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EU is trying to destroy internet as we know it.

O_BruceO_Bruce Member Posts: 2,790
in Off-Topic
The title of this topic may sound like a clickbait, but the situation is a serious one. If the new proposal by European Union about copyright laws is accepted, it will threaten a freedom of sharing information and speech on the internet. It will also essentialy destroy a Fair Use law as it is, making nearly impossible for people to create content online.

Some links, including articles and video by Computing Forever

https://edri.org/eu-member-states-agree-on-monitoring-filtering-of-internet-uploads/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180525/10072939912/forget-gdpr-eus-new-copyright-proposal-will-be-complete-utter-disaster-internet.shtml
https://youtu.be/fvXOfq3AB8s

I hate to bring such terrible news, but I implore all of you on this forum to act as soon as possible, even if you are not from EU. Please at the very least follow the instuctions in the first article and share this information with as many people as possible.

The fate of the internet is in our hands.
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Comments

  • SethDavisSethDavis Member Posts: 1,812
    normally I'd be mildly in the "oh no" group, but the guy in that video is somehow annoying enough to swing me into the "do it" camp
  • ArdanisArdanis Member Posts: 1,736
    I live in Russia. Several years ago we had a new agency formed to monitor internet for "malicious content harmful to children". Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well, now they have authority to run amok blocking sites at will, which they did a couple months ago trying to block Telegram and inflicted a lot of collateral damage not just to users but to businesses as well.

    Don't believe they'll stop at link tax and upload filters.
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,669
    A link tax would do great harm to, if not destroy, most alternative media as we know it, and if I know the EU, that's likely the intent.
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    I don’t get the link tax, it is literally backwards on what media companies and publishers would actually want.

    I don’t get how free advertising for your website and it’s content warrants people or other companies needing to pay for it.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,371
    WarChiefZeke said:

    A link tax would do great harm to, if not destroy, most alternative media as we know it, and if I know the EU, that's likely the intent.

    The quickest way to legitimize fake news would be to ban it (or tax it). Many people would wonder what the EU is scared of and be curious. Can you imagine the conspiracy theories???
  • mashedtatersmashedtaters Member Posts: 2,266
    It’s sad how the origin of free speech has cranked down so much on free speech in recent years.
  • smeagolheartsmeagolheart Member Posts: 7,964
    I think the EU privacy rules are great.
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    smeagolheart said:

    I think the EU privacy rules are great.

    And I, for one, welcome our new Euro overlords! Why my family ever left is beyond me! I like being a target of religious repression! And Celtic genocide! And corruption! And murderous security forces! And indentured servitude! And impressment into another nation's navy!

    [Think that fooled them?]
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    edited June 2018
    ineth said:


    If you don't want people who don't pay you anything have access to your creation, then don't publish it in a way that has the practical effect of giving everyone access to it.

    That's not really an option in this day and age. The Internet allows people who are not the creators of content to spread it wherever they like. Without copyright laws, a songwriter can put a song on their website, let people download it for a fee... and then watch their own customers post it on some other website and let anyone download it for no charge at all. The net result? The artist is doing everything they can to restrict access to paying customers, but does not actually have the power to restrict access.

    It's not possible to publish something in a way that doesn't have "the practical effect of giving everyone access to it." Not unless there's a copyright law to prevent it.

    For games and programs, the creators can use keys to prevent people from copying them, but for any other form of art, their work can be recorded and copied and distributed by anyone who has access to a single computer.

    It only needs to be legally downloaded once in order to be illegally downloaded a million times afterwards.
  • ArdanisArdanis Member Posts: 1,736
    edited June 2018
    The entire thing is basically being run on the honor system at this point.

    This is how I personally perceive the market myself - not losing sleep over "how many people I can bar from illegally downloading my game?", but looking at Steamspy and asking "how many people I can attract to pay for my game?". And suddenly the piracy issue becomes non-existant, because it doesn't enter into calculation in the first place.
    Of course, for large companies with AAA releases it is still different, as they have to return enough to cover huge production expenses, but for small devs? Oh, come on...

    PS Just in case - I'm speaking purely for myself here (and how I envision my future in game industry), this is not an official Beamdog statement :)
  • mashedtatersmashedtaters Member Posts: 2,266
    The only thing copywrite law really does nowadays is give giant corporations the power of the state against their competition via minutia.

    I personally believe that ALL copywrite law should be completely abolished, and that intellectual property should be protected via secrecy, not with the power of the state.

    In the case of artistic talent, you may be able to replicate the product itself, but you will never replicate the talent without the artist.

    Corporations are always publishing feel good articles and trainings on how their most valuable assets are their employees. This just isn’t true. Their most valuable assets are their name brands and their legal rights to their products. Without those legal rights, their employees would, in reality, become their most valuable assets.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    edited June 2018
    jjstraka34 said:

    In the age of the internet, unless you are willing to prosecute MILLIONS of people for breaking copyright law or stealing intellectual property, they are effectively worthless.

    This is not true. You don't have to prosecute everyone who downloads illegal work. You just need to prosecute the people who post it online on their websites--those are the ones who are actively profiting off of someone's labor. Remove that content from those websites, and people will get it from the people who actually worked hard to create that content. Culling content from those websites doesn't hurt consumers; it just penalizes career plagiarists who make a living by copying other people's work.

    Or, better yet, just require those websites to pay royalties to the original creators based on view counts or downloads and such. That way, consumers can access content from a broader range of sources while still supporting their favorite artists.

    Copywrite law is subject to abuse--Disney is a huge offender on that front--but I am a writer, and copywrite law is the only reason the novel I've been working on for 5 years cannot be rampantly plagiarized with zero consequence. Without those protections, "novelist" would simply not exist as a profession.

    Look up your favorite artist on Wikipedia and find out what they did before they started making money as artists. Without copywrite laws, they'd still be working their old day jobs, and they would have had neither the time nor the resources to create their work and provide it to you. Making high-quality art isn't something you do over a weekend--it takes years of effort.

    Put it this way. Imagine if people could steal thousands of hours of your labor in 5 minutes, and take all of the profit as well as the credit for your work. Would you want that behavior to be legal or illegal?

    Even Patreon content could easily be plagiarized in the absence of a law against it. Can you think of a single artist who makes a living by begging their audience for donations? If artists could live on our work without relying on copyright, we would.

    Copyright law is the entire basis of my lifelong dream to be a writer. Without it, that dream would be ash.
    Post edited by semiticgoddess on
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    To put it more succinctly: if you noticed one day that over 90% your paycheck was going to somebody else, would you complain? If you were down to 10% of your normal salary, would you keep working 40 hours a week, or would you switch jobs so you could keep feeding your kids?

    That's the literal reality that artists would face in a world truly void of copyright protections.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,459
    semiticgod said:

    To put it more succinctly: if you noticed one day that over 90% your paycheck was going to somebody else, would you complain? If you were down to 10% of your normal salary, would you keep working 40 hours a week, or would you switch jobs so you could keep feeding your kids?

    That's the literal reality that artists would face in a world truly void of copyright protections.

    I'm not sure this is true. It's undoubtedly the case that the internet changes what were previously successful business models, but it opens up opportunities to balance the threats.

    In the past an artist might have sold a few pictures to friends and acquaintances, then perhaps got an outlet through a market stall, then perhaps sold through a gallery. For the really successful ones they can then move on to have their own show. The numbers of people seeing their work though remains pretty small for all but the elite few. The internet provides the opportunity for far more people to see their work, which means they can allow it to be sold for a much lower price (at least for digital copies or prints). There are plenty of online art galleries now following this model - as mentioned above similar changes have already been made in the way music is sold.

    I agree though that some copyright protection is a good thing, though the length of protection and type of things that can be protected can be too great (I can't see how it's a good thing to copyright the human genome for instance). Others have referred to the total lack of copyright protection, but (at least in the UK) I don't think that's the case. While some years ago illegal downloading via torrents was all the rage with no real enforcement, I think there's significantly less of it now. That's the result of a range of different things, e.g.
    - there have been a number of changes in the law to allow enforcement on individuals as well as websites (though there's an ongoing battle about the appropriate balance with individual rights).
    - a major factor is the growth of streaming services like Spotify and Netflix that allow legal access to material at a cost low enough to persuade people that the convenience, legality and safety benefits outweigh the cost.
    - I think the industry campaigns about piracy of one sort or another have had some effect on culture, so that illegal downloading is no longer seen as an entirely victimless crime.
  • mashedtatersmashedtaters Member Posts: 2,266
    edited June 2018
    semiticgod said:

    To put it more succinctly: if you noticed one day that over 90% your paycheck was going to somebody else, would you complain? If you were down to 10% of your normal salary, would you keep working 40 hours a week, or would you switch jobs so you could keep feeding your kids?

    That's the literal reality that artists would face in a world truly void of copyright protections.

    I disagree with this. There are tons of youtubers and artists that release their content for free and live solely on what the government classified as donations. Many people are willing to pay artists for ongoing content.

    It’s the same argument against DRM for games. Sure, you can take a DRM-free game and post it on the internet for people to download for free. But it doesn’t really happen because most people are willing to pay for worthwhile content and art.

    If there was no copywrite or patents, the world would be much different as a whole. You couldn’t predict what would happen to artists in a world void of copywrite protections because the entire game would change.

    But you know there would still be artists and there would still be people willing to pay for art. I believe that copywrite and patent law, like most things government, have the opposite effect of what they’re trying to accomplish. Instead of incentivizing artists to create more, these types of laws tend to make potential artists afraid of creating anything at all for fear of being sued for minuscule copywrite infringements. This is especiallg true in the patent world of engineering.
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    IPR is indeed an interesting minefield of regulations that are unable to keep pace with Technology.
  • GreenWarlockGreenWarlock Member Posts: 1,354
    The original article seems to consfuse USA law and principles, like free speech and fair use, as universal laws that apply world wide. This is clearly not the case, I am not aware of any European country adopting either of those principles into law today, for example, and UK was a popular destination for libel lawsuits largely because of their lack of free speech laws.

    Now the internet was a US invention, and a lot of its early guiding principles were guided by ideals of US Citizens, often with a more independent view, hoping that going global would put it beyond the regulatory abilities of any one nation - even the US itself. They are now learning the bitter truth - once something is big enough and generates enough revenue, governments around the world will come and claim their bite of something that they did not create. Once something is having a large social impact, governments around the world will take action to ensure they retain the primary influence over their populace.

    We are finally running into the world where EU legislation is at odds with US business practices. This should not be a surprise, as USA was happy to detain CEOs of FTSE 100 companies for merely transiting through US airports (back when online poker was big business in Europe, but illegal in USA). These problems are only going to get worse, as more countries take more interest in regulating internet access not only in their own countries, but on all traffic passing their borders. We note this case today purely because we think the EU is some kind of democracy, and will actually listen to its voters. (Note, majority of EU institutions and governing roles are not voted for by citizenry, the EU parliament is a talking shop, but not the place that regulations are forged and enforced).

    All hope is lost, abandon hope, etc.
    Sorry, you got me on a down day and I have no optimistic alternative or suggested action/resistance we could take that would make the blind bit of difference - just prepare yourself for the worst, and accept you did not think bleakly enough when preparing.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,371
    O_Bruce said:


    One more thing, piracy. Funny thing about it is, getting utterly rid of piracy wouldn't necessary transfer to more income for a content creator. That is because not every person who usually pirates stuff is ever going to buy a thing if a piracy was out of question. Second, there are people who pirate some stuff, and yet are still ending up buying the originals later. I, for example, was introduced to Baldur's Gate via pirated copy and in my lifetime I bought multiple copies of the original. I also tend to buy mangas I like (if they are avaliable in Poland, that is) even though official releases can be months behind and I am up to date with online scanlations. You know, factors like that also counts.

    Wow @O_Bruce I was just going to say that exact thing. When I was young and didn't have money I would get pirated copies of games from my cousin and check them out. Most of them I only looked at one time and never played them again because I didn't like them. If I liked one, I always bought a legit copy if for no other reason then to get the paper copy of the manual or keep up with the latest updates. I never would have taken a chance on purchasing even 10% of those titles because I got burned a lot buying games blind. Some companies made money they never would have because I got those pirated copies...
  • Yulaw9460Yulaw9460 Member Posts: 634
    edited November 2018
    Deleted.
    Post edited by Yulaw9460 on
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,459
    GreenWarlock said:

    Now the internet was a US invention, and a lot of its early guiding principles were guided by ideals of US Citizens, often with a more independent view, hoping that going global would put it beyond the regulatory abilities of any one nation - even the US itself.

    That seems like a bold claim. What's your definition of the internet?
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    I don't think there's room for a subjective definition of internet. Also, while the origins of the internet trace back to the US, I would argue that the internet we know today was kickstarted at CERN (i.e. in Europe). Be that as it may, it is certainly an international phenomenon since the 2000s.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,459
    A lot of what we normally think of as the internet is the World-wide web and that was created by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN.

    It's true that the largest scale use of networking protocols were put into practice in the US through the ARPANET network, but those protocols drew on work and more limited networks in the UK and France. My perception is that the initial growth of the internet as an open system, avoiding commercial or governmental control, was more to do with European attitudes than US ones. However, I admit my knowledge is limited and I'm prepared to be educated otherwise :p.
  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    O_Bruce said:

    As for content creators living off from things like Patreon - I disagree that it is not possible. It clearly is, although it depends on many factors. Your social skills, your self-promotion skills, your merit as a content creator, how you handle your content. It is also dependent on economics in your country. Just today I found out one of artists I support on Patreon posted new image and I checked how much he/she earns monthly just from Patreon. It's over 1200 dollars. For American, it's not that much if not barely enough. But for Polish, like me, oh boy, that's a - pardon my language - shitload of money. If I could earn that much thought passive income like Patreon, then I could make art full time. Really, that would be a dreams come true.

    One day (browser history says March 26th, 2017) a wild hare struck me and I visited a patreon's page because I realized practically all the artists and webcomics I read have patreons.

    I could not believe my eyes at how much it was at this one artist's, so I went to ALL their pages and figured out how much they made per month. (I count 26 of them)

    Most amounted to a few tens to few hundred dollars per month. A couple were around a thousand/month.

    And then there was this one that I'd checked that annihilated the rest. Sakimichan has thousands of patreon followers and I can't remember if it was half a million dollars per year, or 3 million dollars per year.

  • O_BruceO_Bruce Member Posts: 2,790
    @Quickblade
    Of course, their earning depends on number of patrons, "rewards" tiers, their marketing skills, merit as a creator etc. And of course, earning will vary.

    My point still stands. There are people who are able to live on patreon.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    People do live off of Patreon, but Patreon is not a donation system. It's a publishing platform. You're not paying the creator just to support their work--you pay to gain access to more content, just like any other form of publishing.

    The structure is different and the amount of money is smaller, but copyright protections protect Patreon as well as other methods of publishing. You can plagiarize Patreon content just as easily as any other kind of content. Without those laws, Patreon would suffer just like any other platform.
  • FardragonFardragon Member Posts: 4,511
    Grond0 said:

    A lot of what we normally think of as the internet is the World-wide web and that was created by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN.

    It's true that the largest scale use of networking protocols were put into practice in the US through the ARPANET network, but those protocols drew on work and more limited networks in the UK and France. My perception is that the initial growth of the internet as an open system, avoiding commercial or governmental control, was more to do with European attitudes than US ones. However, I admit my knowledge is limited and I'm prepared to be educated otherwise :p.

    The attitudes of scientists are not necessarily the same as those of average citizens of their home nation...
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