Copyright isn't working, says European Commission

zdnet.co.uk

76 pointspwg14 comments

Be very careful when reading this article.

The only actual quotes from it are things like Sadly, many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward and She added that the existing copyright system was not rewarding the vast majority of artists

There is a very common copyright meme in Europe (mostly it seems from France and Belgium) that goes something like this: Google is making a lot of money, and they steal (aka spider) our work. Therefor Google should pay us.

There are examples of this viewpoint in various court cases, for example: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/google-versu...

In the ZdNet article the columnist added a lot of words about things like Rights-holders have long complained about the damage done to their industry by online copyright infringement. Governments and courts in countries including the UK have responded by blocking access to websites that help people unlawfully share music, videos, games and software.

I think that Kroes is arguing for stronger copyright, not less.

Here's a final quote. I hope I'm wrong about it being a "let's tax Google" argument again: In times of change, we need creativity, out-of-the-box thinking: creative art to overcome this difficult period and creative business models to monetise the art

What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright. The problem isn't with copyright itself, it's with the difficulties that those who want to use it to monetize content encounter when it comes to making sure people abide by it. Working DRM is impossible with current technology, I think everybody reading this agrees with that; so there are two ways forward: change technology so that it becomes prohibitively difficult for the average customer to copy content without a rights holder's consent, of a whole different business model all together that separates payment from copying. Both are very hard problems for which there are no real solutions in sight. In the short and medium term, the only realistic trend I see is a more active stance from the rights holders themselves in defending those rights - i.e. more lawsuits, without government involvement. (Criminal law is not the right tool for this issue anyway, it's a shame that we've wasted 15 years on going down that route now).

The downside of civil lawsuits is that the threshold for costing someone who is innocent a lot of money is a lot lower: The copyright holder has an incentive to sue or threaten to sue on the basis of enough information that they on average make the most money through settlements and judgement, largely without much thought to the collateral damage along the way from people who end up settling on the basis of the risk of being sued regardless of whether or not they've done anything wrong.

Conversely, if it's done under criminal law, while the end result for someone who faces prosecution may be higher, so are the standards required for evidence and the prosecutor does not see monetary gain from going after people on shaky grounds.

If one is to keep doing this via civil lawsuits, the consequences of suing without real evidence need to be much higher, and the cost of taking the risk of a lawsuit if you're innocent needs to be much lower.

Why? Why is copyright different from any other area of the law? Anybody can sue anybody else right now, for example claiming that some sort of service has been performed, and the situation would be the exact same. The use of criminal law would be a gigantic drain on already scarce public resources, why waste them on something trivial? If anything, suing for IP infringement should be easier - so that everybody can do it, and not just those with 10k cash up front and several months or years time to wait out the result.

The key to an effective copyright regime is a way to enforce rights. That way needs to be cost-effective, fast, accessible to any sort of rights holder, and needs to put control into the hands of such rights holders. Leaving enforcement up to a prosecutor (who will need to weight such cases with e.g. murder and rape cases!) is or does neither of those.

What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright.

I don't think this is what she is arguing for at all.

Better enforcement of copyright won't really help those artists making less than €1,000 a month from the copyright system - the unauthorised use of those unpopular, long-tail artists will just stop, or be driven further underground. It might provide an incremental lift to the incomes of very popular artists, but it won't magically fix the problem for others.

I think what she is arguing for is a radical restructuring of copyright, doing away with fair use rights for things like web spidering. I think she wants to force Google to pay licence fees to spider websites or, failing that, to tax them.

There is a fair bit of precedent for this argument coming from French sources.

> Sadly, many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward (Neelie Kroes)

As far as I know, copyright's primary goal originally wasn't to "recognize and reward", but to increase the output in creative works. And even if it is recognition and reward, it is done through punishment and withholding (state granted monopoly that if infringed, causes fines).

I'd rather judge legislation by its actual consequences rather than by its professed intentions. And my impression is that copyright causes much more punishment and withholding than it does recognition and reward.

I see a lot more common sense coming from EU lately than from US.

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/...

Untrue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/nov...

That counters different articles on the same topic, not the telegraph article. Nowhere did the telegraph article say that water itself was called bad, just that the dehydration statement could not be made.

Also part of that article is logically unsound in the opposite direction. A significant amount of water is well more than a measuring cup full. Eating a pork pie does help prevent starvation, how could you disagree? It's a nitpick to complain that water only helps hypertonic and isotonic dehydration, the most common kinds.

Edit: just read the linked pdf and t-winsnes's comment. I'm astounded that none on the articles reporting on this, especially the guardian article specifically written to debunk the drama, noticed that this is a rejection of the statement as a disease claim. Dehydration not counting as a disease means labels don't need approval under this regulation.

Edit 2: huh, a downvote. I don't mind it but would you kindly give me a sentence why, whoever voted so? I'm not sure what I've done wrong.

The claim was not that water does not rehydrate, but that dehydration is not a disease.

As hydrofix on slashdot said: "Actually, according to the original decision (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/1982.pdf) [europa.eu], it is not not about bottled water, but (any) water in general.

However, as far as I understand, this conclusion was not reached because water would not prevent dehydration, but because they don't think dehydration is a disease. Which kind of makes sense – dehydration could be a symptom of a disease, but it is not a disease in itself. And the applicant asked a panel that verifies claims about products reducing the risk of a disease to verify a claim about a medical condition that –the board concluded– was not disease, so the board rejected the claim (or actually concluded [direct quote]: "The Panel considers that the proposed claim does not comply with the requirements for a disease risk reduction claim ...")"

[trustworthy citation needed]

The Telegraph newspaper in the UK is a slightly less extreme version of the Daily Mail, but still quite mad. It's a common meme in the right wing UK media & populace that the EU is crazy and brings in lots of crazy silly rules and bans sensible things. This is mostly not the case, and is usually either exadurated or blatantly false.

A UK right wing newspaper saying that the EU does something silly is about as common as a right wing american politician saying that some terrorists are muslim.

At least they didn't declare Pizza a vegetable.

Maybe, but she also said "We need to keep on fighting against piracy", implying that although they acknowledge they've dug themselves into a hole, they want to keep digging.

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