[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Pixels]

Wired's interpretation is more generous than the reality. Here's the actual text:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/doc ... 271_EN.pdf[/url], Chapter 2, Article 17]6.
Member States shall provide that, in respect of new online content-sharing service
providers the services of which have been available to the public in the Union for
less than three years and which have an annual turnover below EUR 10 million,
calculated in accordance with Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC20,
the conditions under the liability regime set out in paragraph 4 are limited to
compliance with point (a) of paragraph 4 and to acting expeditiously, upon
receiving a sufficiently substantiated notice, to disable access to the notified works
or other subject matter or to remove those works or other subject matter from their
websites .

Where the average number of monthly unique visitors of such service providers
exceeds 5 million, calculated on the basis of the previous calendar year, they shall
also demonstrate that they have made best efforts to prevent further uploads of the
notified works and other subject matter for which the rightholders have provided
relevant and necessary information.

Even if you are brand new and have no revenue, you are still required to comply with 4(a) and respect takedown notices to avoid liability. 4(a) is the requirement that you must have "made best efforts to obtain an authorisation," In other words, the requirement that you preemptively acquire licenses for content your users might ever upload. The only bit that kicks in at 3+ years, €10 million, or 5 million users is the requirement to implement a filter on future uploads.

[Iduno]

So are the options are 1) remove half of the content of Gaming Den or 2) say "fuck off Europe, you can no longer access Gaming Den."?

Ditto large chunks of the rest of the internet?

[Pixels]

1) isn't sufficient unless fbmf also implements a filter or starts manually reviewing posts. And that might not even stop them being dragged to court to determine whether they were meeting the standard or not. 2) is the only sane option for vast swaths of the internet, including this site, and screw you if you rely heavily on EU traffic. There's also 3) disallow user submitted content altogether, but that doesn't work if discussions, comments, or reviews are central to the site's function.

[Pariah Dog]

Well if companies employ the 2) only sane option in vast enough numbers that the EU nation finds itself cut off from most of the internet they can then go bitch at their lawmakers to get the shit show overturned. And likely told to go fuck themselves.

[fbmf]

I’m not really imagining anyone gives a fuck about our little corner of the Internet...especially over in the EU. Should I be worried about this for some reason? I’ve always assumed TGDMB is not big enough to piss anyone off as far as copyright.

Full disclosure: Over the years Ive received cease and desist from WotC iand Fantasy Flight, which I have complied with without even bothering to check if they were right to do so.

Game On,
FBMF

[hyzmarca]

1) isn't sufficient unless fbmf also implements a filter or starts manually reviewing posts. And that might not even stop them being dragged to court to determine whether they were meeting the standard or not. 2) is the only sane option for vast swaths of the internet, including this site, and screw you if you rely heavily on EU traffic. There's also 3) disallow user submitted content altogether, but that doesn't work if discussions, comments, or reviews are central to the site's function.

It's not like Western Europe has actually been relevant to anything since World War II, and the best country is leaving the EU anyway. Simply disconnecting them from the internet wouldn't be a loss.

But yes, Article 11 and Article 13 are basically giant "Brexit was actually a good idea" signs.

I’m not really imagining anyone gives a fuck about our little corner of the Internet...especially over in the EU. Should I be worried about this for some reason? I’ve always assumed TGDMB is not big enough to piss anyone off as far as copyright.

Full disclosure: Over the years Ive received cease and desist from WotC iand Fantasy Flight, which I have complied with without even bothering to check if they were right to do so.

Game On,
FBMF

Unless you're based in Europe, or the server is, there is nothing they the EU could do as a practical matter, even if anyone did complain.

However, it's pretty clear that the primary purpose of this law is to shore up Euorpean newspapers by cutting the throat of EU based online news media, and everything else is an afterthought.

[DSMatticus]

You should be worried about this in the way you should be worried about a game of Russian roulette. You are obviously not too small to get the attention of the legal departments of massive and powerful corporations, especially since these days that attention is almost entirely decided algorithmically by web crawling bots. But it is unlikely that there ever will be a human being that sits down and says "fuck tgdmb" and forces the issue in a way that is dangerous to you.

In the end, there are two reasons you've been getting cease and desist letters instead of summons; 1) it's cheaper while still being sufficiently intimidating, and 2) you aren't liable for any copyright content we upload to this website until you fail to respond to a cease and desist. 1 is still true. 2 is not. As individual EU member states implement this directive, the worst case scenarion on the game of Russian roulette you've been playing all along has shifted from mild inconvenience and sour grapes to life destroying lawsuits from countries you've never even been to.

But yes, Article 11 and Article 13 are basically giant "Brexit was actually a good idea" signs.

The UK is weeks away from mandating a nation-wide porn ban which can only be legally circumvented by verifying your identity through a third party private corporation. That shit is 100% getting leaked / sold to Facebook / subpoenaed by a government actor / hacked by Russians and within the year it will be trivial for any sufficiently malicious and powerful actor to build a porn browsing profile of anyone in the UK - whether we know that's what's happened yet or not.

The UK is racing the EU to the bottom on this one, don't count them out.

[maglag]

I predict VPNs will become pretty popular in continental Europe.

Like, China already has their Great Firewall and chinese users inside bypass it all the time.

However if you're trying to monetize your site then things will get nastier.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Some potentially-reassuring excerpts from the document:

The steps taken by online content-sharing service providers in cooperation with rightholders should be without prejudice to the application of exceptions or limitations to copyright, including, in particular, those which guarantee the freedom of expression of users. Users should be allowed to upload and make available content generated by users for the specific purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody or pastiche

The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.

Member States shall ensure that users in each Member State are able to rely on any of the following existing exceptions or limitations when uploading and making available content generated by users on online content-sharing services:
(a)quotation, criticism, review;
(b)use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche.

Where rightholders request to have access to their specific works or other subject matter disabled or those works or other subject matter removed, they shall duly justify the reasons for their requests. Complaints submitted under the mechanism provided for in the first subparagraph shall be processed without undue delay, and decisions to disable access to or remove uploaded content shall be subject to human review.

[Koumei]

Definitely do not listen to hyzmarca. I mean, that's a general rule to follow in life, but in this case, here are the people you should listen to:
1. Your lawyer
2. Other lawyers/legal experts, particularly those involved in Copyright law

If you do end up having to just block the EU, then anybody smart enough can just use a VPN and I'm not a lawyer so I can't say if that's good enough.

It is certainly enough to get around the UK porn-filter rules (meaning basically there will be a licence-fee-and-private-information-security tax on the elderly fuckheads who voted for Tories in the first place while everyone else ignores it). Providing it is for things that don't require a credit card - so as long as you're just interested in free porn, the VPN is all you need, but if you buy stuff you'd need to pay the fee and give other people your porn-viewing info, or get a foreign credit card and I don't know how easy that is.

[Thaluikhain]

Australia's far right One Nation party was apparently colluding with US gun lobbyists to get funding in exchange for loosening Australia's gun laws.

[Koumei]

One of our far right parties, that is. And yes, they were trying to cut a deal with the NRA. This should honestly be the kind of thing that gets the NRA put on a special shitlist of "arrest any member who enters the country, for fucking espionage, then ship them across to whichever other country wants a go and has the harshest penalties lined up", and has the ministers in question put in prison until the sun collapses.

Naturally, Sky News (Murdoch) is on the case making it clear that the real villains are Al Jazeera, for covering this (and for being Middle Eastern).

[Longes]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190 ... -bad.shtml

Is my government retarded?

[DSMatticus]

Some potentially-reassuring excerpts from the document:

The steps taken by online content-sharing service providers in cooperation with rightholders should be without prejudice to the application of exceptions or limitations to copyright, including, in particular, those which guarantee the freedom of expression of users. Users should be allowed to upload and make available content generated by users for the specific purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody or pastiche

The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.

Member States shall ensure that users in each Member State are able to rely on any of the following existing exceptions or limitations when uploading and making available content generated by users on online content-sharing services:
(a)quotation, criticism, review;
(b)use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche.

Where rightholders request to have access to their specific works or other subject matter disabled or those works or other subject matter removed, they shall duly justify the reasons for their requests. Complaints submitted under the mechanism provided for in the first subparagraph shall be processed without undue delay, and decisions to disable access to or remove uploaded content shall be subject to human review.

You are not really appreciating how this works in practice. The law says that everyone will square their circles and it'll be unicorns and rainbows because it was written by moron dinosaurs. That will not actually happen.

If there were a law which said firearms retailers were liable for any crimes their firearms were used to commit, but also that firearms retailers would sell without prejudice for legitimate uses such as hunting or competitive target shooting or whatever the fuck, there would be no fucking firearms retailers, end of story. Under that law, it is impossible to sell firearms and avoid liability, so you do not sell firearms. Period.

It is impossible to manually screen the entire goddamn internet. Our solution to this has been to offer content hosts safe harbor if they comply with legal requests to remove copyrighted content; they do not share their users' liability until they knowingly and deliberately take their users' side in a particular dispute.

Member states of the EU are now required to roll out laws killing safe harbor sometime over the next two years. Websites will then be liable for the content they permit their users to upload. Most of those websites you use do not give a single wet shit about your fair use; you are not going to sue them for failing to protect your fair use rights, and you would lose if you tried even with this law. They do, however, give all the shits in the world about the trouble you can get them into. There are entities like Disney out there who have a legal department with the budget of a small nation, and without safe habor fbmf is exactly as liable I am for anything I upload that might infringe Disney's copyrights. I could post a fucking Lion King fanfic here and now fbmf is trapped on my side against one of the largest media corporations in the world.

[Longes]

The law says that everyone will square their circles and it'll be unicorns and rainbows because it was written by moron dinosaurs

The circumstances surrounding the passing of Article 13 indicate that it is rooted in evil, not stupidity.

[Blade]

The circumstances surrounding the passing of Article 13 indicate that it is rooted in evil, not stupidity.

In greed. And envy possibly as well.

[DSMatticus]

The answer to whether article 13 was stupid or evil is "yes."

There is no way the EU intended to softban user-uploaded content everywhere except the half-dozen megasites capable of implementing a filter as part of the generous favors they thought they were doing for powerful media corporations. That is entirely too much damage to get away with when you are a political entity that still has actual elections. Though, they've certainly timed it well - next elections are in May, so no member states will have implemented anything by then, and the next elections after that are in 2024.

[hyzmarca]

And hatred of Americans. And fear of anything that didn't exist when they were children. Don't forget the last one.

[Iduno]

And fear of anything that didn't exist when they were children.

That one isn't true. Most of them want to return to a version of the past that never existed.

[hyzmarca]

The answer to whether article 13 was stupid or evil is "yes."

There is no way the EU intended to softban user-uploaded content everywhere except the half-dozen megasites capable of implementing a filter as part of the generous favors they thought they were doing for powerful media corporations. That is entirely too much damage to get away with when you are a political entity that still has actual elections. Though, they've certainly timed it well - next elections are in May, so no member states will have implemented anything by then, and the next elections after that are in 2024.

I'm pretty sure that the goal isn't to shut down user generated content except for a half-dozen megasites. I'm pretty sure that the goal is to shut down all user-generated content period, and that the law is specifically aimed to cause as much damage to those megasites as possible, with the destruction of smaller sites being happy collateral.

Article 13 is written at the behest of traditional media corporations that simply do not want to compete with user-generated videos on youtube and Facebook.

[Orca]

The UK's parliament just voted on a series of 8 alternatives describing what goals to pursue with regard to Brexit. None of them - not no-deal Brexit, not stay in the EU and keep negotiating a deal which allows keeping all the EU benefits, and not anything in between - got a majority. Tossers.

[Username17]

The UK's parliament just voted on a series of 8 alternatives describing what goals to pursue with regard to Brexit. None of them - not no-deal Brexit, not stay in the EU and keep negotiating a deal which allows keeping all the EU benefits, and not anything in between - got a majority. Tossers.

It's a fundamental problem of yes/no voting with more than 2 options. If I vote for options B and D, but my preferred outcome is B, then I am making B less likely to occur than if I vote for option B alone. As long as a noticeable number of people figure this out and there are eight fucking proposals, obviously nothing is going to get more than 50%.

The second issue is that none of the Leave options are actually good, because Leave is a fucking stupid idea. On the flip side, a majority of parliament has been convinced that they "have to" provide some sort of Leave because the amount of respect due to an illegally run advisory referendum with a vague question and an undemocratic set of voting rules that is no longer supported by the majority of the population by any measure is given a positively absurd amount of reverence in the British press.

And beyond not even being "good," most of the Leave options on the table are literally impossible. The UK can't join the EFTA even if the British public would accept the "No Taxation Without Representation" deal that the EFTA entails (which they would not). The EFTA operates by consensus, and there is flatly no way in hell that Norway and Iceland are going to allow themselves to be required to reach consensus with the British government before making trade deals. The British government has proven too emphatically that it is not reliable enough for that, and the EFTA would not let the UK in.

-Username17

[Blade]

Article 13 is written at the behest of traditional media corporations that simply do not want to compete with user-generated videos on youtube and Facebook.

And right-holders who wants to keep milking creators.

But Google and Facebook were clever enough to influence the discussions so as to not only be able to keep their platforms but also to add huge barriers to entry for potential competitors.

Due to the power of right-holders in Europe (mostly in France it seems) and possibly the power of the traditional media, I expect them to come back in a with yet another project in a few years when they realize that this one didn't have the expected outcome. By then, Disney will be looking for ways to extend copyright once again so we'll be in for another round

[Stahlseele]

EU voted for the stupid copyright thing.
UK is doing hard brexit.
USA gave Trump 1 billion for his wall and he is still working on destroying obamacare all while planning on sending a woman to the moon.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... iving.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... or-gay-sex
What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. This. World.

[RobbyPants]

Julian Assange Arrested In London

He was arrested in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday. He went to the embassy seven years ago fleeing rape charges, and refused to leave for fear of extradition. Apparently, the rape charges have been dropped.