You’re going to be so disappointed when all this turns out to be a damp squib and not the international disaster you’re hoping for.
It's a botched piece of legislation. Wikipedia has been campaigning against it, because they are probably the one site that is most vulnerable to the law's that EU voted in the second round. First round they failed because public was aware. Most people didn't hear about the second vote, so the MEP's didn't get the feedback they needed.
Many leftists in Europe think it's a potential disaster. Teachers have been fighting against it along with Google, Mozilla, Youtube, the guy who invented www thinks it's a disaster... Twitch also reacted, because they don't know if EU is going to take down their videos or not and if they should stop showing streaming videos to EU.
Smaller news sites are worried because they might have to pay just to link to other newssites and thus you will start to see less blogs and smaller newssites. Just the big ones(edit: oh, and fake news! because they are original, they'll be protected from this law... sweet). Reaction videos might go the way of the neanderthal, at least in the EU. The law is going to be ambiguous. I can't think of anyone making any sense in the defense of it.
Julia Reda's site is good :
Extra copyright for news sites (“Link tax”)
reda's site said:
reda's site said:
- Likely to fail: This is an attempt to replicate at an EU level an idea that already
failed badly in Germany and Spain – only applied more broadly and longer.
The German law is likely about to be pronounced invalid in court, while the Spanish one “clearly had a negative impact on visibility and access to information in Spain” (EPRS). Journalists certainly never saw additional remuneration.
- Attack on the hyperlink: Because readers need to know what a link leads to before clicking, sites almost always include a snippet of the linked-to content as part of a link. Any limitation on snippets is therefore a limitation on linking.
- Limiting freedom of expression and access to information: This provision would restrict not just businesses, but also individuals who publish news snippets, e.g. bloggers. Because a neighbouring right, unlike a copyright, doesn’t require originality to apply to content, it would protect even short and uncreative snippets, such as purely factual headlines.
- Boosting fake news: Making it legally risky or expensive to link (with snippets) to news risks disincentivising the sharing of reputable news content. Since “fake news” and propaganda outlets are unlikely to charge for snippets, their content could as a result become more visible on social networks.
- News-related startups discouraged, even though this sector is in particular need of innovation and experimentation to find new business models, ways of reaching audiences, fact-checking and combating fake news etc., as technology advances.
- Small publishers disadvantaged: Aggregators create a level playing field for independent publishers with less brand recognition to reach audiences.
- In conflict with the Berne Convention, an international treaty that guarantees a right to quote news articles and create “press summaries”
Upload filters
reda's site said:
reda's site said:
- Freedom of expression limited: Upload monitoring software cannot tell infringement apart from legal uses like parody, specifically enabled by exceptions and limitations to copyright. Filters also frequently malfunction. As a result, legal content will be taken down.
- Independent creators harmed: Platforms will receive instructions as to what content to automatically remove from large commercial rightholders. When independent creators have works removed by filters that are covered by exceptions or otherwise misidentified as infringing, they will effectively be deemed “guilty until proven innocent”, having to fight to have their legal creations reinstated.
- Surveillance risk: The proposal requires the installation of what amounts to surveillance technology. Due to high development costs, content monitoring technology will likely end up being outsourced to a few large US-based providers, strengthening their market position even further and giving them direct access to the behavior of all EU users of internet platforms.
- Startup killer: This requirement places a huge burden on internet companies and discourages investment in user-generated content startups, preventing EU competition to the targeted dominant US platforms from arising, effectively locking in YouTube’s dominance. (See Allied for Startups)
- Unintended targets harmed: Community projects like Wikipedia would likely need to implement such filters, even though they only accept freely-licensed uploads. Code hosting platforms would also be affected, “undermining the foundations upon which Free and Open Source Software is built”. As would scientific repositories, “undermining the foundations of Open Access”.
If it fails to be implemented then it's the good for the net.
