Regressive Taxation…

The German implementation of link tax from the new EU Copyright Directive is even more extreme than the directive.

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See article from techdirt.com

Germany was a major force behind the EU’s disgraceful copyright directive passed last year. It is perhaps no surprise that proposed implementation into German law is even more extreme than the directive.In particular the link tax has been drafted so that it is nearly impossible to refer to a press article without an impossibly expensive licence to use the newspaper’s content. The former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda has picked out the main bad ideas on Twitter.Under the German proposals, now up for public consultation, only single words or very short extracts of a press article can be quoted without a license. Specifically, free quotation is limited to: the headline a small-format preview image with a resolution of 128-by-128 pixels a sequence of sounds, images or videos with a duration of up to three seconds Techdirt explains: The proposal states that the new ancillary copyright does not apply to hyperlinks, or to private or non-commercial use of press publishers’ materials by a single user. However, as we know from the tortured history of the Creative Commons non-commercial license, it is by no means clear what non-commercial means in practice. Press publishers are quite likely to insist that posting memes on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter — all undoubtedly commercial in nature — is not allowed in general under the EU Copyright Directive. We won’t know until top EU courts rule on the details, which will take years. In the meantime, online services will doubtless prefer to err on the side of caution, keen to avoid the risk of heavy fines. It is likely they will configure their automated filters to block any use of press publishers’ material that goes beyond the extremely restrictive limits listed above. Moreover, this will probably apply across the EU, not just in Germany, since setting up country-by-country upload filters is more expensive. Far easier to roll out the most restrictive rules across the whole region.

 

 

A Brexit bounty…

UK Government wisely decides not to adopt the EU’s disgraceful Copyright Directive that requires YouTube and Facebook to censor people’s uploads if they contain even a snippet of copyrighted material.

Read more uk_internet_censors.htm at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from bbc.com

Universities and Science Minister Chris Skidmore has said that the UK will not implement the EU Copyright Directive after the country leaves the EU.Several companies have criticised the disgraceful EU law, which would hold them accountable for not removing copyrighted content uploaded by users. EU member states have until 7 June 2021 to implement the new reforms, but the UK will have left the EU by then. It was Article 13 which prompted fears over the future of memes and GIFs – stills, animated or short video clips that go viral – since they mainly rely on copyrighted scenes from TV and film. Critics noted that Article 13 would make it nearly impossible to upload even the tiniest part of a copyrighted work to Facebook, YouTube, or any other site.Other articles give the news industry total copyright control of news material that people have previously been widely used in people’s blogs and posts commenting on the news. Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticised the law in March, claiming that it was terrible for the internet.Google had campaigned fiercely against the changes, arguing they would harm Europe’s creative and digital industries and change the web as we know it. YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki had also warned that users in the EU could be cut off from the video platform.

Tax avoidance…The EU’s link tax will lead to minimal links for EU news providers rather than the hoped for extra revenue

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See article from thethaiger.com

The EU recently enacted an internet censorship law giving websites the right to demand fees for linking to them. It was hoped that Google in particular would end up paying for links to European news providers struggling for revenue in the modern internet environment.But it seems that Google may have other ideas. Google is changing the way it displays news stories produced by European publishers in France as new copyright rules go into effect. Rather than paying publishers to display snippets of their news stories, as was intended, Google will show only headlines from articles instead. Google says that it doesn’t pay for news content as a matter of policy. The company shut down its Google News in Spain after a law passed in 2014 would have mandated such payments. Google are sticking to their guns. The company said: We believe that Search should operate on the basis of relevance and quality, not commercial relationships. That’s why we don’t accept payment from anyone to be included in organic search results and we don’t pay for the links or preview content included in search results. This move will disappoint publishers who had hoped for additional revenue as a result of new copyright law that goes into effect in France next month. The country is the first to implement European Union copyright rules passed earlier this year . But perhaps there is a worse to come for European companies. It could be that in a page of Google news search results, US news services may have embellished entries with snippets and thumbnail images whilst the European equivalent will just have a boring text link. And guess which entries people will probably click on. Maybe it won’t be long before European companies set their fees at zero for using their snippets and images.

European livelihoods laid to waste…Link taxes and censorship machines pass the final stage of European legislation

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See  article from torrentfreak.com

The EU Council of Ministers has approved the Copyright Directive, which includes the link tax and censorship machines. The legislation was voted through by a majority of EU ministers despite noble opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden.As explained by Julia Reda MEP, a majority of 55% of Member States, representing 65% of the population, was required to adopt the legislation. That was easily achieved with 71.26% in favor, so the Copyright Directive will now pass into law. As the image above shows, several countries voted against adoption, including Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. Belgium, Estonia, and Slovenia absta ined. But in the final picture that just wasn’t enough, with both Germany and the UK voting in favor, the Copyright Directive is now adopted. EU member states will now have two years to implement the law, which requires platforms like YouTube to sign licensing agreements with creators in order to use their content. If that is not possible, they will have to ensure that infringing content uploaded by users is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services. The entertainment lobby will not stop here, over the next two years, they will push for national implementations that ignore users’ fundamental rights, comments Julia Reda: It will be more important than ever for civil society to keep up the pressure in the Member States!

Maybe the Brexiteers are right…EU parliament gives final approval to internet copyright law that will destroy European livelihoods and give unprecedented censorship control to US internet and media giants

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See article from bbc.co.uk See Could the EU’s copyright directive entrench the tech giants’ dominance? from tech.newstatesman.com

The European Parliament has backed disgraceful copyright laws which will change the nature of the net.The new rules include holding technology companies responsible for material posted without proper copyright permission. This will destroy the livelihoods of European people making their living from generating content. The Copyright Directive was backed by 348 MEPs, with 278 against. It is now up to member states to approve the decision. If they do, they will have two years to implement it once it is officially published. The two clauses causing the most controversy are known as Article 11 and Article 13. Article 11 states that websites will either have to pay to use links from news websites or else be banned from linking to or quoting news services. Article 13 holds larger technology companies responsible for material posted without a copyright licence. It means they would need to pre-censor content before it is uploaded. Only the biggest US internet companies will have the technology to achieve this automatically, even then technical difficulties in recognising content will results in inevitable over censorship from having to err on the side f caution. The campaign group Open Knowledge International described it as a massive blow for the internet. We now risk the creation of a more closed society at the very time we should be using digital advances to build a more open world where knowledge creates power for the many, not the few, said chief executive Catherine Stihler. Skip Twitter post by @Senficon Dark day for internet freedom: The @Europarl_EN has rubber-stamped copyright reform including #Article13 and #Article11. MEPs refused to even consider amendments. The results of the final vote: 348 in favor, 274 against #SaveYourInternet pic.twitter.com/8bHaPEEUk3 204 Julia Reda (@Senficon) March 26, 2019.

Dark Days…Wikipedia protests against the EU’s disgraceful new copyright laws favouring US conglomerates over European people

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See  article from theverge.com See final draft of EU copyright law [pdf] from europarl.europa.eu

Websites and businesses across Europe went dark yesterday in protest of disgraceful changes to copyright law being introduced by the European Union.Ahead of a final vote on the legislation next Tuesday, March 26th, a number of European Wikipedia sites are going dark for the day, blocking all access and directing users to contact their local EU representative to protest the laws. Other major sites, such as Twitch and PornHub, are showing protest banners on their homepages and social media. Meanwhile, any users uploading content to Reddit will be shown this notice: Critics of the Copyright Directive say it could lead to messages like this. The law in question is the EU Copyright Directive, a long-awaited update to copyright law. Two provisions have been singled out by critics as dangerous to European people’s freedom and livehoods. These are Article 11, which lets publishers charge platforms if they link to their stories (the link tax’), and Article 13, which makes platforms legally responsible for users uploading copyrighted material (the so-called ‘upload filter’). Article 13 is particularly dangerous, say critics. It will make all platforms hosting user-generated content legally responsible for users uploading copyrighted content. The only way to stop these uploads, say critics, will be to scan content before its uploaded, leading to the creation of filters that will err on the side of censorship and will be abused by copyright trolls. Wikipedia said the rules would be a “net loss for free knowledge.” Volunteer editors for the German, Czech, Danish, and Slovak Wikipedias have all blacked out their sites for the day. As well as the website blackouts , more than five million internet users have signed a petition protesting Article 13 . Marches and demonstrations are also planned in European cities across the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday before the final vote. Update: The latest from MEP Julia Reda 21st March 2019. See tweets from twitter.com The official version of the #copyright trilogue agreement is online now, translations will follow shortly. Don’t get a heart attack when you see #Article13 has been renumbered #Article17, both the old and the new numbers will show up on MEPs’ voting lists. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-271-271_EN.pdf Our efforts to defeat #Article13 just got a huge boost! Polish @Platforma_org will vote AGAINST the #copyright directive unless #Article13 is deleted! They’re the second largest single political party in EPP after @CDU. Thanks @MichalBoni https://twitter.com/MichalBoni/status/1109057398566764544 #SaveYourInternet At a press conference in Berlin, @AxelVossMdEP confirmed rumours that some press publishers have threatened parliamentarians with bad election coverage if they vote against the #copyright reform. Voss does not consider this problematic. #Article11 #Article13 #SaveYourInternet

Destroying European livelihoods…The text of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive has just been finalised in its worst form yet

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See CC article from juliareda.eu by Julia Reda

In the evening of February 13, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council concluded the trilogue negotiations with a final text for the new EU Copyright Directive. For two years we’ve debated different drafts and versions of the controversial Articles 11 and 13. Now, there is no more ambiguity: This law will fundamentally change the internet as we know it — if it is adopted in the upcoming final vote. But we can still prevent that! Please click the links to take a look at the final wording of Article 11 and Article 13 . Here’s my summary: Article 13: Upload filters Parliament negotiator Axel Voss accepted the deal between France and Germany I laid out in a recent blog post : Commercial sites and apps where users can post material must make “best efforts” to preemptively buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload — that is: all copyrighted content in the world. An impossible feat. In addition, all but very few sites (those both tiny and very new) will need to do everything in their power to prevent anything from ever going online that may be an unauthorised copy of a work that a rightsholder has registered with the platform. They will have no choice but to deploy upload filters , which are by their nature both expensive and error-prone . Should a court ever find their licensing or filtering efforts not fierce enough, sites are directly liable for infringements as if they had committed them themselves. This massive threat will lead platforms to over-comply with these rules to stay on the safe side, further worsening the impact on our freedom of speech. Article 11: The “link tax” The final version of this extra copyright for news sites closely resembles the version that already failed in Germany — only this time not limited to search engines and news aggregators, meaning it will do damage to a lot more websites. Reproducing more than “single words or very short extracts” of news stories will require a licence. That will likely cover many of the snippets commonly shown alongside links today in order to give you an idea of what they lead to. We will have to wait and see how courts interpret what “very short” means in practice — until then, hyperlinking (with snippets) will be mired in legal uncertainty. No exceptions are made even for services run by individuals, small companies or non-profits, which probably includes any monetised blogs or websites. Other provisions The project to allow Europeans to conduct Text and Data Mining , crucial for modern research and the development of artificial intelligence, has been obstructed with too many caveats and requirements. Rightholders can opt out of having their works datamined by anyone except research organisations. Authors’ rights: The Parliament’s proposal that authors should have a right to proportionate remuneration has been severely watered down: Total buy-out contracts will continue to be the norm. Minor improvements for access to cultural heritage : Libraries will be able to publish out-of-commerce works online and museums will no longer be able to claim copyright on photographs of centuries-old paintings. How we got here Former digital Commissioner Oettinger proposed the law The history of this law is a shameful one. From the very beginning , the purpose of Articles 11 and 13 was never to solve clearly-defined issues in copyright law with well-assessed measures, but to serve powerful special interests , with hardly any concern for the collateral damage caused. In the relentless pursuit of this goal , concerns by independent academics , fundamental rights defenders , independent publishers , startups and many others were ignored. At times, confusion was spread about crystal-clear contrary evidence . Parliament negotiator Axel Voss defamed the unprecedented protest of millions of internet users as ” built on lies “. In his conservative EPP group, the driving force behind this law, dissenters were marginalised . The work of their initially-appointed representative was thrown out after the conclusions she reached were too sensible. Mr Voss then voted so blindly in favour of any and all restrictive measures that he was caught by surprise by some of the nonsense he had gotten approved. His party, the German CDU/CSU, nonchalantly violated the coalition agreement they had signed (which rejected upload filters), paying no mind to their own minister for digital issues . It took efforts equally herculean and sisyphean across party lines to prevent the text from turning out even worse than it now is. In the end, a closed-door horse trade between France and Germany was enough to outweigh the objections… so far. What’s important to note, though: It’s not “the EU” in general that is to blame — but those who put special interests above fundamental rights who currently hold considerable power. You can change that at the polls! The anti-EU far right is trying to seize this opportunity to promote their narrow-minded nationalist agenda — when in fact without the persistent support of the far-right ENF Group (dominated by the Rassemblement/Front National ) the law could have been stopped in the crucial Legal Affairs Committee and in general would not be as extreme as it is today. We can still stop this law Our best chance to stop the EU copyright law: The upcoming Parliament vote. The Parliament and Council negotiators who agreed on the final text now return to their institutions seeking approval of the result. If it passes both votes unchanged, it becomes EU law , which member states are forced to implement into national law. In both bodies, there is resistance. The Parliament’s process starts with the approval by the Legal Affairs Committee — which is likely to be given on Monday, February 18. Next, at a date to be announced, the EU member state governments will vote in the Council. The law can be stopped here either by 13 member state governments or by any number of governments who together represent 35% of the EU population ( calculator ). Last time, 8 countries representing 27% of the population were opposed. Either a large country like Germany or several small ones would need to change their minds: This is the less likely way to stop it. Our best bet: The final vote in the plenary of the European Parliament , when all 751 MEPs, directly elected to represent the people, have a vote. This will take place either between March 25 and 28, on April 4 or between April 15 and 18. We’ve already demonstrated last July that a majority against a bad copyright proposal is achievable . The plenary can vote to kill the bill — or to make changes , like removing Articles 11 and 13. In the latter case, it’s up to the Council to decide whether to accept these changes (the Directive then becomes law without these articles) or to shelve the project until after the EU elections in May, which will reshuffle all the cards. This is where you come in The final Parliament vote will happen mere weeks before the EU elections . Most MEPs — and certainly all parties — are going to be seeking reelection. Articles 11 and 13 will be defeated if enough voters make these issues relevant to the campaigns. ( Here’s how to vote in the EU elections — change the language to one of your country’s official ones for specific information) It is up to you to make clear to your representatives: Their vote on whether to break the internet with Articles 11 and 13 will make or break your vote in the EU elections. Be insistent — but please always stay polite. Look up your representatives’ voting behavior at SaveYourInternet.eu Call or visit your MEPs’ offices (in Brussels, Strasbourg or their local constituency) Visit campaign and party events and bring up the topic Sign the record-breaking petition and spread the word, if you haven’t yet Together, we can still stop this law.

Hollywood held at bay…MEP Julia Reda reports that several nations are fighting for the livelihoods of Europeans by resisting the EU’s disgraceful link tax and censorship machines law

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See article from juliareda.eu

The European Council has firmly rejected the negotiating mandate that was supposed to set out Member States’ position ahead of what was supposed to be the final negotiation round with the European Parliament. National governments failed to agree on a common position on the two most controversial articles, Article 11, also known as the Link Tax, and Article 13, which would require online platforms to use upload filters in an attempt to prevent copyright infringement before it happens. A total of 11 countries voted against the compromise text proposed by the Romanian Council presidency earlier this week: Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Slovenia, who already opposed a previous version of the directive, as well as Italy, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, Luxembourg and Portugal. With the exception of Portugal and Croatia, all of these governments are known for thinking that either Article 11 or Article 13, respectively, are insufficiently protective of users’ rights. At the same time, some rightsholder groups who are supposed to benefit from the Directive are also turning their backs on Article 13. This surprising turn of events does not mean the end of Link Tax or censorship machines, but it does make an adoption of the copyright directive before the European elections in May less likely. The Romanian Council presidency will have the chance to come up with a new text to try to find a qualified majority, but with opposition mounting on both sides of the debate, this is going to be a difficult task indeed. The outcome of today’s Council vote also shows that public attention to the copyright reform is having an effect. Keeping up the pressure in the coming weeks will be more important than ever to make sure that the most dangerous elements of the new copyright proposal will be rejected.

And they wonder why Brits are so keen to leave…The EU is bent on destroying the livelihoods of European creators in favour of handing over control and money making on the internet to US media giants

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See article from eff.org See also EU Parliament Puts Out Utter Nonsense Defending Copyright Directive from techdirt.com

The Internet is Facing a Catastrophe For Free Expression and Competition But You Could Still Tip The Balance. By Cory Doctorow The new EU Copyright Directive is progressing at an alarming rate. This week, the EU is asking its member-states to approve new negotiating positions for the final language. Once they get it, they’re planning to hold a final vote before pushing this drastic, radical new law into 28 countries and 500,000,000 people. While the majority of the rules in the new Directive are inoffensive updates to European copyright law, two parts of the Directive represent pose a dire threat to the global Internet: Article 11: A proposal to make platforms pay for linking to news sites by creating a non-waivable right to license any links from for-profit services (where those links include more than a word or two from the story or its headline). Article 11 fails to define “news sites,” “commercial platforms” and “links,” which invites 28 European nations to create 28 mutually exclusive, contradictory licensing regimes. Additionally, the fact that the “linking right” can’t be waived means that open-access, public-interest, nonprofit and Creative Commons news sites can’t opt out of the system. Article 13: A proposal to end the appearance of unlicensed copyrighted works on big user-generated content platforms, even for an instant. Initially, this included an explicit mandate to develop “filters” that would examine every social media posting by everyone in the world and check whether it matched entries in an open, crowdsourced database of supposedly copyrighted materials. In its current form, the rule says that filters “should be avoided” but does not explain how billions of social media posts, videos, audio files, and blog posts should be monitored for infringement without automated filtering systems. Taken together, these two rules will subject huge swaths of online expression to interception and arbitrary censorship, and give the largest news companies in Europe the power to decide who can discuss and criticise their reporting, and undermining public-interest, open-access journalism. The Directive is now in the hands of the European member-states. National ministers are going to decide whether or not Europe becomes a global exporter of censorship and surveillance. Your voice counts : when you contact your ministers, you are speaking as one citizen to another, in a national context, about issues of import to you and your neighbours. Your national government depends on your goodwill to win the votes to continue its mandate. This is a rare moment in European lawmaking when local connections from citizens matter more than well-funded, international corporations. If you live in Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, or Poland: Please contact your ministers to convey your concern about Article 13 and 11. We’ve set up action pages to reach the right people, but you should tailor your message to describe who you are, and your worries. Your country has previously expressed concerns about Article 13 and 11, and may still oppose it. Sweden: Take Action Here. Germany: Take Action Here. Luxembourg: Take Action Here. Poland: Take Action Here. Belgium: Take Action Here.

Softening a hammer blow…The EU parliament approved a few amendments to try and soften the blow of massive new internet censorship regime

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See  article from ispreview.co.uk See  article from eff.org

The European Parliament has voted to approve new copyright powers enabling the big media industry to control how their content is used on the internet.Article 11 introduces the link tax which lets news companies control how their content is used. The target of the new law is to make Google pay newspapers for its aggregating Google News service. The collateral damage is that millions of websites can now be harangued for linking to and quoting articles, or even just sharing links to them. Article 13 introduces the requirements for user content sites to create censorship machines that pre-scan all uploaded content and block anything copyrighted. The original proposal, voted on in June, directly specified content hosts use censorship machines (or filters as the EU prefers to call them). After a cosmetic rethink since June, the law no longer specifies automatic filters, but instead specifies that content hosts are responsible for copyright published. And of course the only feasible way that content hosts can ensure they are not publishing copyrighted material is to use censorship machines anyway. The law was introduced, really with just the intention of making YouTube and Facebook pay more for content from the big media companies. The collateral damage to individuals and small businesses was clearly of no concern to the well lobbied MEPs. Both articles will introduce profound new levels of censorship to all users of the internet, and will also mean that there will reduced opportunities for people to get their contributions published or noticed on the internet. This is simply because the large internet companies are commercial organisations and will always make decisions with costs and profitability in mind. They are not state censors with a budget to spend on nuanced decision making. So the net outcome will be to block vast swathes of content being uploaded just in case it may contain copyright. An example to demonstrate the point is the US censorship law, FOSTA. It requires content hosts to block content facilitating sex trafficking. Internet companies generally decided that it was easier to block all adult content rather than to try and distinguish sex trafficking from non-trafficking sex related content. So sections of websites for dating and small ads, personal services etc were shut down overnight. The EU however has introduced a few amendments to the original law to slightly lessen the impact an individuals and small scale content creators. Article 13 will now only apply to platforms where the main purpose …is to store and give access to the public or to stream significant amounts of copyright protected content uploaded / made available by its users and that optimise content and promotes for profit making purposes . When defining best practices for Article 13, special account must now be taken of fundamental rights, the use of exceptions and limitations. Special focus should also be given to ensuring that the burden on SMEs remain appropriate and that automated blocking of content is avoided (effectively an exception for micro/small businesses). Article 11 shall not extend to mere hyperlinks, which are accompanied by individual words (so it seems links are safe, but quoted snippets of text must be very short) and the protection shall also not extend to factual information which is reported in journalistic articles from a press publication and will therefore not prevent anyone from reporting such factual information . Article 11 shall not prevent legitimate private and non-commercial use of press publications by individual users . Article 11 rights shall expire 5 years after the publication of the press publication. This term shall be calculated from the first day of January of the year following the date of publication. The right referred to in paragraph 1 shall not apply with retroactive effect . Individual member states will now have to decide how Article 11 is implemented, which could create some confusion across borders. At the same time, the EU rejected the other modest proposals to help out individuals and small creators: No freedom of panorama. When we take photos or videos in public spaces, we’re apt to incidentally capture copyrighted works: from stock art in ads on the sides of buses to t-shirts worn by protestors, to building facades claimed by architects as their copyright. The EU rejected a proposal that would make it legal Europe-wide to photograph street scenes without worrying about infringing the copyright of objects in the background. No user-generated content exemption, which would have made EU states carve out an exception to copyright for using excerpts from works for criticism, review, illustration, caricature, parody or pastiche. A final round of negotiation with the EU Council and European Commission is now due to take place before member states make a decision early next year. But this is historically more of a rubber stamping process and few, if any, significant changes are expected. However, anybody who mistakenly thinks that Brexit will stop this from impacting the UK should be cautious. Regardless of what the EU approves, the UK might still have to implement it, and in any case the current UK Government supports many of the controversial new measures.