The EU Could Vote To Wreck the Internet Tomorrow (vice.com) 215
The EU is preparing to vote Wednesday on sweeping new copyright guidelines that could dramatically reshape the internet and potentially harm your ability to share content online. From a report: As noted previously, the proposal is being driven by rights holders frightened by technological change, including brick and mortar publishers eager to blame companies like Google for their failure to evolve in the modern internet era. And while the EU's new Copyright Directive may be a well intentioned effort to modernize EU copyright rules, it still contains numerous provisions that could significantly harm the open internet. Most of those provisions remain largely intact despite a July vote that sent the proposal back to the drawing board in the wake of widespread activist backlash. The most problematic provisions of the plan include new licensing fees for sharing anything more than "insubstantial" portions of content. Such a "link tax" could prove costly for small news outlets, and, depending on final wording, could put volunteer-centric organizations like Wikipedia at risk since the original proposal failed to include a noncommercial exception.
The most controversial component of the plan mandates that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption (read: most of them) would need to employ automated copyright systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works at the website owner's expense. As we've consistently highlighted, such filters routinely don't work very well.
The most controversial component of the plan mandates that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption (read: most of them) would need to employ automated copyright systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works at the website owner's expense. As we've consistently highlighted, such filters routinely don't work very well.
Not unless it's Chrissy Teegan (Score:1)
Not unless it's Chrissy Teegan, or another starlet who regularly casts shade and claps back.
Hahahaha (Score:1)
And how does such a database of copyrighted works work?
Full text of anything ever generated? every frame of every film in case someone might make a meme of it?
Not to mention, who oversees it. " He who has the Gold (copyright DB control) makes the Rules. "
Re:Hahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
And how does such a database of copyrighted works work?
Full text of anything ever generated? every frame of every film in case someone might make a meme of it?
Not to mention, who oversees it. " He who has the Gold (copyright DB control) makes the Rules. "
Exactly. This is mostly the publishers trying to double dip. Memes using a single frame of a movie and sharing of links benefits the copyright holder. Most of this seems to be targetting google and facebook. Practically everything on google and facebook links back to the original article. What facebook/google needs to do is just start banning links to any site that doesn't want to be included. Then lets see how many views their articles get when they aren't allowed to be shared on google or facebook. A summary and a link to the original article is what every content producer should want. It's free advertising. Give them a way to opt out if they don't want it and let's see how many actually opt out.
Re:Hahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
And how does such a database of copyrighted works work?
Exactly the same way that the DMCA works in the U.S. If someone sees something they don't like, they file a complaint claiming "copyright infringement".
Since investigating the complaint and determining whether or not it really is infringement would require doing actual work, the "infringing material" is immediately taken down without question.
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Hahaha, that would be great. Then somebody could hack it and leak all the content to the world. No, nobody actually knows how this would work, as this whole stupid idea is from lawyers and business people, and, as usually, they did not bother to ask some actual engineers about it.
EU jurisdiction? (Score:1)
Assuming that they will vote to wreck the internet, how much of the internet is under EU jurisdiction?
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It wont matter.
The copyright lobby in the US (and everywhere else) will screech and wail and demand that politicians bring policies in lockstep with the EU. US Pols, who mainly represent Disney and Hollywood, will be happy to concede.
So let me remind everyone that we have an election coming up. Now is the time to let candidates know how we feel about this.
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Unlikely. Why would a billionaire side with the people, instead of his billionaire friends? Water seeks it's own level.
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Nobody is talking about Trump. Just you. The discussion taking place as absolutely nothing to do with Trump or any of you TDS induced issues.
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> Trump is the biggest corporate-shill, trickle-down-economics president in history.
Yes true Trump is a shill (and why I didn't vote for him) but let's be completely honest: Obama was also bought-and-paid for by the Medical Insurance corporations. He received a combined total of $21 million for his 2008 campaign (and he returned the favor by passing Mandatory insurance purchases). Here were his other top corporate buddies that he helped bailout in 2009-10:
Let's face it... whether you vote R or D you
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As a voter, it is mostly a matter of deciding which of those actor's needs align the best with your own.
As a human being capable of cogent reasoning, you need to realize that being fucked with a hot poker and being fucked with a splintery stick aren't your only options when it comes to voting.
Novel idea: How about, instead of voting for "the lesser evil," you stop voting for evil alltogether?
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How about, instead of voting for "the lesser evil," you stop voting for evil alltogether?
Because then the bigger evil wins, you fucking obtuse charlatan.
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trickle-down-economics president in history.
"Trickle-down" is a 100% demagoguery phrase; use it and lose. The proper term is "supply side".
As a EU-citizen in the EU... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm ever more strongly inclined to have them push through the most obviously lobbied-together most atrociously anti-free-speech filtering censorship everything for all websites accessable from the EU. And I warmly invite every website inside the EU to shut down on user content as much as possible and every website outside the EU to block anything EU by geoIP.
Burn it down. Burn it all down. If that doesn't get my fellow EU-citizens up in arms against the EU, well, then what will?
Re: As a EU-citizen in the EU... (Score:1)
Waiting to see a doctor is better than never seeing one and just dying like in the US, no?
so, two Internets (Score:2)
one for the EU, one for everybody else. let the EU built the filters on their own dime, or just pull out.
Re: so, two Internets (Score:1)
Three, you mean. One for China, one for the EU, and one for the civilized world.
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or just pull out.
Yeah, that solution doesn't always work. Damn kids.
The EU government is starting to become annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because of them that I have websites constantly saying, "We use cookies on our website to track you" et cetera. I thought the US solution under DMCA was good:
- You upload something
- It gets taken down
- You respond by saying "This does not infringe copyright" and the item gets reinstated by the website (as required by DMCA).
- At that point the copyright claimant must either file a lawsuit and Prove in court that they are the legitimate owner.... or just let it go.
It provides a way for us average people to deal with takedown requests, without causing permanent harm. It appears the EU and the corporate donors will dismantle this regime, so you have NO way to reinstate legitimate uploads of yur own creation.
wrong (Score:2)
You're assuming the ONLY way to put content on the web is via the "social media" sites. That couldn't be further from the truth. You can post whatever you like on your own web site, without worrying about takedown requests.
You're bitching about Facebook, not the web. Don't use Facebook.
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> You're assuming the ONLY way to put content on the web is via the "social media" sites
I was actually thinking of sites like Youtube, not facebook. However the new EU legislation will affect your personal website too. If some company claims you are infringing, you will find yourself facing a lawsuit (and the web domain provider could pull your site completely).
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If you put infringing content on your web site, you should be facing a lawsuit. That's the whole point of copyright. If somebody wants to take out a frivolous (and very expensive) lawsuit against an innocent person, that usually ends up very bad for the sue("er"?). If you don't put copyrighted stuff on the Net, then you really don't have anything to worry about.
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that usually ends up very bad for the sue("er"?)
Can you provide some statistics? This claim seems implausible. What sort of definition are you using for "very bad"?
I'm not sure having to say "oops, our mistake, sorry" with the "sorry" part being possibly optional counts as "very bad". And that only happens if the victim does in fact hire a lawyer rather than just rolling over. I also wouldn't count sending a member of your full time, salaried legal team to court "very bad", especially if you only have to do it for a fraction of your false claims.
In what
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Because the goal is to merely host content in a dark room, rather than having your content seen by other people.
Douglas Adams > Quotes > Quotable Quote [goodreads.com]
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Exposure isn't free. You're paying for it with dollars to advertise, or by giving up all rights to your content (a la the "social media" sites). You don't have a right to have unlimited worldwide exposure... just because you want it to be so.
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His point was People want to post their creations in places where they get seen like Facebook, Youtube, rather than some obscure website like my prettycreation.com (which nobody sees or knows exists).
Under current law people get to post things on the popular social sites..... under the proposed law they won't be able to, as they will be constantly seeing their work pulled down (or account banned).
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Cross-uploader video recommendation (Score:2)
You're assuming the ONLY way to put content on the web is via [YouTube and other] "social media" sites. That couldn't be further from the truth.You can post whatever you like on your own web site, without worrying about takedown requests.
YouTube has a feature that lists "related videos" and "recommended for you", including videos from other uploaders. On desktop, this is down the right column. On mobile, it appears in a scrolling list below the video. In the case of hosting video on your own domain, what do you put in place to replace this feature? Is buying AdWords the most effective way to get your video recommended to viewers?
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Let me rephrase:
If YouTube ceased to exist, publishers would instead publish video through their own sites. Through what means would these videos get recommended to viewers?
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When people watched video on the Internet prior to YouTube, how did viewers discover other videos related to the video they are watching or related to other videos that they recently watched?
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From a mechanics of dealing with copyright it isn't bad.
The Europeans might not like the idea of Google or Facebook interfering in their elections
https://www.washingtonexaminer... [washingtonexaminer.com]
You go through the bloodiest conflicts in human history, and the whole better to seek forgiveness than ask permission idea gets a little threadbare.
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That has lead to the explosive and valuable growth of internet companies in the US -- any company that lets people post stuff need only take down copyrighted items in a timely manner when notified of the violation, and they are safe from a lawsuit.
This has greatly hampered companies in Europe, to Europe's detriment. This new stuff will only exacerbate it as it is more than worth it for companies to spit implementation than let Europe decide the form of the Internet.
Btw this is what that idiot US senator wa
Nurse! He's been skipping his meds again (Score:2)
Of course it hot-diggety-did, goshdarnit.
What other possible explanation [theguardian.com] is there for the overwhelming "no" in the Brexit vote after his 'back of the queue" threat?
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I thought the US solution under DMCA was good
This post brought to you by the states that legalised marijuana.
It's because of them that I have websites constantly saying, "We use cookies on our website to track you" et cetera.
Yeah damn them providing choice rather than just loading you with so much tracking garbage that your browser slows to a crawl. You should google how much faster common websites load in the EU compared to the USA because of that pesky meddling. The time you spent clicking ignore is well made up for how much time you save not loading tracking scripts and planting 100 cookies for a stateless loginless session.
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providing choice rather than just loading you with so much tracking garbage
Where is there a consumer choice involved that wasn't there before?
You should google how much faster common websites load in the EU compared to the USA because of that pesky meddling.
This has not-much to do with the meddling on its face and much more to do with Privacy Laws that have teeth.
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"Not notable" is the most nonsensical thing for what was once dubbed "the encyclopedia of everything". If it exists (or ever has existed), it is notable. Articles on open source software products and the history of ordinary buildings disappear. Which is annoying, because I can easily find information about the history of the Plaza hotel or Empire State building in NYC in dozens of places, but the permitting process/ordinances/renovation history of a random hotel by the airport or random nameless office b
To grasp notability, first grasp verifiability (Score:3)
Articles in an encyclopedia are supposed to be verifiable [wikipedia.org], containing claims supported by reliable secondary sources. If no reliable secondary sources have covered a subject, how is it even possible to build a verifiable article about that subject? I'm interested in your answer to that question, as it'll help others explain notability.
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If it's already properly cited, how is it not verifiable? Anyone caring to check is free to hunt down the same ancient microfilm-only news articles and government documents. Meanwhile I'm just curious as to when a restaurant edition was added to $random_office_building, but not curious enough to hunt down the permits filed for the modifications or the article in the neighborhood-level newspaper from the 1980s. Someone else did, put the info up, and poof, whole building deleted, "not notable" (I only foun
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If it's already properly cited, how is it not verifiable?
If an article cites significant coverage of a subject in three different reliable third-party sources, then the subject is presumed notable, and deletion was unwarranted. Request undeletion at Deletion review.
I'm just curious as to when a restaurant edition was added to $random_office_building, but not curious enough to hunt down the permits filed for the modifications or the article in the neighborhood-level newspaper from the 1980s. Someone else did, put the info up, and poof, whole building deleted, "not notable"
Coverage must also be nontrivial to establish notability. Wikipedia's general notability guideline [wikipedia.org] states that a mention must be more than in passing. In addition, building permits are primary sources and thus not as strong for establishing notability as secondary sources. But even if something doesn't
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I understand Wikipedia's notability guideline. What I was stating was that I disagree with it and wish for a competitor that is making more of an effort to be a complete knowledge repository (at least as far as buildings/infrastructure and companies are concerned - there's no shortage of various fandom wikis for works of fiction, so Wikipedia's deletions aren't causing a gap of coverage there).
Fortunately this strict interpretation seems to only affect the English Wikipedia. I can get those exact details
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If you can find others who would contribute to a wiki about companies and the buildings they operate in, you could always start one on Miraheze.
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Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:They didn't evolve because they can't evolve (Score:5, Informative)
> journalism never established a culture over the last 200 years of habituating people to pay money directly for the content.
Except that people DID pay money for journalism. They subscribed to newspapers for ~100 dollars a year, and that trend goes back to the 1820s or so.
Re:They didn't evolve because they can't evolve (Score:4, Insightful)
Subscription fees don't even cover the cost of ink for newspapers. Newspapers are paid for by advertisers, just like social media. Subscription fees exist to give credibility to publishers' claims about subscriber count.
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> Newspapers are paid for by advertisers, just like social media.
Well if that's true, why do we need people to "pay for journalism" as stated 3 posts above? The journalists can survive Today the same way the did from circa 1820 to 2000..... with advertising. (All they have to do is relocate from the paper to the web.)
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News companies came too late to the web ads game, and are very far behind the curve. Online advertising is very high tech these days, and there's little money to be made in untargeted ads. I do think there's room for local news running local ads on the web, as "local" is still a valuable form of targeted advertising.
Facebook and Google are great at selling ads, but seemingly have no interest in hiring reporters, despite a lot of people getting their news there. That's ot a sustainable situation, but it's
Consumer Reports (Score:2)
If publishing a printed periodical is so costly, then how do nonprofit publishers that accept no ads stay in business? Such an organization publishes Consumer Reports, a monthly magazine that reviews products marketed to individual home users.
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The world has turned. It was Craigslist that killed a lot of local papers.
They survived on classified ad revenue. Sunday papers where half classified ads when I was kid.
Good law (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good law (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger issue however is covert censorship. For instance, if the EU start to make a stink about “hate speech” and have some sufficiently vague guidelines about what constitutes hate speech, the social media companies might be frightened into erring on the side of caution, and remove moderate but “undesirable” speech as well. They will be doing the dirty work, while Brussels keeps its hands clean.
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How? I have a web site. It wasn't hard to do. It costs about $1/month.
If I want to start a "social media" site, I can do that too. I just have to make sure that people don't post copyrighted stuff on it, just like I do now on my own website.
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The EU law doesn't seem to make allowance for fair use, which is a lot of content on YouTube. But more fundamentally, memes and other remixing of copyrighted work for non-commercial use should be seen as fair use, for the same reason parody is fair use.
What means of prior review for infringement? (Score:2)
I just have to make sure that people don't post copyrighted stuff on it, just like I do now on my own website.
What steps would you take to ensure that? I guess you could paywall the service and use the revenue to hire someone to review each post for copyright infringement before it becomes visible to the public. Is that practical? How would the reviewer even be familiar with all copyrighted works in existence? Or what other practical means of prior review did you have in mind?
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You might as well ask, "What about people who make screws for industrial looms? How are they going to make money?"
Uh, why are you asking me? That's not my problem.
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Well it will be the problem of anyone who wants to upload videos to youtube, and that's a lot of people. Then again, maybe there will be a Youtube Europe if this goes into effect that has the screening and an 18 month wait to get videos uploaded.
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Re: Good law (Score:2)
You asked how it's anyone else's problem and I answered. That's generally how this works.
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That's not my fucking problem. That's Google/Facebook's problem. I don't fucking care what they do. Their servers, they should maintain them properly. If they have kiddie porn on their servers, that's their responsibility. If they have copyrighted stuff on their servers, that's their responsibility. So they won't be able to
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You are the one saying they can simply pay people to block copyrighted material, so tell us, how do these employees know the material is copyrighted?
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Isn't that precious... (Score:2)
The politicians think they can regulate behavior with a pen again.
Good luck with that.
The Redirect Approach - route around damage (Score:2)
Since linking to anything directly will cost money, I propose a new approach - a google search link where you know the first result will be the link target.
Then we could easily write extensions for browsers to convert a Google link with some special URL query param to automatically visit the first link result... might fail sometimes but it would work often enough to be useful.
Can't stop the signal, EU.
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An even better solution would be, locate your server outside the EU, so it is not under their jurisdiction. Place a gateway within the EU which runs a tunnel to your actual server.
Problem solved.
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Not the internet I know (Score:3)
Silly alarmist article is silly and alarmist. And they're just talking about the web. This doesn't affect any of the other numerous things the internet does, besides serving web pages.
And how the hell are they going to enforce this? Who would run a website in these proposed conditions? I wouldn't, I'd relocate my server to a more friendly nation without stupid rules. In this day and age, your geological location matters less and less. I can rent a server anywhere in the world from my home, in my PJs and slippers.
How exactly are they going to 'force' a website located outside the EU to comply with their rules? Seems like they're are shooting themselves in the foot with this stupidity.
Internet knows no borders, and the EU trying to erect a wall around their internet..well.. they are going to find this all just insanely difficult to implement. So good luck with that. The internet will be just fine without you, thank you very much.
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Russia would love the opportunity.
After Brexit, UK might do it as a middle finger.
There shouldn't be a link tax (Score:2)
What there should be is a tax on ad revenue based on the country where the eyeballs are located at.
Always look on the bright side of life (Score:2)
database of copyrighted works
GREAT! All I need to do is start a website and I can get a digital copy of every copyrighted work for free from this database. No more torrents!
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Well, probably the hash values of every copyrighted work.
The EU is a wreck. (Score:1)
It's dying and needs to die.
Hyperbole much... (Score:2, Insightful)
"As noted previously, the proposal is being driven by rights holders frightened by technological change, including brick and mortar publishers eager to blame companies like Google for their failure to evolve in the modern internet era."
No the internet will not be wrecked tomorrow. No this is not driven by businesses that failed to "evolve in the modern internet era."
Stop being a fucking ass-hole and report the facts. That's all you need to do, pro
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I actually bothered to read the proposal and it turns out that most of the fears are unfounded.
There is no threat to hyperlinks, they are specifically exempted.
EU did a study on the effect that laws in Germany and Spain had on news outlets being able to charge for snippets (e.g. Google News withdrew) and decided that there should be an exemption because the market values such rights a 0 Euro. So no threat to news aggregation or search results or snippets in tweets etc, in fact the situation should get bette
Once again, the EU shoots itself in the foot (Score:2)
Which is quite a feat for an organization that doesn't have any guns. Let's just ignore them.
Unenforceable nonsense (Score:2)
Can this be a good thing? (Score:2)
I really hope that laws like this and the closed garden culture will eventually lead some people to create another web/gopher/usenet within the internet, which will be freer than this one. Yes, I know this a naive hope, but let me dream.
Just route around the EU (Score:2)
Use the -site:"nation" to stop getting search results from country domains in Europe.
Create a no EU results add on for a browser and a list of search engines?
No links to any EU nation.
The rest of the internet just moves around all EU content and EU online publications.
Filter the EU from daily internet use. Support nations that have the freedom to publish and support the freedom to link.
The Internet will be perfectly fine (Score:2)
It's already running at 10 Gbps in many areas and 100 Gbps near portals and it will continue to function without all this cruft your ad-supported "internet" relies on.
Aimed at Wikileaks? (Score:2)
The provisions of "you must provide copyright filters on any upload site" seem tailor made to restrict content uploaded to Wikileaks. That's something to keep in mind, if such laws are universal throughout the UK and make no clear accomodations for journalism.
Re:Ha! Good luck (Score:5, Funny)
I'll have you know that America already voted to wreck the Internet. [wikipedia.org]
Yep 2016 has given us the best apocalypse ever. If I had of known ruining the economy, putting NAZIs in office, starting a nuclear war in Asia, and turning the environment into a radioactive ruin on an earth scorched by global warming would have been so pleasant I would have worked to make it happen long ago.
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It might make search/response times a slight bit longer, but that's not our problem, is it?
Re: Pffft (Score:1)
Enforced? Lol
Facebook is not the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
B. Anybody can compete with Facebook. This law just says that you'll have to monitor the content, just like Facebook is going to have to do.
C. The Internet is alive and well for those with brains. For dummies who think the Internet is Facebook... well... they never really used the web... any more than the people who used AOL did.
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This law just says that you'll have to monitor the content, just like Facebook is going to have to do.
How will a smaller entity without the scale of Facebook or YouTube afford to perform such monitoring?
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Then let me rephrase the question to which you compared mine: "How are people going to get their withdrawal syndrome treated if heroin is made illegal?"
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[Treating withdrawal after banning a substance is] a better question.
So in this analogy:
- User-uploaded content platforms are like heroin
- Starting your own website is like quitting heroin
- Loss of a recommendation engine is like withdrawal
Then how would you get documents or videos on your own website recommended to people? AdWords?
I still don't know the answer to that one (nor do I care).
If you want to get your own content viewed, then you probably ought to care.
People should (but won't) learn to use the Internet as it was intended.
With respect to recommendation of documents related to the document being viewed and to other documents that the user recently viewed, on the same or other sites, how was
Coypyright is crazy (Score:2)
There is no copyright protection scheme store.
Everything is copyright, even though most of it was never produced for profit, and nobody is likely to pay for it.
This just makes the material unavailable. Imagine Wikipedia with virtually no photos at all.
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Checked, as expected Facebook is legally a Delaware corp.
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New law: your corporate offices is where your have the most employees.
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1. Your corporate office is where you book the largest amount of corporate revenue.
2. All the tech companies who have parked revenue in other countries are required to transfer their foreign accounts into US accounts and be subject to US taxes.
Okay so how does that work for non-US companies? Also, your first law just declared that your corporate office could be in another country. That would mean Apple is an Irish company and would not be subjected to your second law.
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The internet is in no way open or fair. Just look at how conservative voices have been censered everywhere. This laws must be passed in order to prevent the companies like Google from blocking the free market of ideas with extreme liberal free speech violation. Google is a huge donor to Clinton and Soros funds, and are in investigation around the world for their antifree speech tacticks.
Bullshit.
Google, Facebook, Twitter,etc. are private companies. There is no such thing as "free speech". They can do whatever they want. It is not "censorship". Only the government can engage in censorship and restriction of free speech.
Those companies are not vital to society. If you don't like what they are doing then ignore them. And there's nothing preventing conservatives from starting their own platforms.