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Comment by Gudahtt | Hacker News Reader

Not all for-profit websites are run by big corporations. The companies you're describing here are also the ones that will find it easiest to comply with these new regulations. YouTube for example was already pressured to create a filtering system, ContentID. Behemoths like Facebook will have a far easier time adapting than your typical startup.

Article 13 dooms smaller companies and startups, thus further entrenching these big corporations. There was a provision added to Article 13 to protect "small and medium-sized enterprises", but according to the EFF [0] this "protection" is fatally flawed. It only protects them for 3 years, or until they attain 5 million unique visitors, or until they attain annual revenues (not profits) of €10 million.

That's not to mention that the exceptions for not-for-profit services also has been regarded as vague, which could be problematic.

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/european-copyright-dir...

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I have a platform where teenagers can easily create and share games. I'm currently based in Belgium, but with this new revelation, I'm forced to move abroad with my company. (I already checked I could create a Delaware inc)

Europe tries to catch up to the Silicon Valley startup scene. But stuff like this makes it pretty clear that EU is too retarded.

>with this new revelation, I'm forced to move abroad with my company.

Can you elaborate why that is?

Right now, when one of my users uploads copyrighted material, I can take it down when I see it. Or when I get a complaint (DMCA takedown).

We're taking about teenagers here, so it's not always clear to them that they cannot use ripped sprites from other games, or music, or whatever.

Basically I can make the uploader responsible for what they upload.

The secondary problem is that my biggest competitor also has a lot of copyrighted material, so I'm already very careful with that not ending up on my platform.

With this new law, anyone can sue me if there might be some sprite on there that they created. If I was my (non-EU) competitor, I would anonymously upload some of my own content to sue the EU company. Basically I'm a sitting duck.

I'm currently working on my platform alone, so implementing a filter is impossible. Even with a big team it would be impossible, since slightly modified sprites are derived works and so also copyrighted.

But if I'm outside of the EU, I can just block that region (not the biggest one anyway, and after the UK leaves, not a single native English speaking country in there).

If I get a competitor from the EU in the far future, I just do the upload & sue trick.

Your platform needs to make at least x million a year and have userbase of x million and exist for at least x years. Only then the filtering is mandatory...

Where does it say that, could you cite the legislation in this please?

I think that is x million _OR_ exist for at least x years, where x is 10e6 € resp. 4.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Mandate-R...

That is exactly the whole vibe I get from EU regarding startups: "Think small"

> after the UK leaves, not a single native English speaking country in there

Oi! Ireland and Malta would have a word with you, mate.

> I can just block that region (not the biggest one anyway

Not the biggest, but the richest.

Europe is not that valuable a market for advertising platforms. There is a reason why companies choose to monetize the US first before even attempting to monetize internationally and that is because US advertising revenue per impression is almost 3x what you can get in Europe.

I'm not arguing with that (I would also add that language fragmentation is still a problem). But it does not justifies incorrect blanket statements like above.

That's not a bad thing.

Nice to see Malta remembered for once :)

If it keeps going like this the EU is gonna waste all its capital and become poor. Yeah, it looks like economy is still running, but you can't escape the laws of economics. Many don't see it because they're not into politics, but the EU, Germany, France, Italy are making an article 13 for all kind of industries, every day. Eventually you run out of capital (including willpower and time) and a slow descent become a collapse.

Of course since I'm just a nobody on a forum what do I know.

yeah cost of creating new business is going up, taxes and red tape around existing business are going up, taxes to the middle class are skyrocketing, welfare is dropping and everyone's wondering "why is Europe having a youth unemployment problem"?

>> Not the biggest, but the richest

It depends on what you mean by rich. From a GDP PPP perspective there are issues on short, medium and long term when compared with other countries. For example: China is richer than the whole of the EU (incl UK). US is almost as rich as the EU. India is 1/2 and Japan 1/4.

*By rich I mean GDP PPP.

The EU isn't close to as rich as the US, the parent comment was far off the mark.

Not only does the US have about ~40% of all the millionaires on earth all by itself, its GDP per capita is 77% higher than the EU ($33,700 per capita per the Worldbank 2017 figures; versus $59,700 that year for the US). Its nominal GDP is also about $2 trillion higher, despite having roughly 200 million fewer people.

PPP is a near worthless measurement if you're a business trying to sell goods. It's the absolute last thing you'd rely on to gauge the pricing power in a market for a product or service.

PPP is worthless for a business. i totally agree. that's why i was asking the parent comment about what does "rich" mean for him.

but I agree with you that from a business perspective the US is de facto the place to be.

> If I get a competitor from the EU in the far future, I just do the upload & sue trick.

Pretty scummy behaviour :(

But a great idea to apply to all the websites of Article 13 supporters.

> But if I'm outside of the > EU, I can just block that > region.

This kind of behaviour is going to lead us to having two seperate internets.

> Not the biggest one anyway

True, but does it need to be the biggets to be valuable.

> not a single native English speaking country in there

Except there are native english speaking countries in there, and besides, europeans can very often (region dependent) read/write english anyway.

Also, do you just not want to support none english content? What about spanish speaking Americans?

I also think you'll lose many users in other eurasian countries that use an anonymising network and have exit nodes in the EU.

> This kind of behaviour is going to lead us to having two seperate internets.

No, EU kind of behavior does, just like China behavior.

> True, but does it need to be the biggets to be valuable.

I have lots of users in US, Australia, New Zealand, various Asian countries, and UK. Focusing on them allows me to skip translations.

> europeans can very often (region dependent) read/write english anyway.

As a European myself (Belgian), I know this very well. The Netherlands and Flanders are probably leading in this. But the bigger countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain prefer translated software. Just look at the dubbed movies they watch.

It's a lose situation anyway for me, there is no question about that.

> Europe tries to catch up to the Silicon Valley startup scene.

I don't even see them trying to do this...

>Article 13 dooms smaller companies and startups, thus further entrenching these big corporations.

Only "smaller companies and startups" whose main purpose is "enabling users to upload and share a large amount of copyright-protected content with the purpose of obtaining profit from that activity". That's what the document says; how it will actually be enforced is still a mystery, of course.

P. S. I have pointed to that "protection" on a previous comment [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19491806.

That description includes any for-profit services that involve user-generated content. That doesn't make me any less concerned.

Also that link appears to be dead, so I'm not sure what comment you're referring to.

It's a link to a comment of theirs that is dead - not sure why it seems like a pretty good comment.

I've vouched for it, hopefully a few other people with enough karma to do so will and it will resurrect itself.

It's back, and it's a very good comment.

I couched my statement with seems like because I don't know enough to evaluate if it's correct or not. Assuming it is it's an awesome comment.

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