How the EU Copyright Proposal Will Hurt the Web and Wikipedia (wikimedia.org) 122
Wikimedia, which operates Wikipedia, chimes in on the EU copyright debacle: Our movement is working to promote freedom online for the benefit of all. Our efforts in this public policy realm are all the more important in an era of increasing restrictions on free speech and free access to knowledge across the globe, which directly threaten the mission and vision of Wikimedia and its projects, such as Wikipedia. This is why we strongly oppose the proposed EU Copyright Directives and urge the Members of the European Parliament to reconsider proceeding with the version recently adopted by the Legal Affairs Committee. We are concerned because these flawed proposals hurt everyone's rights to freedom of expression and Europe's ability to improve the welfare of its citizens online. Next week, we expect the European Parliament to vote in plenary on whether to proceed with the version adopted by the Committee. If the Members of the European Parliament reject it, there will be another opportunity to fix much of the current proposal's broken requirements. Now may be the last opportunity to improve the directive.
The requirement for platforms to implement upload filters is a serious threat for freedom of expression and privacy. Our foundational vision depends on the free exchange of knowledge across the entirety of the web, and beyond the boundaries of the Wikimedia projects. A new exclusive right allowing press publishers to restrict the use of news snippets will make it more difficult to access and share information about current events in the world, making it harder for Wikipedia contributors to find citations for articles online. The proposal does not support user rights, is missing strong safeguards for the public domain, and does not create exceptions that would truly empower people to participate in research and culture. We believe that enactment of this copyright package will significantly decrease in the amount of content that will be freely accessible to all across the globe.
The requirement for platforms to implement upload filters is a serious threat for freedom of expression and privacy. Our foundational vision depends on the free exchange of knowledge across the entirety of the web, and beyond the boundaries of the Wikimedia projects. A new exclusive right allowing press publishers to restrict the use of news snippets will make it more difficult to access and share information about current events in the world, making it harder for Wikipedia contributors to find citations for articles online. The proposal does not support user rights, is missing strong safeguards for the public domain, and does not create exceptions that would truly empower people to participate in research and culture. We believe that enactment of this copyright package will significantly decrease in the amount of content that will be freely accessible to all across the globe.
Give Europe what it wants. (Score:5, Interesting)
Cut Europe off from the Internet.
THIS is what they really want.
$15 a Minute phone calls to Italy and only Government approved newspapers.
Galileo for navigation and no GPS.
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Aww, you left out the "We won WWII" nonsense from your post. If you're gonna go full retard chauvinist how could you have missed that?
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We didn't win it alone.
Absent the USA's help, the USSR may have won.
The nation that lost the most people was the USSR. They lost ~14% of their population, because they fought the most brutal, relentless part of the war against the Nazi regime.
All are true.
There, I fixed that for you so you don't come out sounding like an ignorant asshole.
Re:Give Europe what it wants. (Score:4, Informative)
Might want to find out how much help we gave the USSR.
Hint: we sent them 10000+ tanks, and more airplanes than tanks. For a start...
All too true. Which doesn't invalidate the OP's statement that they were allied with the Germans at the beginning of the War. Always remember that when Poland was invaded by Germany from the west, it was also invaded by the Soviets from the East....
Re: Give Europe what it wants. (Score:2)
Yeah! Russia should leave their neighboring countries alone! Like the U.S. does with Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua!
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Re:Give Europe what it wants. (Score:4, Funny)
Feels to me he's spot on. Google, Wikipedia, Slashdot should all geoblock the EU if this law goes through. Lets see how long it lasts.
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For the two weeks it'll take the European population to demand a reverse to this inane law? Yes.
Politicians may not care about the internet working correctly but the rest of those 500 million people do.
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One does not simply refuse the Donald.
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One does not simply refuse the Donald.
Is that you Ivanka? #MeToo
7 Trump Quotes About Ivanka That Will Make You Go WHOA [bustle.com]
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Boromir [youtube.com].
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Cut Europe off from the Internet.
I don't think this is really a trolling statement, just maybe not delicately stated.
Just because Europe is fucked up doesn't mean the USA isn't also fucked up, the two are not mutually exclusive (both is perhaps the more likely scenario). There are several countries that ought to either learn to cooperate online or get the hell out of cyberspace. Nothing stops a country from running their own network and routers, other than the public outrage of their citizens.
Re:Give Europe what it wants. (Score:4, Interesting)
Cut Europe off from the Internet.
THIS is what they really want.
$15 a Minute phone calls to Italy and only Government approved newspapers.
Galileo for navigation and no GPS.
Upload filters will never work. Make the countries interested in filtering responsible for filtering, not non-eu websites.
It's best to not cut them off, but to remove any .eu sites from web search results, then see what happens.
The Internet generally knows how to route around problems.
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Upload filters will never work.
And there is a way around them. Instead of a "platform" with "forums", every user gets his own complete domain with his own single-user forum. He must of course provide a filter if he let others post - but he don't need to let other people post. Discussions can be done by linking to posts on the other guy's forum. Everybody have their own site (although identical to all others), no third party posting so nothing to check. Of course you're responsible if you do piracy on your own site - but no automatic chec
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As a European, I agree. It's the best way to show the average EU citizen what a detached abomination Brussels has become.
Re:Give Europe what it wants. (Score:4, Insightful)
If this EU law passed you think you're safe in the US? The same actors will push for similar laws in other countries and cite the EU law as basis.
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If this EU law passed you think you're safe in the US? The same actors will push for similar laws in other countries and cite the EU law as basis.
While I generally thing you are right about that, it's at least worth noting that in the US this has already been tried, and it backfired spectacularly.
Publishers threatened Facebook with lawsuits for not paying publishers for the first sentence being used to link to the actual publisher article.
Facebook turned around and started removing their news feeds completely and said the publishers will now need to pay them to be included.
Publishers then bitch and moan that their internet visitors dwindled to a tiny
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The real problem is that the EU policy makers just don't understand how technology works. It's not due to malice. It's ignorance.
On some level, the large majority of the populations anywhere around the world support copyright and support enforcing it. That's why the policy makers can get behind initiatives to 'improve' enforcement. They are, again, simply unable to properly foresee the consequences of what on some level seems like reasonable policy. It obviously doesn't help that they have all kinds of lobb
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Dream on. If anything Congress is sitting around right now trying to figure out how they can make next years release of IP to the public domain not happen.
Roseanne is an idiot. She was an idiot decades ago when her original show was on and she hasn't changed.
P.S. there are plenty of conservative actors, some are even starting to "come out" now that studios and media companies are afraid to retaliate against them for the crime of not being liberal.
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How is offering consumers a 3rd choice for navigation worse than only being allowed one as is the case currently? Europeans will have a choice of GPS and Galileo (probably not Glonass though). I'm struggling to see how greater consumer choice and the ability to choose not to be dependent on a technology controlled by the US is somehow oppressive?
The phone calls thing makes no sense either, you can use your mobile contract right across Europe, meaning I can phone from anywhere in Europe as if it was my stand
Re:Brexit, baby (Score:4, Insightful)
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Probably not "communism", the "People" is of no importance *at all*. It's more like a form of textbook fascism.
Historically speaking, communism and fascism are forks of a GUI for a totalitarian operating system. Bringing this up tends to get both pissed off, which is part of why both are in (hilarious) agreement about glossing over the early history of fascism and its political roots, which is sad because a lot of historical irony is involved. (The main reason the fascists snagged support from the conservatives was more than anything else because the fascists rejected the idea that class warfare was necessary; it
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I agree that fascism has often prospered under a banner of communism - but can you cite even one instance of a nation that was actually even remotely communist, rather than just using the name as a convenient mask?
Remember, one of the key tenets of communism is that the workers own the means of production, and that is wholly incompatible with the government owning said means, unless you can make a strong case that the workers truly own the government.
Personally, I can think of only a small handful of countr
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It's difficult to say what true communism is or should be, because Marx never really defined what should happen after class warfare in order to be successful. At least in theory practical implementations of communism range from anarchy to totalitarianism.
However I strongly suspect that Marx would have hated what those countries did in his name. All they did was to replace the old bourgeoisie with the state and turned everyone else into their proletariat. And since
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Stalin certainly wasn't stupid. He surely realized that giving all the power to the people wasn't going to work. People tend to be irresponsible and embracing cheap comforts. But Stalin didn't go for something in between, he essentially choose to make himself the new czar
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Yes. Slavery is the result of Communism, because you can't base a government on a lie about human nature.
Humans are fundamentally flawed. A theist would say its because of Original Sin, or the Yin/Yang duality of good and evil, or just because humans are bad. A psychologist might point to the Id as the ethics free core of the human psyche.
The point is that most people when put in a position of power unfettered by external constraints will abuse that power. For every Washington or Cincinnatus there are hundr
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Personally, I can think of only a small handful of countries (Iceland comes to mind) that could make an even remotely plausible claim to having a government truly owned by the workers.
And when I visited, they still complained about the asshat banksters having gotten off easy in the Great Recession.
wut (Score:2)
I agree that fascism has often prospered under a banner of communism [...]
I don't know who you are agreeing with, but it isn't me. I did not claim that fascism has been passed off as communism. Here, let me put some emphasis in the key words in the first line: "Historically speaking, communism and fascism are forks of a GUI for a totalitarian operating system."
Or, to use your phrasing, I said that totalitarianism has often prospered under a banner of communism and fascism .
Re: Brexit, baby (Score:2)
The No True Communist fallacy rearing its head.
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Well said.
> But it does raise the question of whether it is actually possible to implement correctly or not, since each failure to do so makes that seem less likely.
It certainly does raise the question. But if an incoming regime never had any intention of being communist beyond riding the banner into power, does that really count against its possibility, rather than more specifically to the credibility of those claiming to be its champions?
Let me put it this way - given the track record I would be vehem
Re: Brexit, baby (Score:2)
I reject any system that promotes labor. We are a technologically advanced society on the cusp of a post-labor capability. Any attempt to focus on laborers is missing the point.
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That's a third position that does indeed bear discussing in the face of the potential elimination of the need for manual labor within a few generations. I'm not even sure what you'd call it, and it's very different from the other two. Capitalism says the bulk of the value generated by society rightfully belongs to the organizers, those who have shown they can most effectively manage and accumulate capital. Communism says to the laborers, those who actually did all the work to make it real. And this other
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Bye bye communism.
If you look closely at the Brussels regulatory regime, it's actually more like Californism. It's just that the sacred untouchable 'refugees' are a different ethnicity.
EU hurt free speech? (Score:4)
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Re:EU hurt free speech? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The EU does not want to implement censorship. They want to scare online platforms into doing it for them.
Scaring companies - or regulating them - to enforce what you want used to be known as fascism. But now it's considered nice, EU-style socialism...
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Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:2)
Industry taking over government is corporatism. That's what we're dominating the world with from over here in the U.S. :)
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Who has ever said or wrote this? Please name them and provide exact quotes with relevant citations to when they said or wrote this.
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Post-liberty world is coming (Score:1)
Brussels are only pure and holy and love freedom for all...
Fascism and a love of money is a cancer that is spreading throughout Western civilization. Europe is not immune and will be consumed immediately after the United States falls.
The information age brought a new kind of power that we're only now understanding. Viral media, memes, fake news, social media, doxing, data aggregation, market research, 21st century terrorism, cryptocurrency scandals, and the erosion of our personal liberty are all related. It's the end of us if we don't get a handle on it, repair ou
Re: Post-liberty world is coming (Score:2)
Europe will fall into fascism way before the U.S. does. It's always had that nationalism thing in the bag. America is composed of too many individual nations to be truly nationalist.
Re: Post-liberty world is coming (Score:2)
The EU is not a nation. The United States is. The comparison is not between the US and the EU, but between the US and various ethno-states in Europe such as Germany, Albania, or France.
The EU has a long way to go before it can be compared to the federal system of the US. The fact that it just lost one of its member states isn't helping it either.
Re: Post-liberty world is coming (Score:2)
In addition, the individual states in the US are not their own nations. The individual nations that make up the US are not nation-states, they are religious or foreign.
The argument has been made that if fascism came to America it would be through the one thing that binds us as a nation: liberalism (one example might be antifa thugs).
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Well yes. The EU can't restrict something we don't have. There's no free speech laws here, that's an almost uniquely American thing.
Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:3)
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of speech. The guarantees aren't as strong (hate speech is only protected in the U.S. for example), but it's silly to claim freedom of speech laws are only an American thing.
Other nations you may be surprised to possess free speech laws: Japan, Phillipines, Australia, Canada, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mexico, ...
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Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of speech.
It most definitely does not. It guarantees freedom of expression and opinion which is not the same thing as speech. And even if it did apply to speech, if you bother reading the actual 2 line of article 10 you'll find a laundry list of exceptions:
"2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national secu
Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:2)
So, you don't know what the word "American" means so I didn't bother to read the rest of your ignorant drivel.
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So, you don't know what the word "American" means so I didn't bother to read the rest of your ignorant drivel.
LOL. Nice comeback mate. That comment would be really gutting if you didn't need to read 3/4 of my post it in order to make it.
Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:2)
Hey, dipshit, one does not have to read from the top of a post. Less likely to do so when the post fills more than a phone screen. I don't begin reading a post only to find out later it's ten pages long, I scroll to the bottom first to check.
Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:2)
I would like to add that any definition of American that includes both Alberta and Chile is not a particularly useful one.
Should we start talking about EU member states as Eurasian?
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Ya, there is a "good side". [and "no", I'm not living in the US]
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Wondering as first thought if you have permission to do something is a symptom of living in a corrupt government. The reason some people have to bring an "extra" wad of money to the DMV or wait 5 years for a driver's license is that corrupt officials slide their way in because that's how you earn money -- ge5ting in the way to get paid to get back out of the way.
That there are so many regulations people wonder what is permitted rather than forbidden supports this massively over-regulated systrm.
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Sure, it's a cage, but it IS gilded, and there's this nice, splinter free perch for us. Who wants all that icky space outside with cold and rain and heat and sappy branches...
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Depends on where the immigrants come from. Also bear in mind that someone who moves between EU member states is no longer counted as an immigrant.
Re: EU hurt free speech? (Score:2)
Really? Which immigrants get a warmer welcome in Europe than in the U.S.?
Here's the singular issue ... (Score:3)
... right here:
... content that will be FREELY accessible to all across the globe.
Emphasis mine.
The content was not generated "freely."
Sources of information, particularly involving resources such as reporters, information systems, infrastructure, should be fairly compensated for expenses.
News and other content aggregators are doing little to no work and making money off other's IP.
We recently had discussions here on /. about copyright law [slashdot.org] that views this matter from a different perspective.
Lawrence Lessig Criticizes Proposed 140-Year Copyright Protections
Re: Why is this a problem? (Score:2)
Net neutrality has existed for like a year. The World Wide Web has been around for almost 30 years. Please explain how the lack of net neutrality destroyed the Internet.
Not just control of IP; control of INFORMATION (Score:5, Interesting)
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Troll-lolololololol Again: Fuck you.
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Obviously you were not a history major.
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The "dark ages" are called like that because we lack written information/history about them.
There was nothing particular "dark" during the migration times.
Re: Not just control of IP; control of INFORMATION (Score:2)
They are also referred to as the Dark Ages because the people living through them also had no idea what their own history was. This is the vacuum of information the Catholic Church moved into to dominate European thinking. It was much easier to spread Catholic thought to the ignorant post-imperial society than it was in the preceding centuries with an educated, cosmopolitan, "global" empire.
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Official Reponse (Score:2)
Dear Wikimedia,
Womp womp.
At least they were terse (Score:1)
Why say in two screenfulls what you can say in two sentences. /s
E
Pathetic americans (Score:3)
Your copyright law and patents are still much worse than Europe's.
Re: Pathetic americans (Score:2)
You prefer backdoors placed there Brussels rather than Washington. That's understandable, but that's a lot of investment just to be able to choose which spy agencies can pwn you.
Six years notice that sources are needed (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wikipedia is it considers the cult games Osu! and Kid Pix as not notable and sent its deletionists
I see that there are Wikipedia articles for both. The Kid Pix article has been up for at least 13 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]!
I also see that for the past SIX YEARS it's been flagged as needing references. Each page has only a single reference, and the Osu page consists of a single sentence.
If you think these topics are important, important enough that they've been written about, spend 10 minutes on Google to find a few articles and add them as references. It's really not hard.
If you actually take the 20 minutes to READ the articles, you can then type some information from those sources into the Wikipedia article, so it'll be an article instead of a sentence.
You've had six years notice, how long do you need in order to spend a few minutes adding a couple links?
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You're focusing on the trees and ignoring not just the forest, but the entire Amazon Basin.
How Wikipedia handles things is completely irrelevant to the situation. This legislation affects literally everybody, possibly even outside the EU depending on how far they try to wave their reproductive pseudopod.
It's a shockingly stupid piece of legislation that in one move can easily make it not worth the effort to run *any* service *at all*. ESPECIALLY if that might even vaguely involve interacting with the public
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