Draft of German copyright reform proposes memes should only be up to 128 pixels
imgur.com
imgur.com
Additionally today they announced that while profits on stock trading (specifically derivatives) can be taxed fully, losses can only be accounted for upto 10.000€
Berlin is trying to freeze rents for the next 5 years and make it possible to retroactively lower rents to the level of 2013.
This kids, is what it looks like when a government is too scared to solve bigger structural challenges (digitization of the beauraucracy, switch to electromobility, better competitive environment for startups, questionable pension system, unneccesarily high taxes that keep leading to surpluses, I could go on) - and instead keep themselves occupied with non-issues that are PR heavy. Schade.
The EU can't make laws themselves. The way they work is by requiring member states to make laws and this is Germany's.
But the implementation details are left to the member states and of course Germany came up with this in their interpretation of the link tax
And to the other point: There are two kinds of EU law. Regulationsa and directives. Regulations are direct law in all member states, directives need national implementation.
They can. It's called a regulation. Directives are what you're referring to.
A regulation is a legal act of the European Union that becomes immediately enforceable as law in all member states simultaneously.
Another point is that even when it comes to regulations it generally falls onto the member states themselves to enforce those regulations.
Just a note, because that can be misinterpreted very easily: that's something from the local Berlin government (Bundesland), not at the federal level.
Are the ones in Germany enforced? Honest question, I don't know, and I'm interested in the answer.
Dancing Ban? Usually not unless you're either A) a very big venue or B) a public place like a school. But for either cases it wouldn't matter much since most of them are closed on those days since they are usually national holidays anyway.
OSHA, workman comp
> minimum wage,
Present
> working hours kinda laws.
Overtime/holiday pay.
What's lacking again?
You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law. Also missing from US law: parental leave and sick days. None of these things are mandated, they are purely up to individual companies to optionally provide, which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.
The US Department of Labor says they are:
So, I checked, and out of the 193 countries in the world, only 41 mandate parental leave. [1]
1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-m...
And even so. Do you want the US to be ranked together with developed nations or places like Papua New Guinea and ... Huh, turns out that's the only other country listed besides the US that has no paid maternity leave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...
Although I imagine there could be some very conservative local jurisdictions, in the US, that outlaw dancing in some ways as well.
Any closed club is fine to my knowledge.
It’s a euphemism.
Honestly, I feel it must be unconstitutional to outlaw protected expression by people simply because they are standing in a building in which other people serve alcohol at other times.
As unnecessary as it might seem, however, it is not bizarre. This piece of legislation was not cooked up overnight, as you suggest. Basically, this is how the start of enacting Article 13 aka 'meme ban' looks like.
Article 13 aka "the meme ban" explained.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-article-13-article-1...
In this case, the most likely outcome is that the judge will rule that breaking the image into 128 pixel squares and then reassembling them is simply the same as displaying the full image by intent. The result is the same so you broke the law.
(No, I ain't gonna write it. But I did just give all y'all an acronym for it, and I ain't gonna ask any of you to write it, either. However, I do dare challenge you to come up with some recursive derivation of the acronym, tho!)
MIMIC: MIMIC Is Memes In Chunks.
If the link tax ("Leistungsschutzrecht") gets implemented on a European level, I also hope that Google (and all other search engine provider) then just return search results with the maximal allowed word count.
Maybe? 128 pixels is a vanishingly small amount as display pixel density continues to rise. That's under an inch on many displays.
Not to mention, while no fair use defense is automatic (fair use is a defense against copyright lawsuits in court), memes feel like they easily and cleanly fall under "parody", and perhaps "critique" categories.
> memes feel like they easily and cleanly fall under "parody", and perhaps "critique" categories.
I feel like the problem with that claim is the parody and/or critique is very commonly not related to the subject of the image in any way. It seems strange to claim I should be able to fairly use a copyrighted picture of a famous person in order to comment on memes, or vegetables, or (super commonly) as a completely random funny backdrop to a saying.
The ideas behind the parody and critique exceptions in fair use is that you can use a picture of Patrick Stewart to make comments about Patrick Stewart's acting or something he said in an interview, not that you can use a copyrighted picture of Patrick Stewart to comment on use of fonts on the internet, just because he happens to have a pose that makes the saying seem funny.
When I Google "memes" right now and look at images, I see an entire page of copyrighted images, and only one of them (out of 26 images on the first page) has text relevant to the image. The other 25 are not making a parody of the person(s) in the image, or critique something even remotely relevant to the image.
As most of them are stills, and use the entire still, there's no defence of a partial use of the work. Under Berne the key test would be if it was prejudicial to the copyright owner's economic rights, and it would be hard to argue the image had no economic value if it was being used in a popular meme.
I do think the parent's comment that memes could be actionable in a great many situations in most jurisdictions but rarely get such in practice has merit.
Isn't that backwards though? Doesn't the Berne Convention say that exemptions to reproduction of copyrighted works can't be prejudiced against the economic interests of the original author?
Memes don't really infringe on the original works. Seeing an image of Peter Parker with some text on it doesn't really compete with the Spiderman movie, does it?
That is faulty, incorrect logic, and the law (both US copyright and the Berne convention) does not agree with you. You don't have the right to decide what is in the interests of the Marvel franchise, Marvel does.
Images of Peter Parker are being actively used for ancillary marketing purposes, and they can easily show that infringing use of their copyrighted image is diluting their brand and/or causing some financial harm.
BTW I'm not worried about Marvel, I'm more worried about the many smaller independent businesses, and individual creators, that lose control of their work and have no practical legal recourse.
That doesn't sound right though. Wouldn't this mean that any time a large corporation used somebody's copyrighted works that they're stepping on a huge minefield, because it's now up to the individual to decide what is in their interests?
I'm pretty sure that even US copyright law weights whether the potential copyright infringement creates an alternative product for the market.
>and they can easily show that infringing use of their copyrighted image is diluting their brand and/or causing some financial harm.
That's trademark law not copyright. It's a different matter, because trademarks have to be actively defended.
>I'm more worried about the many smaller independent businesses, and individual creators, that lose control of their work and have no practical legal recourse.
Then you're worried about the wrong thing. They will never have practical legal recourse as long as the legal system is based on spending a lot of money. We can't even get criminal law to work with this. What's the chance that we would get civil law to work with it?
Most memes are full reproductions of photographs, not smaller sections of larger works like a still from a film. And I suspect Getty would argue pretty successfully that the online use would indeed compete with their licensing of the image on a website for their photographs for example.
1. Yes, fair use is not an automatic pre-emptive validation of copyright infringement. Rather it is...
2. Under US law, an affirmative defence: "A new fact or set of facts that operates to defeat a claim even if the facts supporting that claim are true." (https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Affirmative+D...) That is, ajudication occurs in a legal (or criminal) case.
3. Also US law: there is a four-part test for fair use for fair use, the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount of the work utilised, and the impact on the market of the original. Not all, or indeed any one test need be met for fair use to be found.
4. There is a parody right which has been argued, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, for fair use. I won't get into the argument but suggest: https://corporate.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/parody-f... which begins "It has been a long-standing practice to poke fun at our cultural icons, symbols, public figures and celebrities." Commentary by way of analogy or reference is also a long-standing tradition, which it could be argued that memes extend.
I'm not claiming these rights are absolute or uncontroversial. However they've been argued and asserted, and there is basis for a fair-use defence of virtually any meme use, so long as it's not injurious to the original.
The case of whether or not unpopular, fringe, or extremist-group adoption of specific images, concepts (a difficult case under copyright), characters, symbols, etc., might be considered injurious, and prosecutable via copyright, is ... an interesting question.
Yeah, fair use definitely has been used successfully. And in many meme cases I'd agree the meme is not necessarily injuring the original. (Though note, lack of injury is in no way sufficient to justify copyright infringement.) But I would speculate(!) that meme images being irrelevant to a photo undermines the fair use defense, that using a copyrighted photo to comment on something other than the subject in the photo means that use of the photo is not "commentary" relevant to the photo that supports fair use.
An element of which, this house argues, is the enjoyment of and illumination provided via, Internet memes.
All that matters is whether this happens much in the real world or not. The world's most draconian laws mean absolutely nothing if they're not enforced.
>Memes that try to use frames from movies have been handed takedown notices.
And the banana you ate contained radioactive isotopes, but you didn't hold off from eating it because of that. Something that's a rare occurrence doesn't change how people behave.
>It’s not ethical to claim it’s permitted just because someone can’t defend it.
I believe that our current copyright system itself is unethical. There is absolutely no point at which "copyright needs to extend 70 years beyond the author's death" and "copyright laws exist to further the advancement of science and culture" intersect. I'd even argue that these copyright laws are what hinder the advancement of science and culture. Memes don't mean much if they don't get shared and if sharing them is something people will get in trouble over then they just won't share memes.
Also, I'd like to point out that this copyright system has also created a variety of companies and people who abuse the system for monetary gain, yet there's essentially no recourse to be had.
No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?
Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
E.g. in the article there is an image from the copyrighted work "Dawson's Creek".
The image doesn't supersede Dawson's Creek. My understanding is that this template is lampooning overwrought acting on the show. Isn't this covered under transformational fair use in the United States?
128x128 is about 1/4 of a 320x200 screen. That's a lot of space, actually.
Also imagine how much faster webpages would become.
I mean OS manufacturers could just change the way viewport pixels are calculated in their viewport rendering, which makes the law redundant. And relying on device resolution doesn't make any sense for modern devices with hidpi displays.
If it's a rectangle, can one side exceed 128 pixels if the product of width and height is less than 128x128?
Someone somewhere will come up with a JPG to SVG or CSS converter for images, if it doesn't already exist.
(Of course, the link tax is BS, but it's not exactly related to memes)
Safe harbour, y/n?
(Discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481351)
Why should commercial companies be able to make money off copyrighted material? Or if you think they can, why not expliclty abolish image copyright?
It's like media industries love to hurt themselves. They've already brought back mass piracy by fragmenting streaming services, next they want to kill any chance of their content going viral I guess.
Most of the time I don't know where the meme's graphical content is from so it's not really advertising the source. But by the same token of course the meme is not harmful to the the content owner's economic interests.
Unfortunately, artists can't make a living from free advertising.
Anyway, the "Germany to ban memes" is just a spin on the story to generate clicks and outrage (similar to the EU copyright directive some time before). This legislation is about commercial use of images. The 128x128 pixels is what the law would consider a "thumbnail" image that can be used without explicit license from the copyright holder.
Perhaps a more correct headline would be "Germany to unban memes smaller than 128x128 pixels".
They also don't make money when the meme is 128x128 pixels or not used at all. What is your point?
Imgur has recently started displaying a GDPR cookie notice modal over the entire page on their image only URLs. I feel like I can’t escape the EU’s ruination of the Internet and I have never stepped foot in the bloc.
I find it hilarious how companies allegedly afraid of the big bad fines by the EU continue to use a non-compliant solution for a problem they created themselves.
It's cargo-culting of the stupidest way of (barely) solving the problem. American lawyers trying to interpret EU regulations never worked well it seems.
> I have never stepped foot in the bloc
It's not like the rest of the world doesn't have to obey several American laws as well.
So yes, they have done a lot of good, but only in fields they understand. In fields they don't, however, they are a much too powerful weapon in the hands of (effectively) the highest bidder.
However, the UK does not share the history of the continental countries of being occupied by their neighbours.
The compact "I surrender much of my sovereignty for security from being periodically exterminated by my neighbours" - has a very different balance on the scales for the country of the UK than it does for countries with a recent memory of occupation, that have seen large percentages of their populations dying from violence in continental wars going back centuries.
It’s not for no reason that the past 300 years of British foreign policy has revolved around the principle of ensuring that no continental power could rise up to the point of posing a threat to her navies. Admittedly, this is now truly superseded, but it should bear an impact on people’s decisions.
Just for kicks the browser extension is open source and is maintained by anonymous..
It would be correct, tautological even, to say in German "Deutsche Richter haben die Intelligenz einer Kartoffel". But that doesn't translate to "German judges have the intelligence of a potato" but to "German judges have the intelligence of a kraut".
In other words, no, that is not how the law works.
I recommend reading What Colour are your bits [0].
The major point that it tries to get across is that as software devs, we think in terms of data and computers. The law doesn't. The law says "you can't have an image like X", and you immediately think "hah, well, arbitrary base64 encoded data isn't an image." The law doesn't care about that though. If the law says you can't display an image like X to users, then it doesn't matter what weird layers you go through. It doesn't matter if you stitch together 1 million 1-pixel images, or if you have them install a browser extension, it just matters if you intended for them to be able to see that image, and then they could see that image.
The blog-post I linked does a much better job of explaining this, and I recommend reading it.