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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

Since the companies who are advocating for economic censorship of the open web like lists so much, is there a github repo of all companies:products:services and associated lobbyists who are advocating for the proposed EU copyright law?

Such a list will be necessary for mass-market boycott, divestment and sanction of the companies who killed the open web. Users will have lots of time available to focus and channel their energy, if these laws are passed, economically outlawing most user-generated content.

In the history of online and offline publishing, what have been the commercial and censorship consequences of centralized copyright registers/databases and pre/post publication filters?

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Just some trivia, and I'm sorry if I get any details wrong;

a former colleague (who is now a PhD student at Northwestern, in the US) made a Chrome extension that used publicly available data to transform every mention of a politician or political party into a 'link'. By hovering the mouse, the extension showed you exactly who/what companies donated how much to that politican/party.

It was eye opening to read the news with that on. He even made national headlines here (not EU).

Eventually the project was canned because the public source was discontinued by the government.

Thanks for the idea, a writeup or screenshots would be helpful. Maybe we can rebuild it using multiple data sources.

I made something similar for Belgium a while back [0]. Unfortunately, all I had were the official resources. How much is earned for most of the positions is not public information (or is well hidden in opaque structures). This form of information augmentation has an enormous impact on how you can consume the news.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hoeveel-verdient-e...

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/2...

https://lobbyfacts.eu/reports/lobby-costs/all/0/1/1/1/11/0/

There is even a company that specialises in lobbying for their customers, making them invisible in lobbying process

http://www.burson-marsteller.eu/who-we-are/about-us/

> is there a github repo of all companies:products:services and associated lobbyists who are advocating for the proposed EU copyright law?

I like the idea for the site, but might a wiki be better suited for this? I've noticed with some passing curiosity that git is being used increasingly for things that aren't exactly its forte. Maybe it's just the metaphorical hammer that make all problems look like nails?

It's less the tool (git) than the culture of active OSS contribution across the social network of github members.

Github has wikis too, which are backed by repos.

Axel Springer

What the EU is doing is no more a killing of the open Web, than what China has done. China's economy will soon surpass the size of the EU, and of course its population post Brexit is 3x that of the EU.

The open Web will persist. Some countries/regions will be part of it, some won't.

How much bigger would be China's economy with an open web?

It'd probably be smaller because they'd have no domestic tech industry and be on Google Apple FB like everywhere else

Trade policy (protectionism) can co-exist with an open web, so Chinese tech companies could not only exist, they could serve non-Chinese customers in an open web, growing their market and competing globally with Google/FB/etc.

Some of them already do

Think of Alibaba

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