#eu laws

[starlightreign]

EU try not to make authoritarian, invasive, surveillance laws challenge level impossible-

I hope everyone involved would :

[socialpants]

[alanaisalive]

There's a YouTuber who is British, but lives in Czechia. A while back he was complaining about the EU like, "I would have voted against Brexit, but I do hate some of the EU laws," and went on to complain about the caps now being attached on soda bottles and how annoying that is.

Yeah, it is annoying. And I know that because I live in the UK and we have them too even though we are no longer in the EU. The manufacturers in the UK still have to follow EU guidelines to sell in Ireland and the rest of the EU.

So we still have to deal with the annoying EU laws, but no longer have any say in creating or passing them. Just like we fucking told you before you voted to leave.

[dawnswindow]

My dad is trying to lecture me on EU law. I got a first in EU law, my dad does not live in Europe nor does he know the laws European or otherwise.

Damn mansplaining really be on a whole new level here

[regalpotato]

This is it. 

The final meme. 

Goodbye friends.

[lilized]

Ok, I have read a lot of people I follow heartbroken and scared cause Article 13 passed.

Please, remember that the Eu directive will still have to translate into law in your country and that could very well take years and that your blog and memes and other stuff will be protected.

I have reblogged an interesting post  (one of the last reblogs) about this that contains the actual text of the law, that it could settle your mind as much as it settled mine.

[daisy-oreilly-fti]

An In Depth Analysis on Articles 13 and 11 - Part 1

This is going to be the first in a series of posts attempting to shed some light on the potentially disastrous implications of the new EU Copyright Directive articles 11 and 13.

Unfortunately, these laws have so many implications that I can’t actually put everything into a single post and still keep it somewhat structured, so I’m going to break it up.

The biggest problem with article 13, you see, is how incredibly vague it is. There are things we know for certain it will do, and things which it might or might not do. Article 11 suffers from the same problem, to a lesser extent, but I’ll go into specifics separately.

I’ll deal with article 13 for now, as that one holds a host of problems.

The immediate and clear effects it will have on hos the internet works as of now.

Ways it can and will clash with previously established freedoms and render them null.

Repercussions of painfully vague wording and things it might or might not affect.

As people have been saying up and down, the point to this article is to basically force every website that ‘allows users to post  text, sounds, code, still or moving images, or other copyrighted works for public consumption’ to implement filters to automatically veto any and all content that users try to post for copyrighted material.

The definition of copyrighted material in this situation is a problem in and of itself, but I’ll delve deeper into that in the next post of this series. For now, I’ll deal with the internet as a whole.

You see, what the article is trying to force is the biggest threat to the internet as we know it.

“Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users”

This is the wording the article uses. Basically, any website that admits user-generated content becomes responsible as the provider of said content. Forcing every website in existence to become responsible for the content that users upload, instead of the other way around, will force the entire business model that these sites have adopted for years now to completely turn on its head. That combined with the investments needed to put in place filtering systems that will be able to sort through not only video and audio, but any photographs, text, and any type of possible content, means that many smaller platforms might simply not be able to hold up financially and have to shut down.

Creating new platforms will also become an option which just won’t be viable for many, for the investments that would be needed. Already, this is a threat to the internet as we know it, making it harder for spaces where people can share content and information to exist.

Beyond that, there’s an issue that needs to be faced. If websites will be held directly responsible and punishable by law for the content that users upload, they’d be hard pressed to stay on the side of caution. If there’s even the slightest ambiguity about whether or not something is an infringement, websites will have to err on the side of caution and get rid of the content. This might sound harsh, but it’s a hard truth. Works which should not be deleted, will be deleted, in an effort to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

Taking this a step further, the word ‘hosting’ could be taken to mean that this is applicable to not only platforms like Google, Facebook, ao3, tumblr, Deviantart and others, but even storage servers like cloud and google drive could fall under this blanket term.

TL;DR: Fewer websites allowing less content means a huge decrease in possibilities for user-generated content, of any type.

Do you want to know the worst part, though? The grossest repercussion of this article they’re trying to pass?

This means a continent-wide surveillance system that governments and huge corporations can use to monitor and control any and all online activity of the citizens.

These filters need to be in use by any and all websites, and their job is ultimately to read through every bit of content that goes through a platform. There is nothing that will be left untouched.

And this comes on the tail of the GDPR legislation (privacy laws) which is supposed to protect the personal information of citizens from being used by any company or corporation - personal information which includes names, ID information, phone numbers, where you live, email address, etc.

But not online activity.

So, yeah. This law is gross and horrible, but I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.

I’m going to let y’all chew on this for a bit. I’ll have two more individual posts at least:

- on how the ambiguity of the wording will cause it to affect works it should not and infringe on previous Fair Use laws (how exactly it might or might not affect fan content like fanfiction and fanart)

- as well as how automatic filtering machines are shit and will cause a huge loss of content for the internet (and how that in turn might affect fandom culture)

As well as a separate one on article 11 which is another dumpsterfire entirely, which is aimed to control the type of information we have access to until they’re able to control what the public believes by controlling what we get to see online.

These next posts will more clearly accentuate the reason why I’m trying to push for a preventive movement in creating mailing lists in order to share content and information more freely in the eventuality that these laws pass.

Resources:

The body of the law (scroll down to chapter 2, article 13): 

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593&from=EN

Websites will become legally responsible for the content we upload:

https://gizmodo.com/the-end-of-all-thats-good-and-pure-about-the-internet-1826963763

https://gizmodo.com/the-founding-fathers-of-the-internet-plead-with-eu-to-s-1826792360

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia 

(this one in particular will be more relevant in one of the next posts, but I’m not going to stop you from reading ahead)

Effects of ambiguity, surveillance, and the loss of legal content for the safety of responsible websites:

http://copyright4creativity.eu/c4cs-fact-sheets-on-the-eu-copyright-reform/

(Their entire spreadsheet on article 13 is very thorough and tries to explain every possible repercussion while quoting the proper text of the law (which I’ve linked above) so feel free to study this in depth explanation and run it by the text of the law. Have fun!)

[simpletonpers]

Sad world we live in.

Even if nine of the undecided countries opposed it, it would be three votes short.

If consent's so important, why can't I say no to such law? What benefit is this supposed to give a minor?

There were studies conducted by the parliament back then when the law was first proposed (before it was withdrawn and brought back by Denmark) that proved that teenagers would be uncomfortable sharing pictures because it could get flagged as illegal content.

Not to mention how EU politicians are the exceptions, meanwhile you don't... Is it really equal and fair?

The world is worrying about minors and kids... Now yes, it's very good. Except their methods are very much the phrase "good on paper, moronic in practice".

Why don't we instead teach the kids about safety? Why do politicians have to control what we do or say?

What my question is now is, they say "protect the kids", but in cases like these; Is it actually protecting? Or is it just another buzz word that you can't argue about or else you look bad?

I'm a minor and I'll ask something, what do these politicians know about how kids feel? Do they know anything, are they aware of our feelings and our opinions? Do they understand what they're doing is doing the most disrespectful thing you can do to minors, all while reassuring that it's to "protect them"?

What will parents think about this? They know their kids, not the old politicians. Parents will probably not be happy that their WhatsApp messages are being scanned by a system while their kid is being vulnerable to them over the phone.

Consent is important, especially to systems like these.

Fuck the system, they can suck my dick. They're all hoes.