This is a scandal it has reached so high up. I think authorities should investigate everyone involved in conceiving this directive.

Can’t laws that are equivalent but opposite be formulated? Laws that specify what is legal and should not be considered infringing. Similar to US constitutional formulations “congress shall pass no law..”?

The copyright holders and their lobbyists are untiring in their push, because they only need their proposals to be successful once to go through, but we need to continuously get them voted down to retain our freedoms.It&#x27;s very much an uphill battle.

This battle is nowhere near over, copyright holders are constantly bribing and pushing towards more and more draconian laws to keep competition out and maximize profits.Having said that, it&#x27;s good to see EU didn&#x27;t sell us out at the first chance.

That doesn&#x27;t make sense though... Because the plan was NOT to brexit.

Maybe david Cameron reckoned England football supporters would more likely to be pro-Brexit?

With such laws as this, and giant cookie consent banners, I&#x27;m surprised Brexit wasn&#x27;t&#x2F;isn&#x27;t more popular.Edit: apparently I&#x27;m not surprised. Or not allowed to be.

Brexit wasn&#x27;t &quot;pushed through&quot;. Everyone was pretty confident that they&#x27;ll stay in the EU.

&gt; why the downvotes?I did not downvote you, but I think you are getting beaten because you brought up a potential hot topic (brexit) in a way that is unrelated to the discussion topic (copyright). The argument that parties could have been using similar tactics is IMO irrelevant even if true (and that is not clear to me either).

Brexit was pushed through while loads of people from the UK that could have voted were in France at matches for the Euros.why the downvotes?

&gt; Though in that particular case the &quot;fishiness&quot; led to rather a lot of journalists reporting on the general hilarity of the situation ...Hilarious, but this is how they should have done it properly: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UGBZnfB46es" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UGBZnfB46es</a># How much is the fish!? 
The bigger fish keeps eating all the smaller ones. It&#x27;s not like anyone cares. Nah, let&#x27;s just go watch some football, shall we.

Yes, and I still remember how they tried to adopt software patents, without a vote, at a fishery meeting on 24 Jan 2005. So be on the lookout for any similar fishy business.Though in that particular case the &quot;fishiness&quot; led to rather a lot of journalists reporting on the general hilarity of the situation, which probably helped it fail. The bad guys will have learnt from that and will probably avoid any obvious fish-connections in future.

FIA are pretty in the dark ages with F1 too. FE is slightly different and seems to be where they&#x27;re experimenting. GTE is getting better too.

If FIFA are so uptight about copyright, why continue to support them by consuming and discussing their &#x27;product&#x27;?Go out and create your own content. Until that becomes predominant they have no reason to care. And frankly neither do I; it has never been easier to make videos, take photos, make podcasts and broadcast them.This whole copyright-law furore has really highlighted the entitled attitude of most Internet users nowadays.

&gt; Do they really want me to wait for an incident to be televised before I can discuss it online?Yes. They sold the exclusive right for lot&#x27;s of money. In some countries even with a Multi-Laser approach where one station is allowed to transmit live and another station is the first one being allowed to use snippets for summaries.&gt; Should I have to track down specific moments in a game using my own recording in order to be able to discuss it?No. You are not supposed to track it. You are supposed to see the programs so they get high ratings and refinance their license.That&#x27;s how the deal works and it&#x27;s a constant battle, whether this is a private entertainment event or something of newsworthy character ... intermixed with international copyright law.

This is one (of many) areas where the NBA has done it right. Social media, clip sharing, fan produced highlight reels on YouTube - all good.No surprise that the NBA is huge and fast growing in younger demographics!

It&#x27;s funny you should mention The World Cup, FIFA are hugely annoying when it comes to copyright.It&#x27;s only just making the normal news[0], but their pettiness has plagued the sharing of small clips and highlights.Do they really want me to wait for an incident to be televised before I can discuss it online? Should I have to track down specific moments in a game using my own recording in order to be able to discuss it? FIFA, the World&#x27;s Most Corrupt Organisation™, should realise that fans enjoying and discussing their events adds a lot of value and will drive more viewers.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.co.uk&#x2F;video&#x2F;fifa-delete-twitter-video-of-boy-celebrating-world-cup-goal&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inews.co.uk&#x2F;video&#x2F;fifa-delete-twitter-video-of-boy-c...</a>

The point isn&#x27;t that the vote itself was held in the middle of the World Cup, the point is that the time during which the public would have had informed itself about the issue and news coverage might have featured it overlapped with the time during which headlines are typically dominated by the World Cup.This isn&#x27;t unusual and it doesn&#x27;t take a conspiracy theorist to see a pattern. In fact, if you don&#x27;t want too much public scrutiny, this is exactly what you would want to do. Actually Germany provides a good example for where this might work because historically Germany always made it past the group stage and Germans in general tend to follow their World Cup coverage fairly closely -- and it would have worked this time, too, hadn&#x27;t it been for those meddling South Koreans.

For several EU countries including Germany, the World Cup was already over as of this vote. Moreover, this vote happened precisely during a two-day &quot;pause&quot; before the quarterfinals in which there are no games. If the intention was to push this law while people were distracted with the games, whoever did that had rotten timing.

That was my thought as well, there&#x27;s always something &quot;big&quot; going on. IMO, it would be difficult, near impossible, to coordinate votes with events, going through the bureaucracy involved etc.

I went to the BBC site thinking Erdogan&#x27;s re-election would be on the homepage (a day or two after the election IIRC), nope, nearly all World Cup. So, it would certainly be on the News section, er nope; not in the European news subsection either. Searched and found one video which was propaganda level of support for Erdogan.Might&#x27;ve been just me.I don&#x27;t quite see how the World Cup is more than a small news story. Why isn&#x27;t it one item in News and then all the detailed stuff in Sport section.(Yes, I&#x27;m watching it, yes I enjoy it, yes I love football; no I don&#x27;t think the BBC should devote half the resources they are to it.)

There are very few weeks in the year when something &quot;Big&quot; isn&#x27;t happening somewhere in Europe, so this is an easy accusation to level. I doubt its coordinated.

The good thing also is, that the Worldcup will be over when the law is discussed again. You can spot pretty easily how laws like this are always pushed in a time where most people are occupied with something else, usually around summer. It&#x27;s ridiculous how often that happens. Let&#x27;s hope we don&#x27;t have a big distraction coming up in September.

You probably mean 11 and 13, just for reference

This isn&#x27;t SOPA&#x2F;PIPA, where the entire thing is bad and should be just tossed in trash.This is a copyright reform that needs to be adopted (its main purpose is to reduce inconsistencies in copyright laws across EU countries), and the fight is against two very specific articles (11 and 13) in the current version of it, through which there was an attempt at doing something bad for the Internet.That doesn&#x27;t mean that the entire copyright reform is just rotten to the core. You&#x27;ll notice that nobody asked for the entire thing to be abolished, just for those two articles to disappear.

Nice, that&#x27;s one bullet dodged! Back to the drawing board doesn&#x27;t sound very comforting.

The fundamental problem is that EU law can basically ride roughshod over existing member laws undoing decades of organic law creation in each member country. This means that you have to kind of pass those laws at the EU level to ensure they don&#x27;t get wiped out by something like article 11 and 13.

What are precedent laws or legal principles that adopted this approach, in any country, for copyright or licensing?e.g. trade agreement, national constitution, fair use, orphan works, compulsory licensing, RAND licensing, creative commons, public domain, freedom of speech, freedom of information act, right to know, accessibility for blind&#x2F;deaf, access by libraries and archives, educational use, citation rights, remix models, national incentives for creativity and innovation, ...?

The only long term solution is to create law that scuttles these kinds of articles in the future. When you play on the defensive you are leaving the definition power to the copyright lobby.

&gt; I think that current implementations of update filters are not readyThere&#x27;s no one filter nor any way to do this. YouTube designed and implemented a system. Some other sites might have their own design. Most have nothing.Try to think about what&#x27;s needed to create something like a filter. It&#x27;s quickly obvious that it&#x27;s a massive undertaking (expensive). If I&#x27;d be Google, I&#x27;d actually be happy with a strict law as YouTube has a filter. All other competitors would immediately have a huge disadvantage.Note: I quite like Formula 1 and I&#x27;ve noticed that people quite easily get around the YouTube filter. They make the video a bit smaller, add some moving stuff around it and they&#x27;re done. This while the filter blocks valid use cases.

I think that current implementations of update filters are not ready and satisfactory to make internet a better place, thus I am glad that it is rejected for now.When youtube content id matches 10 seconds of black screen as a copyrighted material, it shows that these systems are nowhere near production ready.I am all for fair use and credits when it comes to creators getting paid for what they deserve but, when you need couple of lawyers to dispute something as a student on internet against enterprises, then freedom and equality of Internet disappears.

&gt; pushing what used to be extreme-right standpoints more towards the more acceptable political middle<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Overton_window" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Overton_window</a>It&#x27;s a political tactic used since at least Roman days.

At least judging from the description on Wikipedia, the other articles seem mostly reasonable: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market#Content" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_...</a>

&quot;US Congress quietly slips cloud-spying powers into page 2,201 of spending mega-bill&quot;[1].Could the EU copyright law be slipped in the same way?[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;cloud_act_spending_bill&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;cloud_act_spending_...</a>

Have you read it? It&#x27;s pretty reasonable without those articles.

It is a shame people don&#x27;t even question if that was necessary at all...

What I&#x27;m reading is that they&#x27;ll mostly just adjust some part of this proposal until it does pass; whether Article 11 or 13 make it (which are the most controversial) then is to be seen.Yet, I&#x27;m worried now that those articles were just ludicrous distractions for the real problem. That is, it shouldn&#x27;t pass without those articles, but those that would oppose it normally would now vote in favor of it because &quot;at least it doesn&#x27;t have those articles anymore&quot;.like how [politics] the current political climate and news coverage is pushing what used to be extreme-right standpoints more towards the more acceptable political middle. As in,&quot;well at least we&#x27;re not separating kids from parents anymore&quot;[&#x2F;politics]

That&#x27;s the democracy in the EU - things get voted until there is desirable outcome.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;plenary&#x2F;en&#x2F;votes.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;plenary&#x2F;en&#x2F;votes.html</a>

page 7 of this has the details of who voted what. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;sides&#x2F;getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bPV%2b20180705%2bRES-RCV%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN&amp;language=EN" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;sides&#x2F;getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...</a>

Yes. Where can one see who voted what? We have European elections coming up soon, I&#x27;d like to use this vote to inform mine.

We said the same about software patents.The realist in me can&#x27;t imagine the outrage will be any smaller the next time they try to pass it.

As a side note, I&#x27;ve spent quite some time calling the offices and sending individually personalised e-mails to most of the PPE abstain voters. I guess normally they would&#x27;ve voted in favour. Maybe it&#x27;s possible to have some small effect in the end?A special award goes to a Slovenian NGO for making this hilarious vote tracking page:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;danesjenovdan.si&#x2F;resimointernet&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;danesjenovdan.si&#x2F;resimointernet&#x2F;</a>

Yes, and the breakout by party is disturbing too.[0]Greens, Regionalists, Pirate, Left and Eurosceptic Populists were strongly against, but only have 120 votes total. Eurosceptic Conservatives and Liberals were mostly against, but only have 124 total. Social Democrats (167) and Far Right (32) split evenly. And Far Right (177) were strongly in favor.I&#x27;m guessing that Eurosceptics are mainly against more EU laws. And that it&#x27;s largely Social Democrats that have the votes to pass a weaker version.0) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Senficon&#x2F;status&#x2F;1014914337763418112" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Senficon&#x2F;status&#x2F;1014914337763418112</a>

The vote was worryingly close though:<pre><code> In favour: 278
 Against: 318
</code></pre>
The pessimist in me can&#x27;t see this getting rejected a second time :(

Wonderful, thanks to everyone that helped making some pressing on the MEPs, from Wikipedia to the last of the tweeters!

He is right in that this was tried passed during the summer &amp; world-cup when most people are not paying attention though.That&#x27;s clearly not coincidental.

How do you think a parliament works? It consists of multiple parties who generally don&#x27;t agree with each other; it does not generally do things as a group.

FWIW, I think you&#x27;re asking a legitimate question that should be thoughtfully answered instead of downvoted. I don&#x27;t know what to call it other than &quot;internet cause fatigue&quot; but it does happen, and I believe that there are lawmakers and bureaucrats that take advantage of it by postponing votes and&#x2F;or bringing the same issue to vote down the line under a different label.

So, is the EU Parliament postponing it because they didn&#x27;t like the media attention and want to try it again when there are other things that attract media attention in three months time, or because they actually think it is a bad idea?

Remove articles 11 and 13 with too ambiguous and fuzzy limits. They provide an open door to abuse.It&#x27;s time to change business models and evolve. Destroying the internet just to protect some profits should not be an option. 
Make subventions from states to newspapers illegal. Make scholar journals selling other peoples work in numeric form illegal.Terminate google news and equivalent services. Journals don&#x27;t deserve that free publicity.

Your assumption here is that regular people need to have their bad decisions to use shit services mitigated by government using threats of violence.It is bad for people. It allows them to keep using bad, centralized, censoring, services without acknowledging the problems that causes. It prevents alternatives from springing up both indirectly because they can continue to make bad choices without consequence, and directly because the heavy new regulatory load makes start-ups harder and gives giant corps (and their giant legal teams) an advantage.Additionally, you imply that regular people are not impacted. People are businesses. They don&#x27;t stop being regular people when they run a business.

Why bring GDPR into this?Unlike the upload filter it&#x27;s actually good for regular people (though not so much for certain corporations).

I live in Japan and I&#x27;d love for some of the privacy laws to come over here! Many things are absurd like being required by law to hand medical records to your company.

In fact Twitter is one of the few who CAN comply with GDPR, because it costs big ( very big ) money to comply.

&gt; GDPR is goodGDPR is bad. See what I did?

sorry for hurting your feelings. I had tweeted it before and thought it was quite relevant to the post so I shared it here as well. If a couple of hashtags bother you, you should re-evaluate your priorities in life.

Except for the large overhead costs it imposes.Anyone who thinks the GDPR is only costly to companies that were misusing data hasn&#x27;t had much contact with the GDPR in the context of a business that&#x27;s not absurdly simple (and most businesses aren&#x27;t absurdly simple).

GDPR is really cool and good and does nothing to hinder technological progress, except not allowing massive privacy infringements.

First #GDPR, now #Uploadfilter... What is next? A totally censored internet?  The EU is becoming more and more absurd with its regulations that do nothing but hinder technological advancement. Already way behind than the East Asian countries as well the US and Canada...

Looks like votewatch.eu has gone done, I presume from all of us checking what MP&#x27;s we&#x27;re going to have the school.

&gt; &gt; Google, youtube, eBay, etc., etc. have been doing this for years without &quot;killing the internet&quot;.&gt; Google has the infrastructure and resources to do so with YouTube, going out of its way to detect copyright infringement and to react automatically to take down notices. Smaller players don&#x27;t have Google&#x27;s resources.Worse, even Google sucks at it. There are so many original creators whose youtube video get slapped ads on because someone else used their music in a Youtube video before the original author did. Google wrote a fully automated, non-appealable copyright judge and jury. This is scary shit! I don&#x27;t understand how anyone can look at stuff like that and think &quot;wow, awesome, we need more of that!&quot;

Like I said, I really dislike current copyright law as it exists in most countries, so you wont find me arguing in favour of extending copyright powers at all.But article 13 does not seem to represent an extension of copyright powers since it looks weaker than any of the existing national laws.&gt; Google has the infrastructure and resources to do so with YouTube, going out of its way to detect copyright infringement and to react automatically to take down notices. Smaller players don&#x27;t have Google&#x27;s resources.I&#x27;ve read this argument and it doesn&#x27;t really convince me. Google and the rest run sophisticated copyright infringement detection not because they CAN or have the resources, they do it because they are obliged by US copyright law. The same US law applies to smaller players and it doesn&#x27;t seem to have broken the internet in America. Try launching an app that allows streaming video torrents for example - even a teenager 
 working from a bedroom has to comply if they are going to offer such a service.

Some of these sites, like Google&#x27;s Youtube, have made deals with copyright holders to do more than the law requires. In the US, a site only needs to take down user content in response to DMCA demands.

I would argue that controversial laws have to be at least delayed in order for all the points to be address.I would rather not change anything instead of risking broken legislation that does more harm than good.&gt; Google, youtube, eBay, etc., etc. have been doing this for years without &quot;killing the internet&quot;.Google has the infrastructure and resources to do so with YouTube, going out of its way to detect copyright infringement and to react automatically to take down notices. Smaller players don&#x27;t have Google&#x27;s resources.This is not the same issue as with GDPR. Even if companies need to invest resources in being GDPR compliant, it can be argued that business models relying on the ignorance of users are criminal enterprises and that GDPR-style consent should have been asked for without having a law for it, being common sense in a world where people don&#x27;t understand the repercussion of their actions when using technology.But copyright? That&#x27;s a government granted monopoly and like all government granted monopolies it can do more harm than good. It can be argued that copyright is flawed, especially given the forever extending duration, currently being life plus 70 to 120 years, which is absolutely ridiculous. Give us 20 years, like patents and then we can discuss about extra protections otherwise fuck media companies lobbying for even more protections.

Upload filter implements a proactive measure to avoid contents violating copyright.

Perhaps this will help you understand why the somewhat obscure and guarded legal language in the proposal is interpreted the way it is: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;juliareda.eu&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;article-11-13-vote&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;juliareda.eu&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;article-11-13-vote&#x2F;</a>The upshot (wrt upload filters) is that the proposal makes platforms directly liable for the actions of their users. This follows from the text in the proposal where hosting user content is defined as an act of communication to the public.

Ok I&#x27;ll look for Voss&#x27;s blog.Because, here is the full text of the infamous article 13 and there is nothing in it that I can read as &quot;makes the publishing infringing material the point of liability&quot;:
1.Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers. Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate. The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject-matter.
2.Member States shall ensure that the service providers referred to in paragraph 1 put in place complaints and redress mechanisms that are available to users in case of disputes over the application of the measures referred to in paragraph 1.
3.Member States shall facilitate, where appropriate, the cooperation between the information society service providers and rightholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices, such as appropriate and proportionate content recognition technologies, taking into account, among others, the nature of the services, the availability of the technologies and their effectiveness in light of technological developments.

The specific issue with Article 13 is that it requires hosting services that allow user-uploaded content to be published to ensure that copyrighted content is not made available. The specific wording in the law is &quot;non-availability&quot;. This is different from takedown mechanisms (that already exist) in that it requires the service to screen the content before the fact, or become liable for the content. The current situation is that the service is not liable for copyright infringement as long as they implement a takedown mechanism - that is, allow rightsholders to complain and have the content taken down. The new situation would be that the service becomes liable at the time of publication. This shift in liability is what constitutes the most significant change, and because there is no punishment for false positives (failing to publish non-infringing content) but there is a punishment for false negatives (failing to stop the publication of infringing content) this will lead to a chilling effect. If you run a service that allows users to upload any kind of content, you would become liable for their copyright infringements.The talk about filters comes directly from Voss&#x27;s (the law&#x27;s author&#x27;s) blog, where he explains the law and what is intended with it. There is a specific reference to google&#x27;s content id as an example of the kind of measures services are expected to implement. In the law text these are refered to as &quot;effective technologies&quot;. The specifics of how the filter is implemented is not exactly relevant in this case, but another aspect is - currently nobody except google has an implementation of this technology, and google&#x27;s implementation has very bad recognition rates and is also easily circumvented. So if you run a service that allows user-uploaded content, you now either pre-screen each post manually, license a buggy filter from google, take the risk of being sued for something your users posted, or block user-submitted content entirely. The last one is the only option for things like small forums.Reading specifically into the law&#x27;s author&#x27;s blog post about this, they state that if something is wrongly filtered, the recourse is attempting to force the service to accept the upload by taking them to court. Clearly this is not something you can do on a routine basis, so if your content gets wrongly identified as infringing (and of course automated systems cannot recognize parody, or remixes, or similar but unrelated content as non-infringing) you&#x27;ll end up effectively prevented from posting it.So yes, you&#x27;re right that there are already mechanisms to take down infringing material. The added change in this law is that it makes publishing infringing material the point of liability, and so each service becomes responsible for all the content that its users post. This is the significant change.

It requires a lot of knowledge of the context and some pretty hard work of crossreferencing several legislative texts to really get to what&#x27;s going on here, although I think that the text by Julia Reda does it justice pretty well.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;juliareda.eu&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;article-11-13-vote&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;juliareda.eu&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;article-11-13-vote&#x2F;</a>In what follows, I&#x27;ll say a bit about Article 11, because it&#x27;s the part of the debate that I have been following more closely, and the one that I actually care about.There is some context to this. This is a change that media corporations have been pushing for for many many years. When they did so at the level of national law in several European countries, they weren&#x27;t quite as good as they are this time around at concealing their dark design. They basically came straight out and said: &quot;We want to create an organization representing all of us in collective bargaining against the likes of Google. We want that organization to collect money from Google, compensating us for displaying headlines, webpage titles, and automatically generated summaries in search results and on Google news. And we want to change copyright so as to make it so.&quot;Some of the legislative text that was passed around on the national level in several European countries, such as Germany, Austria, and Spain, actually made explicit mention of automatically generated summaries of copyrighted material, or use of copyrighted material by search engines and content aggregators etc.In Germany, such a law actually entered into effect. Here is some more reading on that:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ancillary_copyright_for_press_publishers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ancillary_copyright_for_press_...</a>
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taz.de&#x2F;!5064771&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taz.de&#x2F;!5064771&#x2F;</a> (in German)Then Google set up an online platform that press publishers can use to declare that they are okay with Google continuing to use their stuff for free. Content by any press publisher that&#x27;s covered by this ancillary copyright who has not entered into this agreement with Google then disappeared from the index.Guess what happened next? Everyone signed the agreement.So, it&#x27;s essentially dead law now. It doesn&#x27;t affect Google, as everyone signed the agreement. So far, the media aren&#x27;t going after the smaller content aggregators, stepping lightly around the touchy subject, but it&#x27;s certainly creating a lot of legal uncertainty for search engines and content aggregators who aren&#x27;t Google.But they&#x27;re still hard at work, trying to make this into a &quot;world revolution&quot;, the hope being that, one day, enough material will be subject to this ancillary copyright that Google will no longer be willing to lose all that content and therefore the threat of just taking it out of the index will have lost its sting.Now about what&#x27;s going on in Brussels: Back in September 2016, the Commission set up a draft for this new Copyright directive, which read pretty innocuously. It had an Article 11 that basically just said: &quot;We want press publishers to be able to have some kind of a copyright in their material.&quot; From a U.S.-perspective, you probably wouldn&#x27;t understand what this is even about, as, in the U.S., this has always been the way copyright worked. An employee would routinely say, in their employment contract, something along the lines of &quot;for copyright purposes, my employer is the creator of any work I create&quot; and that&#x27;s that. In Europe, copyright is non-transferable. The only way you can be the creator of work is if you actually created it, e.g. an individual journalist or programmer, not a media or tech company. So, the way this article actually read was so as to imply that, for the special case of press publications, the Commission wants Member states to implement copyright to allow for stuff to happen that already routinely happens in the U.S. So it was fairly technical, uninteresting lawmaking.Then, between September 2016 and now, secretive, intransparent, corrupt bullshit took place behind closed doors. A committee was formed. The committee voted in changes to the proposal of a Directive to be voted on in parliament. Nobody friggin new what the changes actually were, as a text wasn&#x27;t published at the time the vote was taken. Then, on June 29th, leaving only three full workdays to when the draft directive was supposed to be voted on in parliament, they published the text, and did so in a completely unreadable format.You have to read it as a meta-meta-meta-level document. The document wasn&#x27;t law. It was changes to be made to a proposal about things that the Commission was going to force Memberstates to implement into law.Where it previously said:&quot;Member States shall provide publishers of press publications with the rights provided for in Article 2 and Article 3(2) of Directive 2001&#x2F;29&#x2F;EC for the digital use of their press publications [i.e. with an ancillary copyright].&quot;&quot;It was now going to say:&quot;Member States shall provide publishers of press publications with the rights provided for in Article 2 and Article 3(2) of Directive 2001&#x2F;29&#x2F;EC [i.e. with an ancillary copyright] so that they may obtain fair and proportionate remuneration for the digital use of their press publications by information society service providers.&quot;So, previously, you could have read it like this: Well, publishers are now going to have copyrights, but copyright is already pretty clear on hosting exceptions, quoting exception, etc., so nothing will change for search engines and content aggregators. Now that reading was definitely out! Now, the directive made it clear that this was going to be an ancillary copyright, an additional right that should have the effect that search engines, content aggregators etc should pay press publishers for something extra, something not already provided for under current copyright.And Julia Reda makes the point, which, I believe, is very valid, that, since the proposal made it clear that this was going to be a new&#x2F;extra right, it was not clear at all, that certain limitations that apply to copyright also apply to this ancillary copyright. In particular, Reda notes that, to be the creator of a copyrightable work, you need to create work that crosses some threshold of originality. But in order to enjoy this ancillary right, all you need to do is to be a press publisher. So this is the way, that, this time around, they snuck back in the idea of &quot;A headline is not too short to enjoy protection&quot;, or &quot;If Google shows the bits about our content that have the search term in it, with dots in between, that doesn&#x27;t mean the content doesn&#x27;t still enjoy protection&quot; etc. etc.Hope this was helpful in clarifying a few things.

Here is a link to the whole proposal:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;legal-content&#x2F;EN&#x2F;TXT&#x2F;HTML&#x2F;?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&amp;from=EN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;legal-content&#x2F;EN&#x2F;TXT&#x2F;HTML&#x2F;?uri=CEL...</a>You will probably need to search for a few formal definitions, but in my opinion it&#x27;s relatively easy to understand.

I have to say (and I am not a fan of modern copyright law at all) that I&#x27;m undecided about this law.I guess the contrarian in me requires more analysis and reasoning than I&#x27;ve found in the top google search results or following some of the links posted here on Hacker News. In fact I&#x27;m aware that I often take positions based on disliking the presentation of arguments and this is a personal flaw.But I have to say most of the pieces I read rub me up the wrong way by seemingly just repeating arguments from authority or presenting interpretations without any logical reasoning built on primary sources (i.e. the text of the directive).Many of the pieces, even by respected sources, seem very click-baity where it seems there is competition to come up with the most apocalyptic claims. The directive will lead to the end of the internet itself seems to be the bar.When I finally found a piece which actually quoted text from article 13, for example, it didn&#x27;t seem to explicitly support many of the claims. Is there a mandate or even reference to upload filters in the text of the article? Does it reference memes at all? I&#x27;m happy to be correct if there is. But if there isn&#x27;t, I don&#x27;t see an obvious path from the primary text to these sort of claims.The actual text of the article that I&#x27;ve seen quoted seems to simply codify the status quo that currently exists in nearly all countries. Which is that content aggregators are oblidged to cooperate with copyright holders to block copyright infringement. Google, youtube, eBay, etc., etc. have been doing this for years without &quot;killing the internet&quot;. Don&#x27;t all countries with copyright laws already provide legal mechanisms for holder to force content aggregators to remove infringing material?If that&#x27;s the case, then this is simply a typical EU directive - which just represents some sort of minimum standard based on the existing laws in the 28 countries.As I said, I&#x27;m happy to be corrected if someone can provide an argument based on the text. Please reply with links or references instead of down voting :)

They prefer to screenshot and summarise other media.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;the_papers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;the_papers</a>

Hint: BBC is media. They&#x27;ll be benefited by the change, supposedly.

You can listen here. Just skip to 2:33 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;b0b85mct#play" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;b0b85mct#play</a>

Radio 4&#x27;s Today show had Jimmy Wales and William Orbit on with Justin Webb (08:32 GMT). Rory Cellan-Jones introduced it pretty well as the Beeb&#x27;s Tech correspondent. Their thoughts, roughly summarised: copyright is good as creators need to get paid; mandatory upload filters aren&#x27;t going to work and will certainly be a barrier for smaller players. Generally an excellent discussion. Wales said we needed to look at how artists are being paid by, for instance, Google but as they already have upload filters in place this isn&#x27;t useful leverage.

...listening to BBC Radio 6 today, I was pretty shocked about how they only portrayed it in a positive light.  Their spin was that it&#x27;s all about making sure YouTube can no longer pretend they&#x27;re not benefitting from copyrighted material being uploaded illegally, and how Paul McCartney thinks that&#x27;s a great thing for artists.

I am all for giving more power to the local governments. The more local it gets the better. That being said at least on a country level there are people who speak the same language and are brought in somewhat similar culture. There is much bigger chance the laws are going to be acceptable for me if they are made by people who live here, know our history and are brought in our culture.For example after 45 years of in-fact occupation by the Soviets people here won&#x27;t easily accept censorship and wrong-think laws. Those things are too fresh in memory. It might be easier for our politician to vote for that in EU parliament when they are safely away from home (they didn&#x27;t from what I understand) but they would think twice voting for it here.Another thing is that people follow country level politics much closer than they follow EU politics which seems to be very detached. What usually happen is &quot;GDPR got voted in EU, we need to adjust our laws&quot; without any kind of public discussion about if we even want that law to begin with.It may work somewhat better in USA where at least there is one language and some common element in education system (history, civics etc.). Here it just seems that People&#x27;s Party Committeein in Brussels is making up laws and we are supposed to just accept it.

That argument scales up and down, which makes it pointless without an accompanying argument about absolute size.Why is your country&#x27;s current extent and size optimal? Why not split it up, maybe even down to sovereign towns?Why not unify it with one of your neighbours?

A lot of countries are happy to accept immigrants from other civilized countries. If some are not, that&#x27;s their choice, I will look into those who are open to accepting me.
We can have freedom of movement without tons of other regulations.
I can for example move to Thailand as many of my friends did even though Thailand isn&#x27;t in any way of form part of centralized EU government. They will just be happy if I live, pay taxes and spend money there.
There are laws that need to be set at global level but set of those is way smaller than EU legislature operates on.

What gives you the right to randomly move to places that have laws that satisfy you, if they are not all part of a (more or less) centralised government?

Because the UK authorities are not yet able to read thoughts.  But there are people in prison for wrongspeak. And more  that have been fined or detained.

&gt; UK prison-for-wrongthinkDoesn&#x27;t happen.

How about healthcare, immigration laws, wealthfare, educational support, etc... You can&#x27;t just move to a magic place that has it all, if where you live fails on one parameter.It might be better and cheaper to try to improve the place you live one step at the time. This assumes you live in the EU, there are worse places for which this might not hold.

Seeing how close it was I am really pessimistic about EU and further integration. I want my country to have a shot at sane copyright&#x2F;patent&#x2F;tax laws. If they fail I want other countries to have that shot, maybe at least one succeed and I could move there. With one centralized government there will be nowhere to run if things like UK prison-for-wrongthink or German&#x2F;Spanish copyright and censorpship laws are implemented.

Wow, not by a huge margin. I&#x27;m sure it will pass sooner or later.It&#x27;s really amazing how people have to keep these idiots that are _supposed to_ be there to guard our interests in check.As long as parties are allowed to accept contributions, things like this will happen. It should be absolutely forbidden to give any politician any money--both while campaigning and in case of victory. That way they would actually work for us and not corporations.

Sounds like that&#x27;s about profit to me.

Sounds like tinfoil hattery to me. Simple greed and technological illiteracy seem much more straightforward and don&#x27;t involve a conspiracy about &quot;the real reasons why things occur&quot; [creepy music in the background]. It&#x27;s especially ridiculous since of late the internet seems to have been much more efficient at shoveling garbage to gullible people than enlightening the proletariat.I&#x27;ve even seen some proponents of the bill lament that the lobbying by the &quot;GAFA&quot; (google, apple, facebook and amazon) won, so I&#x27;m sure some of them actually believe that they&#x27;re fighting the good fight against the multinational behemoths who are trying to pillage European resources. It&#x27;s relatively easy to justify the bill if you take it purely at face value without thinking about the consequences: the big players like Google make a ton of money by linking to other people&#x27;s work without redistributing any of the profits to the creators, let&#x27;s fix that. Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and clueless politicians.That or it&#x27;s the Illuminati, who knows.

&gt;It&#x27;s the only medium where truth can still be found about the real reasons why things occur.So.. flat earth, anti-vax, 9&#x2F;11 truther, NWO, aliens or... what? What&#x27;s your poison?

Nonsense. Its mainly cat pictures and porn. If you&#x27;re interested in learning how things work, read a lot of books. (non-fiction obviously)The truth about the fuckedupedness of our civilization is all readily available for you to read. Just no-one cares.

I doubt it&#x27;s about profit. The internet is the only mass medium not being completely controlled by corporations. It&#x27;s the only medium where truth can still be found about the real reasons why things occur.Link tax and other new laws will make sure that networks that spread truths goes underground.

This would mean you get into endless discussion about whether a new proposal is covering the same topic or not. Politicians try to game every system if it helps their cause. And then there are the corner cases where the underlying situation changes enough to warrant action even though it fell through one or two years prior.

Aside from the obvious loopholes (how do you define two laws as being the same -- and what stops your opponent from intentionally sabotaging a law they know you&#x27;d want to pass?) there are some other practical issues.If it applied to all laws, you could pretty easily imagine some negative consequences (attempts for marriage equality or suffrage could have been delayed by decades if the opposition tried to introduce laws in a way that would be guaranteed to not pass). And what if the circumstances change within that decade so that an old law proposal now makes much more sense.I do think that the law-making process should have quite a few more safeguards. The way that after-the-fact amendments work (in America or Australia for instance) is quite scary -- though Australia does have double dissolution which intends to prevent deadlocks and the Senate changing laws without authority from the House of Representatives.

We are seeing how legislation lags behind AI (self-driving, facial recognition etc.), we seriously don&#x27;t want to make that even worse.

The problem is more that the lawmakers need something to do... EU is producing a torrent of regulations, which is a bit absurd since it&#x27;s layered on top of a substantial amount of already existing legislation in the member states.It&#x27;s not so much about &quot;harmonizing the markets&quot; - it&#x27;s just full speed ahead, high and low, idealistic, corporatistic, amateurish or razor sharp, but all the time relentless building the superstate.

It seems time for a double-jeopardy type law for laws. If a law tries and fails to pass, there should be a cooldown period. Possibly a decade.

Which chapter is that in? I don&#x27;t remember that from the book.

Well, it&#x27;s a very old trick. Probably several thousand years, as long as people have traded. Don&#x27;t give credit to Caldini just because he wrote a popular book!

That&#x27;s basic negotiating 101. Probably older than the pyramids.

Sounds like they learn from Influence by Caldini. Ask for a far-fetched goal then conceded to what you want originally.

Where do we get the names of these people?

Yes. People need to understand that are whole teams of people whose full time jobs are to get this kind of thing passed. They don&#x27;t care what&#x27;s right or wrong. The Nuremberg defence is perfectly acceptable in business, unfortunately.

There are many people who are paid to get up every morning and get this law passed in one form or another.  They do it every day for the rest of their lives and they get paid handsomely for it.  That&#x27;s why they never give up.

See also &quot;the duck&quot;:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;122009&#x2F;developing-a-feature-which-sole-purpose-to-be-taken-out&#x2F;122148#122148" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;1220...</a>

Students are being taught to put questionable things in - that are easy to excise. They get challenged, remove the red herring, and are approved since the &quot;offended party&quot; feels appeased.I&#x27;ve heard similar stories with regards to censors. I&#x27;ve also seen it at work with release reviews. Pointy-haired management was given something obvious to correct, to keep them from thinking of something out of left field.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_triviality" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Law_of_triviality</a>

I&#x27;ve done it in code reviews, especially with picky people.

I recall seeing a tweet this morning stating the same for ethics committees in academic research papers. Students are being taught to put questionable things in - that are easy to excise. They get challenged, remove the red herring, and are approved since the &quot;offended party&quot; feels appeased.Anyways, Interesting analog. Intellectual dishonestly aside...I have no first hand knowledge, but it seems highly probable.

Yes, GP even specifically referred to them as &quot;old tricks&quot;. But even though the strategy is old, many people do not perceive the process that way so it&#x27;s worth pointing out.

Sounds more like a paranoid description of how almost all political change, positive or negative, happens. You push for what you want, but if that gets too much opposition, you moderate your proposal the next go-round.The other approach, of course, is to pursue incremental change. In the same &quot;ZOMG tricks&quot; lens, that&#x27;s boiling-the-frog-slowly.

{quote}
Also it is important to keep in mind the old tricks used to pass bad laws: they push initially for worse laws then after public protest they slowly step back to the initial goal to pretend people were listened to, so that not only they get what they wanted, but the public is also being fooled into believing their protest were successful and they have politicians who actually listen to them.
{end quote}That&#x27;s called haggling or bargaining and is old as the notion of trade.

We need liquid democracy. This current system is broken.

Bad example. The Lisbon treaty was voted down by the Irish in the first referendum. But then the EU made changes in the controversial areas and then the Irish were asked again. And they were happy with the changes and as such with the 2.0 of the treaty.My point is: changes.

The EU are masters at this. See: the Lisbon treaty.

Wow, thanks for clearing this up. It reminds me very much of the AT&amp;T thing regarding net neutrality in California. I thought it was over there too, but at they suddenly slipped in a win for themselves at the last minute.

&gt; problem because they&#x27;re going to try again and again to pass it, one way or another.Err, this simply means that EP didn’t rubber-stamp the proposal, as happens most of the time, but that the plenary will vote on it in September, and MEPs may propose amendments.I.e. what should be a standard democratic process, but isn’t in EU for some time how.They will not “try again” - attempt one is still ongoing and may very well succeed due to gross misunderstandings of the process and the general impression among people that the battle was won and it’s over.It really isn’t just yet.

It is extremely important not to lose focus on the problem because they&#x27;re going to try again and again to pass it, one way or another. They&#x27;ll never stop: it&#x27;s about profit both for the corporations bribing for those laws and the politicians being bribed to push for them, so they&#x27;ll just keep pushing until they find the right weapon of mass distraction to keep the public attention away.Also it is important to keep in mind the old tricks used to pass bad laws: they push initially for worse laws then after public protest they slowly step back to the initial goal to pretend people were listened to, so that not only they get what they wanted, but the public is also being fooled into believing their protest were successful and they have politicians who actually listen to them. How lucky!

Thanks for slightly optimistic reply in this regard. But I think it will all come down to how this will be implemented in member states (and I&#x27;m sure it will be far from common in EU), here where I live not all rights are transferred as part of the contract, some rights are non-transferable.
Nevertheless it&#x27;s scary how this is developing, I wonder who will be deciding about &quot;fairness&quot; of compensation, will it be courts deciding how much some services are worth...
I wonder if UK will accept it, if not I&#x27;d expected lots of business moving there from EU.

Yes, the general impression is that proposal articles almost feel being written under somebody&#x27;s dictation, for the benefit of a single market player.

perhaps it just means that you have to pay in equity.

I think that when you hire someone you are not:<pre><code> entering into a contract for the exploitation of the rights
</code></pre>
because you are the of the rights yourself. The person you hired to write a program for you doesn&#x27;t have any rights to it.
That being said, the whole article is ridiculous. If it passes you will be on the hook for % of the profits you make possibly forever if you licensed any kind of work to run your business. Maybe they should add another article where you can apply to get some of your money back if you don&#x27;t make or lose money trying to run your business.

I believe you can still transfer copyright to somebody else in the EU. Only certain &quot;moral rights&quot; are inalienable.I don&#x27;t know of any copyright law in any country that provides a way to &quot;destroy&quot; copyright before its term has elapsed. In the US, it seems to be held to be possible by legal tradition.

That&#x27;s a load of nonsense, no idea where you picked that up, but you can assign copyright in the EU and it is written into contracts with contractors.

As things stand right now insofar as I can recollect, copyright is inalienable in the EU. That is, in contrast to the US, you can&#x27;t give it away. But that&#x27;s fine in practice, because you can still grant an exclusive royalty-free license. Is article 15 changing that?

My comment was basing on this: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;legal-content&#x2F;EN&#x2F;TXT&#x2F;HTML&#x2F;?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&#x2F;legal-content&#x2F;EN&#x2F;TXT&#x2F;HTML&#x2F;?uri=CEL...</a>But AFAIK they have already changed that and this text doesn&#x27;t reflect the recent changes (it&#x27;s the proposal of the comission AFAIK).

I cannot find the text of article 15 anywhere online.

If you&#x27;d ask me personally I think Article 15 is far worse than Article 13. Computer programs are also copyrighted so this would make really hard time for anyone trying to maintain the business once it grows. If this is passed (if I understand this correctly) a subcontractor could sue you for extra money you gained on some of his contributions. It&#x27;s like contracts no longer define how much you owe to people because everything may change if you succeed. How do you reinvest the money in such conditions?
Do you hold some cash just in case someone pops up demanding more money?

Does anyone know if (and how) you can check which MEPs voted for and against it? Does that data get published somewhere?

I think they&#x27;re right to point out that there are corporate interests on both sides, but I also think they&#x27;re doing the public a disservice by failing to mention the effect on smaller companies and even on regular internet users.

Interesting how The Guardian are choosing to report this: &quot;YouTube and Facebook could escape billions in copyright payouts after EU vote&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2018&#x2F;jul&#x2F;05&#x2F;youtube-could-escape-billions-in-copyright-payouts-after-eu-vote" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2018&#x2F;jul&#x2F;05&#x2F;youtube-c...</a>

+ 278- 3180 31Too close. They will try again.

List of votes is on pages 7-8 of this document:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;sides&#x2F;getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bPV%2b20180705%2bRES-RCV%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN&amp;language=EN" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;sides&#x2F;getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2f...</a>

This is still quite a defeat IMHO. The vote was won just by a margin of 40 votes. The real deal will cover up in September. If the margin gets smaller - were kinda busted. If the negative votes increases - well, the internet might be saved.
Now only money talks and who takes which side will decide onto the rest.

Congratulations! But they&#x27;ll come back with some new garbage, they always do. So there will another need to repeal something like that.

I hope efforts like the Dutch De Correspondent works out in the long run. I know readers that love their work and happily pays for it.<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.niemanlab.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;dutch-news-organization-de-correspondent-is-getting-more-money-toward-its-global-expansion&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.niemanlab.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;dutch-news-organization-de-...</a>

We need new business models for new media, which are not based on artificial scarcity.  Then new media can afford to outspend old media.  It&#x27;s unfortunate that the current flag-bearers for new media are funded by advertising, rather than creativity and innovation unlocked by fair use and remix culture.

People need to lobby for laws protecting consumer interests. There just isn’t any large coporation willing to foot the bill here.

I am always impressed by the support efforts to curb copyright expansion, as it relates to practical freedoms of expression, information and control over the internet. It&#x27;s a nuanced issue, international and unrelated directly to any major political wing or ideology. So, the fact that it attracts a dedicated and effective activist base is both surprising and heartening. This for the &quot;cause&quot; least likely to get you laid.Thank you to whoever is involved. You are fighting for me and I appreciate it. I&#x27;m going to make a habit of writing MEPs and generally getting behind you guys. I want my next comment on the subject to be in the first person (we).But.....I feel like we&#x27;re at a real structural disadvantage. Copyrights (up generally) are under constant expansive efforts. Expanding rights. Expanding duratii. Expanding enforcement. Practical enforcement edforts that will result in dragnets (like this, now defeated proposal).The saintly activists are working to defeat restrictions, but they can&#x27;t win every fight. This proposal will be back, in modified form. It&#x27;s a ratchet. Sometimes we don&#x27;t lose. Other times we lose. There are no wins, just defense against loss.For a practical example: YouTube is the biggest video site, and it does not honour fair use. You can&#x27;t (easily, anyway) automate fair use detection, so it gets caught in the copyright violation dragnets. In practice this weakens fair use rights. I&#x27;m sure pressure from copyright holders played a role on YouTube&#x27;s policy decisions.Is there (or can there be) an activist effort that puts pressure on YouTube (just for example) to protect fair use rights, and freedom of expression generally.Are there wins we can aim for? Is an effort to shorten copyright duration feasible? I think the economic argument is on our side, even if we accept the other side&#x27;s premises. Is a fair use expansion campaign possible?

100% THIS.  Great details here. Glad to see this posted and we need to make as many people aware of the details in your post as possible.

They&#x27;ll never stop.And, they&#x27;re using your own money against you. Sales revenue, all the higher and more profitable as they tighten their control.Your tax dollars. Here in the U.S., there is an ongoing conversation about the continued efforts to &quot;criminalize&quot; IP infringement. Not only do the &quot;big players&quot; already have the advantage in terms of the ability to pay -- potentially endlessly -- for attorneys. They are trying to get the government, with its deep pockets and salaried attorneys, to take over prosecution of civil law infringements.Which also means less government attention to crime that may actually concern you, its citizens, more.Now, if the world were getting better, one might debate whether these are useful changes. Instead, it seems most people who take the time to understand this, and who aren&#x27;t benefiting from tacking on another 20 years to Micky Mouse&#x27;s exclusivity, find the changes both absurd and a hindrance to real productivity and creativity.Workers in the U.S. have had to compete not only against lower wages, but also against lower costs of producers who don&#x27;t respect and pay for the IP they use. Some of the same companies that scream bloody murder about infringement in the U.S., turn around and use those producers abroad because of their lower costs.They&#x27;re using your own money against you.(And, I&#x27;ve got nothing against the rest of the world catching up. I do resent and oppose the arbitrage practiced by such entities, in combination with convenient legal and political collusion, to greatly enrich themselves while perhaps even impeding real progress.)P.S. Regarding the &quot;tricks&quot; used to escalate their control, mentioned by the parent commenter. One of those is the current proliferation of &quot;trade agreements&quot;. One member is convinced, bribed, coerced to increase an IP &quot;right&quot;. The trade agreement includes an automatic mechanism for &quot;harmonization&quot; between members. The other member states use said &quot;harmonization&quot; as the cause that increases that right in their own state.People living in the latter may never have agreed to e.g. another extension to length of copyright. But suddenly they have it, via &quot;harmonization&quot;. And politicians saying, &quot;The treaty made us do it.&quot;This has all been discussed before, on the Web. But I haven&#x27;t seen it surface prominently, in a while, and it bears repeating for those who are just becoming familiar with the issue.

Glad to hear it, but eternal vigilance etc. Keep an eye on them.

Thank goodness, that thing was horrific. It even read like ISPs were supposed to filter user content.It was Copyright &gt; everything else &gt; freedom of speech (granted I get that&#x27;s a US phrase but you get my point).

Yet, both of these policies (article 11 and 13) have been tried out in a few countries.IMO concentration of power merely means that you need to be more careful with it. The EU will rarely be critized for standardizing boring regulation.I keep thinking that in the post brexit world maybe the EU should strive away from controversial topics for a few years. But I could be wrong :)

This not only a problem with the EU, but with concentrated power in general. It wouldn&#x27;t be cost effective to lobby every single government to pass this type of legislation, but when you concentrate it into a single place, suddenly intense lobbying becomes cost effective.I have a similar attitude to the US Federal government and why I think state rights are supreme. You lose economies of scale, but gain a distributed and hard(er) to corrupt system.

Here is how different countries voted: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;europe&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8wbbsy&#x2F;analysis_of_the_copyright_vote_per_country&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;europe&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8wbbsy&#x2F;analysis_of_...</a>And here is how different parties voted: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;xcr22o59g5811.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;xcr22o59g5811.png</a>

For those who want to see detailed breakdowns (by European party grouping, by national party, by country, etc.) see <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.votewatch.eu&#x2F;en&#x2F;term8-copyright-in-the-digital-single-market-draft-legislative-resolution-vote-decision-to-enter-into-inte.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.votewatch.eu&#x2F;en&#x2F;term8-copyright-in-the-digital-si...</a> (note - you&#x27;ll need to create a login).Interesting takeaways:1. As is usual, party discipline was very strong on the national-party level, but usually weak on the level of the European political grouping.2. The center-right EPP grouping voted by a large majority for the regulation.3. There was a very strong national divide between France (&gt;80% in favor) and every other large state (small majorities against).4. Party discipline on the European level among the Socialists (S&amp;D) broke down completely, leaving them split about 50&#x2F;50. For example, German SPD voted unanimously against; the French, British, Italian, and Spanish socialists by large majorities in favor; and most of the socialists from small states voted against.5. The liberals (in the European, FDP sense), were split within parties at a high rate.6. The nationalist far-right (the French party formerly known as the Front National, Lega Nord, etc.) and the Eurosceptic right (e.g. UK Conservatives, the governing Polish PiS, etc.), which usually vote similarly, split along national-party lines.

Many commenters here point out that this is not necessarily the end, and that lobbyist will keep trying. Seemingly implying that this is an eventuality.I don&#x27;t think so, if we keep fighting we can win this. I for one plan to keep applying pressure to members of the legal committee.Realistic optimism is not a cause for complacency. But we must also recognize that this is battle we can win, as to not give up without a fight. For all the faults of our democracies let&#x27;s recognize that it worked today :)

People seem to be viewing this through the eyes of US copyright proposals (longer terms, stronger enforcement etc).That&#x27;s not was this was at all. It was a change in the liability structure to make platforms liable for content published on their platform.It was basically about news. European news organisations hate that people are getting news via Google and Facebook so they want to restrict that.

After more reading, it is horrible. Even if the answers seem to be (0) no (1) maybe (2) yes, the main point of interest for researchers is that they will become publishers slaves, or else they have to not publish (anything which might result in a copyright filter). Give not publish, or be a slave.

Open Science fan here, I have some concrete questions about this copyright, publishers and linktax story, for example: 
(0) - will Scihub be affected?
(1) - will arXiv link instead of the published article link be affected?
(2) - will the social media companies start to apply filters to the search results and timelines???

EU copyright law proposal rejected