The text of Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive has just been finalised

[alex_theman]

As you may know, Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive has gone through a long and winding process to get this far. While some minor changes have been made, they will still vastly affect large swathes of the internet,  including this forum and potentially even LMG as a whole, entrench big players like Google and Facebook, who can afford to make robust filters, and hurt independent creators by making it significantly harder for them to distribute thier content. Article 13 basically requires that sites remove any possible copyright infringing content, or get licenses for that content, even if the content would likely fall under fair use exceptions. Indeed, one of the groups lobbying for the bill, along with the legacy music and film industries, was Audible Magic, a company who sells filtering software.

 

However, you can still do something (besides getting the word out) about this poorly conceived law if you're in a member of the EU. Look at the article below to see your options.

 

https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/

 

Quote

In the evening of February 13, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council concluded the trilogue negotiations with a final text for the new EU Copyright Directive.

For two years we’ve debated different drafts and versions of the controversial Articles 11 and 13. Now, there is no more ambiguity: This law will fundamentally change the internet as we know it – if it is adopted in the upcoming final vote. But we can still prevent that!

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

F

[WereCatf]

The absolute worst thing about this whole thing is how it hurts small start-ups. I've been railing against any and all measures that hurt start-ups and favour the big corps for years, but the people in power just do not fucking care about such things; only the money going into their pockets, or other kinds of favours they're getting, matter. It's absolutely fucking disgusting.

[Mihle]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

The absolute worst thing about this whole thing is how it hurts small start-ups. I've been railing against any and all measures that hurt start-ups and favour the big corps for years, but the people in power just do not fucking care about such things; only the money going into their pockets, or other kinds of favours they're getting, matter. It's absolutely fucking disgusting.

The directive spesifically mentions that it doesnt matter for very small companies, but don't have an exact link or quote right now (on phone).

 

Tho, I agree that laws should generally benefit small companies/Startups over big cooperations. Big cooperations already have benefits by just being big that startups/small companies does not have.

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Mihle said:

The directive spesifically mentions that it doesnt matter for very small companies, but don't have an exact link or quote right now (on phone).

But it does!

Quote

Last September’s version of Article 13 excluded small businesses, but that’s no longer the case.

If a service is publicly available for less than three years, with fewer than five million unique visitors per month, and an annual turnover of less than €10 million, only then it is excluded.

Those are pretty hefty limitations, plus even if the start-up is covered by those, they still need to actively seek to make deals with copyright-holders. Three years is nothing, it can take a lot longer than that just to get the company barely off the ground!

 

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-reaches-deal-on-article-13-and-other-copyright-reform-plans-190213/

[myselfolli]

But big corporations bring in the big bucks, so the laws will always favour them, that's just the sad reality that we live in.

[Taf the Ghost]

13 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

The absolute worst thing about this whole thing is how it hurts small start-ups. I've been railing against any and all measures that hurt start-ups and favour the big corps for years, but the people in power just do not fucking care about such things; only the money going into their pockets, or other kinds of favours they're getting, matter. It's absolutely fucking disgusting.

 

That's the point of it, realistically.

[duncannah]

Welp, time to get a VPN

[Mihle]

52 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

But it does!

Those are pretty hefty limitations, plus even if the start-up is covered by those, they still need to actively seek to make deals with copyright-holders. Three years is nothing, it can take a lot longer than that just to get the company barely off the ground!

 

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-reaches-deal-on-article-13-and-other-copyright-reform-plans-190213/

My mistake then :"(

[Mihle]

51 minutes ago, myselfolli said:

But big corporations bring in the big bucks, so the laws will always favour them, that's just the sad reality that we live in.

Who does it factor that is bigger than Google? Because it doesn't favour Google at all....

[Stefan Payne]

Only Italy, Hungary and other East Countrys might save us.

Maybe Denmark.

 

The rest will vote (mostly) yes, especially the Social Democratic Partys...

The one that should be for the small people, the workers of the Countrys they represent.

But they don't seem to care.

 

The ones who lobbied for this shit are most likely the big media Companys like Axel-Springer, Broder and co, who are dying and trying to get some money elswhere...

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

Who cares it'll be nuclear winter in 2 years anyway XD

 

 

/s I very much do care fuck these bastards

[suicidalfranco]

Save us Italy!

[Syntaxvgm]

A future where you can't link a picture of a potato peeler is incoming. 

 

 

F

[ravenshrike]

Welp, time to stop using EU VPN locations.

[peanuts104]

Europe would find a way to ruin the internet.

[Tech_Dreamer]

there goes my pepe meme posts.   #NoFilter #Wait

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

DCMA turned up to 15. Sigh. Please dont pass this people. Even the big companies like youtube and FB will be forced to be even more aggressive in their takedowns and thus cause more and more issues like the stupidass verge situation. 

[Guest]

If political discussions were allowed here I would write like 30 A4 papers
 

3 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Only Italy, Hungary and other East Countrys might save us.

Maybe Denmark.

 

2 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Save us Italy!

We may...

Let's just say some center-right influent dude here I would say no name about it in Italy wants to lead the "changing spring" in the next European elections, and it is particularly focused on banning those articles, and is loved from the people even of other contries and hated from every leftist existing in this planet

But he also has to deal with the other "crazy" half of the Italian government, which is totally messed up in every way

The funny thing is he likes the memes about himself, which is something a lot of people does

I'm not saying if I'm going to vote for him...

Edited February 15, 2019 by Guest

[Thaldor]

It's sad how people only read the "popular" parts and know only the parts that someone sees problematic for a reason or another and all this without reading the whole thing.

 

I don't know how many times it must be said that the article 13 doesn't say that everyone should have impenetrable automatic filter in place. It says everyone should have automatic filter that reflects the size of the platform and the revenue and size of the company behind it. No one expects some small start-up to have same kind of automatic filter as Content-ID which probably will be used as a refence what kind of filter huge platforms with megacorporations behind them should have (like Facebook). Small start-ups can quite probably have a filter that just refuses someone from uploading video titled "Spider-man FULL MOVIE!" because everyone knows they don't have the resources to have anything better. That part of the article 13 is basicly aimed at Mega, Openload and other platforms that have no filtering and which are solemly used to spread copyrighted material and refuse to remove it or it takes them too long (also reflected on the size of the platform and company behind it) to remove it when the copyright holder demands contents removal.

 

Companies can be hold accountable for copyright violations that come from users uploading copyrighted material to their platform. But only if the company doesn't have automatic filter reflecting their size and userbase and/or the company refuses or intentionally longers removal of copyrighted material uploaded. Again the keywords are "reflecting the size of the platform and the size and revenue of the company behind it", no one will hold some small start-up accountable for material uploaded to it's platform if they don't have same kind of automatic filter as Content-ID or if they don't have 100 people to go through copyright claims as long as they have what they can have. Something like Openload could very well be sued because they have big userbase and with it big revenue, but they don't have anykind of automatic filter or it's just very poor and they clearly have resources to have better but for some reason or another they don't have it. And here it also will be case by case, like some platform might have good reasons why they don't need strong filter (not wanting to restrict the freedom of the user probably isn't one of those reasons).

 

Why YouTube then fights so hard against article 13? Because the article 13 also states that if some company gives some licences for a platform, those licence also apply to the users of the said platform. There's also some tones that say that the platform must offer every user the same licence deal. These, in some light, are very dangerous parts for YouTube because at the time YouTubes TOS (licence deal) basicly says that anything uploaded to YouTube, YouTube can use as they wish, so that song your favorite artist just uploaded to YouTube, you can reupload it and it will be legal in EU because as YouTube has all the rights to do with the song what they want, so does every user of YouTube, because YouTube cannot offer big players exclusive licence deals that would make exception in that part.

 

Also for those screaming that EU doesn't have Fair Use -law. Fair use is written within the copyright laws so there is no need to write separated fair use -laws. In some cases those freedoms in the copyright laws are even more broad than the US fair use-law, like it's no where stated how much you can quote, lend or otherwise use someone elses copyrighted material as long as you do it in good will (you don't cheapen/defame/degrade your source) and credit the source and you use it just as much as you need (so you don't quote the whole page while you only needed one sentence) and you really need their material (like you cannot take a clip from LOTR movie when you are making a video about Star Trek without somehow referencing to LOTR).

[Lurick]

14 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

-snip-

You know, "best effort" is tossed around a lot but is nowhere defined who determines what's "best effort" has/should/etc. been or will be made. Maybe I'm a copyright holder and I determine that because you don't have AI filters in place and a team of people scanning every upload to your service then you haven't made a "best effort". If you look at the text below, it's basically saying (at least from what I can read) the rights holder gets to determine what's "best effort" but even that's vague as heck.

 

If unauthorised works and other subject matter become available despite the best efforts made in  cooperation  with  rightholders  as  required  by  this  Directive,  the  online  content  sharing service  providers  should  be  liable  in  relation  to  the  specific  works  and  other  subject  matter for  which  they  have  received  the  relevant  and  necessary  information  from  rightholders,unless  they  demonstrate  that  they  have  made  their  best  efforts  pursuant  to  high  industry standards of professional diligence.  In addition, where specific unauthorised works or other subject matter have become available on the services, including irrespective of whether the best efforts were made and regardless of whether  right  holders  have  made  available  the  necessary  information  in  advance,  the  online content sharing service providers should be liable for unauthorised acts of communication to the public of works and other subject matter, when upon receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice,  they  fail  to  act  expeditiously  to  remove  from  their  websites  or  disable  access  to  the notified  works  and  subject  matter. Additionally,  these  services  should  also  be  liable  if  they fail  to  demonstrate  that  they  have  made  their  best  efforts  to  prevent  the  future  uploads of specific  unauthorised  works,  based  on  relevant  and  necessary  information  provided  by rightholders for that purpose.

[Thaldor]

17 minutes ago, Lurick said:

-snip-

Actually they have.

 

From the older proposal:

Quote

5. The measures referred to in point (a) of paragraph 4 shall be effective and proportionate, taking into account, among other factors:

 

    (a)the nature and size of the services, in particular whether they are provided by a microenterprise or a small-sized enterprise within the meaning of Title I of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, and their audience;

 

    (b)the amount and the type of works or other subject matter uploaded by the users of the services;

 

    (c)the availability and costs of the measures as well as their effectiveness in light of technological developments in line with the industry best practice referred to in paragraph 8.

Quote

8. The Commission and the Member States shall encourage stakeholder dialogues to define best practices for the measures referred to in point (a) of paragraph 4. Member States shall also endeavour to establish mechanisms to facilitate the assessment of the effectiveness and proportionality of these measures and provide the Commission regularly with information on those mechanisms. The Commission shall, in consultation with online content sharing service providers, rightholders and other relevant stakeholders and taking into account the results of the stakeholder dialogues and the national mechanisms, issue guidance on the application of the measures referred to in point (a) of paragraph 4.

The second quote is more important for this subject. It may seem very vague, but it's actually quite clear that the commission will be deciding what are the best practices and for that they are basicly going to ask for the service providers (Alphabet, Facebook and so on), rightholders (record companies, publishers and so on) and stakeholders (basicly anyone with competence on the field like EFF and other associations) and comparing that to what is already in use and what kind of mechanisms and practices member states have made and how well they perform. They can't clearly state that "this" and "that" must be like "they have here" or "those have there" because then the article wouldn't have flexibility to adapt what is still coming and how things evolve. The first quote is for that even those best practices decided by the commission are flexible to account that not everyone has the resources or need to have as good systems as those best practices define.

 

But what you actually quoted is basicly same system as DMCA. Now spieced with consequenses for not acting when claims come, so service providers can no longer wipe their asses with takedown notices (what many service providers do with DMCA claims) without being screwed for doing so. What they probably actaully mean is that the rightholders can sue service providers to EU court of justice if they feel the service provider haven't done what they could do and then it would be up to the court of justice to determine if the service provider has done enough (this might sound bad if you have only read the orders that EU court of justice has made to companies like Google and Microsoft, basicly the ones that are media sexy, but they have done a lot good calls like the "Tele2" judgement where basicly it's illegal for ISPs to record other data than what officials (police) requires and what they need for billing meaning that with that judgement copyrighttrolling became a lot harder, or when they ruled that circumventing DRM in game systems may be legal in some cases).

[Eaglerino]

all the big American conglomerates need to just remove EU access to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and everything else for a while. It wouldn't take very long. But my guess is those companies would happily support censorship and strict copyright laws so they would have no reason to

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, Thaldor said:

*snip*

Doesn't it say something like that the ones that hold the copyright must work together a reasonable  ammount with with sites that has the filters?

 

Edit: some of it was mentioned above I think

[Thaldor]

3 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Doesn't it say something like that the ones that hold the copyright must work together a reasonable  amount with with sites that has the filters?

That is the stakeholder negotiation part which freely quoted says that the member states will need to encourage the CR owners to negotiate with the service providers to find the practices that are doable for the service providers and good enough for the CR owners. These then are reported to the EU commission which will take them into account when considering what are the best practices in the bigger picture.