Sweden preparing new IP law to put pressure on actors like Facebook

[Spindel]

Summary

”Efter ett lagförslag som tvingar Facebook att betala medier för att få dela deras innehåll har bolaget blockerat alla nyheter på plattformen i Australien. En liknande lagförslag är på gång även i Sverige, vilket välkomnas av branschorganisationen Tidningsutgivarna.”

Rough translation:

”Following the purposed law that forces Facebook to pay media companies for shared content (on the platform) the company (Facebook) has blocked all news on their platform in Australia. A similar law is under constriction in Sweden, which is welcomed by the branch organization Tidningsutgivarna (Newspaper publishers).”

 

Quotes

 

Quote

Patrik Sundberg är rättssakkunnig på justitiedepartementet och huvudansvarig för genomförandet av artikel 15 i EU:s upphovsrättsdirektiv till svensk lag, som ska reglera förhållandet mellan mediebolagen och it-bolagen.

– Syftet med artikel 15 är att stärka tidningsutgivarnas ställning på nätet genom att ge dem ensamrätt till sina publikationer, säger han.

Translation:

 

Patrik Sundberg who is a legal expert in the department of justice and has the main responsibility for implementation of article 15 in EUs IP-directive within swedish law, with the purpose to regulate the relationship between media companies and IT-companies.

 

- The purpose with article 15 is to streanghten the newspublishers position on internet and to give them the exclusive rights to their publikations.

 

Quote

Anders Ygeman (S), energi- och digitaliseringsminister, hade inte väntat sig att Facebook skulle gå så långt som bolaget nu gjort i Australien. Han ser helst att it-jättarna och nyhetsmedierna själva gör upp och skriver avtal, men det som hänt har påverkat hans syn på behovet av lagstiftning.

 

Translation:

 

Anders Ygeman, minister of energy and digitalization, didn’t expect that Facebook would go to the lenghts they have in Australia. He would rather see that the IT-giants and media companies comes to terms and make contracts by themselves, but current circumstances has changed his views towards the needs of regulations.

 

My thoughts

I think a regulation of this is needed and we might see a reshuffeling of the status of social platforms.

 

Sources

(In swedish)
https://www.svt.se/kultur/ny-svensk-lag-ska-pressa-facebook

[Levent]

Eveyone is getting on the hypetrain. 

[jagdtigger]

This so dumb, why should anyone pay for linking to a site which is basically free advertisement for them....

[Spindel]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

This so dumb, why should anyone pay for linking to a site which is basically free advertisement for them....

As I understand it it’s not so much linking as publishing entire articles on platforms like FB. 

[TopKitty]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

This so dumb, why should anyone pay for linking to a site which is basically free advertisement for them....

The block Australian media outlets experienced only proves the fact that organizations would be willing to pay Facebook and Google to be indexed an given reach not the other way around, hopefully the blocks go through

[Fasterthannothing]

I absolutely hate social media but this is absolutely insane. I hope Facebook keeps up the pressure and the governments have to cave on this stupid idea. Charging for news per link is not a good idea. Do you know what that will do to news companies. Not to mention why does the government think that tech companies should be paying for the privilege to give the news companies clicks and views? That's the most backwards thing.

[Taf the Ghost]

Whelp, looks like the Big Social networks had a major fallout with the other major players. This is going to be fun. 

[TetraSky]

Oh great, another country trying this...

Another country that doesn't understand that, facebook doesn't need them and you can't just pass a law that discriminate against FB in particular and force them to pay the media companies, when they are the ones putting their links/articles on FB. FB doesn't need the media companies. They don't need to have news on their platform. They are free to kick them off if they want to.

 

Instead of a "link tax", which is entirely ridiculous and literal free publicity for the media companies who willingly put their stuff on Facebook in order to reach a greater public than they would otherwise... Why not just ask Facebook to implement an Ad revenue system, where a portion of the ads displayed on the media company's Facebook page, goes to them? Kind of similar to Youtube AdSense, where the ads on your videos, contribute to your revenue...

[starry]

This wont work, work on breaking these companies up instead.

 

Except its a US company so swedan cant do anything.

[Spindel]

For clarification:

 

1. This is NOT aimed at Facebook alone but all social media platforms. 
 

2. This isn’t entierly clear by the article in OP, but you can currently interpet it as we being aimed more at posting full articles not just links. 
 

 

Now to a thought in the discussion:

Even if it turns out to be a ”link” tax.
Is it fair that a 3rd party (FB, Twitter etc) makes advertising money on your original work without sharing that profit?

We can have a separate discussion about IP law, but as it stands this is kind of a strong argument for this, meaning: ”No one else has the right to make profits from content you cerate without your consent”

[AlTech]

3 hours ago, Tedny said:

So, it really will happened 

 

4 hours ago, Levent said:

Eveyone is getting on the hypetrain. 

These were the people on the original hype train, they passed the legislation in the EU parliament in either 2019 or 2020. And they had 2 years to implement the new changes, this is just their implementation of it. Each EU country will need to make their implementation of this Link Tax and ofc the Upload filters that weren’t supposed to be upload filters.

[TheReal1980]

Swedish:

Det är bättre att folk slutar använda Facebook.

 

Translation:

It is better if people stop using Facebook.

[robigan]

7 hours ago, Spindel said:

Summary

”Efter ett lagförslag som tvingar Facebook att betala medier för att få dela deras innehåll har bolaget blockerat alla nyheter på plattformen i Australien. En liknande lagförslag är på gång även i Sverige, vilket välkomnas av branschorganisationen Tidningsutgivarna.”

Rough translation:

”Following the purposed law that forces Facebook to pay media companies for shared content (on the platform) the company (Facebook) has blocked all news on their platform in Australia. A similar law is under constriction in Sweden, which is welcomed by the branch organization Tidningsutgivarna (Newspaper publishers).”

 

Quotes

 

 

 

My thoughts

I think a regulation of this is needed and we might see a reshuffeling of the status of social platforms.

 

Sources

(In swedish)
https://www.svt.se/kultur/ny-svensk-lag-ska-pressa-facebook

And there goes sweden, canada, italy, etc. following australia. Knew it that this would have been a cascading event. Yes I believe we must do something so that news companies don’t lose that many profits or can thrive. But this is not the way to do it. It fundamentally breaks the internet if you pay to link to a website. Unfortunately I do not have an idea as to how to accomplish this any other way. Maybe embeds? Idk.

[robigan]

4 minutes ago, TheReal1980 said:

Swedish:

Det är bättre att folk slutar använda Facebook.

 

Translation:

It is better if people stop using Facebook.

I wish I could. But it’s everywhere. Let alone the fact that I need an acc for using my oq2

[Spindel]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

My solution:

• Sweden bans Facebook in Sweden
• Facebook removes all data on, and stops serving any entity related to Sweden

And likewise for any other country who wants to join in on the action

As long as someone bringa back Lunarstorm* in the process.

 

Kramizar och pussizar

 

*Lunarstorm was a Swedish social network site in some ways very similar to (early) Facebook but it predated facebook by 5-10 years (depending on from what starting date you count since there was another site with another name that morphed into what became Lunarstorm). Lunarstorm shut down some time around 2010. 

[suicidalfranco]

just. let. these. journalism. companies. die.

They can only blame themselves for not doing a single thing to change in the past 30 years or so.

The world moved on, they decided on their own to be left behind

[Lurick]

4 hours ago, Spindel said:

For clarification:

 

1. This is NOT aimed at Facebook alone but all social media platforms. 
 

2. This isn’t entierly clear by the article in OP, but you can currently interpet it as we being aimed more at posting full articles not just links. 
 

 

Now to a thought in the discussion:

Even if it turns out to be a ”link” tax.
Is it fair that a 3rd party (FB, Twitter etc) makes advertising money on your original work without sharing that profit?

We can have a separate discussion about IP law, but as it stands this is kind of a strong argument for this, meaning: ”No one else has the right to make profits from content you cerate without your consent”

So I should charge Google Maps for providing driving directions to my business?

[Spindel]

9 minutes ago, Lurick said:

So I should charge Google Maps for providing driving directions to my business?

Actually yes, since the data Google harvests on you is worth way more than the cost of the latest map pack for a garmin GPS. 

[Lurick]

35 minutes ago, Spindel said:

As long as someone bringa back Lunarstorm* in the process.

 

Kramizar och pussizar

 

*Lunarstorm was a Swedish social network site in some ways very similar to (early) Facebook but it predated facebook by 5-10 years (depending on from what starting date you count since there was another site with another name that morphed into what became Lunarstorm). Lunarstorm shut down some time around 2010. 

And they will get taxed by the way all the same, along with any startup as well hampering their growth. The point of a tax by the way is to reduce something, so if you tax news links you reduce the number of links therefor reducing traffic causing newspapers (who were too lazy to monetize their sites earlier) to demand more money basically leading down a very deep rabbit hole. Facebook blocking news is a logical outcome of taxing something. People also assume facebook is a dominant source of news information when decrying their move, it's not, it's the news sites that still exist and still have websites.

 

Edit:

And we haven't even gotten to the other problematic part of the law -- which is that it requires Facebook and Google to give newspapers heads up to algorithmic changes. The Australia law is nothing more than an attempt by big newspapers to figure out how to game the system better to crush competition.

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, Spindel said:

As I understand it it’s not so much linking as publishing entire articles on platforms like FB. 

Then it should be a law that addresses that not simply linking to an article. This is what I don't understand. Why would they create a law that targets the link? Obviously the link is the least of the problem. The law should be about using other peoples news articles on your own website without paying. If it is a simple link with a brief description of what the article is about and doesn't serve as a replacement of the article itself then no money should be required to be paid. I mean they are going after Google as well in the other laws already out. Google obviously doesn’t have replacements of articles on their search engine but simply links to articles when you search for them using their search engine. Its simply stupid that they are creating a law that kills the forest along with the weeds. 

[Mihle]

I am against Facebook and Google having to pay them for only a link.

 

But I am for them having to pay for quoting quite a bit of articles or even the hole article, that is only fair. That seems like what Sweden wants to do.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, Spindel said:

Actually yes, since the data Google harvests on you is worth way more than the cost of the latest map pack for a garmin GPS. 

Thats called profit. The fact that you think its not ok simply because they make more than they spend is actually crazy. I guess amd should be in trouble because cpus cost way more than it cost to produce them. Let's be honest here and admit that Google provides a service that most people use and its incredibly useful so yeah they made a way to profit off of it but I would rather do that then go back to the days where only people who could afford to pay a monthly subscription to a gps service could navigate well. Just because a company makes alot of profit does not mean others are entitled to it. It honestly baffles me to think that people would think that Google should pay for links to websites in its search engine when without the search engine alot of websites would have little hope of being found by people. I mean I don't know if this is still a thing but I remember people paying for their website to come up first in relevant searches rather than asking Google to pay them to have them come up in a search. But I guess now Google is too profitable meaning they are now evil and we must destroy them through regulations even if it screws other people over that aren't as big as Google or Facebook. 

[Spindel]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Thats called profit. The fact that you think its not ok simply because they make more than they spend is actually crazy. I guess amd should be in trouble because cpus cost way more than it cost to produce them. Let's be honest here and admit that Google provides a service that most people use and its incredibly useful so yeah they made a way to profit off of it but I would rather do that then go back to the days where only people who could afford to pay a monthly subscription to a gps service could navigate well. Just because a company makes alot of profit does not mean others are entitled to it. It honestly baffles me to think that people would think that Google should pay for links to websites in its search engine when without the search engine alot of websites would have little hope of being found by people. I mean I don't know if this is still a thing but I remember people paying for their website to come up first in relevant searches rather than asking Google to pay them to have them come up in a search. But I guess now Google is too profitable meaning they are now evil and we must destroy them through regulations even if it screws other people over that aren't as big as Google or Facebook. 

Profit is ok. 
 

But you and a lot of people don’t value your data. With Google you pay $1000 for a $10 product 

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, Spindel said:

Profit is ok. 
 

But you and a lot of people don’t value your data. With Google you pay $1000 for a $10 product 

I pay Google nothing. Also alot of the tracking stuff is used to improve Google maps itself. Knowing where the traffic is and approximate time delays is all done by tracking people. Would you prefer going back to the days where GPS navigation is only for people who had money? Information is power and honestly Google maps is super useful to many people especially workers that need GPS to do their work. How about this. Go and sell your Information for 1000 dollars and get back to me because I bet you wouldn't be able to do it. Sure Google makes money off of our Information but so what? I can't sell my Information and it's not like we aren't tracked by so many other companies already. The idea of privacy in the modern world is a joke and if you want privacy then go to the middle of nowhere and stop using technology otherwise you won't have privacy. 

[Spindel]

48 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I pay Google nothing. Also alot of the tracking stuff is used to improve Google maps itself. Knowing where the traffic is and approximate time delays is all done by tracking people. Would you prefer going back to the days where GPS navigation is only for people who had money? Information is power and honestly Google maps is super useful to many people especially workers that need GPS to do their work. How about this. Go and sell your Information for 1000 dollars and get back to me because I bet you wouldn't be able to do it. Sure Google makes money off of our Information but so what? I can't sell my Information and it's not like we aren't tracked by so many other companies already. The idea of privacy in the modern world is a joke and if you want privacy then go to the middle of nowhere and stop using technology otherwise you won't have privacy. 

TANSTAAFL