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> Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now?

You didn't actually have that up until now either.

> now the Germans and the French rule our country

Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point.

> and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign

I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here.

> BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative.

Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.

> You didn't actually have that up until now either.

Yes, and we liked it.

> Citation very much needed, unless you mean nominally German and French companies delegating factories and subsidiaries to your country, in which case, that's the point.

See how countries are represented in the EP.

> I think if you'd ask them, they died for their children to have a better life, and not having to fight any more wars. Also, a lot of (great)-grandfathers died in countries that are pretty happy to be in the EU; your appeal to nationalism is pretty offensive here.

You know what, I actually asked them. Our nation maintains a project called "memory of the nation" that collects inputs like this from as many important and ordinary people of past times as possible, from various sources such as chronicles, personal diaries, letters, books, court hearings etc as well as actual conversations with them.

It is exactly what I said it is, please don't try to school me on my own nation. Our grandfathers died because they wanted us to be sovereign. Please don't try to change their (well documented) message. The whole thing by itself has nothing to do with nationalism! It is the fact that the western nations have been the oppressors of our people and the (provably) 300+-year old understanding of the whole nation (and its literature, songs, art...) that in order to be free at our homes, the country has to be sovereign - because our ideas about politics and what freedom is are different than yours.

> Your country can just decide to leave. If the burden of delegating some super-national matters to a larger voluntary body becomes too much, you can just opt-out.

It can not. The EU has just shown everyone that it will absolutely and purposefully destroy anyone that tries and severe all their international ties to a state roughly equivalent to the Cold War. On top of that, our country is economically tightly tied to Germany and France and their investors - whatever our citizens want, these foreign investors will work against it, and now their governments (that will naturally protect and help their citizens as much as possible) have the power to override our laws directly, the last thing they lacked.

> Yes, and we liked it.

The Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, or, in short the "Copyright directive" was from 2001. You adhered to that on joining in 2004.

The current proposal build on and extends that, so, in conclusion, you didn't actually have that up until now.

> See how countries are represented in the EP.

Fortunately another poster did your homework for you: "In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k."

But regardless, MEPs are part of European parties, which, to exist, need to represent a cross section of EU countries. EU matters are sometimes instigated by countries, but signed off on by international political blocks. There are anti-EU parties for you to vote on.

> On top of that, our country is economically tightly tied to Germany and France and their investors

A terrible thing that, employment and economic stability. Fortunately, you can elect a government that throws them out, together with the EU, and nationalise all their property and do it your way. Venezuela did exactly that, and you could join them in their glorious ascent to complete sovereignity.

> The EU has just shown everyone that it will absolutely and purposefully destroy anyone

Citation needed, and I sure hope you're not thinking of "Brexit" as some sort of example here.

> The whole thing by itself has nothing to do with nationalism!

Except for the "our people" and the "noble blood of our forebears" and the "insidious foreign influences" bits.

> A terrible thing that, employment and economic stability. Fortunately, you can elect a government that throws them out, together with the EU, and nationalise all their property and do it your way. Venezuela did exactly that, and you could join them in their glorious ascent to complete sovereignity.

But we don't want to be a country that nationalises stuff. The point is on the exact opposite of the political scale. We (the citizens) didn't want to sell it away dirt cheap in the first place.

> Fortunately another poster did your homework for you: "In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k."

How are German and French citizens relevant to the laws of my country, why do they have a say about it in a vote? I don't want to vote about Germany either.

> Except for the "our people" and the "noble blood of our forebears" and the "insidious foreign influences" bits.

Nothing noble about it. There is nothing wrong with cherishing your heritage, especially in case of people just a generation or two away. ;-)

Are you denying history? Our national history has undeniably significantly shaped our whole culture - movies, theatre, language, literature, music, art, ways of parenting and education and so on... Basically the whole Czech culture is build on top of the fight against foreign oppression and the will to gain sovereignty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_National_Revival

Our people == citizens, nothing else. When I say nation, I mean people with common cultural background and in most cases citizenship. I don't care about immigrants, economical migrants and even refugees and I support helping them in any way possible, BTW - they're free to live with us, by our rules (or their, if they're citizens already).

Obviously a political and economic union will impose laws on its member states. Your country, holding 2% of the votes, being able to overrule the entire union wouldn't be very democratic either.

It sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of the union but be able to refuse the laws it imposes. If the EU decides on a law, that the majority of the union agrees on but your country doesn't, then your country has the option to leave the union.

Your country might not agree with these laws, other countries might not agree with laws regarding the environment, or human rights, etc. But the union as a whole agrees on them and if you want to benefit from the union then you have to follow.

I absolutely don't think an economic union (our citizens did not vote in a referendum to join a political union, that was forced on us) needs to impose such laws (environment, human rights) not regarding international trade between member states and third state policies. It should impose treaties regarding export and import between member states, and maybe provide a civil court.

Whatever the EU is, it's not an "economic union" for at least a decade. We don't want any of that cake, as you say - you forced that upon us, I was talking about that in my previous comment.

And no, our country doesn't have an option to leave. Germans bought key state corporations from the corrupt post-revolution government and they won't let us (the people) do it, on top of that it has been proved that the EU will try to take revenge by all means and not wanting to be in the EU means they will destroy you. So much for the "friendship among nations" goal - paid friendship is not friendship.

You can elect a government that can trigger article 50. There is no exception, any country can do it.

Do they really have the option to leave, though? I mean, have you seen how much success Britain has had trying to leave the EU?

Why does it have to regulate everything?

why not leave some space for local regulation and souvereignity?

I don't think the Art 13 legislation will last in its current form. But whatever form it does take, if your country was "independent", I wouldn't be surprised if it signed up to harmonize anyway as part of a trade deal.

Your real enemy is globalization and modern conveniences of globally cheap goods, and globally high quality goods being available for you to purchase and manufacture and export. The alternatives are somewhere on a sliding scale between Norway / Switzerland to North Korea. The closer you are geographically to Europe, the more you'd need to be like North Korea to maintain the kind of independence you think you want, because the game theoretics of inter-nation competition demand that competitors follow international rules.

Hmm, I'd like to see future where most [high quality] goods are produced locally - thanks to robots and AI. That's why I'd like the country to stay independent and of course automation and IT/tech/knowledge-based export economy is the only way it'd work in the long term for such country.

For that we need our citizens to be as free in doing business as possible, and for the whole thing to be as easy as possible. The EU is directly influencing our economical growth and technological and societal progression in this way.

Coincidentally, I am also from a 10 million country surrounded by mountains... and I feel the need to say a few words.

What sovereignty are you talking about? The one we had before WW2, right before we were occupied by Germans? Or after WW2, that brief moment before we were controlled and later even occupied by Russians? That sovereignty is an illusion, especially in today's interconnected world. We can either be small and be controlled by the big ones or be a small part of a big one. Is EU perfect? Certainly not. We can talk about reforms. But despite all shortcomings, I would still say that being part of the EU is the best era of our history.

And saying that people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today... that contradicts my experience and this is the sentiment I would like to express in the strongest possible terms.

And I would not be so sure about what "most people here would rather..." - if I might share my position on this: I voted yes to join the EU in order to get roughly what I got and I would not change my vote.

Just my $0.02 - article 13 is not about what Germans and French want, it is about what powerful lobbies want - being outside of EU would not save us from something like that despite what majority of the country wants - the fact is that we were not overruled; check the stances of our representatives (https://saveyourinternet.eu/cz) - unless there is some other mountains-surrounded country I do not know about, most of our MEPs voted for the article 13.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_...

In the countries with 10 million population, you have roughly 500k people per MEP. In Germany & France, it's 850k.

If you add up the seats of the 6 countries with roughly 10 million people, you get 126. If you add up the seats of Germany and France, you get 175. So the small countries are definitely not irrelevant. Can a single country decide on a matter on their own? No. But with 28 (soon 27) states, requiring consent of every single country would render the EU unable to take actions on issues.

This is fair representation in matters that an economical union should decide, but it is not fair representation when the EU became a political union - almost no German lives in the country and yet German citizens have more control over it than Czech citizens do. The EU does not need to regulate everything, or even most things. The Czech Republic tries to promote distributed multi-level government (so only people living in a given area have say over it) and the EU goes directly against it.

The copryight directive is about unifying copyright law and rules in the EU. It's about making it easier to offer services to all EU citizens. If the EU doesn't regulate some area, naturally countries will have different rules, making inner EU trade in that matter difficult.

The countries of the EU, including Germany, can't survive on their own in a world where there's the USA, China and India. We need a strong entity that protects european values world-wide.

Also, this isn't a new thing either. Think of Charles IV. a czech ruler of the HRE which included both today's Germany and today's Czech republic.

Charles IV. provided Bohemia with multi-hundred year long significant power over the HRE and sovereignty in everything but name inside the HRE, while making Bohemia a large and major power (but we're not expandish anymore today, so that "large" part is usually not even commonly known). That is the major reason why we universally think of him as "The Father of the homeland" (Otec vlasti) in the Czech Republic.

Then the Habsburgs gradually took that away from us and that made us angry in a poetic way in the 1770's, which has caused the Czech National Revival and has formed all of contemporary Czech culture.