Memes are dead, thank the EU

[Darklord Rooke]

TNW recently spoke to lovers and haters of the Copyright Reform in-depth, but the controversy of the proposed reform can be boiled down to two contested articles, number 11 and 13 — which would effectively establish link tax, censorship machines, and ban memes.

Article 11 (a.k.a. link tax) would force anyone using snippets of journalistic online content to get a license from the publisher first — essentially outlawing current business models of most aggregators and news apps. This can also possibly threaten the hyperlink and give power to publishers at the cost of public good.

Article 13 (a.k.a. censorship machines) will make platforms responsible for monitoring user behavior to stop copyright infringements, but basically means only huge platforms will have the resources to let users comment or share content. There’s a worry that this could lead to broader censorship, with free speech vehicles — like parody, satire, or even protest videos — potentially untenable under this system.

https://thenextweb.com/eu/2018/09/11/eu-parliamen-copyright-reform-internet-censorship-machines-link-tax/

Other problematic measures were passed as well, including Article 12a, which prohibits sports fans from posting their own photos or videos of sporting events online, while stating that only event “organizers” have the right to do so.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kenb8/the-eu-can-still-be-saved-from-its-internet-wrecking-copyright-plan

Good job EU. Nice work. We all hate your guts. Please retire.

[Darklord Rooke]

 

[Thyndd]

So they finally got it approved huh. Well, that's sad. Let's just hope it gets rejected in January.

If, heaven forbid, this directive became effective, it's ultimately going to be a pain in the ass. No, I don't quite believe censorship would reign supreme and the internet as we know it would disappear; the net would just rearrange itself to adapt to the changes, as always. The only way to really destroy the internet would be to shut it down  This is literally a war they will never win, but yeah... unfortunately they can still give us some headaches.

[Ranzo]

Has this thread now become memes? Am I now part of a meme?

 

Also that sounds pretty fucked, well good luck out there!

[sarkasmus]

The EUs roof is already burning and they have nothing better to do than pouring fuel into the flames....

I've been defending the EU for years, saying the concept is not beyond saving but I'm starting to get to a point where I'd love to see the whole construct crash and burn hoping it's done better the next time. (Who am I kidding, people never learn from their mistakes.....)

 

Concerning the effects of this:

I don't think it'll be an apocalypse for the internet. There'll be ways to circumvent it and plattforms outside of the EUs reach (outside of the EU or not entirely legal). It'll be more of a pain at some points but not the end of the internet as we know it. (And I don't think it's something that'll last, at some point even the EU will have to notice notice that the law will drive away new companies from them and cut off future potential of economical growth only to give temporary life support to outdated forms of media-buisiness-models)

[Funyarinpa]

EU baby what the everliving fuck is you doing

 

 

[Clephas]

Be honest, did anyone not see this coming?  The farther east you get in Europe, the less they like free speech (with the exception of Germany, possibly).

That said... while it is a troubling trend and the bill itself is a bit too far-reaching, I doubt that it will get abused horribly anytime soon (give it twenty years).

PS:  YAY!  They are killing memes!  I hate memes.

[bakauchuujin]

Considering how Youtube has used their algorithms so far I would assume that the horrible things will be implemented in not too long.

[alpacaman]

3 hours ago, Clephas said:

Be honest, did anyone not see this coming?  The farther east you get in Europe, the less they like free speech (with the exception of Germany, possibly).

Only that this law has been lobbied for especially by German media publishers and the link tax (in a slightly less radical form) has been law in Germany for five years and is known by the beautiful name "Leistungsschutzrecht". As far as I know no news aggregators had to shut down because of it. Which doesn't make it less stupid. The argument supporters of this law made back then was that it would be necessary to prevent Google from making billions with content they don't own without the actual content owners seeing any of that money. Even if you accept this point and ignore that media companies profit from exposure when people click a link to an article, the law was completely ineffective because guess what Google did? They told publishers they wouldn't link any content they had to pay for. But the publishers knew they needed Google's reach to get any traffic and make ad revenue online so they gave licenses to Google for free. 

 

The bigger problem is Article 13 for the reasons mentioned by the op. I wouldn't turn the criticism of this law into a general criticism of the EU. This concrete issue is more about members of parliaments being mostly old people who don't know how modern technology works and believe lobbyists' arguments that you can just apply laws from the physical world to the digital one without thinking about  the implications or practicality.

[Clephas]

It isn't criticism... it is the same issue that pops up here, with the varying regions having different views and interests based on demographics and regional limitations.  The political culture in much of the eastern part of the EU only plays lip service to the idea that free speech is a fundamental right.  The western and northern parts have the influence of past political scholars and movements that have made free speech a positive to a greater extent than it is in the east, which is still feeling the after-effects of the Cold War. 

In the US, censorship isn't as extreme mostly because the ACLU jumps on people and the government, and the main issue that has people thinking of information regulation seems to be everybody finally figured out Facebook and Twitter are evil and have no idea of what to do about it...

[alpacaman]

Oh, I should have clarified that my paragraph about criticism of the EU was refering to the people who did criticise the EU in general, not you.

With the rest of your comment I agree for the most part, only that this copyright reform was initiated by western and northern european countries. This isn't a case of authoritarian governments trying to suppress free speech but one of members of the EU-parliament being manipulated by certain corporate interests and the damage to free speech rights is more of a byproduct.

[littledaimyo]

9 hours ago, Clephas said:

The farther east you get in Europe, the less they like free speech (with the exception of Germany, possibly).

Definitely shows that you've got 0 idea of what goes in Europe. Yeah, man, sure East Europe is not "free speech" loving (whatever you consider that word to be btw, would you consider "hate speech" not being free speech? :thinking:) that's why whoever talks about the communist regimes in those countries go to jail all the time, oh wait... they don't, but then you have the haven of free speech, Germany, (definitely not leading the 4th Reach in Europe right now with their policies that affect all the member states with things that literally no one wants btw) and their policies that let everyone speak about whatever the hell they want, but wait a minute... Nazi imagery in any way shapee or form prohibited even in History education? Prohibition to talk about Nazi Germany or whatever related to them unless you want to be jailed or fined? You can't talk about the fact that they let in hundreds of thousands of "refugees" each year and they're destroying the country from the inside unless you want to be fined or jailed? I'm sure that those women who got raped in Cologne really loved that moment when they couldn't speak against the "refugees" that raped them because of muh bigotry and muh raysism. But yeah, Germany is definitely the best state out of every Eastern European country.

PS: friendly reminder that "free speech loving" Germany has had several terrorist attacks (definitely not tied to the massive immigration at all btw) but the free speech "haters" at Poland and Hungary have had 0 attacks but they're the meme-lovers and bigots xDD.

10 hours ago, Clephas said:

That said... while it is a troubling trend and the bill itself is a bit too far-reaching, I doubt that it will get abused horribly anytime soon (give it twenty years).

Hey guys, don't worry about the refugee laws that the European Union imposed on every state! I'm sure they'll be correctly regulated and nothing big will change! *looks at Sweden crumbling down, Germany accepting hundreds of millions of immigrants and France getting terrorist attacked left and right* 

Idk why being American you pretend that you have an idea what goes on in Europe, but it ain't pretty I'm telling you, if the "scary" far right is rising again its because people are pissed off at what's happening, and the Brexit happened for a reason and Italy wants to leave for a reason as well. People passing this law tells me a lot of how the European Comission or whoever decides that crap are a bunch of people that are disconnected with reality and they don't understand neither meme culture nor the mentality of the newer generations, they are also the ones that believe that the frog meme is a nazi symbol, like lmao if you get triggered by that just quit the internet.

10 hours ago, Clephas said:

PS:  YAY!  They are killing memes!  I hate memes.

What a sad life you must be living then to hate pictures with text embedded on them (or videos or whatever), also, no need to hate on yourself.

 

[alpacaman]

Nearly everything you wrote is incorrect. Nazi imagery is completely legal in Germany when shown for educational or artistic purposes. Neither is it illegal to talk about the Third Reich. In my school time we spent about two semesters of history classes on the Nazis, talked about them in German classes, ethics/philosophy/religious education classes, and so on. Every other day you have documentaries about this time period, many of them focussing on war crimes and the Holocaust. And yes, they are full of swastikas and SS-Runes. Glorifying the Third Reich and denial of the holocaust are illegal, but so they are in many other countries.

Crime rates in Germany haven't gone up more since 2015 than you would expect considering the demography of the asylum seekers. Many of them are young men, and young men coomit more crimes than other demographics, no matter if they are white or not. The terrorist attacks you're talking about don't really change how safe it is to live in Germany. 12 murders more each year aren't that much in a country with 82 million inhabitants. The same goes for the whole Cologne thing. The overwhelming majority of rapes are still committed by family members.

Talking about problems regarding immigration isn't illegal in Germany either. If you know just one example of someone who went to jail in Germany for talking about immigration I would like to hear it. You only get fined when you use racist slurs with the intention to insult someone or call for violence against ethnic groups. If you know of any other cases, again, I'd like to hear about them.

Edited September 14, 2018 by alpacaman

[Mago Ivo]

It's easy to deal with the problem. We can just take all the internet under the "surface". We can be truly free in the deep web and it will be very hard for them to bother us with their hideous laws.