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Comment by porpoisely | Hacker News Reader

This is what I despise about "news". If this was china or russia or venezuela, etc, the headline would be "China tightens grip on their people" or "International community concerned as China becomes more authoritarian" or "Pro freedom activists protest against China's draconian censorship". It would be spun as something more ominous than "reform". But reuters being reuters and also a major supporter of censorship, of course spins it in a pro-censorship manner. Also, considering that google and facebook support these "reforms", how are they "aiming" it at them? These laws will entrench google and facebook and secure their monopoly positions. The biggest beneficiaries of these laws are google and facebook and of course large media companies, like reuters.

I wonder what the headline would be if reuters and the news industry was against these "reforms".

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Take this with a grain of salt since it's their own website, but Youtube themselves say they wouldn't be able to let any content on their platform stay up even if it slightly resembled copyrighted content. Think the current Content ID system times 10.

https://www.youtube.com/saveyourinternet/

https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/10/a-final-upda...

The webpage you linked is from last year I think. Article 13 has since been updated

It has been updated to something worse:

https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/

Content ID almost definitely operates on a score model, which I'm sure would scare Google into changing their minimum required score to remove a video. It would result in more false positives, but you can almost see the headline in your head if they don't "Youtube has over 50000 videos that their own Content ID Algorithm detected, but they didn't take them down!"

The first issue is that this is called a "Copyright" reform. The language is loaded from the start and discussion can never get off on the right foot.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.en....

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html

I feel like headline bickering is endless.

But I also think there is a lot of difference between even draconian copyright laws.... and China, Russia, Venezuela....

Same goes for laws enacted by democratic governments who have free press, independent courts, etc.

Your comparisons seem hardly 1:1.

I think his point is not about comparison, but of the media putting a 'spin' on the way a news item is presented to make it more in line with their own entrenched positions, and the ethicality of their doing it.

Even considering the huge uproar about fake news, etc that the media is crying hoarse over, they seem reluctant to reform their own practices like reductive and sensationalist head line writing, and change to a more plainspeaking reportage.

I'm not sure there is automatically "spin", because of the difference.

My point being those government actions are very much in different contexts and might deserve different descriptions.

In terms of the areas of what the OP mentioned, there is no difference.

My point being there is more context than just what he OP mentioned.

There's also usually more context behind the stories from say Venezuela that you normally don't get, so that doesn't really say much.

How many such laws need to be passed before we can say that the context has changed?

Well some of the context I mentioned was a democratic government, free press, independent courts, etc. So that would have to change.

My point is these don't have to be abolished at once with a single law, there can also be a gradual decline.

This law _does_ threaten free speech by basically forcing platforms introduce content filters. First to be used for copyrighted content, but once it's there it can easily be extended to hate speech, fake news, defamation and other euphemisms for the content to be censored. It basically un-does a lot of internet's democratizing effect on free speech.

I don't like the law either, it might even impact some of the context I mention, but that context is still there if we're talking about OP's headline vs headline discussion.

Heh, a few weeks back I was listening a podcast and it mentioned when US/NATO decide to remove some foreign country's government they start by calling it regime instead of ruler/ruling party etc.

So maybe you should start talking about the future of the Conservative Regime in the UK and the Trumpian Theocracy.

I think I that's how causation works.

This isn’t just about the US/NATO e.g. Iran not wanting to recognize Israel so they refer to it as the Zoinist Regime, the term regime is used to refer to an illegitimate and often authoritarian government, however for the most part when NATO uses that term they are objectively correct even if they have additional motives for using it.

But reuters being reuters and also a major supporter of censorship, of course spins it in a pro-censorship manner.

That's too bold of a claim to just toss in there leisurely. Surely you should feel some degree of need to qualify that statement.

"Supporter of censorship"? How does this become the top comment?

The Reuters article presented both points of view, including the dissenters, contradicting the "Reuters supports censorship". But perhaps if we upvote and downvote commenters, we can make a real change in the world.

Pay attention to the language of the article:

> two years after the EU executive proposed changes to protect the bloc’s cultural heritage and ensure that publishers, broadcasters and artists are remunerated fairly.

> dissenting countries said the proposed changes could hinder innovation and hurt the bloc’s competitiveness

The first statement is presented as fact, the second as something that was merely 'said'. 'Censorship', 'freedom of expression', or 'chilling effects' are entirely absent from the article.

I see your point but the full sentence seems to me (to my reading) simply to mention the stated purpose of the legislation. The phrase after "to" I read not as what Reuters stamped as the Correct or Real reason, but what the legislators' implied reasons were:

Negotiators from the EU countries, the European Parliament and the European Commission sealed a deal last week, two years after the EU executive proposed changes to protect the bloc’s cultural heritage and ensure that publishers, broadcasters and artists are remunerated fairly.

What's after "to" is the reason for the legislation. What, the reason for the legislation is fully subjective? And then they mentioned the dissenting voices.

I don't know. Reuters might be biased, but I don't see this as making a strong case.

I have no idea if Reuters is deliberately biased, and I don't think this article shows that. It's just lazy inertia-driven reporting. But inertia-driven reporting is biased, even if the reporter tried to be neutral. It usually ends up subconsciously treating official sources as truth, and everything else as mere claims. But it's what it doesn't report that tilts the story most heavily. Industry PR and politicians give very different answers from e.g. software freedom activists.

Exactly, that’s why “fake news” is a funny term: it is mostly used by news outlets that are loosing at their own game ;-)

Anyway, I believe it doesn’t take much to read through the double standards BS.

> Also, considering that google and facebook support these "reforms", how are they "aiming" it at them?

Huh?

"Google, which has lobbied against both features and has even suggested that it might pull Google News from Europe, said last week it would study the text before deciding on its next steps."

That does not sound like support to me.

This is not true, and the headlines are not misrepresentations.

This is not an authoritarian move by the EU.

It's actually quite fair, or a reasonable premise to posit that neither you nor Google have the right to publish copyrighted material.

They are enacting laws for basic copyright protections - which seem wild only due to the fact that the web has been a 'wild west' since inception and it's what we are used to.

I'm against this law, but there are very real arguments for this.

The arguments against the law are actually more pragmatic than anything, i.e. small sites will have trouble complying and it could make information more difficult to access.

The headline is fine.

Nothing is being censored. You can say whatever you want.

> Nothing is being censored. You can say whatever you want.

a) Not if the platforms needed for ordinary people to say them are destroyed/neutered.

b) This is a direct attack on criticism and fair use in general. Some of the most biting criticism is to use the opponent's own words against them, or to demonstrate a historical example of them being wrong or inconsistent. Which has in general been legally protected for that exact reason, yet this is likely to impair that significantly because it would be detected as "infringement" by an automated system with a useless, opaque or non-existent appeals process.

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