Copyright Directive Panic

[Fishmanpa]

What's the point, it's not like they're going to listen...

Then what's the point of worrying?

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

Activism does clearly work, Frank. But there is a massive difference between doing something for those reasons and reacting to an irrational anxiety disorder. The latter is destructive to your mental health.

Of course they won't listen! Politicians don't care about us, only what they can get for their careers. The trick is to bully them into having to be arsed to do something they would normally not as they just want to phone it in and collect their paychecks. Remember, they are causing deaths through lack of funding so they are hardly going to be concerned about this stuff.

Like axolotl said, this is vague legislation. It's been left that way because the EU are putting the onus on businesses to do the work. Politicians can demand teleporting be introduced if they want but it doesn't mean it will happen.

So, it's the detail that matters. It could come in and be of little influence. There are so many ways around it as it stands and none of those questions have been answered yet.

It's not going to have much influence on the economy, this isn't a big sector and if it was anyway it would be concerning that the economy was dependant on copyright infringements.

I wonder if now it's going ahead there will be a challenge under human rights legislation somehow as this is going to potentially infringe on all citizens who may post links to things and the fair use policy actualWeeaboo mentioned?

---------- Post added at 02:15 ---------- Previous post was at 01:58 ----------

I can honestly empathise in being terrified of how the freedom of the internet may get censored or abused from here on. After the Net Neutrality stuff that happened in the US recently, I got really concerned about how that sort of thing might actually go through and spread to other countries.

Because of how much the internet means to me, and does for me, I shudder at the idea that it could become a restricted place.

I'm bad at keeping up with worldly events, so I generally don't know much about this EU situation at the moment apart from the 'memes are actually going to be banned!!!' junk I've been hearing - which sounds both horrifying and hilariously ridiculous at the same time - but I really don't think it's gonna be that crazy. I may just be talking out of my butt with all this, but I see this whole thing as negative, though not particularly alarming yet. I mean, what can they do? Shitposters and creators aren't gonna stand idly by and let THAT sort of thing happen - it's guaranteed that people would find workarounds.

Besides, like... I know barely anything about law-related stuff, but unless a piece of fan media is being used for monetary gain, shouldn't a lot of creations fall under fair use anyway? Memes, particularly, would without a doubt fall under 'parody or satire' - fair use! Otherwise, censorship often comes from direct wishes of a creator, so unless every media studio on Earth decides they no longer want their fans to have fun with their works, I don't think you should worry about that too much.

Unless you like some of those really stingy game companies, ahahah~

I mean, if we're looking at copyright censorship, YouTube's been doing that forever. YouTube's video removal already happens, no matter what country you're in. If a company doesn't want your content up, they'll strike it. How ridiculous, unnecessary and difficult is it gonna be to keep track of every piece of content on every part of the web? It'll take a long time to sort out even just what the big tech have on their sites alone. Ahaha~

Also, don't VPNs allow users to 'change' a region they're in? Surely if it actually becomes insanely impossible for EU users to retain online freedom, they can utilise those sorts of services. Heck, people will continue to make more of these services available (and better!) to combat that sort of insanity. The amount of online content is incomprehensibly huge and the internet is chock-full of clever folks who want to use it!

The trouble is the internet needs some level of control as it's creators forget the golden rule about giving humans a toy...we have lots of idiots. So, some laws are always going to be needed unless we want unchallenged criminal behaviour.

It seems the push is from the material owners e.g. record companies. They don't want them used without their permission. The same with image creation and recently Google removed the button to access images for download due to pressure so you have to go around it. This is why I question whether so many people can simply update their privacy policies to say whether you can have fair use or not?

There are some good articles explaining the legislation via Google but the full document is linked earlier in the thread if you want a read.

Yep, we already do all this stuff. This is just tightening the grip on existing copyright laws. But it comes with the introduction of a tax too and this is concerning as these are cash cows to politicians so I guess we have the worry they may choose to try to charge us for fair use. I can't really see that as they would be chasing billions of people for tiny sums of cash. Normally a government would have to admit they can't afford to pay for this, and the public would have them over the cost in other services to chase an ideology aimed at helping corporations anyway, but this legislation is so woolly and aimed at the companies doing the work so one concern is whether they will be expected to collect this "tax" on behalf of somehow. That pushes a lot of work onto hosting, searching companies that I wonder whether the push back would just halt it.

Yep, with VPN's you can choose the server location from what I remember. VPN's are incredibly cheap too. But I guess the question is whether part of this will demand tackling the issue of VPN's with it? There are already discussions about cracking down on the dark web in the UK and the EU has a lot of right wing politicians in power so could we end up going the way of Russia and banning them? Do the EU just get the companies to block VPN IP's?

[FrankT]

Then what's the point of worrying?

Positive thoughts

There's an answer to that above.

[Fishmanpa]

Frankly Frank (had to ), IF something happened where the internet were restricted or policed to the point of removing freedoms, the people wouldn't stand for it. I understand that it is an intricate part of our lives now but as someone who grew up without it, when there were 7 TV channels and stations signed off a little after midnight, I could get used to the way things were quite easily. Life was simpler and less stressful 40 years ago before all of this.

This thread relates to a thread about the internet causing more mental health issues. While it's opened up the world at our finger tips, it's also created more stress and vitriol as illustrated clearly in the comment sections of news sites and on forums. Let's put it this way... 40 years ago, a "troll" was an imaginary creature that lived under a bridge

All we can do is vote. We have no control otherwise. I'm seeing things happening in the US that have directly affected my life (such as health care etc.) and I'll be voting in November. Until then, as sucky as it is, there's nothing I can do

Positive thoughts

[FrankT]

What good is voting when the people who share my opinion are largely outnumbered?

[MyNameIsTerry]

What good is voting when the people who share my opinion are largely outnumbered?

I don't think you can really gauge people's opinions because this is an obscure vote in a remote chamber we have little impact in. If it was a manifesto pledge then voters would be me directly engaged.

So it comes back more to activism than voting unless you are voting for the MEP's...which again probably won't mean anything other than you can vote for a candidate you understand doesn't share these values. The trouble is, it's a widespread population with vastly different politics so again I think lobbying your government is perhaps all we plebs can do and the big companies & powerful people can meddle in their usual ways.

It's like trying to change UN policy.

[Fishmanpa]

What good is voting when the people who share my opinion are largely outnumbered?

It's no different than writing in your vote or voting for the underdog in any election. It's about doing what you feel is right. I wrote my vote in the last two presidential elections here in the States knowing full well it wasn't going to make a difference with the exception of my conscious. I did what I felt to be the right thing and I feel good about that. There's nothing I can do to change the way things are except to exercise my right to vote again. If it doesn't go my way then I have no choice but to live with it.

Positive thoughts

[FrankT]

You mean I'll have to live with memes, fanart, everything being banned?!

[MyNameIsTerry]

You mean I'll have to live with memes, fanart, everything being banned?!

Possibly, yes. We don't know at this stage as the legislation is unclear.

But people see changes to their liberties through their lifetimes and you adapt. Not so long ago smokers were raging of not being able to pollute everyone's air so they could smoke wherever they wanted. They adapted, they had no choice.

Like I said, this is a bit of a niche area. Most people in the UK won't care about memes, fanart, mixes on YouTube, etc. Some of this is already supposed to be illegal via existing copyright laws anyway.

If "the people" can adapt to the smoking laws they can certainly adapt to this.

I think the internet has created a lot of people who have got used to complete freedom. That freedom has included the ability to harass people to the point of suicide and there have been some horrible crimes due to the internet's ability to hide people. The law is playing catch up all the time. Not so long ago people were raging about not being able to pirate music & film, which was already illegal under existing copyright laws.

Why should the internet be a place of total freedom? Real life never has been. The minute you give access to something like this you only invite crime and some very unpleasant sides of human nature that may remain hidden in real life as a broken nose often offends

Right now you don't know what is going to happen with this one so you have to accept the uncertainty of that. You can't change it. If you wish you can try activism to apply pressure along with other.

As for voting on MEP's to get them to do anything... The EU will always go it's own way. It tells whole countries to bugger off (they are losing a big net payer for not taking our concerns seriously) so it's not going to listen to a small number of the public. It's too large and too remote. We can't do much other than try to change the size of the political parties across the whole EU. We don't even share common values with all these countries. What do we have in common with Poland? The struggles of the Greeks with austerity? Italy turning to the far right? You can try to shift your limited MEP seats to left wing parties but it only achieves so much if the right wing parties have the majority across the EU. The people with bigger voices are the ones that can push so activism can help to get behind them.

I think the key issue in this is what big business say is the worst of the two evils. If it turns out the cost to implement this will be far worse than putting up with what we have now will the MEP's listen to a smaller bunch of big business who pushed for this legislation? Possibly not.

[FrankT]

Like I said, this is a bit of a niche area. Most people in the UK won't care about memes, fanart, mixes on YouTube, etc. Some of this is already supposed to be illegal via existing copyright laws anyway.

If "the people" can adapt to the smoking laws they can certainly adapt to this.

That's outrageous.