While this isn't great, it is worth remembering that this is one individual's proposals that hasn't passed any committee, any vote, any vetting, any review period, and is a long way off becoming enacted.
I'm all for voicing descent to this bad idea. I just want people to keep it in the context it belongs (a very big longshot for getting through as-is regardless).
That's too optimistic. Let's dive into how EU law is made:
First, the Commission (~government) proposes a law. They proposed this "extra copyright for news sites" that covers even tiniest snippets of news content and thus would put a price tag on links to news. In their version, publishers could opt out of it – but it would still cause major problems. Leading IP researchers said it will "deter communication of news", "negatively affect authors" and "hinder European innovation" http://www.create.ac.uk/policy-responses/eu-copyright-reform...
Next, the Parliament and the Council (member state governments) need to approve the plans or suggest changes. The Parliament nominates one MEP to shepherd this process. In this case that's Axel Voss (from Merkel's CDU). His job is to get together with the other parties and then make a proposal that in his assessment enjoys majority support in the Parliament.
This is what this article is about. Not "one individual's proposal", but the lead negotiator's view of what a majority of the Parliament supports: Doubling down on an already bad idea by making the right inalienable.
He may be wrong about that – we'll know when the Legal Affairs Committee votes on it on June 20/21. Other MEPs will file counter-proposals, but one of them winning out would be a rare, unexpected upset. Voss may also make changes to his proposal until then, but so far he's brushed off all opposing arguments. And yes, even if his plan is approved, there's a chance the "inalienable right" addition (the threat to Creative Commons) may not survive final negotiations with the Council and Commission.
The thing is: This vote is the number one chance the public has to affect what will be in this law, and thus whether there'll be a "link tax" in Europe. We need to push our representatives to reject that idea in that vote, not double down on it.
This isn't the first time Axel Voss has dumped out a proposal that would undermine how half the internet operates and make the other half open to a court case from the first half.
Voss is a tool, but it's true that right-wing parties are currently a majority in the EP, and they are flexing their muscles. However, there is barely a year left to this term - that's not much, to get this sort of thing through. Among other things, it needs a majority in the Council, which can be challenging depending on the political issue du-jour.
To me, to be honest, this looks like a classic overreach designed to cover a land grab: the "obligation" of remuneration will be inevitably shot down, but some other wording will be found that will enshrine the basic right of content producers to demand payment for links if they wish to do so.
> But Voss wants to amplify its worst features by asserting that press publishers will receive—whether they like it or not—an “inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses.” This means that publishers will be required to demand payment from news aggregators.
Does "inalienable" mean something different in European law than it does in US law?
In the US, having an inalienable right doesn't mean that you are required to exercise that right. It just limits what others can do to stop you from exercising it. For example, we have an inalienable right to travel. That doesn't mean we have to travel. It just means that government is limited when it comes to things that impact our exercising that right.
I could contractually agree to limit my exercise of that right, and that would be fine. Such a contract could be enforceable.
> I could contractually agree to limit my exercise of that right, and that would be fine. Such a contract could be enforceable.
Wait a minute, isn't that the opposite of inalienability? That is, isn't an inalienable right one that cannot be given away (or whose exercise cannot be limited by, even consensual, contract)?
No. You have some rights you can waive away. Remember that "warranty void if removed" sticker from a few days ago, or eula in general? Inalienable rights can't be taken off, even by yourself.
I'm not referring to that part. I'm confused because OP says "an inalienable right to travel [...] doesn't mean you have to travel", but it seems to me that you don't need "inalienable" for that - "a right to travel" by itself also doesn't mean you have to travel.
If you have a right to travel, then you can agree that you won't travel.
If you have an inalienable right to travel, then you can travel no matter what, and can't enter into a binding agreement that you won't travel; you can publicly declare that you won't and sign an agreement expressing that you won't, and then do it anyway.
Right (no pun intended). In general, a right to X means you can do X, not that you have to do X. But the original article said that the new law would add an inalienable right to remuneration, and said that meant publishers would be required to demand payment.
That made it sound like when a right is inalienable in the EU, you must exercise it.
In the US, inalienability affects how hard it is for others to stop you from exercising the right, both intentionally and unintentionally. It is still your choice whether or not to actually exercise it, and depending on the particular right you may also be able to freely agree by contract to not exercise it.
> [T]he latest proposal from the head of the copyright committee would deny creators the right to refuse remuneration — the right to share a work without getting paid — which could undermine the use of CC licenses if approved.
This particular new right would apply only to "publishers of press publications and news agencies" (to quote one of the recent drafts), which is why I added "in journalism" to the title to clarify [edit: but mods removed it].
Open source is unfortunately threatened by a different provision, which would force GitHub and other code hosts to implement "ContentID"-like filters trying to detect copyright infringement in commits: https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filter...
> For the purposes of this Directive, it is necessary to define the concept of press publication in a way that embraces only journalistic publications, published by a service provider, periodically or regularly updated in any media, for the purpose of informing or entertaining. Such publications would include, for instance, daily newspapers, weekly or monthly magazines of general or special interest and news websites. Periodical publications which are published for scientific or academic purposes, such as scientific journals, should not be covered by the protection granted to press publications under this Directive. This protection does not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute communication to the public according to the judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), notably hyperlinking to content which is available in the internet to the public with the consent of the rightholder, and hyperlinking to content which is available on
another website without the consent of the rightholder for non commercial purposes by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website (CJEU Judgement of September 8, 2016 in Case C-160/15).
You mean FOSS presumably, rather than OSS, a requirement to pay producers wouldn't end OSS. Even FOSS could continue, with a company paying the creator(s) and the public receiving the OSS for free. It would hamstring it though.
Your quote does a similar thing in saying "refusing remuneration" is "sharing a work without getting paid" they are notably different. If no-one offered payment you wouldn't need to refuse; the scope is quite different.
I am a content creator that sometimes uses CC as a license. I am also American.
I know this is a bit of a nuclear option, but would (re-?)licensing my works as CC+"EU ban" actually help the use of my works in the EU? Essentially, I would ban the use of my works in any country that makes such laws (which would violate my rights as a copyright holder to license my work however I see fit), thus preventing the foreign nation from applying additional restrictions to my license because it is already banned in their country.
Obviously, I could not enforce such ban (nor would I; the entire point is to hamstring the government's actions, not the actions of the consumers of my content), but they couldn't modify my license without legitimizing my license.
In essence, it's like how in the US, it is illegal to pay taxes on illegally gotten gains, because it puts the IRS in a weird spot and forces you to violate your own rights of self-incrimination while making the IRS implicit partners in your crime.
It is illegal in the US to NOT pay taxes on illegal profits. That's how Al Capone was taken down - it's infinitely easier for the government to prove that you had income that was not declared than it is to prove that the income came from specific illegal activities a, b and c.
> it's like how in the US, it is illegal to pay taxes on illegally gotten gains,
Actually, the rule in the US is:
it is illegal to /not/ pay taxes on illegally gotten gains
Failing to declare and pay income tax on income (no matter the source of the income) is what is illegal. And many a criminal (as another poster mentioned in regards to Al Capone) has been ensnared in a "failed to pay income tax" /gotcha/ even though they could not be convicted of the illegal activity itself.
Have the concerns raised by CC received attention from serious lawyers? I'm no lawyer, but I fail to see how this:
... an “inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses.”
suggests that I must get paid whether I want it or not, as the CC post seems to rely on for stoking up concern.
Surely it's the same as an inalienable right to free speech - you're not obliged to actually go round speaking freely, it's inalienable in the sense that you can't get rid of that right, not that you must exercise it!
First, it's no secret that the intent is to prop up the business model of struggling publishers by getting internet platforms to pay them for spreading (links to/tiny snippets of) their content.
After a "link tax" law was introduced in Germany, some publishers decided to waive it. Google reacted by removing snippets from those who didn't in Google News, making their links less likely to be clicked on. Afraid of losing traffic, these publishers then granted Google a free license.
The government of Spain looked at this result and decided to implement the idea as an inalienable right, to make sure some publishers couldn't opt out, and Google would have to pay up. In response, Google shut down Google News altogether in Spain.
This is the version that the Parliament's chief negotiator now wants the EU to implement. He believes that Google (and Facebook and Twitter, which have been added as targets) wouldn't dare shut down a service across all of Europe.
Google (and the other portals) would probably shut down a service across all of Europe if it were losing money.
That might be the outcome publishers want. They might imagine that if they eliminate outside links to individual stories, people would be forced to use publisher's sites as portals to the news.
You're exactly right: The big publishers lobbying for this aren't particularly scared of that outcome. They'd prefer to just receive millions from FB & Google, but if those platforms get out of the news sector entirely, they expect their consolation prize to be regaining control over how people find news, renewed brand loyalty, increased front page traffic and an advantage over smaller and new competitors.
Couldn't I or a million other individuals that aren't multinationals with holdings in Europe just start a news site while thumbing my nose at their inalienable rights?
Is the threat specifically Google News? I feel it's very rarely mentioned anywhere, at least compared to Facebook's news feature. If I didn't know better, I would've thought Google News was one of the services Google closed down.
The German law was targeted only at news aggregators. The legal text of the proposed EU version has no such limitation.
As for clear (ahem) statements who this is actually aimed at -- here's Commissioner Oettinger, who was responsible for the first edition of this proposal:
"If we don't act now, there will be fewer and fewer news articles to link to." "Even iPhone, tablets and Facebook are offering news feeds nowadays. We want to strengthen publishers not least in relation to these new providers"
Translated from German https://twitter.com/GOettingerEU/status/772785182550159360
In this context, it means you cannot waive that right. I. e. there could not be a license saying "use this freely, I don't want to be paid". The "no payment" part would be null and void and anyone using CC content would be in danger of being contacted by the author requesting "fair" payment any time later. (But I would say this would not be a completely unprecedented case, CC licenses brush aside a few unalienable rights already.)
The proposal (linked PDF) says the payment is obligatory.
At least in my European country, the likely result would be that the company will pay the Association of Authors (an organization which collects payment from all kinds of uses of works), which would retain it until the author collected it.
> 11. This is the provision that would introduce an additional right for press publishers to extract fees from news aggregators for incorporating short snippets of—or even linking to—their content.
With this from the proposal:
> 2a. The rights referred to in paragraph 1 shall not extend to acts of hyperlinking which do not constitute acts of communication to the public.
What text are you going to include in your hyperlink? Must every hyperlink title be paraphrased? It does seem to impact even the most basic hyperlinking as it has been used for the entire history of the internet.
Doesn't this provision basically contrast with copyright itself? Doesn't this erase the rights an author has on its work, including giving it away for free?
It's a bit murky, especially in an international context. But they generally aim to protect authors, specifically in the author<->publisher relationship.
It may seem counter-intuitive that taking away "your right to relinquish your rights" may be protecting you. But the idea is the same as whatever law stops you from selling yourself into slavery.
Except the current proposal goes against a very widespread and desirable use of copyright, which is to share freely while retaining attribution and control over reuse. And there are no human rights violations involved. As a result, the proposal in hand seems draconian - and since it basically deals with money, not at all similar to moral rights.
This is completely typical in consumer protection laws. You can't legally sign away your right to warranty for example, and I believe that in some jurisdictions you can't sign away your right to sue (like you would if you agree to binding arbitration).
I'd really like to see a more thorough argument than the linked blog on whether or not the proposed section is really a huge problem, and/or does nothing to protect legitimate rights holders who are in an asymmetric relationship with google that is maybe not to dissimilar to the consumer situation.
It's unalienable because a reasonable party would just refuse to pay for the privilege of linking to you and a reasonable content creator would realize that losing 50-80% of traffic coming from the people who you think ought to pay to promote you would be a bad bargain.
Its inalienable to short circuit the normal results of negotiations between big companies because they don't like the end result.
Slight clarification: for example, the "moral right" of recognition isn't inalienable, one can publish [pseudo-]anonymously. Indeed your linked Wikipedia makes clear inalienability is not a characteristic of all moral rights depending on jurisdiction.
(I don't think you were asserting this, but it seemed you were on first reading, hence "clarification")
So, if a EU based news organization publishes an RSS feed, and I have a web page that consumes that RSS feed and displays a link to the original page and the blurb/headline from the RSS feed (as RSS aggregators do), I would now have to pay them?
The claim is that you’re profiting from their publishing activity without compensating them. In essence, the feed is a data stream and you must obtain a license for it. I’m not saying I agree, but that’s how I understand the argument.
> in Germany, Axel Springer SE, the country’s top publisher, had to scrap a move to block Google from running snippets of articles from its newspapers because traffic to its sites plunged.
I think that says it all. They are getting paid: in traffic.
If they aren't okay with that there are already means at their disposal, like the robot exclusion protocol, or even putting their content behind a paywall where robots can't get at it.
The agreegatr is doing the work of collecting, displaying, possibly curating, possibly organising, rankng, sorting, etc. If anyone should get paid t should be the agregator.
If the original content publishers are unhappy that can stop publishing they can stop publishing their content for FREE.
They want all the benefits of near zero cost distributing to acrue to them. On top they want those proving exposure and increasing the value of their product to pay them!
And since that is uttely one sided, ridiculous deal no one has taken them up on it. So, they are trying to use the law to enforce it.
Because traditionally the idea was that sharing the fact that Bob wrote a story entitled Hippos are horrible along with 17000 other hippo related news items wasn't a copyrightable thing. Copyright has traditionally ensured that authors and those they designate are the sole source of their content while allowing everyone to discuss, share, and talk about the content freely so long as we don't share the meat of the content itself.
The fact that the article exists and it's title does not stand in for the articles content so we haven't deprived the author of any right to profit from such.
If Bob wants to be paid he can run ads within the article or even charge money and put up a paywall.
Making anyone who wants to talk about Bob's article and share a link pay for the privilege of promoting Bob's work is quite frankly stupid even if narrowly construed.
A website discussing all the articles about Hippos is a different work than Bob's article and Bob doesn't need a cut further this could easily be misused to say shut down criticism by charging undue revenue for anyone who wants to talk about and link to your work if they have anything unflattering to say.
Im already dubious about the current applications of copyright. Giving authors the right to own all discussion of their work seems monumentally stupid.
Before you call this legislation, and legislators everywhere "clueless", as some unfailingly will, take a moment to consider its motivation.
Because you can disagree with this proposal, and I do. But arguing against it should start with an attempt to understand its background.
Many European countries, as well as rural US states, have seen their local press landscapes dying. Where there used to be two or three quality local papers, there are now one or none. And those often no longer have the resources to devote to actual investigations of local issues.
The reason is obviously the internet, on two fronts: First, often overlooked yet more important, is the death of classifieds and ads. These used to provide about half of publishers' revenue. Craigslist and Google Ads have reduced these opportunities drastically (i. e. by about 80%).
On top of that comes the competition by publishers on the internet.
The issue now is that it simply doesn't pay to devote any resources to any serious investigation. The Wall Street Journal might pay a reporter for half a year of work to produce a story on corruption at the FAA. But ten minutes after that story is published, the AP and every news site on the web can quote the essential information.
Nw if you believe copyright and patents should be completely abolished, then it's completely fair to call this idea by the EU "clueless".
But if you think that (limited) intellectual property laws may, in principle, be acceptable and important to allow investments in such endeavours, then this idea doesn't seem as outlandish.
I still believe these ideas are misguided, and there might just not be a good way to create a workable system around such rights. But as a believer in the necessity for a vibrant media landscape to inform the public discourse, I don't enjoy watching the press' misery either.
It's true: Publishers' business model is under threat, and some politicians pushing for this law are doing to so out of a genuine interest in fixing that.
But actually, only a few very big publishers have lobbied for this, claiming that this would "save journalism in Europe" when they care mostly about their own bottom line. Limiting how news spreads on social networks and aggregators is not in the interest of and would actually harm smaller publishers, who benefit from competing with the big brands on such sites on an equal footing.
Small, independent and innovative publishers had to get together to form their own lobby organisation to OPPOSE this law that politicians would claim is to their benefit: http://mediapublishers.eu/our-views/
I find it humorous that this is being done with good intentions, "to benefit creators".
In one sense it appears tone deaf to how much CC-licensed sharing can be argued to enable an economy of content creators, by lowering certain transaction costs.
But in light of recent revelations and the public mood, it seems more prescient: perhaps pointing the way to a future where everybody pays for every little bit of content they consume, rather than being the product themselves, in a "free" offering. That old idea of micropayments for content, here we come, eh? And the EU being the first (for once) to lawify it. Is it too early to pat them on the back?
If you can encourage reuse, that's good. If you can encourage payment, that's good. Different strokes, for different folks, works. As I understand it, the proposal forces payment. That's not good. Creators choices should not be constrained in this way.
Instead of constraining options, I feel EU legco, should see if there is an opportunity to legislate to ease the way for implementing and executing micropayments / content transactions ( a real problem ), if there is, do that. Law that engages with and enables technological realities, rather than trying to constrain something already useful, would seem to work better here.
press publishers will receive—whether they like it or not—an “inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses.” This means that publishers will be required to demand payment from news aggregators.
Is this even what Mr. Voss intended? Who benefits from this? Couldn't this be fixed by replacing "obtain" with "demand" or "choose to require" or something?
I used to think nobody was that awful, e.g. nobody was anti-public-library, until I met people who were.
It's totally understandable that the goal is to eliminate the public domain and all free/libre/open publications as a means to the end of funding proprietary stuff.
Say you have a business mowing people's lawns. If you were anti-social, you might support outlawing friendly neighbors mowing others' lawns for free or even outlaw people mowing their own lawns. You might even deceive yourself with some pro-social ideas about how forcing all lawn-mowing to be paid-lawn-mowing will end up with a world of better lawns, better economy, and all the extended benefits of well-paid lawn-mowers besides yourself…
Similarly, if you're a news outlet, you'd be happy to see a price forced on all your competitors. It's easier for you to charge your price if everyone else has to also. Ironically, this could be argued from a pro-social consideration of solidarity and funding journalism.
Of course, deeper pro-social inspection of the situation reveals that sabotaging FLO works and public domain is an unacceptable tragedy that is not a respectable means to the end of funding journalism. But short-sighted folks will try anything since they are freaking out about the valid concern over journalism funding in general.
IANAL, so can someone explain how we get from "inalienable right to obtain an [sic] fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses" to "required to charge a fee"?
You could, but then you would be able to later sue and/or rescind the right to use if it became popular. It is a right to undermine contracts after the fact, which would be extremely stifling to publishing in general.
I have lately been fond of the idea of not abolishing, copyright, but setting a copyright tax that increases heavily over time. Say, first two years tax-free, third year USD 1000 and doubling after that each year. Once copyright holder fails to pay the tax, the copyrighted work becomes automatically public domain. Orphan works would be solved as well with this.
(Admittably, I have not thought the international problems that this might cause)
> Once copyright holder fails to pay the tax, the copyrighted work becomes automatically public domain
...or it gets bought by some more powerful entity - capable of paying the tax - shortly before this happens. Leading to concentration of copyrights in the hands of big corporations, to an extent even larger than under current system.
> or it gets bought by some more powerful entity - capable of paying the tax
The "doubling after that each year" provision of the original comment neatly takes care of that. After a relatively small number of doublings the size of the tax for the single item would be larger than the current US national debt.
Did you calculate how much tax would be payable after e.g. 20 years? I guess it would be a very rare piece of work that anyone would be willing to pay the tax for longer than 20 years.
They're not. The copyleft portion of the GPL prevents improvements to open source code being locked up. In the case of source code, simply putting it in the public domain is of little use if the source code isn't public.
Not under this proposal, as long as you continuously updated the software. If you never payed the tax, the version from two years ago would lapse into public domain, but any maintained versions would continue to be copyrighted (or at least contained copyrighted elements) as long as effort was expended to maintain them. In theory there is nothing preventing this from happening with GPL software now, except that the length of time for something to go into public domain is so long.
Edit: In some ways this is actually an improvement over the status quo. It solves the problem where software can't be relicensed because no one can track down all the authors. You only have to track down the authors who have been active in the last two years.
That still ends up with a lot of copylefted code ending up losing the copyleft protection. E.g. someone could build their proprietary product on top of a two year old Linux kernel, and not have to adhere to the GPL.
> In some ways this is actually an improvement over the status quo. It solves the problem where software can't be relicensed because no one can track down all the authors.
I wouldn't really call that an improvement. There's no longer even a point in relicensing code, given that the license only matters for code less than two years old.
The revenue generally goes down over time, while copyright tax goes up. At some point the two intersect and that is where it doesn't make economic sense to continue paying for copyright.
How many 20 year old pieces of copyrighted work you know where the copyright holder would be willing to pay 130 Million USD in taxes to keep the copyright one more year? I can't think of a single one.
I calculated a couple of free years in the beginning as per my original post. But I may also have missed by one or two years in my no more existing spreadsheet
It could be left at the discretion of the holder, with fair use being an escape valve to prevent abuse.
e.g., Disney won't stich together all their movies in a year-long pseudo unit of work, because, if it did so, a two-hour clip from that work would fall under fair use.
Frankly, I have thought this more around books, music and patents than software. Obviously there should be some way to accommodate changing work, then.
2 years may be a bit too drastic for many forms of content (e.g. books, music albums) where sales need longer to recuperate the expenses that went into making them. 10 years would seem okay IMO.
I would like to have copyright end once your earnings from a certain work exceed some multiple of the expenses that went into making it by a certain factor, but I can see that this is not realistic for various reasons.
> I would like to have copyright end once your earnings from a certain work exceed some multiple of the expenses that went into making it by a certain factor...
One of the reasons is that it would have a chilling effect for speculative investment in creating works. What if I'm a movie producer getting an average of one hit for nine flops? I need the profit from the hit to subsidize the flops.
I disagree. I believe that the code I write for my employer is valuable and I recognize that having no copyright on it would reduce my compensation as an employee. You're right that developing a consensus on this is ngih impossible.
Okay; for the sake of argument, let's say I agree.
The first problem that immediately arises is that of providing a 1984-proof who-made-what oracle. No, the blockchain won't work. :D
(Alright, alright, in a perfect-to-the-nth-degree world the blockchain probably would work, but it's generally a good idea to try and invent one new thing at a time, not invent ten interdependent things that all require each other and which all independently have discrete adoption inertia.)
I'm sure anyone who is a content creator would disagree with you. The only reason to abolish copyright would be to freely copy, steal, and use other people's works without compensation or even attribution. It can easily take more than two years to even write a thorough and well-researched article or book. Would you spend two years of your life creating something with the knowledge that it can be freely stolen and resold by other people the day you release it?
> Would you spend two years of your life creating something with the knowledge that it can be freely stolen and resold by other people the day you release it?
That's the dream of the Free Software movement, n'est-ce pas?
When you release something without restriction, it brings the whole civilization forward.
The problem is monetizing the creation of the work, which doesn't have to be done by the business-model of restricting its usage. Indeed the latter seems like a violation of individual freedoms that I'm not sure should be allowed by legal contract.
It cannot be stolen if you still have the original. It can only be copied. To steal something requires you removing from the possession of the owner. Making a copy is not stealing. But you can steal someone's reputation.
> Why does it always seem as if such proposals are written by clueless people?
Whenever you start to think that a complex thing was done by a clueless person, you should stop, and consider the possibility you might be lacking a clue yourself. That doesn't mean the other side wasn't missing a clue either, or isn't acting in bad faith, of course. But I find it rare that there's no actual good reason ideas happen.
In this case, it's definitely true that the "right" to refuse renumeration has been abused, on many levels — from free-of-charge press effectively displacing and forcing the rest to follow on the "big guy" scale, to unpaid internships on the "small guy" scale.
There are good reasons to reject the proposal — as outlined in the OP — but that doesn't mean the author was clueless. Whether incoherence comes from a difference in perspective or bad faith we don't know (though you can guess what I - a socialist - am guessing about the good faith of a CDU politician). But there _are_ reasons.
> Can't we, people of HN, draft proposals collaboratively, perhaps with some moderation system?
There aren't "we, people of HN", but if you want to collaboratively draft proposals, join your nearest political entity. My own even has a Discourse forum where you can get all meta about the policy process.
Whenever you start to think that a complex thing was done by a clueless person, you should stop, and consider the possibility you might be lacking a clue yourself. That doesn't mean the other side wasn't missing a clue either, or isn't acting in bad faith, of course. But I find it rare that there's no actual good reason ideas happen.
This is true, and it works both ways. For example, people who oppose GDPR are not all Facebook shills.
I suspect they are doing this because otherwise no one would ever make use of this provision. (No one would be that stupid.)
By forcing people to make use of this, their law actually gets used, which is important because otherwise they look like they don't know what they're doing.
But the law of unintended consequences is going to cause serious problems if they actually pass this law.
Or, if the scenario they're thinking about is news aggregators: probably they don't want to see an aggregator (let's say Google News) to force deals for free licenses or the articles won't be included in its pages.
Maybe they didn't even think about other scenarios or they accept them as collateral damage.
Agreed. In the past, media companies that tried to enforce a "link tax" (IIRC in Spain and Germany) were just unlisted from the news feed---and lost a lot of traffic, rendering the whole endeavor moot.
I guess they think that if everyone has to enforce the tax, they are protected from the threat of being unlisted.
I wonder if that link tax provision isn't a door-in-the-face technique? It just seems so blatantly ridiculous given how the internet works that I have trouble believing anyone genuinely thought it was a good idea. Links almost by definition aren't copyright worthy information, it makes no sense to charge for them.
This is the latest outcrop of news publishers fighting Google News in Europe. Previous results have been for example the creation of additional rights for news outlets in Germany where quoting even headlines of news stories in links might now require a (paid) license from the publisher. Of course, that law has been boldly worked around by Google (they dropped news sites from the index that didn't offer free licenses) and is now entirely useless.
What a disgusting shady move is that... Glad that I don't use a search engine that uses such mobbish predatory ways to extort newspapers so that it can make money off of the stories they write, and mandate what I can access or not in the meantime.
Is it disgusting and shady not to buy and use something when it is more expensive than you are prepared to pay? What obligation does Google have to drive visitors to newspapers' websites and pay the newspapers for doing so?
I think the US government is sick, but the EU is new and needs to be a benefit for it to survive.
My assumption is that they are entirely incentivized by niche groups in each country that are pushing for reform to help their own goals. I dont see how many of their policies are beneficial to the masses.
The biggest incentive for them to work together rather than pushing for reforms specific to an individual country is to match the power of the US government on the world stage.
This was one of the main reasons for the creation of the EU to begin with, to compete with the US.
As powerful as a strong economic country like Germany can become, they still pale in comparison in size to the US.
Working together cohesively with other EU nations could create a superpower to rival China, USA, Japan, etc.
Why do you think the US government is sick? It's certainly not perfect, but would you really prefer any previous or existing government over what we have?
I'm not an expert on history, but I don't think that holds true, at least based on my limited knowledge. As I understand it, we've always had a government partially beholden to certain large interests, but it's offset by having to maintain some level of restraint on behalf the public interest.
If we look back at our government's founding, we have large interest groups pushing to maintain horrible things such as slavery. But eventually we moved past that.
I won't claim that things couldn't be better; we certainly have a lot of room for improvement. But I don't think we're doing as poorly as many people would like to believe.
No, I'm quite serious. Can you explain why you think that? What aspects of New Zealand's government do you favor over the US? And to maintain a balanced view, are there any aspects of it that you'd criticize?
The US's political system is extremely antiquated, and is not at all appropriate for a post-industrial economy. We do have a few nice things though, like a very strong protection for speech. Arguably too strong right now though, as it gives corporations nearly unlimited rights to influence elections.
I don't understand how the proposed language leads to the conclusion. How does an "inalienable right" to compensation turn into compulsory compensation? Don't you have the ability to choose not to enforce the right?
I think the problem is that you can't announce that you wont enforce your right for some given content - it is inalienable. (IANAL) So, you can say "don't worry I wont enforce this" but nothing is stopping you then enforcing it. So nobody can feel legally in the clear to link your stuff.
Not sure as maybe the term "inalienable right" has a different meaning, but I feel like the article is making too strong a claim. An "inalienable right" is usually something you cannot waive by contract, and so while you could promise never to enforce a right you cannot legally bind yourself or the state from enforcing it.
Basically it makes CC licenses more risky for distributors of such content as there is always the risk that the previously waived right is now enforceable on a whim.
However, maybe "inalienable right" in EU legal language means that you must enforce it, which seems like quite a legal burden on the license issuer.
Seems like the consequences could go way beyond licensing and into monopolization of news and press. They just can't help themselves but always push to centralize control over media.
I'm all for voicing descent to this bad idea. I just want people to keep it in the context it belongs (a very big longshot for getting through as-is regardless).