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This is not happening in a vacuum, it's driven by lobbying from the publishing industry. Just as previous rounds of problems were caused by the EU copyright directive demanded by the music and video industries.

>Just as previous rounds of problems were caused by the EU copyright directive demanded by the music and video industries.

Or previous "rounds of solutions", if you were a music or video or print rights holder / publisher.

> Bureaucracies will keep themselves alive by inventing new rules constantly and the EU is no different

The flaw in the EU's design appears to be how easy it is for the EU to enact new legislation versus the public's ability to stall that process through hearings or a court.

That's not what happening.

The current attacks on the Internet are sponsered by Axel Springer (largest newspaper buisness in Europe) and the result of massive lobbying. They even used openly pressure and the supporters in the EU are fed bullshit stories. There is a useless lex Google in Germany called Leistungsschutzrecht, the link-tax is the attempt to a weaponized version through the EU - sponsered by the CDU and conservative and right-wing politicans.

Their hope is to somehow rescue their broken revenue model and make everyone pay for their content.

Upload filters are likely the lobbying result of the content companies.

> ...is what as happened to any other sector that was innovative at the time.

s/innovative/"innovative and illegal"

While everybody has got used to "freely" enjoy copyrighted content on internet, IP protection is still a pillar for the low of most (if not all) countries in the world. Let's stop being hypocrite: either we push IP into oblivion or we enforce it consistently. Pretending that IP laws matter only when it concerns our own content doesn't help innovation.

> either we push IP into oblivion or we enforce it consistently

False dilemma. I can quote a sentence from the New York Times in a Hacker News comment without incurring, for myself nor Y Combinator, any financial obligation. "Fair use" has admittedly been over-narrowed in the U.S. But it still exists.

On the contrary, we've come to rely on extremely intermittent enforcement, because both the "total enforcement" and "no enforcement" outcomes are bad.

The problem isn't enforcing legitimate IP rights. Effective and consistent enforcement would cause a wrench for a lot of people, and that in turn would surely cause laws to be changed to give a more proportionate and realistic situation, but we'd adapt.

The problem is that no mechanism can exist to reliably enforce genuine IP rights as provided by law today without also causing collateral damage and excessive costs.

Well, you agree with me that current IP laws are obsolete and should be ameliorated, I suppose!

I don't think copyright as a principle is obsolete. It generates useful economic incentives to create and distribute works, which I consider to be good things, and I have yet to encounter any alternative economic model that looks anything like as successful at achieving those things.

I do think the current implementation of copyright in law is flawed in a lot of places. This is bad because it potentially imposes excessive restrictions on ordinary people and sometimes limits how much we can take advantage of the benefits of new technologies. It is also bad because it brings the law into disrepute, and combined with the practical difficulty of enforcement particularly against small-scale infringement that is only a civil matter, it results in a general sense among much of the public that infringing copyright is a victimless crime and socially acceptable.

> or we enforce it consistently

Why do you think it isn't enforced consistently? The vast majority of copyright infringement isn't a criminal offence, but a civil matter, which means the rights-holders are the correct people to take action if they wish.

> innovative and illegal

Why do IP laws apply to the internet, exactly?

Why shouldn't they, exactly?

Because it's not tenable and not desirable for any countries' laws to apply to the internet.

Imagine what would happen if China decided that it made a law outlawing any and all mentions of the Tienanmen Square Massacre and decreed that because of that law, all websites which serve information to Chinese people should comply or face massive fines?

I think there's some confusion here. IP laws currently do apply to the internet, but I'm not necessarily subject to the same laws as anyone else.

The example makes no sense because it has nothing to do with IP. It is also dependent on jurisdiction. China has no power to implement global laws.

> China has no power to implement global laws

Apparently they have, because IP laws do, as you said, apply to the internet.

> The example makes no sense because it has nothing to do with IP. It is also dependent on jurisdiction.

The example was absurd by design. IP laws differ strongly per country. Which of those should the internet adhere to? All of them? This would not work, since some works which are protected by IP law in one country would not be by another country. Should it be decided by the country of the uploader? Or that of the downloader? Of maybe the country of the server where it's stored, or each countries' IP laws in which there are nodes it passes through as the data gets to its destination?

There is no sensible and doable way to apply IP laws, or any countries' laws in general, to the entire internet. The entire idea is, to me, a non-starter from the get-go.

> Apparently they have,

No.

> because IP laws do, as you said, apply to the internet.

IP laws that are different depending on where the peers are.

> IP laws differ strongly per country. Which of those should the internet adhere to?

The user will have to respect whichever laws apply to the user, the host will have to respect the laws that apply to the host, the business owner will have to respect the laws that apply to the business owner etc. It's not rocket science. You're talking about it as if it's some sort of hypothetical situation we have yet to solve, but this is how it works now.

> GDPR was about telling the consumer what is being done with their data and about transparency, so at least it was for the people.

If you say so. Seems to be more about threatening small players with risks well beyond anything reasonable.

Their intention doesn't mesh well with the law as created. I'd say the biggest outcome is the number of services the EU has lost from the GDPR.

The GDPR hasn't been used to threaten any smaller players. Many small players got paranoid because the GDPR allowed for large financial penalties in severe cases and against major players; but that's not the same as proactively threatening small players.

The biggest problem with the GDPR is the FUD that surrounded it. How often is it that people are charged to the maximum effect of the law? Yet for some bizarre reason that's exactly what people thought would happen against every small operation once GDPR came into effect.

The GDPR hasn't been used much against anyone yet. It is far too early to draw any meaningful conclusions about what sort of real threat it does or doesn't pose and to whom. That ambiguity is itself a big part of the problem, because if you don't know how far you have to go to be compliant or what the real risks are if you get things wrong, you can't make informed decisions about anything you might need to do.

If you don't do enough, you face the prospect of severe penalties. The GDPR's defenders can claim that enforcement will be reasonable and proportionate, but the fact is that the maximum potential penalties are written in law, and it's not as if national authorities have never been excessive with their EU-derived powers before. On the other hand, if you do too much, that's wasted time and money, possibly it's limited useful data processing more than you were actually required to, and now you're at a competitive disadvantage.

The issues about filtering user-supplied content that arise because of the proposed copyright changes are directly analogous. There are vague suggestions about proportionality, but no-one really knows how this would play out, and the potential harm to anyone hosting other people's content if the new laws were interpreted in a different way could be severe.

> The biggest problem with the GDPR is the FUD that surrounded it. How often is it that people are charged to the maximum effect of the law? Yet for some bizarre reason that's exactly what people thought would happen against every small operation once GDPR came into effect.

What do you think small operators would rather deal with?

"You can be certain you're doing nothing wrong"

or

"You might be doing something wrong, but they'll probably be lenient".

If geoblocking European visitors is no big loss, of course they'll go for it. Which many here seem strangely okay to accept, given staunch positions about net neutrality.

> "hasn't been used"

The smaller players are rightfully too afraid to do anything that the big players that can get away with. You may not see GDPR fining small players, but what you also won't see is small players innovating as much out of fear.

If "innovation" means selling my details without my concent or hosting my details on insecure infrastructure, then I welcome their inability to innovate. Thankfully though, it doesn't and they still can innovate.

A few people disagree with me it seems. Which is fair enough, we're all entitled to our own opinion. However the last two businesses I've worked for have all managed to innovate easily enough whilest still remaining inside the GDPR. Which is why I really don't see GDPR as a massive deal breaker.