EU digital distopia With new copyright law - Unless the parliament stops it

Wait, what? Why is there banana curvature legislation?

More importantly, who did they consult on this?

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A Brussels ban on bendy bananas is one of the EU’s most persistent myths.

Bananas have always been classified by quality and size for international trade. Because the standards, set by individual governments and the industry, were confusing, the European Commission was asked to draw up new rules.

Commission regulation 2257/94 decreed that bananas in general should be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature”. Those sold as “extra class” must be perfect, “class 1” can have “slight defects of shape” and “class 2” can have full-scale “defects of shape”.

Nothing is banned under the regulation, which sets grading rules requested by industry to make sure importers – including UK wholesalers and supermarkets – know exactly what they will be getting when they order a box of bananas.

from: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/11/boris-johnson-launches-the-vote-leave-battlebus-in-cornwall

It’s a good example of how selective reporting on typical types of legislation can be used to sway a population - or just makes everyone so fed up about ‘Laws from the EU’ stories that they stop looking at anything including the more important stuff.

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Ah, makes sense. I had a mental image of mathematicians with funny glasses and moustaches examining a large sample size of bananas to determine which are up to scratch.

¨On July 5 at noon, all 751 Members of the European Parliament will vote on whether to rubber-stamp the plans for upload filters and the “link tax”, or send them back to the drawing board¨

https://juliareda.eu/2018/06/article-11-13-vote/

Parliament just voted against the directive today (mind that it was about giving approval for the directive to get into the process of becoming law, not the vote that would make it valid itself. The process is still very early and even if the vote was in favour today there would be more chances to make amendments - just now these amendments can be more drastic and take more time to formulate):

I would like to note this comment:

Yay!

Casual reminder to please show up to the polls next year because these EU parliamentary elections really do matter.

Indeed with the directive going back to the drawing board and the EU election next year it is highly likely that the new directive that will be formulated will be decided by the next parliament. Definitely something to take into account if you are casting a vote next year.

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VERY good news! Great to see reason win against reactionary old men and corporate interests for once.

Basically what I expected. The EU Parliament, being directly elected by EU citizens, has always tended to be much more in tune with the public opinion and IMHO more reasonable than the council and commission, which are appointed by national governments. If anything, I’m surprised at how close it was.

I don’t see the fact that it is being “sent back” and reworked as a problem, it seems that most people agree that there needs to be IP law reform, and the EU is the correct instance to have those discussions on.

I just hope that the next proposal drops having the onus on site providers for maintaining IP’s, though it probably is unlikely due to how close the vote was. It will probably more likely be toned down and resubmitted again next year, rather than entirely scrapping the plan and rebuilding the foundation of the plan.

I was breaking under cold sweat. It’s good to see that EU parliament is not completely made up of idiots and corporate drones.

Are you saying that it’s not dead yet?

It will be reworked and resubmitted (in a year?), as expected in the case of a rejection. I think most MEPs agree that there needs to be IP reform, what they did now was just reject this particular plan for it. The process will continue, hopefully the next plan proposed is better (though it will likely just be a milder version of the current plan, considering that the vote was relatively close),

Next vote is in September IIRC.

This vote even if passed wasn’t a vote to vote into law, a cold sweat wasn’t required. This vote puts it back to the drawing board as both the council and parliament disagreed to voted against (in this case) the proposal as it stands.

The commission will have to go back to the drawing board before putting it forward again.

There’s almost zero people who think there isn’t a need for this in some form, most just disagree with it in its current form.

This is basically the EU working as expected.

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Depends on what you mean by “this in some form”. If you’re referring to protecting content owners, then certainly. If you’re talking about making every site on the internet liable for user-generated content, not so much.

As @Eden said…EU copyright law is archaic and needs to be updated. Basically now that the council, commission and the Parliament disagree they will need to negotiate and find a new form of the law (especially for the most problematic articles) that both can agree on.

The deliberation and any amendments will happen during the fall and will be public rather than behind closed door within committees, which is always good. Definitely a better form of the directive will emerge. How much better will depends on the deliberation and the will of the EU citizen to keep on pressuring on the matter.

The final vote could happen at the start of 2019 but since these things can take more than planned it is possible that the process will take that much that it will fall to the next parliament to take the final vote.

This is indeed typical EU procedure. The EU Net Neutrality directives went through a similar process. It begun pretty bad and through the process was amended to sth quite more positive. Hopefully sth similar will happen here.

Back then though the parliament had much less reactionaries in their ranks so things might go badly here if the public loses interest.

Just because a law is old doesn’t mean it’s bad and needs to be replaced. Does it look like we need more people to go to prison because they share songs and movies over the internet?

Having archaic laws that were formulated on the beginning of the internet era (completely out of touch from the present situation) that are overly complex, have voids and are too ambiguous for most people to understand only serves the copyright trolls and big publishers. Copyright legislation in the EU is like the wild west and only bandits can exploit that.

Legislation can work both ways. It can also protect the people that share songs and movies over the Internet. It is all about who formulates it. It is a law that says in Switzerland that users cannot be prosecuted for copyright infringement. The GDPR is also a law. The EU net neutrality directives as well.

Good rules provide freedom
Bad rules provide oppression
No rules provide a jungle

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Just an update that this is the current state of this particular proposal.

Forecasts
11/09/2018 Debate in plenary scheduled
12/09/2018 Vote in plenary scheduled

This is the councils proposed changes which I believe is likely to be what will be voted on in the upcoming debate/vote.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&mode=XML&reference=A8-2018-0245&language=EN#title1

Summary: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/summary.do?id=1542686&t=d&l=en

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Also Reda’s (and the Pirates) summary, opinion and proposals here:

https://juliareda.eu/2018/09/copyright-showdown/

And the saveyourinternet campaign: https://saveyourinternet.eu/

Just sent this to my MEPs.

I am writing to you as I’m concerned about the potential negative implications of EU Copyright Directive Article 13.

Both the original proposal of the Commission and the proposal by MEP Voss in the JURI Committee can be interpreted in practice in a manner that could seriously harm the open internet. Specifically, the upload filters proposed in Article 13 will lead to a wide range of online companies to filter, block and erase our communications with no incentives to balance these measures with the respect of other rights.

As someone who depends on access to the open internet for communication, entertainment and work, I’m worried that this could impact myself and others, both socially and economically. By allowing such overreaching controls of copyrighted materials, the EU could be opening the floodgates on a massive influx of false copyright claims - making a mockery of fair use, and our copyright system in general.

The potential for this type of unfair censoring has already been demonstrated on platforms such as YouTube. Any persons filing a copyright claim, true or otherwise, takes all monetisation for the length of time the claim is held against the content creator. In doing this, the claimant is actively preventing money from entering the economy of the content creator’s respective country, not to mention the effect it has on the person’s livelihood.

As well as this, the implementation of measures discussed in Article 13 are not practical on any scale, and will require years of work to be at a level which wouldn’t be considered acceptable by anyone who cares about open access to information.

I hope you take what I’ve said into account. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your response.

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Just to play devil’s advocate. The proposal being voted on to the best of my knowledge is now the amended council’s proposal, of which this makes no mention on upload filters. (or content recognition technologies)

Correct me if I’m wrong?