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»EU copyright reform goes from bad to worse«

By on July 19, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Big Media, Copyright, EU, Free Information

For example, the “snippet tax” would require commercial sites that quote even tiny portions of online press publications to pay a licensing fee for each one. Given the way social networks constantly quote and cross-link information, that’s clearly absurd. And yet the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee of the European Parliament has come up with a cunning plan to make it even worse. It wants the snippet tax to apply to physical publications as well as digital ones. (…)

Just as the ITRE committee wants to make the snippet tax even worse, so the Culture and Education (CULT) committee of EU politicians has come up with a way to make the upload filter dramatically more ridiculous. If the CULT committee’s amendments are adopted in the final law, EU citizens will no longer be able to upload copies of copyright material to the cloud, even if they have acquired them legally.

Glyn Moody @ PNI: EU copyright reform goes from bad to worse »

EFF: Do Last Week’s European Copyright Votes Show Publishers Have Captured European Politics? »

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European Parliament making a pig’s breakfast of new Copyright regulation package

By on July 16, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Entertainment, Big Government, Big Media, Censorship, Civil rights, Copyright, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Human rights, Intellectual Property, Link wars, social media

On 11 July, two Committees in the European Parliament voted on their Opinions on European Commission’s proposal for a Copyright Directive: the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE).

CULT decided to abandon all reason and propose measures that contradict existing law on monitoring of online content. They also contradict clear rulings from the highest court in the EU on internet filtering. And for the sake of being consistently bad, the Committee also supported ancillary copyright, a “link tax” that would make linking and quotation almost impossible on social media.

ITRE made a brave effort to fix the unfixable “censorship machine”, the upload filter proposed by the Commission. On the one hand, this demonstrates a willingness in the Parliament to resist the fundamentalism of the Commission’s proposal. On the other, it shows how impossible this task really is. Despite deleting the reference to “content recognition technologies”, ITRE has decided to keep the possibility of measures to prevent the availability of copyrighted works or “other subject matter” which may or may not be understood as supporting preventive filtering.

And there is more bad news in the linked text, below.

EDRi » Latest copyright votes: Filtering, blocking & half-baked compromises »

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Copyright vs. freedom of the arts, freedom of the press and freedom of information

By on June 10, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Big Media, Censorship, Civil rights, Copyright, Democracy, ECJ, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Germany, Human rights, Intellectual Property

• What role the rights granted by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union plays: in particular, what is the relationship between copyright protection (Article 17(2)) and freedom of the arts (Article 13)?

• (C)can copyright protection be trumped by the need to safeguard freedom of the press and freedom of information? Or can fundamental rights be even directly invoked to prevent enforcement of copyright?

These two – rather fundamental – questions have been sent to the European Court of Justice from Germanys supreme court, undesgerichtshof (BGH).

Techdirt » Two Big Copyright Cases Sent To Top EU Court: One On Sampling, The Other On Freedom Of The Press »

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Committee vote on EU Copyright: No to the censorship machine. Yes to link tax.

By on June 8, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Big Media, Censorship, Copyright, EU, Free Information, Intellectual Property, Internet, Link wars, social media

Today the European Parliaments committee for the internal market (IMCO) has voted on the new EU copyright package.

The »censorship machine« (demanding that net platforms and ISP:s should filter all user uploaded content) fell. This is a victory for a free and open Internet.

(But still, the proposal is not quite dead. It can be re-tabled for the main vote in plenary.)

However, the »link tax« (license fees for linking to mainstream media content) still stands.

This terrible idea must be stopped in plenary!

It ain’t over ’till the fat lady sings.

Update » A more detailed report » IMCO Vote on Copyright in the DSM: crying tears of…? »

Update 2 » Pirate MEP Julia Reda » 5 takeaways from the first important copyright reform vote in the European Parliament »

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EU to move on the Internet Censorship Machine and Link-tax

By on May 31, 2017 in Big Entertainment, Big Media, Censorship, Copyright, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Intellectual Property, Internet, Link wars, social media

Next Thursday, June 8, the European Parliaments Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) will have its main vote on the EU Copyright Package.

Here a proposal will be hammered out for the parliament’s final plenary vote later this summer. So it’s a very important event. And there are dark clouds on the horizon.

Key points are the EU Censorship Machine (forcing internet platforms to control and, in relevant cases, censor content uploaded by its users) and the Link-tax (a license fee for linking to media news articles).

This is the best – and maybe last – opportunity to stop this from becoming EU law.

Take action, spread the word and please contact your elected members of the parliament.

Julia Reda (German Pirate MEP): Just 9 days left to reject the worst version of EU copyright expansion plans yet »

BoingBoing: ACT NOW! In 9 days, the European Parliament could pass a truly terrible copyright expansion »

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EU to ISP:s: Scan and censor everything

By on March 26, 2017 in Big Brother, Big Entertainment, Big Media, Censorship, Copyright, EU, Free Information, Freedom of Speech, Intellectual Property, Internet, Privacy

Under the extreme rules proposed by the Commission in the Copyright Directive, uploads to the internet would need to be scanned to assess if any photo, video or text that is being uploaded can be “identified” based on information provided by copyright holders. This would block, for example, memes that include copyrighted images or videos, parody, quotation and other perfectly harmless activities.

In order to encourage internet companies to monitor and delete information as thoroughly as possible, it is also proposed that their legal liability for uploads would be increased.

EDRi: EU moves one step closer to the world’s worst internet filtering law »

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