. even google search is mostly a form of piracy. taking other people's content and slapping ads on it.
google needs to die and it is nice to see the EU helping here.