EU Council of Ministers Approves Copyright Directive
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
> The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers just a few minutes ago, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden.
Nonetheless, those countries will have no choice but to implement national laws to comply with the EU directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francovich_v_Italy
> Francovich v Italy (1991) C-6/90 was a decision of the European Court of Justice which established that European Union member states could be liable to pay compensation to individuals who suffered a loss by reason of the member state's failure to transpose an EU directive into national law. This principle is sometimes known as the principle of state liability or "the rule in Francovich" in European Union law.
Indeed, EU members lack the sovereignty even of U.S. states. The US federal government can pass laws directly binding on the citizens of every state, but cannot compel state governments to pass and enforce particular laws. The EU can do both (the former through regulations, the latter through directives). In the US, the inability of the federal government to hijack state legislative and enforcement machinery to its own ends is seen as an important measure of accountability—you can always blame state legislators for state laws. (You see this in the areas of drug and immigration law. Sanctuary cities can exist because the federal government cannot force state organs to enforce federal law. Likewise, legalized marijuana at the state level.)
The mechanism in question was and is known by all participant countries that joined the EU.
Not perfect, but is there a better system at reach?
There's a country I heard, overseas, where it can happen that someone is elected president although they didn't get the majority of the people's vote.
That is just not true. The mechanism was changed drastically by Lisbon treaty - no more vetos, qualified majority now overrules the rest. Needless to say, 'no' was not accepted as an answer to European Constitution/Lisbon treaty, as reminded by referendums in France, Netherlands and Ireland. This is the true nature of the EU.
The referendums were a disgrace, true. So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government, and not as expressions for the very question.
Find any country, political structure that is pure, of anything.
But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent, something not seen for several centuries before that. The EU project, and structure, and growth, and maturity, is central to that peace.
How factually worse, exactly, have been any EU member, since they joined the Union? How factually better have they been as well?
Pretending that EU members would be better off without the union is a plain, undocumented, geopolitically hostile, lie.
> So were they because referendums are often organised, and seen, and used, as votes of confidence for a given government
From the grab-bag of possible explanations...
> But still. Here we are. More than 70 years at peace on a continent
Also an amazing co-incidence that NATO has been in existence for 70 years. Containing three nuclear powers, it doesn't take a leap of imagination that it was a greater deterrent than whatever you had in mind.
How has your version worked over 70 years? The EU has only been in existence since 1994. Prior to that, it existed in a smaller, trade-only form as the EEC. I thought the 'butter mountain' and 'wine lake' were figures of speech. So were they physical defences, something like an obstacle course to deter the Russians? /s
(edit for that: I'll answer for you: Trump is sowing chaos because that's how his kind grabs more control and more riches.)
Btw, there are 2 nuclear powers in the EU as of today.
I don't really buy that. There were a number of years of peace before the EU even existed; crediting the EU with the peace therefore seems a bit revisionist.
Edit: additionally just because countries are "better off" does not mean they should happily agree to every new power grab by Brussels. Some ex-soviet republics were also better off than before they "joined".
As soon as the EU falls apart you will see everyone feeling cheated or oppressed by its neighbour for all kind of reasons not to mention territorial reclaims. War will be inevitable. The big powers will profit most(Russia, China and the US).
For "better off" - apologies for being unclear - I didn't mean joining the EU. I was making the comparison that the same was true for countries that were (forcefully) joined into the Soviet union in mid 20th century.
(First what-about: the election system is related to but distinct from the ability of the Federal gov to force state-level laws)
Only in theory.
See the National Minimum Drinking Age Act[0] for an example of when the Federal Government forced states to enforce a age 21 drinking minimum. When an entity controls the purse strings limits on their power are largely theoretical.
PS - Yes it is constitutional[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...
That distinction, moreover, is not "theoretical"--it is a limit on federal power that has real teeth. In NFIB v. Sebelius, a majority of the Supreme Court (7-2, on that point) held that ACA's Medicaid expansion was "unconstitutionally coercive" because it would allow the federal government to withdraw all of a state's Medicaid funding if the state did not expand Medicaid eligibility under state law.
Gay marriage, drugs, and immigration are other significant areas where states have used their prerogatives to depart from and refuse to enforce federal law.
Unlike the US, EU member states are free to leave if they wish. See also: Brexit.
I get what you mean by a difference between a US state and the EU... but that difference doesn't address the issue.
A small consolation is that it may also kill Facebook in the EU, giving more room for smaller, open source, distributed social networks like Diaspora, Mastodon and Friendica. If it's true that this only holds for profit-driven sites, as someone claimed in an earlier discussion about this.
Most content hosting startups are likely to be too small to need to implement any tech at all, so they're fine as well for now.
The problem is that now it's practically impossible for a startup to scale up. The route to an exit for any startup hosting content and serving the EU is effectively closed, which is going to make raising impossible, which in turn will make developing a solution impossible. This law cements YouTube as the market leader in a way that no one can really challenge. They've been handed a de facto monopoly. That's the problem.
Anyway: the law will stay unclear for years, won't it?
This is a directive, which means each EU country will need to implement it through a local law, and then they will still be free to implement it the way they want it (unlike GDPR, which is a regulation).
Old businesses have shown time and again they are unable to understand what's good for them if it moves from the way it was always done (some, at least).
Youtube can't even proactively moderate its platform now, its always moving after a media outlet writes a hit piece. Even when they do react their solutions are ham-fisted at best.
I'm starting to think these companies (youtube/facebook ect) are simply too large and traditional economies of scale don't actually work in the way they do for non-tech businesses.
A small curated app store has quality apps published by humans. A giant app store trends towards being full of malware. The larger a platform becomes, the easier it is taken advantage of by bad actors.
I suspect content hosting companies will let anyone upload anything but only make the content visible to people in countries that allow it. A VPN won't help. The directive isn't saying "An American uploaded this so it's fine for everyone to see." It's saying "The original version of this is owned by someone else so no one in the EU can watch this derivative work." Who uploaded it doesn't actually matter.
How will the EU enforce that? Will they obscure any website that don't implement filters?
How can they enforce this?
I think many websites will simply move to other parts of the world. That is what I would do anyway.
For instance, if in India an Indian uploads a video to a website that doesn't implement EU-compliant filters, that video will get blocked?
How will the EU enforce that? Will they obscure any website that don't implement filters?
I haven't followed the whole thing closely, sorry--but any help in understanding would be appreciated.
- How internally hosted content is enforced
- How externally hosted content is enforced
- Would a VPN would help
.
Internally operated content: Fines to the company distributing the content (e.g. Google operates in the EU and if YouTube was not found to be compliant they would be fined).
Externally operated content: Not really sure, the EU doesn't have a "great firewall".
Would a VPN help: Using a VPN to upload your video to YouTube as if you were Canadian will not change that YouTube cannot show illegal content in the EU. The question posed by the law isn't "who uploaded it" it's "what is in it". Using a VPN to view videos as if you were Canadian would naturally allow you to see things blocked in the EU.
I'm more concerned about geo blocking by smaller sites. Especially GitHub. It will probably also mean the end of EU access to Reddit.
Basically every smaller site that allows upload of user content will face 1) dealing with legal uncertainty 2) buy content screening packages from Google, Microsoft etc. or 3) give usage statistics a hard look and implement geo blocking.
I think it's unlikely either site would leave the EU, but if it did, I'd be glad for the increased competition it might give rise to.
Indeed, I foresee our current internet content supply to converge to what's currently available on television, ie: a very few good shows, but majorly common denominator low quality productions. I hate what television has turned into. Where channels like Discovery would have interesting content now it's only storage wars and other formulaic pulp. Especially the lasts years there has been an emergence of very good independent Youtube creators focusing on niche topics. I really enjoy those videos. But with this change, where will they go to get their audience and income?
The law basically says that the company has to try it's best to prevent copyrighted material. If you're a small company, you can put together some simple algorithm and claim that's all you can really do. Big shots like youtube have the capital to be proactive and pay for things like real people to monitor claims. They're at a bigger risk for not doing enough.
Either way, the bar would be high enough that I don't think anyone is really going to be affected by this.
You can argue that you are using some content fairly and you did your best to prevent it in court while paying 500$/hr to your layer, or you can simply remove it.
But yeah, that won't be a problem for 95% of companies and startups - but it will be for some.
In the "English rule" system the losing party pays for the legal fees so a rich person can't just arbitrarily spam law suits.
But then again, I am making a lot of assumptions here (but then again it seems like so is everyone else here) so I don't know about the exact legal details that could change things.
>If no authorisation is granted, online content-sharing service providers shall be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public, including making available to the public, of copyright-protected works and other subject matter, unless the service providers demonstrate that they have:
>(a) made best efforts to obtain an authorisation, and
>(b) made, in accordance with high industry standards of professional diligence, best efforts to ensure the unavailability of specific works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information; and in any event
>(c) acted expeditiously, upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice from the rightholders, to disable access to, or to remove from, their websites the notified works or other subject matter, and made best efforts to prevent their future uploads in accordance with point (b).
[0]: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-A...
Stupid question not being native English speaker (or writer):
Shouldn't it be: "to disable access to, or to remove from their websites, the notified works" without a comma between from and their?
Otherwise, could the sentence also mean to disable access (...) to their websites? That could be a different thing than just enforcing rights to remove some content. Or it could be at least, a sentence without much meaning.
EDIT: "Oh, and if you don't like being censore, that means you endorse terrorism, because politics in 2019"
Most focused-interest boards don't have members uploading rips of Hollywood movies and claiming it to be 'fair use' and the ones on which I.am active haven't raised any concerns about this legislation. GDPR was more tumultuous.
How will they know? unless someone reports the content its impossible for any EU system to catch that.
Since every state has it's own version of Copyright office and what powers it has, it will not be 100% homogenous all over.