EU wants to require platforms to filter uploaded content, including code
blog.github.com
blog.github.com
Think of ice skating. It's been years since I stopped uploading videos of ice skaters to Youtube, because they are automatically deleted based on music matching their filtering database. Others in my ice skating circle share videos on Amazon Prime Photos or similar platforms, never on Youtube.
1. YouTube supports DMCA notices, because it has to in order to keep safe harbor, but YouTube's preferred/automated system does not use DMCA notices and so is not bound by the DMCA's rules.
2. It's next to impossible to meet the standard for getting punishment/damages out of a false DMCA takedown. The only part of a notice that's made under penalty of perjury is that assertion that you are, or are authorized to act on behalf of, a copyright holder. The claim of infringement is not made under penalty of perjury. The infamous Diebold case did get damages, but only because Diebold literally admitted in court "we knew this wasn't infringing but sent a takedown anyway". As long as the sender of the takedown notice isn't quite that stupid, they won't be on the hook for anything.
Some might cry foul at this. As a thought experiment, I wonder if such cases are worth clogging up our court systems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying that violations of law ought to go without remediation... but purely from a pragmatic point of view, I'm not sure that the system is currently set up to handle lawsuits over this as a recourse.
In the US, I'm not sure if small claims courts would handle such a speculative case.
We could set up extrajudicial processes via executive bureaucracy, but the end result is simply less transparent courts.
I suppose we could compel businesses to manually validate takedown requests and the like... I am also imagining that would be ripe for abuse to the point it ends up being used antagonistically and ultimately drives down shared revenue for all participants to offset the cost.
Seriously though, when you copy and upload 'their' (in many cases the author is long dead, or in your case they even attacked the author) works of art it's "How dare you, you are single-handedly responsible for the breakdown of the fabric of society. You should be locked up forever, we lost over 1bn moneyz because of your video!!!!11"
But when they store and sell your age gender and other personal data to other shitheads that want to sell you useless stuff you don't need it's all fine and dandy.
This is why I will always endorse piracy at user's discretion as a way to harm stupid greedy corporations relying on a broken copyright law.
All of the revenue that otherwise would have been the uploaders.
If I want to use someones music in my ad or product showcase or movie or anything that will make money I need to pay those artists for using their work. You should also IF you want to make money from it.
It's only fair if the money goes to the real copyright holder. We know that Youtube is broken here, and allows non-copyright holders to claim the ownership.
Suffice to say, the music they choose may be copyrighted or long out of copyright (I'm looking at you Carmen). Skaters are never paid for competitions, thus they can play their music without worry at the events. Recently, music with words has now been allowed at competitions.
Here is a brief over-view of music and ice skating: https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/965031866775437312
I don’t mean in the specific case of ice skating but in the general professional performer / athlete sense.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2016/08...
In this case, isn't the usage covered by the event venue paying ASCAP? I don't think there's an exemption for "but I'm not making any money off of it".
> But the basic rule is simple: Standard licensing fees paid by broadcasters cover these uses, and the money makes its way, eventually, to songwriters as royalties.
Most of the time, when songs are included on television, producers have to pay for a so-called synchronization license from music publishers. Negotiations can lead to high fees for the most in-demand pieces, like Beatles songs.
But since the Olympics are considered a “live event,” even when tape-delayed, no such special permission is needed, said Steve Winogradsky, a lawyer who is an expert in music licensing. [0]
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/arts/music/olympics-figur...
I would prefer you didn't have such issues with sharing videos.
I do not know about the Olympics but I checked with the national ice skating federation, and there are apparently no special licensing fees for ice skating events. Ice rinks pay the usual fees for public performance, though.
But the Github folks are right! Please, tell your MEPs that/why this is a stupid idea - it's important!
(I sometimes wonder why the commission proposes stupid things. Uninformed? Corruption, uhm I mean lobbying?)
If our government brings in legislation then I want them to be accountable to that, and not have the ability to pass the buck.
You may (and quite rightly) say that EU elections are not decided on these issues and particular EU Parliament representatives have been useless and actively undermining the EU, but that's not really the EU's fault.
Plus global standards are now being derived from EU standards.
That's the theory, but it's really not true at all in practice.
For one thing, UK MPs are directly elected. If they don't represent their constituents satisfactorily, the constituents can vote them out, personally, next time. In contrast, UK MEPs are elected via a party list system. If they don't represent their constituents satisfactorily, the only way to get rid of the top person on a party's list is for that party not to get enough votes for even a single representative in that region. The personal accountability is lost under this system.
For another thing, UK MPs do tend to communicate meaningfully with their constituents. I have written to my MP on occasion and invariably received at least a sensible reply (and this has been true for several different MPs, not all in the same party). I have visited my MP in person at their surgery and had a face-to-face discussion where I could see they were understanding the issue I was raising. In striking contrast, on the occasions when I have written to my MEPs, I have not received so much as a courtesy acknowledgement from around half, and usually only one or two have replied with any real substance. I have literally never heard (unsolicted) from any MEP representing me other than at election time, I am not aware of any means to meet them face-to-face to discuss an issue, and most of the time I don't even know their names or which parties they represent.
Whatever the pros and cons of the EU in general, the democratic deficit is a legitimate and well-founded criticism.
Personally I think it's more democratic for the government to reflect the will of the people than a local representative to represent the largest minority in an area.
EU Parliament doesn't make policy. Therefore the parties have no manifestos worth a damn. You can't "vote for the other guys" if you care about copyright because none of them have any real influence over the Commission which is where all the power truly lies.
If copyright is your main concern, you should look at the Green Party. Julia Reda, linked in this article, is a tireless advocate against copyright overreach.
Step 1: Make election promise
Step 2: Fail to deliver.
With regard to accountability, the process goes something like:
Step 1: implement unpopular policy
Step 2: lose next election. Don’t go to jail, or otherwise be held accountable. Receive fat government pension.
Step 3: new government doesn’t undo unpopular policy implementation, but blames former government anyway.
There's also been some recent controversy about Juncker's method of assigning one of his close allies as secretary-general of the commission.
What I said, and I said it as a staunch remainer, is that the EU has done nothing on their side to prevent the catastrophe we're facing now. They are to blame as much as people like Mr. Farage. They could have prevented this when Cameron went to them before the referendum to adjust the UK membership deal. All I said is that everyone is to blame for this.
As far as I can tell this was irrelevant to the result, and decades of fact-free Euroskepticism in the press won the day. Cameron also learned completely the wrong lessons from the Scottish Indyref.
Maybe it’s unfair that industry is better able to organize and make their case. But it’s not corruption, and not bribery.
Plenty of consumer-advocacy groups are also active in lobbying. Hell, this article by github is lobbying as well.
A pretty serious outcome for public health, but at least no money overtly changed hands.
I'm not saying that's how 90% of lobbying works in politics today, but the practise does have a place.
I don't understand how this statement is in any way true? Corruption is generally considered illegal and lobbying is not; the dictionary definition of corruption doesn't require it to be illicit though, so by that definition it would include lobbying.
> you need the industry as source of technical knowledge
There is a world of difference between seeking out/commissioning technical input from industry on a subject and the industry spending significant sums of money on actively trying to bring their claimed technical knowledge to you unsolicited.
It is, but then by your own argument it isn't a way to gauge industry expertise. Because anyone can lobby (so expertise isn't a factor -- and the politician isn't in a position to assess the expertise of a particular lobbyist), and those with more time and money can lobby more than anyone else. This is part of what makes it a problem, and makes people connect it with corruption -- because the only people who can effectively engage in corruption are the same people who can effectively engage in lobbying (those with large troves of cash).
In 2014, Jean-Claude Juncker and his party had won parliament elections, and believed they had a reasonable reason to demand control of the committee, as would happen in a parliamentary democracy. The parliament threatened to veto every committee candidate and policy proposal unless the council would nominate the candidate that had "won" the elections. As a result, that happened, Juncker became committee president, and these new rules got later codified.
It took a lot of unconventional methods for the parliament and court to get the power they have today from the council, which used to hold it before.
Just a quick note, the intention of lobbying is to help politicians - people with the power but not the knowledge - make informed decisions by getting industry experts to advise them.
The problems exist because those industry experts are almost always going to be working in the industry (that's why they're experts). Accordingly, those advisors are always going to want what's best for them, and will be sure to tailor their advice accordingly. And if it's even remotely legal to "enhance" advice with money, of course it will be done.
I don't think you're referring to lobbying. What you're talking about sounds more like expert panels or independent investigations that produce reports, which are then used to inform politicians.
Lobbying is effectively where someone works to convince a politician (or group of politicians) that a particular point of view is in the best interests of their constituents (regardless of the truth of such a claim) -- and the success rate is generally proportional to how much money the lobbyist spends. There is no peer review or qualifications required for lobbying, it just takes money. So even if it's true that the intention of lobbying was to get "industry experts to advise politicians", it would be a horrible way of doing it because industry experts aren't the only people with money.
The practice of lobbying provides a forum for the resolution of conflicts among often diverse and competing points of view; provides information, analysis, and opinion to legislators and government leaders to allow for informed and balanced decision making; and creates a system of checks and balances that allows for competition among interest groups, keeping any one group from attaining a permanent position of power. Lobbyists can help the legislative process work more effectively by providing lawmakers with reliable data and accurate assessments of a bill's effect.
<<<
An excerpt from the legal definition of lobbying. My own take is a bit lacking on the "resolution of conflicts" portion, but still in line with the intended outcome - informing politicians on matters they wouldn't otherwise understand. That said, its definitely not as pristine an occupation as we would hope, with all the people involved in it.
Another take on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States#...
It's worth noting that lobbiests can and do also work at levels incapable of affording expert panels or independent investigations, such as the city and state levels.
I agree with this definition (though it does omit the glaring problems with "providing a forum" which requires you to pay into). The problem is that this is not what you originally said:
> the intention of lobbying is to help politicians [...] make informed decisions by getting industry experts to advise them.
Lobbying is about getting different interest groups to put forward their point of view (that's what the definition you quoted effectively says), regardless of their level of expertise or credibility when it comes to the topic under discussion. This is completely antithetical to providing expertise to someone in power (which is what you were implying is the intention of lobbying).
You could argue that requiring expertise or credibility would result in a technocracy, and that allowing ordinary people (who don't necessarily have education or expertise in a topic) to lobby is more equal. And in theory it would be more equal. But lobbying costs time and money, which are things that ordinary people don't have in abundance. So the system is already favouring groups of people that have bigger bags of money -- so surely favouring people that have bigger stacks of research would be a better solution overall.
Unfortunately most of my peers call for more and more regulation of business and all technology. More regulation is always good in their eyes.
I've explained how regulation should be viewed as a constant push and pull, as society needs to be willing to repeal a regulation if it's not logical or relevant.
Unfortunately the word repeal and regulation in the same sentence is dirty and I get looks for even mentioning how large unnecessary barriers to entry via regulation isn't always a good thing.
In some ways this is why I support crypto currencies. Not for the scams and pump and dumps of today, but rather the building of a decentralized internet that may survive the lawyers and usher in a new era of freedom and creativity. Of course we are still about 5 years from having a GitHub or a search engine on top of crypto currency at the current rate of development. Unfortunately the bubble craze attracted a lot of unsavoury characters that is currently doing this space a lot of harm. Thankfully the lawyers can't shut Bitcoin down so we're safe for now.
What's stopping bad actors from foregoing these protections in an unregulated/decentralized world? The perfect example of this is what's going on with frivolous ICOs and crypto exchange "breaches" where consumers are losing because their ordinary consumer protections are not being enforced.
If it's anything like USC 2257 or obscenity law, it's a wildcard law to be played when there's no other dirt on somebody. The implementation is left intentionally vague. They won't provide you a national registry to check against, nor will they license you government software that fulfills these goals to legal specifications. It's a law they put on the books with no clear path to compliance.
So you're left to your own devices to implement something that may or may not do the job ("we checked hashes against a blacklist!")-- which you can arbitrarily be found in violation of by the courts at some later point ("...but you didn't do enough to check for derived or modified works!"), since there is no precedent for the extent to which one is expected to comply.
Nobody will be prosecuted for this until there's a high-profile site that needs a takedown.
History shows us there are many people that either do not understand or believe in free speech.
We encourage people to upload and share content they don't own under the guise of "information wants to be free".
We encourage the transformation of employees into contractors and operate in locations where the business is explicitly against the law, because "disrupt all the things".
We work behind the scenes with our competitors to suppress worker wages, fix prices, and avoid taxes, because profit is more important than anything else.
We do ICOs with imaginary money or IPOs with only private shares to get around the SEC and little nuisances like public disclosure.
WTF did we expect to have happen? The government is a slow elephant to SV's sleek mouse, but when we don't run fast enough we're going to be completely flattened. This isn't new behavior on the part of the government - it's not like we can claim ignorance.
> what caused governments to use regulations instead of alternatives (including doing nothing)
It's the same as it always has been - why are any rules made up? Because someone cheats. Why do rulebooks get bigger and bigger and not smaller and smaller? Because someone sees the rule "do not steal", and threatens the victim into "giving" him the stuff, cause "it's not stealing if he gives it to me, right?" Now you need rules about coercion.
More directly, people flouting the spirit of the law is the cause of this legislation. People ignoring the verbal and written warnings put out there by governments to play nice.
Ultimately, the government has two forces of authority. The law (regulation) and force (police, army, etc). The first is empowered by the second. If the warning signs leading up to regulation are ignored, what else can we expect the government to do?
I would say it's the opposite problem:
We pretend that publicly accessible information can be owned.
Hell, we've been "pretending" it long enough that the concept of ownership of ideas is included in the US constitution.
Know what else we "pretend"? That someone bigger than you can't just come along and take your lunch. We as a society agree to "pretend" that the lunch is yours, and that someone who does take it from you should be punished.
I think we're well past the point where we're "pretending".
> That someone bigger than you can't just come along and take your lunch.
No we don't, and I don't think we ever have. In fact, we openly admit that someone can come and take your lunch. What we do is say that, while someone can come and take your lunch, that person also has an incentive to avoid punishment.
Or perhaps not everybody agrees with you on the point that all information wants to be free. I, for example, don't agree. I'm quite happy that you can't legally take a photo I create and use it for your own gain.
As to the other point, replace 'can't' with 'shouldn't'. Sorry.
Notwithstanding the rest of the discussions, this will only create more jobs. I realize Google may not like the hit to the profit line, bit it's a bit disingenuous to ask only the developers to sharpen the axes and fight the Google's war while not informing them of the rest of the legislation: "Illegal content means any information which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, such as content inciting people to terrorism, racist or xenophobic, illegal hate speech, child sexual exploitation, illegal commercial practices, breaches of intellectual property rights and product safety. What is illegal offline is also illegal online."
I guess I object the delivery. Tell us everything, and then ask us for support. This way they are just spinning it to fit their agenda in a way that keeps us less informed: "they are after your GitHub". Classical FUD
Edit: Here is a much better overview http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=50096
Imagine trying to create Digg or reddit or twitter with this law on the books.
I don't have to imagine. I already have two failed products behind me precisely because the tech giants exist and are big enough to not play by the rules.
Coming from where I've been through, I actually see this law proposal opening the playfield for smaller entities.
How, when it imposes additional costs upon said entities?
The "law of a Member State" part is very concerning. If it's enough that content is illegal in one member state to have it taken down in the whole EU, very tough times lying ahead.
The first two things which came to my mind were the new Polish holocaust law and the current prosecution of various symbols of Kurdish groups (e.g. flags of YPG) in Germany.
Say goodbye to free speech.
Interestingly, this mistake would dramatically increase the market power of the US and its tech giants. The US market would continue to produce endless numbers of wildly profitable, very large tech companies. They'd continue to start out by easily capturing the US + Canada + various global markets, and then they'd better be able to piece by piece target markets in Europe with whatever customized product changes were necessary. A company starting from a small to mid size market in the EU simply can't perform like that, they don't have the financial resources to meet all the demands of each member state. Facebook can trivially do it.
This would be a huge gift to US tech.
In Spain, recently twelve young adults got two years of jail time for "hate speech" lyrics in a rap song. It's a country that didn't yet resolve its fascist past. Not only that, but the post fraquist party (PP) does have a branch at EU level (EPP), and that's where many of those silly proposals originate from.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
By comparison, the statutory rate for Norway is 23%, Sweden is 22%, Denmark is 22%, Portugal is 21%, Slovakia is 21%, Finland is 20%, Estonia is 20%, Iceland is 20%, Russia is 20%, Czech is 19%, the UK is 19%, Poland is 19%, Switzerland is 18%, Ukraine is 18%, Romania is 16%, Serbia is 15%, Lithuania is 15%, Ireland is 12.5%, Moldova is 12%, Macedonia is 10%, Hungary is 9%.
I'll emphasize again, those are just the statutory rates.
Google is obviously aggressive in their tax avoidance, however they're not in fact paying low rates compared to what can be managed in more than a dozen European nations.
> however they're not in fact paying low rates compared to what can be managed in more than a dozen European nations.
But they run businesses in significantly more countries outside of the ones you've listed. The fact that you could only find a handful of countries (several of which have very questionable governments) where 15% tax for a multi-billion dollar company sounds normal is pretty telling.
They don’t “profit from your country” - they have users who live in your country. Maybe it makes sense for those users to pay up to the government, but it’s crazy to say that you should have to pay taxes to a foreign government just because someone under that government uses your website.
In the long run, if this rhetoric you’re advocating is successful (that if you touch anything somehow related to a government over the internet then you owe them a cut and have to follow their local rules), you can say goodbye to the open, global internet. Companies will IP-restrict (or if that doesn’t convince the lawyers, government ID restrict) every single website.
Which they make money from -- in fact quite a few companies make more money from a given Australian than other markets[1] meaning that they are profiting more off Australians (even for online services -- like Adobe that charged AU$1400 more for their software in Australia).
If a company wishes to sell books in Australia, they have to pay Australian taxes. But if you sell online services, all of a sudden everyone starts talking about the destruction of a free and open internet. If a company selling a service is willing and has the ability to "destroy the free and open internet" through IP blocks if they are asked to pay taxes for the money they make off foreign markets, then ask yourself -- how free is the internet in the first place if that is all it takes to destroy it?
You don't pay taxes if you don't make money. I don't understand what you're trying to argue against here.
> but it’s crazy to say that you should have to pay taxes to a foreign government just because someone under that government uses your website.
It's not about usage, it's about profit. If you're making a profit by providing services to people in a foreign market, you have now made money in a way where society requires that you pay taxes on your profit. Most countries have bilateral tax agreements to avoid double taxation, so if a company pays tax in $countryA they only have to pay the excess in $countryB. Those agreements exist explicitly to facilitate the ability to do business overseas.
Not to mention that many of these companies are incorporated in foreign countries as well, which means that they aren't even foreign entities at that point. They're just ordinary Australian companies that don't pay tax.
> In the long run, if this rhetoric you’re advocating is successful (that if you touch anything somehow related to a government over the internet then you owe them a cut and have to follow their local rules), you can say goodbye to the open, global internet.
I hate to break it to you, but you already have to follow the law of countries that you do business with. If you host certain kinds of hate speech, you are not permitted to provide access to said hate speech in Germany (even if legal in your country). If you host certain kinds of pornography, you are not permitted to provide access to said pornography in other countries (even if legal in your country). And so on. Will you be extradited for breaking those laws? Maybe not, but that doesn't make it any less illegal.
I understand the whole "anti-regulation" view that some US folks have (and I agree that many laws regarding the internet are very troubling), but pretending as though companies should be allowed to make money in a foreign market without paying tax just because their company happens to involve the internet is pretty odd to me.
That analogy is not applicable. Google's profit taking is not the overall global nation state profit taking. It's just one company.
Whereas currently the money velocity is lower because it sits on Google's books, employing people will increase only increase it overall, and more in the case of people living in EU.
I'm not sure I can agree that this is a positive thing.
(It’s probably a result of constantly having their legitimacy questioned and and vile insults having hurled at them)
The EU Parliament has no real power. It can only say yes to things or delay them. As a consequence the only people who run for seats in it are either fanatically pro-EU or anti-EU, but none of them are going to have any real interest in copyright. They can say no and send it back and the Commission - if it wants this - will just send it back for re-approval again, or bypass them entirely.
Here is an example with 500 proposed amendments to draft legislation on cybersecurity: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/amendments.html?...
Click on the pdf icons to read the actual texts.
Please don’t spread falsehoods.
While the grandparent wasn't 100% technically correct I think the broad view (that "The EU Parliament has no real power") is effectively correct. The lion's share of the power of the EU still rests in the Commission and the Council. By all means, write to your MEPs, but don't get too hopeful
This is false. In most policy areas, if the council disagrees with the parliament's amendments, the proposal goes through a conciliation process. If the council and parliament don't reach agreement there, then the proposal is rejected. Thus, parliament has the power to reject almost all legislation. I wouldn't call that powerless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_legislative_pro...
Except GitHub actually tried to do that to me for real, and failed. Luckily, they unlocked the repos while trying to charge me (no billing details on my account, so... nice try?) and I was able to snag my code back without being extorted for money. At no time was I given the option to opt-out of private repos. My only other option had they not screwed up was to pay.
I’m a little disappointed in Github for trying to carve out a specific exemption just for their area of business rather than fighting the proposal as a whole.
If you think complying with foreign regulations is not worth it, or if you're not even aware of it, it's not up to you to block anything. Why would it be? If they care they would make providers block your site.
Also, blocking sends a message to the users in more ways than one.
So I'm curious to see what would happen if many tech companies refused service to europe. I believe twitter was seeing around 6,000 tweets per second, a few years back. 6,000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = ~189.2 billion tweets per year. Say 1 minute to analyze them, you would need 3.15 billion man hours. 8 hours a day * 40 hours a week, * 50 weeks per year = 16,000 hours per employee, per year. So thats 197,100 employees, not counting management. The last time I checked, they had 3,600 employees, and lost about $.5 billion per year. Automated analysis works, but not perfectly. What happens when you AI filter misses something? So refusing service might have to be an option?
[1] "The law went into effect last August and, while some details still need to be ironed out in court, the controversial heart of it — whether search engines will pay money to publishers — has an uncertain future. Google has refused to pay fees to publish snippets from news sites, and instead asked German publishers last year to opt in if they want to be included in Google News search results, waiving their right to cash in on the use of their content according to the new law. To avoid paying the collection agency, VG Media, which represents the publishers that chose not to opt in, Google stopped showing snippets from their news articles on Oct. 23. Shortly after that, the publishers in VG Media gave Google a license to restore snippets to their search results — for free. Berlin-based Axel Springer, one of Europe’s largest publishers, announced on Nov. 5 that it had caved to Google’s pressure after traffic to its websites from Google dropped by 40 percent and from Google News by 80 percent when snippets were left out of search results."
http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-fight-to-get-google-to-...
I was concerned when GitHub started censoring repositories that didn’t meet their code of conduct, but was told it was for the greater good. Now the issue is coming back to bite them it seems.
Including Christian bakers? I don't really disagree with your free market approach, but that doesn't seem to be the way things stand.
Except when they're a quasi-monopoly, then people find it more difficult to opt out. Hence anti-trust laws, and more recently, GDPR.
> It is a pure attack on Freedom.
By definition, all laws are exactly that. The question is never "does this law restrict my freedom?" but always "on balance, am I happy with the way this law restricts my/others freedom, and what might be the (un)intended consequences?".
So while it's a dumb proposal, it's hardly more stifling to creativity than 70+ years of draconian copyright protection.
GitHub is also quite like this.
This is not just about popularity. On the internet, winner takes all. The monopoly is extreme in every type of website/service. If you can't use Youtube, you effectively cannot watch videos on the web. If you are banned by github, you cannot participate in the global open source community.
There are 2 solutions:
1. Break the monopolies.
2. Force them to respect my rights, similar to the government.
Youtube is no monopoly. You have hundreds of sites offering video streaming services and you can broadcast your own as well using other services not affiliated to youtube. The fact that almost everyone uses Youtube does not make it a monopoly.
Can you explain what makes Youtube and Github monopolies when both have competitors in the market?
> Force them to respect my rights, similar to the government.
What rights do you think you have that they are violating?
> You aren't entitled to viable alternatives.
????
If you were entitled to alternatives, that means the tax payer has to reasonably fund every possible alternative that could exist, or at a minimum a vast array of them, and most likely at perpetual losses. It'd be extraordinarily dumb and would become an epic cost for the government and would breed corruption (failed businesses, bleeding vast red ink, perpetually subsidized no matter what they do).
E.g., I personally don't see why it's bad when an elected government passes legislation but totally fine when Apple uniterally updates the App Store ToS or Google excludes certain things from Search. In both cases, participants of the respective markets won't have any choice than to comply.
I believe YouTube is comparable. Yes, there are alternatives. However, YouTube's popularity is important for content producers. If you make your own video content and are banned from YouTube, you'll likely have a significantly harder time to be discovered.
I agree with you that this woudn't really be an issue for GitHub, since there is neither a market nor any lock-in effects or monopoly.
When Google decides you're not gonna show up in the search results, as much as 90% of your traffic could be gone. A business can (and have) go belly up for not showing up in page 1 of the search results.
IMO if a service crosses a certain threshold of networking and marketshare they should be regarded as a public utility rather than a private business. The other option is to give such corporations an incredibly amount of power over what the population thinks, sees or, in github's case, codes.
Even for public utility you have a choice. It's not a good choice, which is what matters.
Facebook and Google have definitely reached a state where not being part of their business (by being on Page 1 of the Results or having a Facebook Page) will actively harm your business. If either denies you service they also deny a lot of customers access to your service just like you'd get people denied service to a business when that business isn't connected to the power grid.
And if you think that isn't true I urge you to talk to a PR department of a bigger corporation or a startup. Placement on Google and Facebook is very very important.
This may be unlikely to pass as is, but the trend of stifling new software and algorithm development in the name of copyright (or security) is pretty strong. IMO it is worthwhile to push back using chance we have.
It doesn't really place any burden on business - it simply means that you must be transparent with users about how you use their data, allow them to know what data you hold about them, and allow them to delete it if they wish.
As a consumer, as well as a founder, that seems very reasonable.
Sadly, that is not true.
But the biggest real problem is that since the GDPR, read literally, is borderline draconian and the defence is that the regulators will enforce it selectively and pragmatically, literally no-one really knows how great that burden will be... which itself then becomes a significant burden.
When I first heard about it, I was somewhat fearful of the unknown, imagining I was going to have to 'waste' time on 'checkbox compliance' - but after spending some time reading about it, I believe the intent is good, and also that the burden isn't going to be that big.
As a consumer, I absolutely want the GDPR - I believe I do have a right to know how my information will be used, to know exactly what is held, and to have it deleted if desired.
As a founder, I want to be responsible with personal data. And because I am, I'm already compliant with just about everything needed by the GDPR. I hardly expect a deluge of requests from users, so I don't even need to spend any time on automation.
On the other hand, it would also mean that we'd be 'randomly' told that we can't commit something because it looks too similar to some other code someone wrote. In the case of Google vs Oracle that would be a relatively trivial, obvious-to-an-experienced-developer 10 line method. That wouldn't be great...
Don't worry, at our current rate that won't be allowed. As a programmer you are now company property. I guess that also means "You're fired" means "Literally fired in an incinerator"
Or it could make the whole internet more like the Chinese internet. I'd rather not take that chance and allow the decentralized systems to grow organically instead (and they do, albeit quite slowly).
We already check newly uploaded files automatically against known bad content and stuff copyright holders have reported in the past. It's basically just file checksums though, nothing fancy.
I don't know what what would be "appropriate and proportionate" according to the directive though, and having to check code for copyright infringements sounds absolutely painful and vain.
It appears my MEP had a few concerns with some other aspects of it already, so has had their eye on it for a year. She said she has contacted "the Rapporteur for the file, Axel Voss MEP to ask for his clarification on the issues you raised related to code-sharing platforms and why the scope of the proposal suggests to include them."
I'm kind of surprised at getting such a genuine response so quickly! I will update once I get more information
What that suppose to mean? My web service should be fine as long as I agree for the Government to MITM me?
We should have everything sensitive in encrypted P2P networks and then demand that snail-mail privacy laws are applied.
I'm not expecting this position to be popular on HN tho, you can't build an unicorn on freedom.
Much better alternatives than bittorrent, from privacy and censorship-resistence aspect is, git-ssb which is git on secue scuttlebot aka SSB.
Bittorrent can be censored, the DHT can/is monitored and can be eclipsed to prevent lookups.
Scuttlebot can work offline, over WiFi or sneakernet. Transport layer is encrypted, unlike bittorrent.
Another alternative is Dat Project, which is similar to SSB, but focuses on larger data files.
The fact that the EU is _following_ us into some of this madness is not a good thing and certainly doesn't imply that the UK is onto something good.
Currently politicians have said a number of times that they'd like to get rid of human rights.
There's currently talks about making social media platforms responsible for editing content rather than acting as a transport layer.
There's plenty more, I'm sure others can chime in.
That's not true at all. They may want to leave the European Court of Human Rights but that's not the same as suddenly rolling back loads of human rights in the UK.
I'm old enough to have been an adult before Tony Blair signed the European Convention on Human Rights into law in the UK. People's rights didn't massively change for the better when that was signed, so I wouldn't expect them to change for the worse if it is repealed.
It's all very well trotting out the line that "they can can shortcut Parliaments and pass the sort of laws that any right-thinking person should support, or the proles on the street might not understand", but that's the crux of my objection. The democratic rights of the populace were never yours or theirs to subvert or give away.
As Tony Benn wisely said, "I'd rather have a bad Parliament than a good King".
As a sibling comment says, after Brexit the UK will most likely try to enact all kinds of bad ideas that it feels it's been held back from by the EU. Most of which will be directed at "immigrants".
EU Parliament wants to mandate filter: “lets burn this place down”
I can see how it's bad for business, but as a developer wouldn't it mean more jobs and more of custom libraries to make?
Here is a Proof of how platforms are hurting everyone (i.e Everyone who lives by law):
Notice 4 of top 6 Entertainment apps (In US) launched in last 30 days on Google Play are pirating Movies? This not only hurts Movie Studio, it hurts every developer on the platform because they are taking those downloads away from Developers who abide by rules.
One of those you're referring to is just a blatant case of false advertising (Netsub IT Services one), because it's just showing the trailers and info about the movies, and the Scooby Doo one is just playing sounds from Scooby Doo, not letting you watch Scooby Doo.
And just because such apps exist, doesn't mean that every developer needs to validate every input to make sure that it doesn't infringe on someone's copyright. It just means that Google needs to do a better job at detecting such apps.
We could use pre-shared keys for OSS software available from a separate registry, with a legal disclaimer on there that code hosts cannot use the keys to decrypt the code.
That way github could not physically access your code to run these checks.
Why should I care that Zuckerberg is a zillionaire as long as he didn't took his money from me forcefully? I dislike him profoundly, but his money are his money.
I don't resent him because of his mega fortune and I don't expect an authority to take that mega fortune from him and distribute it to ones like me.
As long as we're focused on how to convince others to rob the rich and distribute their wealth to us instead of focusing on how to create nice things that people want, we'll keep being a break to the mankind.
Regarding digital monopolies like facebook and google, those markets didn't even existed 20 years ago. It's them who created them, almost from zero. They created the need in the market. I still can't see any reason why a third party (aka government, in the name of the people) would use force to break them apart. Mostly because they're not monopolies for services related to basic human needs.
That said, I own companies and I am on the makers' side of things. So, I am not resentful of myself.
The EU should not be able to dictate things like this.
And per-country rules don't really make much sense anyway for the internet. Global rules would make it easier for developers - unless they are completely stupid like this proposal obviously.
For example, let's say the EU would vote to make the internet illegal inside EU. I could move to Norway but otherwise my nearest alternative would be either the US or Russia. Neither of which is an easy move or even thinkable.
I agree that it would be awesome if they only passed sensible legislation, but unfortunately the risk of them passing stuff like this is too great for them to have this power to begin with.
The EU have done so much good stuff, but also so much stupid stuff and if this gets passed I'm probably going to vote against staying in the EU if given the choice.
The scariest part about EU is how no one understand how the process of creating legislation is. It is very hard to keep track on stuff as a normal citizen and you are completely reliant on information from third parties like in this case Github. Also when stuff like this happens, I have no idea who to write to unless someone tells me who to write to and I don't have a directly huge belief that they would care about what I have to write about it anyway. The power to make grass root changes within the EU is super small compared to making it within your own country.
If Github wouldn't have posted this I would never have known and that scares me a lot.
However, the EU succeeded in passing the idiotic requirement for cookie notices, so I guess it's not a bad idea to watch out for more.
Or could it have to do with the successor agreement of safe harbor?
I guess Github could decline to pay. But then they could do no business in the EU, and then there is the likely impact on Github employees - similar to how BetonSports' CEO was arrested when he changed planes in the US: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...
Because they might be interested in doing business in EU?
But if Github's phrasing accurately represents what EU wants to do with online sharing, then I feel like this change is a step in the wrong direction, restricting privacy to make big-corps even richer than they already are.
Even this legislation, while misguided, is actually aimed at large businesses (mostly YouTube) while the beneficiaries (publishers and artists) are rather small, comparatively.
Well, nothing else really works.
The European parliament in general tends to be fairly good on these issues, but it's not in control of the agenda and the whole system is very vulnerable to being captured by industry groups. It's inherently difficult for the public to participate and there's seldom any discussion in the press while legislation is underway.
There's also no recognition of or exemption for small businesses in EU legal thinking. It's one of the things that the UK tends to do fairly well, but EU law sort of assumes that businesses start at 100 employees with multi-million-Euro turnover and can afford compliance.
Copyright/patent is an area where the legislation has been extremely pro-status-quo for a long time.
Think of it like the SOPA/PIPA/whatever fight: You manage to barely resist some bill from being enacted into law but then just a few months/years later another version of the same law is proposed.
*: from the perspective of someone
It's clear that the EU needs serious fixing, and German politicians/Brussels technocrats aren't up to the task because they don't care.
Unfortunately, at the time being, these reform parties (mostly social democrats, but not exclusively, and not of the "old kind" of social democrats) aren't big, because the emotional way to deal with the crisis is "To hell with them, let's roll-back to nation-states so we can take over control". Unfortunately, we'll bitterly find out that breaking up won't solve the problem. We'll lose all the benefits of being able to lobby together for a better solutions, and still suffer from all the problems of the EU, even without being in it, because the big institutions won't be stopped by border checks..
Consumer friendly regulations come only into play if it doesn't hurt European big companies. GDPR hurts the big new economy companies in the US far more than the EU companies, for one. Free roaming is also in corporate interest. Big industry lobbyists lament in a regular fashion about too little migration.
See, that’s just completely unbelievable.
> Free roaming is also in corporate interest. Big industry lobbyists lament in a regular fashion about too little migration.
It’s somewhat funny that you’d associate “roaming” with what I can only presume are imaginary hordes of immigrant scavenging the countryside.
But, in this case, it was referring to mobile phone “roaming”. Something European telecoms taught with all the might of their lobbying power.
(Oettinger is an idiot, I give you that)
I was referring to this http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-didn-t-think-ttip-coul... article, which I had remembered incorrectly but the money quote is I do not take my mandate from the European people by Malmström.
Good one for the roaming I totally misunderstood that. I admit this is beneficial for citizens and against interests of Telcos. However many companies (especially big ones) operate throughout EU and have frequent travels from their employees so there may have been a bit of lobbyism at play here as well. But I concede that it is a rather weak argument.
EU may have a somewhat bad reputation amongst some part of the population, the majority if far wanting to quit it.
All the polls are showing EU citizens are much positive about the EU after the Brexit referendum. Even Greek citizens -- probably the most Eurosceptic -- prefer the EU compared to a few years ago.
What your saying isn't backed up by what polling data is saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/05/italy-turns-ba...
It doesn't. It's just a proposal. Not all proposals become law and this one has "not gonna make it" written all over it.
Invariably it turns out it's not a law yet, but a proposal. Which, due to the EU parliament's rather open law-making process, are immediately available online in 26 languages. A closer reading of the proposal then invariably exposes one of the following: a.) It's a theoretical conclusion that could be drawn from this proposal but is in no way how the law is supposed to be applied and will very clearly thrown out of court if you'd try. or b.) It's a proposal that it written by someone who has no subject matter knowledge, who has been clearly instructed by some lobbyist, who is adamant to defy every expert's opinion on their proposal, or who is just generally a loony who happened to make it into the 751-person parliament. No one is going to vote for their proposal.
Obviously when a proposal like this makes it to the floor that's scary, but it's a side effect of democracy. Some people buy into the entertainment industry's shrieks that technology is killing them (even though they're doing better than ever) and some of the people that buy into it happen to be MEPs.
It's a problem that exists in every legislature in the world, and the only way to fight this is by taking an active role in your country/union's politics.
I history of selective enforcement of laws (especially when using them as leverage to plead guilty on another charge) in the US has taught me that overreaching laws are a bad thing. The ones in power will, given time, always take advantage of poorly worded laws.
The EU bound counties together through trade and NATO protected against external threats.
Despite them all being NATO members, unable to by treaty, with the whole NATO organisation geared up to enforce that?
How exactly would your scenario play out? I'm genuinely curious.
It's also important to note that NATO does not provide prosperity (that was the goal of the EEC through closer trade and cooperation). So it does absolutely nothing to prevent the rise of extremist movements that could cause a repeat of the 1930s. There is also nothing it can do to prevent a member from quitting, just like Germany quit the League of Nations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...
Worth noting that two NATO members (Greece and Turkey) have had deaths from a not-quite shoot out http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/23/greece.crash/. Interesting also that Turkey isn't an EU member, and counties like Germany and France have had as least as much a history of conflict as Greece/Turkey have.
I've never seen a copyright law so far that isn't downright draconian and authoritarian and with a huge potential for unintended consequences and a lot of collateral damage (even if the authors' intentions were "good").
1) Public access internet, where everything is regulated by the hosting company
2) Restricted access internet where everything uploaded in linked to a real life ID and the uploader has liability for whatever is uploaded. Access would be granted after a basic licensing test, but hosting companies would not be required to police the content
This way, media companies can easily regulate the mass market internet to keep pirated content off of it, and the restricted access network would have a link to the uploader with personal liability, so people are not likely to upload pirated stuff anyways. In exchange, they arent harassed in the name of anti piracy
This is already done in closed-doors forums and whatnot. If you mean the ID should be government-issued, you have Facebook where fake accounts area nearly impossible at this point and it's pretty close to a "Governet". In the Governet you'd still be censored because their goal isn't to sue everyone (that's expensive and doesn't always work), it's just to control them.
Only for stuff that would be illegal in offline life as well... anything that you're allowed to do in offline life, under whatever extent of freedom of expression is permitted by your country would still be uncensored.