back to article JURI's out, Euro copyright votes in: Whoa, did the EU just 'break the internet'?

JURI, European Parliament's legal affairs committee, voted today to approve article 11 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which allows news publishers to seek payment for reuse of snippets of articles, in a narrow 13:12 vote. It also voted to back a more controversial measure, article 13 of the same …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'new exceptions for data mining'

    Data-mining: What's that part about specifically... Anyone know?

    Dear Reg Editors please URL link that section as you usually do...

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Dear Reg Editors please URL link that section as you usually do...

      Perhaps they were subject to a 'take down' request or worse a payment of £100,000 for publishing a link to their site.

      In those immortal words from the days of Laurel and Hardy...

      "Another fine mess..."

  2. tiggity Silver badge

    bad for small sites

    Obv. any method to identify material as infringing is dubious as context matters, false positives / negatives etc

    However even though methods will be flawed, big companies can create them

    Small companies will not have the resources to do that, so will have finacial burden of buying off teh shelf expensive solution to check infringing, or just remove that storage / data providing functionality from their website.

    We have already seen how flawed this will be with US DMCA takedowns - there is no penalty for a copyright holder making an incorrect / malicious takedown, so it can be a huge burden (and for an easy life data provider often takedown non infringing material as it saves time / money) and DMCA has also become a good silencing tactic (e.g. nice way to remove a (bad) review of your game as video review includes short snippet of a bug in action)

    Any system of takedown needs a penalty structure so false takedown requests cost a lot of money (after all, it is expensive to service takedown requests "properly" (i.e. checking the takedown is valid) as cannot readily be automated

    1. John Lilburne

      Re: bad for small sites

      Multiple flaws here:

      1. A small website won't have millions of uploads by users requiring automatic checking.

      2. There is no requirement for a website to check the validity of a takedown request.

      3. The number of malicious takedown requests are (according to Google) extremely small.

      I doubt that one could point to more than a few dozen in the last 20 years.

      4. There is no penalty for an uploader mistakenly thinking that their use is OK.

      1. eldakka

        Re: bad for small sites

        > 3. The number of malicious takedown requests are (according to Google) extremely small.

        Seriously?

        I believe it was reported here on a Reg article that Google gets in excess of 1 million take-down requests a day, and that 95% of them are rejected as being improper (malicious, dodgy, inept, just plain out WTF?-type).

        1. John Lilburne

          Re: bad for small sites

          Don't be daft. The vast majority of the ones rejected are because they URL has already been reported. IOW they aren't malicious they are duplicates, the URL in question has already been removed.

          1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

            Re: bad for small sites

            The vast majority of the ones rejected are because they URL has already been reported. IOW they aren't malicious they are duplicates, the URL in question has already been removed.

            Citation, please. To actual data.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What next, the Post Office wanting to open all my letters before they arrive to make sure there is nothing infringing copyright ?

    I wonder how much was spent by copyright cartels on getting these Stephen Conroy style measures through.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Opening mail can actually be done under RIPA, just fyi.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There are thousands of full-time lobbyists who live in Brussels and Strasbourg whose job is to petition for special treatment for their particular interest. I don't know if you recall Tim Worstall, but he described the time when the rare metals lobby, in a time of a price slump, lobbied the EU for a ban on incandescent bulbs (under the guise of the 'green' movement) to force the sale of toxic 'low energy' bulbs and drive the rare metals price up. So we created a pollution mountain, got poorer, and had worse lighting - and then 10 years after the ban the LED bulb went mainstream. And I doubt that's the most egregious case.

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        "There are thousands of full-time lobbyists who live in Brussels and Strasbourg whose job is to petition for special treatment for their particular interest"

        I've never figured out why lobbying is legal.

        Reporter outside parliament:

        "Who are you ?"

        "I'm a lobbyist working for a cartel of oil companies hoping the gov will relax pollution regs so we can carry on poisoning the population"

        " Hows it going?"

        "well , we've just donated $5m to the party to , get them in the mood, as it were ... so fingers crossed"

        "good stuff , good luck with that."

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          I've never figured out why lobbying is legal.

          In the US, because it's protected by the Constitution, specifically by the First Amendment. The freedom of speech clause obviously applies, and it's not difficult to argue that a law attempting to excessively restrict lobbying would fall foul of the petition-the-Government clause.

          It's even possible that SCOTUS would find a prohibition on lobbying a violation of the assembly clause, as they did with California's blanket-primary law in California Democratic Party v. Jones.

          More generally, how do you think lobbying should be restricted under a democratically-appointed republican form of government? What mechanism would prevent "lobbying" (already difficult to define in a sufficiently specific way) while still letting constituents interact with their representatives?

          If you're concerned about the money, how do you eliminate all quid pro quibus? No representative, nor any party body, nor any recipient the representative might care about, can benefit in any way from any contribution made by anyone, ever? Such a proposal is patently absurd.

          1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

            Yes im concerned about the money.

            1) No party should be allowed to accept any donations - all "campaining" to be done on 1 £1m per election budget, from the taxpayer.

            2) no politician to have ANY income apart from their £90k salaries. If they cant handle that they are in it for the wrong reasons.

        2. Claptrap314 Silver badge

          "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

          Check that final clause. I just pray you're not a US citizen.

      2. Anonymous Coward
  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. GIRZiM

    with some complaining it would "transform the internet into a tool for surveillance and control".

    I, for one, welcome our latecomers from the pre-internet era to the party; wait until you get a load of the landscape today, guys - it'll blow your socks off the valves on your amplifier!

  6. Mage Silver badge

    Perhaps this explains a little?

    Perhaps this explains a little? Unlike the EFF and other rants on Twitter that claim this HELPS Google and extends YouTube Content ID to the "Whole Internet".

    Google owned YouTube is one of the largest violators of copyright, because Google wants adverts. What ever this "YouTube Content ID" is, it doesn't work.

    No doubt this has flaws, but probably not the ones claimed on Twitter. "It's going to kill all our memes!"

    No, it won't.

    Also some memes are not parody of the content being adapted, but simply taking unrelated copyrighted content to illustrate a meme.

    I doubt any automated content filter will work properly because they don't work now.

    Really I've no idea what this means, but the EFF aren't explaining it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Perhaps this explains a little?

      > I doubt any automated content filter will work properly because they don't work now.

      It is more fundamental than that: put it simply, a machine cannot determine what is legal and what is not and that's what is being proposed, in detriment of rather more fundamental rights, including but not limited to freedom of expression.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Perhaps this explains a little?

        It gets even better than that. At the moment YouTube will block completely private videos of people singing songs that are in the public domain because some big name artist also recorded the same song and the record company makes a blanket claim to copyright. Everything in our artists back catalog belongs to us unless we have an officially registered ownership claim from someones else as the songs author.

        A quick dig shows that a third party company does the video / audio scanning for copyright / IP "infringement " and its the classic case of head we win, tails you lose. They make blanket claims of ownership to everything not claimed by other record companies / music publishers. Such as Christmas songs written in the 19'th century.

        Who would have thought it. Record companies / music publishers running a scam.

        1. Nick Kew

          Citation needed

          It gets even better than that. At the moment YouTube will block completely private videos of people singing songs that are in the public domain because some big name artist also recorded the same song and the record company makes a blanket claim to copyright.

          That sounds credible, but not (AFAIK) proven.

          It's basically something Big Pirates (like Disney) have been doing for decades. Which begs the question: is it some story from the past that's become apocryphal in a modern retelling, or are there documented cases you can cite? URLs would be welcome here.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Citation needed

            > That sounds credible, but not (AFAIK) proven.

            It's basically something Big Pirates (like Disney) have been doing for decades. Which begs the question: is it some story from the past that's become apocryphal in a modern retelling, or are there documented cases you can cite? URLs would be welcome here.

            <

            I was the recipient of the blocked private video from a friend who is a professional musician and has about 400 plus professional performance videos on youtube uploaded over the space of a decade. Not a big name but was shown live on Arte Concert so not exactly obscure either. The song was for a Christmas Greeting for her agent that was going to be for private circulation and was sent to me as part of a group of videos to get an opinion about which was the best song /take.

            The blocked song was "O Holy Night" (written in the 1840's) and the take down notice was from Warner. Which means that it was probably due to the Mariah Carey recording of the song decades ago that Warner claimed i.p ownership of a public domain song. Its hard to tell as the takedown notice was deliberately obscure and there is no simple of challenging it. I checked out the originator of the takedown. Its one of those 3'rd party i.p enforcement companies that are also responsible those blanket DCMA's. So basically sleazy little i.p pimps with morals to match.

            1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
              Trollface

              big bad google

              As ive said before , im happy to pay for stuff in data , blood , or being advertised at - because i dont have the spare cash to pay for all the stuff we get online for free in money.

              Google has given us a great free search engine that can find anything! for free!

              They have also photographed and mapped the entire planet from space for us! for free!

              If that wasnt enough they then drove down every road on the planet and photographed that for us! for free!

              Then they made the Android OS to stop Apple having 100% market share.

              They give us a doodle every day.

              They Translate languages for free! like a babel fish!

              They give us a cloud drive to store GBs of data - for free!

              So they're not all bad ....

            2. Nick Kew

              O Holy Night (Re: Citation needed)

              Wikipedia lists a lot of recordings of that, some of them a lot older than the one you mention.

              One possible hypothesis is that Warner have copyright over some particular arrangement of the song, and spotted that in the video in question. In the absence of more specifics, I couldn't possibly tell.

              I checked out the originator of the takedown. Its one of those 3'rd party i.p enforcement companies that are also responsible those blanket DCMA's.

              As in this story (which didn't lead to a takedown)!

              I'm genuinely curious here: what information do they send you (a blog entry or similar URL like mine above would help)? It it's from a third party, where does Warner come in? Did you check whether the originator was really Warner's henchman, or a third-party abusing their name with no actual connection? Did google/youtube actually take down a video based on that notice? I can well believe Warner would do evil, but there are too many unanswered questions to say for certain that this is an example.

              1. Nick Kew

                Re: O Holy Night (Citation needed)

                P.s. should've said. I could post this where it would be likely to catch the attention of real people at Google (i.e. not the ones whose job is to fob the public off). But before doing that, I'd need sufficient detail not to look an idiot as soon as they ask the kind of questions I'm asking.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: O Holy Night (Citation needed)

                  > P.s. should've said. I could post this where it would be likely to catch the attention of real people at Google

                  Nick, pay attention to what the other AC is telling you. This is their usual modus operandi. It is not one unfortunate mistake or anything like that.

                  Back in the days when the big labels had a tight grip on everything, all the musicians that I knew used to pirate their own music. And we're talking a wide spectrum from punk to classic.

                  Now the big copyright merchants have seen the opportunity in the form of the most corrupt and incompetent "leadership" in the history of post-war European institutions and are determined to take advantage of it. If we let them they win, so better start writing to your national MPs (MEPs are hit and miss, there are a handful of good ones and over seven hundred leechers).

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: O Holy Night (Citation needed)

                I get the strong impression you have little real world exposure to the day to day workings of the music biz over the last few decades. If you were familiar with the workings of record companies and music publishers you would know that they have been sleazy lying cheating shitbags for as long as anyone can remember. My introduction to the inner workings of the biz was back in the early '80's as I got to hear first hand how probably one of the most financially successful bands of the last 4 decades got its start. It was nt pretty. You dont win at this game by being nice guys. Then later in the decade I got to hang out in LA with session people in some of the big studios where the really serious war stories were heard. This was during the transition to CD's when the musicians were royally screwed (yet again) and the record companies made out like bandits.

                Since then the distribution media may have changed and the names on the outside of the corp HQ's may have changed but the default behavior of those in charge of trying to cheat everyone has not changed one iota. The stories I hear now are exactly the same as the ones I heard decades ago. In its defense the music business is not as unrelentingly vicious as the TV or movie business. Where both management and talent tend to be total a*holes. In the music biz its usually only management that are vicious and nasty. Talent tends to be OK. Although usually nuts.

                If you know any professional music people who have dealings with youtube or other video hosting sites you will hear lots of stories just like the one I told. As is the extreme difficulty in getting a straight answer or reversal. Google (in the search sense) is your friend if you want to find lots of stories.

                I'm on the road at the moment but when I get back to Cal if my musician friend wants to push back hard they could make a tidy sum from the negligent notice from the i.p enforcement company. I wont go into details but the enforcement company broke several laws by their wilful and deliberate negligence. Which it was. They have prior form. Given how lucrative these little scams are and based on past performance they would probably settle a 5 figure sum to make the problem go away.

                Again, that how the biz works in the real world.

                1. Nick Kew

                  Re: O Holy Night (Citation needed)

                  I get the strong impression you have little real world exposure to the day to day workings of the music biz over the last few decades.

                  Indeed, I have nothing but contempt for the so-called music biz, and no direct knowledge of its day-to-day working. However, I do both listen and perform on a reasonably regular basis. I've also done a little composing, broadcasting and recording, so have a slight level of indirect exposure to some of it.

                  I'm well aware that copyright abuse happens. I'm also well aware there are lots of stories floating around based on misunderstandings. Nothing posted here enables me to classify your story beyond reasonable doubt as one or the other.

                  If someone presented a firm case, the Googlers I occasionally encounter are those who work in Free Software. People who believe in copyright but detest its abuse. People who might raise a fuss and would carry weight internally if presented with clear evidence that youtube was complicit in abuse.

            3. Adrian Midgley 1

              Re: Citation needed

              Encryption to specific recipients and groups, and serving files off one's own machine are perhaps going to get more interesting.

              1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

                Re: Citation needed

                Encryption to specific recipients and groups, and serving files off one's own machine are perhaps going to get more interesting.

                It's easier than that. Use a public hosting firm that lets you configure TLS. Run your own CA (it can be a toy/demo CA like OpenSSL's) and issue client certificates to anyone you want to grant access. Leave index pages and their resources unrestricted, but require a client certificate for anything you don't want visible to hoi polloi, Google, the IP bottom-feeders, etc.

                In other words, "encryption to specific recipients" is already provided for in existing web standards and infrastructure. Browsers and servers will handle it automatically; in fact, many TLS stacks will handle it automatically for all the applications that use them.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Whatever is bad for Google...

      ... is good for Mankind.

      Google has become the bigger exploiter of ideas and contents made elsewhere - and pay peanuts or nothing for it.

      Google & C will *kill* freedom of expression, because they are interested in it only as long as it is a profitable business.

      Just very few will spend their time to create true innovative expression of freedom as long as they are loitered by Google, its worshiper and people too ignorant and stupid to create anything new and valuable but very greed to distribute and loiter other people successful creations.

      1. Mage Silver badge

        Re: Whatever is bad for Google...

        Googler, Facebook and many other megacorps are malicious and evil, driven by only their own empire building, ego and profit.

        Lack of USA consumer orientated money.

        EFF was once a wonderful idea, now tarnished by accepting dirty money.

      2. Graham Cobb Silver badge

        Re: Whatever is bad for Google...

        I share your dislike of Google. but these two articles favour only Google!

        Google will never have to pay the link tax to anyone: no one who owns any copyright, of any type, can afford Google to delist it. Copyright is worth precisely zero if no one knows your copyrighted material exists (to buy it) and Google is the way the word finds everything. So Google will always be given free licenses.

        Google Youtube has already implemented the leading content identifying system. Even if someone demands it be improved, Google is ahead of everyone else and can easily improve it at little further cost. All the "staydown" does is create a massive barrier to entry for any competitors to Youtube. You want a Bulgarian national competitor to Youtube? Well, you won't get one now because no one can compete: with no revenue except advertising, how will your national UGC service ever pay the entry costs of implementing Content-ID?

        The only winner for this is Google. Certainly not Spotify. And not copyright owners either.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Blakes7 Internet Federation

    I've been looking forward to a Blake's TV reboot forever. Apparently Microsoft bought the rights but buried it like Nokia and everything else they do... Pity! But its all just fiction right? I mean no one ever imagines a reboot manifesting into real-life?! Lets look at some other tech news this week as Marriott hotels justifies putting IoT listening devices in their hotels as something every cultured traveler wants. WTF? If this isn't some kind of weird warped reality were living in right now. I welcome the revolution! We'll see more talented Avon's floating around not focused on Ad-Slinging etc...

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: Blakes7 Internet Federation

      Blake's 7 already had its reboot. It was called Firefly. Sadly didn't last.

      1. steamrunner

        Re: Blakes7 Internet Federation

        "Blake's 7 already had its reboot. It was called Firefly. Sadly didn't last"

        I want to both upvote this (because Firefly was awesome and I want it back) and also downvote it (because Firefly wasn't really Blake's 7 and I really, really want Blake's 7 back). *sigh*

        1. graeme leggett Silver badge

          Re: Blakes7 Internet Federation

          You listened to the audio remake though didn't you.

          http://www.b7media.com/audio/blakes-7/blakes-7-audio-adventures/

          And the Big Finish audio dramas

          https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/blake-s-7

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Paul Darrow was quoted as saying Firefly was B7

      Don't get it personally! To me it would be like comparing Black-Sails to Pirates-of-the-Caribbean... Or Transformers to Alien/Aliens etc. Firefly was gentle Sci-Fi tongue and cheek TV.

      A sci-fi A-Team etc. It wasn't nearly as bleak or dystopian with the same level of deadly self-serving characters. It also didn't touch on corporate-overlords / dark-web / surveillance-state / fake-news manipulation or other topical internet of cesspit stuff faced today.

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        Re: Paul Darrow was quoted as saying Firefly was B7

        Am, i getting old? whats B7?

        Did Blakes7touch on , oh wait ive figured out what B7 is , doh! , Did B7 touch on all that stuff?

        The more I think about it , the more i cant really tell which way you are arguing - not being totally familiar with B7 dosent help. Firefly definitely touched on all those things though.

      2. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        Re: Paul Darrow was quoted as saying Firefly was B7

        "Dark Matter" is the new Blakes 7! (as well as Firefly)

        Sadly cancelled after 3 series though.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          '"Dark Matter" is the new Blakes 7! (as well as Firefly)'

          Nah, both were 'pink' by comparison. But it gives me hope that there's room for B7 to return someday, as it hasn't been remade.

  8. gcla72
    Mushroom

    52% of the vote

    Did they know what they were voting for?

    1. Mark 85

      Re: 52% of the vote

      They're legislature types. If (a big IF) they read viewpoints they will get impressed with a proper sounding name of the organization. Individuals don't count unless it's someone of influence and power.

  9. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Hand Off My Internet

    Get all government regulations off the Internet.

    It is not theirs to regulate, it is ours. Freedom of access, freedom of speech and no restrictions/monitoring/manipulation to its use is acceptable, EVER.

    1. Steve the Cynic

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      It is not theirs to regulate

      If you look carefully at the original intent and sponsors, yes, it very much *is* theirs to regulate.

      Hint: the Internet is the spiritual inheritor of the ARPANet, and the ownership, or at least sponsorship, of that is clear in its name. ARPA. Now called DARPA. A governmental tentacle if ever there was one.

      Oh, and I very much don't care how many downvotes I get for this.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      In which way it is "yours"?

    3. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker
      Holmes

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      You mean it is the corporations' who provide the hardware and software for content and distribution/routing, from the databases & scripts down to the fibers? Yes, it is theirs, and they will restrict, monitor, and manipulate to the full extent of the law (and possibly more until penalized enough to dial it back).

      Government regulations are very handy when they keep corporate greed in check. So don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

      1. Graham Cobb Silver badge

        Re: Hand Off My Internet

        Government regulations are very handy when they keep corporate greed in check.

        Indeed. They are also, unfortunately, very handy to those same corporations when they prevent competition.

        Google are the only winners here.

      2. Mark 85

        Re: Hand Off My Internet

        Government regulations are very handy when they keep corporate greed in check. So don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

        In the States, they are doing this.. Thanks Pai. But now it's Europe's turn to follow. It's a race to the bottom (or for control depending on point of view) and the leader of the race changes daily.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      Actually, before democratic government with a Constitution warranting citizen rights and their enforcement existed, you had not freedom of expression, and often, no freedom at all.

      Don't believe that without a democratic government and its rule protecting citizens' right the world would be better.

      Only the law of jungle will exist, and that's exactly what 800lb gorillas like Google want - so it can enforce its own law at the expense of everybody else. People like the EFF are the classic Lenin's "useful idiots" who could only help megacorp like Google achieve their aim, blinded by their anarchism.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Mark 85

        Re: Hand Off My Internet

        People like the EFF are the classic Lenin's "useful idiots" who could only help megacorp like Google achieve their aim, blinded by their anarchism.

        I upvoted your post but go look again in the article and see who's funding the EFF. Hint: Google is one of the funders and appears to be in control. So EFF is the megacorp, not "useful idiots".

    5. Mage Silver badge
      Angel

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      A totally anarchist society sounds nice, but only works for perfect people. We need to regulate companies and have laws.

      Internet is simply a delivery/distribution medium. The same laws as for printed material, bill board ads, TV, Radio content, and Mail Order must apply, as appropriate to content and/or service. Also similar oversight & regulation as postal services, telephone, telegraph, radio spectrum and satellite slots & frequencies.

      There is no sense whatsoever that the Internet should be unregulated in terms of access, infrastructure, privacy, content etc.

      1. technoise

        Re: Hand Off My Internet

        Internet is simply a delivery/distribution medium. The same laws as for printed material, bill board ads, TV, Radio content, and Mail Order must apply, as appropriate to content and/or service.

        No - it's not simply anything at all.

        The Internet and World Wide Web are not like the other media you are talking about, which are centralised, and rely on a lot of concentration of capital and/or power for someone to use, hence making them centralised, star networks - it's a decentralised, mesh based network, allowing many-to-many communication, and the big powers don't like that, because they have cottoned on, maybe too late, to the realisation that the very medium itself, has a natural tendency to shift the centre of gravity away from power and money, to the individual citizen, where it truly belongs, in an actual democracy.

        However, power and money, and the legacy media,having realised this, will naturally perceive that as an existential threat to their power and money, and influence, and so can be expected to use legislation to try to make the Internet look like any other centralised distribution system that has existed to date.

        1. phuzz Silver badge

          Re: Hand Off My Internet

          "The Internet and World Wide Web are [...] a decentralised, mesh based network,"

          It might look that way from a distance, but when you look closer you'll see that generally internet connections are star shaped networks, with an ISP having all their customers connecting to them, and only a small number of routes out. Likewise, most links between cities and countries all come together in peering exchange points, and of course submarine cables tend to follow similar routes, and land at the same places.

          For these words of mine to reach you, most of the way they'll be travelling over corporate owned networks and systems, only the last few meters are somewhat 'free'.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "The Internet and World Wide Web are [...] a decentralised, mesh based network,"

            It was, maybe, in the very beginning . Now it's an highly centralized system when most contents are stored by a few megacorps server and fashion dictates where little serfs have to go to store their little gems.

            Look at how much Google and Facebook control contents - email, photos, videos, blogs.... how many services run and are stored on AWS or Azure? All the code was in GitHub, and only the hatred for MS will make some migrate to other shores, until a new big centralized service becomes fashionable, and moths will fly to it and store everything there.

            Google is exactly scared that if the loopholes that allowed till now to become a monstrous collector of everything without any liability are closed, it cannot sustain such scale with little costs and huge profits, and then Internet yes, will break into smaller pieces, in a positive way, because it will return to be much more diverse and de-centralised one.

            Maybe you'll still need a search engine to find a video, but there won't be anymore a chance that 99.999999% of the times it will be hosted on YouTube...

          2. technoise

            Re: Hand Off My Internet

            It might look that way from a distance, but when you look closer you'll see that generally internet connections are star shaped networks, with an ISP having all their customers connecting to them, and only a small number of routes out. Likewise, most links between cities and countries all come together in peering exchange points, and of course submarine cables tend to follow similar routes, and land at the same places.

            For these words of mine to reach you, most of the way they'll be travelling over corporate owned networks and systems, only the last few meters are somewhat 'free'.

            At the hardware layer, yes, but at the interpersonal layer, which is what the legacy media and the large commercial enterprises are concerned with, we can communicate directly without having to go through their intermediation, and that is a loss of power to governments, media, corporations, and the politico-media bubble, and the corporate state.

            But the hardware layer, and much of the application layer, are controlled by business entities, and the corporate state can now use legislation to control those. If we let them succeed, they can get all communication back under their control. That is bad for us, and freedom and democracy, and ultimately, bad for everybody.

            We are not talking about some idealistic utopia, we are talking about something we already have, which, if we are complacent, we are in danger of losing.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              but at the interpersonal layer [...] we can communicate directly

              Yes, now using cloud services rented to you by one of the few megacorps above...

              Internet is becoming an highly centralized system - and the less liable those huge megacorps are about what they actually control, the higher the profits of a centralized system with little or no competition.

              And implementing surveillance and crushing free speech when a few large companies are in charge and are bound only to law they write themselves, is much, much easier.

    6. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: Hand Off My Internet

      "Get all government regulations off the Internet"

      Nonsense!

      The internet is a public area, and therefore public laws and decency should be obeyed.

      If the internet keeps flouting public laws, it deserves to be broken up, like any other criminal gang,

  10. Giovani Tapini
    Trollface

    What will happen is

    Almost every fan site for anything will be taken down and stripped of its content. Blunt instrument censorship of your content stops people talking about it. Can you imagine the internet without any mentions of GOT except within the publishers sites. It would have generated far less interest and income.

    I am sure that will make great business, and won't somebody think of the children!

    1. Martin
      Happy

      Re: What will happen is

      Can you imagine the internet without any mentions of GOT except within the publishers sites. It would have generated far less interest and income.

      True, that is one upside I hadn't considered....

  11. IDoNotThinkSo
    Trollface

    Ignore?

    Perhaps we should just leave this EU single market thingy.

    /Steps away/

    1. Bernard M. Orwell
      Big Brother

      Re: Ignore?

      "Perhaps we should just leave this EU single market thingy."

      Last night, the Commons voted to transfer all EU law into UK law in a very short period of time. Once that exercise is complete, those laws can then be "amended" to suit the UK governments vision of Things to Come.

      It'd be nice to think that they'd spot this particular one and throw it out, saying "we won't stand for our nations internet users uploads being spot checked for....ahem...copyright infringement! That's against our nations strong stance on freedom of speech and expression."

      But, if I thought, for even one second that they are actually going to something like that, I might just find some worth in Brexit after all.

      I believe that this particular issue may be a real red flag for anyone who believe in the "taking back sovereignty" slogan.

  12. fishman

    News sites should pay the aggregators.

    News sites make money off of the additional traffic driven to them by the news aggregators. The news sites should pay something to the aggregators for the additional traffic - not the other way around.

    I expect that there will be fewer articles from EU news sources linked to by aggregators, replaced by news sources from other parts of the world. Look at Spain as an example of how well laws like this worked.

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Re: News sites should pay the aggregators.

      That's only true IF they aggregators drive traffic. Drudge does. Facebook tries really, really hard not to.

    2. MJI Silver badge

      Re: News sites should pay the aggregators.

      Years ago Google news used to link to some good news sites, so it drove my traffic to them

    3. The Indomitable Gall

      Re: News sites should pay the aggregators.

      " News sites make money off of the additional traffic driven to them by the news aggregators. "

      Which assumes that:

      A) aggregator sites drive traffic to content providers

      and

      B) the traffic driven is of high value.

      Whether A is true or not depends on whether you're interested in unique visitors or page-views. Aggregators increase the former, but decrease the latter. This is where B comes in. "Drive-by" readers are less valuable than brand-loyal "sticky" readers.

      Overall, aggregators appear to cost content providers significantly.

      1. ratfox

        Re: News sites should pay the aggregators.

        Overall, aggregators appear to cost content providers significantly.

        Then make the aggregators illegal, or force them to pay like Spain did. When Google shut down their news service in Spain, I suspect it was good for the largest media, where people would naturally turn to if they have no aggregator available. On the other hand, it was probably bad for smaller sites.

        However, one thing I am certain is: If Google and providers would negotiate a price for showing articles in Google news, the providers would end up paying money for it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: News sites should pay the aggregators.

        "Whether A is true or not depends on whether you're interested in unique visitors or page-views. Aggregators increase the former, but decrease the latter. This is where B comes in. "Drive-by" readers are less valuable than brand-loyal "sticky" readers.

        Overall, aggregators appear to cost content providers significantly."

        your evidence for asserting this utter tosh??

        maybe all you regtards are much smarter than me but where on earth is the harm in this to a news provider? (see some google news headlines below)

        You can't increase unique visitors WITHOUT increasing page views by definition ... the users are clicking through from the aggregator link to the news provider's site - how can that not increase views as well as unique visitors.

        Just pasted in some headline links from google news this pm below .. i fail to see how in any way the publishers copyright is being abused or how google is "stealing" ad revenues.

        The reader either is interested and clicks through and the publisher gets the unique visitor and Ad revenue from page views or the user isn't intererested in either the story or the publisher in which case the publisher has neither lost a uniqure visitor or any a=Ad revenue.

        Only morons like Murdoch think their organs are special enough that google or any other aggregator is going to pay them for a sodding story title link... i mean really, it's totally risible propostion. I notice now that the (london) Times will in fact let you have a story or part of one for free now having shown nought but a paywall for 3 years and the Sun has basically given up on it's paywall entirely.. I mean really, how arrogant can these f***ers be? Do they seriously think people love the Sun or The Times so much they are going to pay in droves when the bbc and guardian or express etc are free. The product is just not good enough or dilneated enough for them to ever have that many brand loyal sticky readers behind the paywall.

        -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        European automakers stung by Daimler profit warning

        Shares in Europe's largest automakers fell sharply in early trading on Thursday after Daimler issued a warning that its profits would be hit by new Chinese tariffs ...

        Financial Times

        4 hours ago

        Daimler profit warning sends car shares skidding

        Shares tumble after the German carmaker says Chinese tariffs on US vehicle imports would hit its sales.

        BBC News

        2 hours ago

        Daimler issues profit warning on back of US-China trade dispute

        The Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler has become the first major company to issue a profit warning after being hit by the escalating trade war between the US and ...

        The Guardian

        5 hours ago

        Daimler blames profit warning on US-China trade war

        Mercedes parent Daimler has become the first major company to issue a profit warning in the wake of China raising tariffs last week amid the tit-for-tat initiated by ...

        Financial Times

        Today

        Donald Trump Is the Perfect Scapegoat for Mercedes

        German carmakers are a handy whipping boy for Donald Trump. The presence of so many BMW, Mercedes and Audi vehicles on American roads is prima facie ...

        Bloomberg

        5 hours ago

  13. Duncan Macdonald

    Not yet final

    It is still possible for the European Parliament to say no to this rubbish. The JURI committee is not the full Parliament and the MEPs can still override the committee. The various content providers copyright cartels still need to convince or bribe the MEPs not to override JURI.

  14. Zwuramunga

    .eu

    404 NOT FOUND

  15. earl grey
    Paris Hilton

    Hands off my pronz

    And my tentacles. She knows.

  16. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Lots of lovely sticks! No carrots?

    So, is there a rule yet that sets up penalties for erroneous automatic takedown demands from rich media empires?

    Does this mean Slashdot won't be able to quote El Reg articles in their summaries, in Europe?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google being allowed to police itself on YouTube is ridiculous - their copyright system ignores blatant infringement constantly, while non-infringing Youtubers, i.e., actual users generating "user-generated content", receive inscrutable and unreviewable "copyright strikes" regularly. Obliging them to do more of the same is a terrible compromise.

    1. Mage Silver badge

      re: Google being allowed to police itself on YouTube is ridiculous

      Agreed.

      I've no idea what the workable solution is, other than human moderation of EVERY upload and thus a per item upload charge.

      Google wants free uploads and little checking to maximise advert revenue.

  18. whitepines
    Mushroom

    Don't like it? Don't buy Big Media garbage. Don't pirate it either!

    Make your own content instead. Support the artists directly under license terms that are more fair for society.

    When copyright has become a giant noose that is strangling society, the only reasonable option is to embrace free software / free culture projects. Anyone saying otherwise is trying to to sell you something (or sell you, or both...)

    1. Mark 85

      Make your own content instead. Support the artists directly under license terms that are more fair for society.

      Nice idea... lovely. So if you create some content and it gets ripped off, who protects you? The catch on the protection is if the country where the piracy is done cares. Look at the stuff being ripped off by the Chinese for example.

      1. Graham Cobb Silver badge

        So if you create some content and it gets ripped off, who protects you?

        No one does. Sorry -- that is the way the world has changed. Wake up, smell the coffee and get a new business model. There are other ways to make money from your talent and the material you have created than getting paid for copies.

        Copyright (the law) and business models around talent and content have always been reinvented every 20 years due to changes in technology. Just think about the impact (on both laws and business models) of piano rolls, phonographs, radio, TV, VCRs, etc. All those took away someone's existing exclusive rights and forced them to change their business model. Some of them went out of business and some others were more successful. That is business.

        Cory Doctorow has a great example: think about music hall artists. They used to have control over the only way to be entertained by them: you had to buy a ticket to get into the theatre. It means that success rewarded not only being able to sign and dance but also charisma, stage presence and good looks. Then radio came along and everyone could get the entertainment for free. All of a sudden success rewarded a good voice (and a talent for ending up in the newspapers). Dancing, charisma, looks became much less relevant. Some performers lost out very heavily, and others saw much increased success. No one succeeded in getting the new reality banned.

        1. Skwosh

          Oh yeah – Cory Doctorow, I remember him – his website has a shop now.

          Things change.

          There was this thing called the industrial revolution.

          History moving forward.

          Big factories, pumping out crap into the air and the rivers – horrible unsafe working conditions – large companies making lots of money exploiting the easily exploitable and dumping their externalities on the rest of society.

          Presumably the thinking at that time was that if you can't make it with your outdated agrarian labouring skills then you need to adapt. If the air is a bit poisonous then just man up because this is how things are now – work with it – don't hark back to a bygone age when the air was breathable, the rivers had fish and kids didn't need to work 18 hour shifts on dangerous machinery just to eat.

          You can't turn the clock back man.

          Things changed again though – as they do.

          Incidentally, have you not noticed that things have started to change in the world of digital content?

          People are paying.

          Spotify. Netflix.

          There's even money in recorded music again.

          Extraordinary.

          Lots of creative people in the music and TV production world busily and happily adapting to this new reality.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Then radio came along and everyone could get the entertainment for free."

          Actually, in many countries outside US radio (and later TV) were for a long time state managed, and you had to pay to use them (in many, you still pay TV licenses or the like).

          In US, the "free" contents started to be paid by advertised exactly back then. But still artists had control on their performance - broadcasting enlarged the audience. True, it changed the business model also, but RCA didn't have people bringing radio transmitters into theatres to broadcast shows without the performers permission.

          Recording technologies, when they became cheap enough for the consumer marked, became the real issue for copyright owners. Still, even the illegal copies market didn't have the size, reach and protection of YouTube today.

    2. pater_suspiriorum

      IP needs to be abolished completely.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Copy & Paste Journalism

    I wasn't paying much attention to the effect on Google; they're a mega-corp so good luck with that. What I found more interesting is looking at all the ways publishers can negatively effect their competitors. There's an awful lot of copying, snippets true, going on out there. If published snippets can be detected, and they can in roughly the same way as music, what happens then? Plagurism is very much alive and well.

  20. Claverhouse Silver badge

    It is modern democratic governments who have done the most to expunge freedom of speech, in both the last 50 years of the 20th and the first two decades of the 21st. In America under both BushObama & Trump. Partially because most of the democracy doesn't give a fuck about all these things and just wants people like Snowden to shut up and stop being traitors.

    Modern democracy wants the freedom to watch what is put before them to be watched. People in tyrannies in the 18th century had more 'freedom of speech'. When Fred the Great came across a poster criticising him he merely ordered it to be placed lower down so more people could read it. If Obama had come across such, the Secret Service would have been all over it.

  21. Frank Fisher

    This is worse than you think.

    A net curtain is descending across this continent.

  22. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    Did the EU just 'break the internet'?

    Er... probably not. To do that it would need to mess up TCP/IP, or the DNS system.

    Causing problems for hyperlinks would damage the 'World-Wide Web', however. I had hoped that a technical crew such as El Reg would appreciate the difference....

    1. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: Did the EU just 'break the internet'?

      It is IPv6 that messed up TCP/IP, not politicians.

  23. RobertLongshaft

    Think about it.

    The globalists took a pasting in the Brexit and 2016 US elections, the lost because they could not control the narrative on the internet. This is the way they take control back, this is another slow drip on the way to global slavery.

    Globalism is corporatism wrapped up in soft socialism, you think these parasites want whats best of the normal everyday people of Europe? They only care about their slaves being obedient in future.

    Pro Europeans are turkey's voting for Christmas, most of them are too wrapped up in the emotional narrative of collectivism.

    1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      ....The globalists took a pasting in the Brexit and 2016 US elections, the lost because they could not control the narrative on the internet. ...

      Interesting. They control the narrative on the media totally but that didn't seem to help them. All that happened was that people became deeply suspicious of everything they said...

    2. Frank Fisher

      Yup

      Correct. wrote about it here nine years ago - http://www.frankfisher.org/the-battle-of-climategate-is-over-the-battle-for-the-internet-has-begun/

  24. mark l 2 Silver badge
    FAIL

    How does this new law benefit EU citizens? All it does is allow big media corporations to be able to continue to line their pockets.

    It will just create an environment where any website that lets you upload your own content deletes anything that could possibly be infringing 'just in case'.

    EG. At current you could upload a video to Youtube of your kid dressed as Batman and call the video title 'Batman' and the video wouldn't be deleted. But in a situation where Google might be fined for allowing videos which possibly could be infringing, your video with the title batman gets automatically deleted as because they have to ensure anything potentially infringing doesn't get published.

    1. Frank Fisher

      State corporatists gonna state corporate

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually, it always worked that way. Just, until a few years ago, a video of your kids dressed as "Batman" and titled "Batman" would have been inflicted cruelly on only the few relatives so unfortunate to have to spend an evening with you with no excuse to leave.

      That was also true for many other amateurish movies, songs, fanzine, etc. So no much damage done.

      But now Google & C. have made available the tools to distribute them to a worldwide audience - and also make money from it, and that completely changes the landscape. Thereby yes, using someone else's work and ideas, and publishing it worldwide, even if you're using your kids, may infringe copyrights.

      We could discuss how long a patent or copyright should be valid, but they were created for sensible reasons - and it's clear that if people copy them it's because they perceive a value - why should they appropriate that value at will? Why spend time, energy, money and other resources to create value that will be appropriate by others too lazy and/or incompetent to create it themselves?

  25. This post has been deleted by its author

  26. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Unhappy

    On the plus side

    no more of those downfall parodies where Hitler has his subtitles replaced..

    Maybe that was the cause...... knowing that the great unwashed could take video of the great and worthy and make them look like utter chumps (instead of them actually proving they are utter chumps...)

  27. Astara

    Google: get out of Europe

    Seriously. The EU copyright laws are not the same as those in the US.

    If the EU wants to put the onus on websites instead of those actually doing the wrong -- it is up-ending safe-harbor for hosts of interpersonal communication. It's requiring pre-censoring which always gets it wrong part of the time as well as becomes a tool for political and ideological censorship.

    There are enough false positives to worry me. From my own created art -- that someone filed take down notices against to harass me until I contacted google's legal department, to some claiming ownership of the "Happy Birthday" song.

    With an extension of copyright on the horizon -- AGAIN. It becomes clear that "Imaginary property laws are no longer benefiting society at large, but the rich elite. In the past this has caused depressions, oppression and violence. Is that what it takes to stop this type of abuse?

    If content owners want complete control of "their content", don't share it with the world. It brings no benefits worth the cost of those most selfish.

  28. Jwilsonwest

    Share buttons

    So if I'm wrong here, example sky news, the sun, daily mail etc have share buttons to twitter, Facebook etc so a surfer can share that story with headline title, image and brief description to a social network? So these media companies need to remove all social network buttons from their pages, these shared links create millions of clicks per day to their websites, to then be bombarded with forced videos to watch first while eating the customer's data allowance on their mobile? Doesn't make sense to me....!

  29. Jwilsonwest

    Share buttons

    So these news paper sites that have share buttons to share their content to the likes of Facebook LinkedIn twitter will be removing these buttons? And miss out on the millions of clicks back to their sites?

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