#wtf eu

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Save the internet!

If article 13 has taught us something, it is that too many powerful politicians have no idea how the internet works and that we have to fight back early against new rules, which are stupid.

So that’s why I want to shed some light on new rules that are proposed by the President of the German Parliament Wolfgang Schäuble and that are supported by the likely new President of the EU Commission Manfred Weber.

They propose that everyone should be required use their real name everywhere on the internet. All social media accounts should be named after your real name. If you write a comment somewhere it should be signed with your real name.

That is the worst thing possible on the internet and right now it is a basic right that you can use a pen name. Not sure though how long it stays this way, once the politicians get to work.

Think about it:

you write about oppression in your country - not anymore

asking questions about health issues – everyone knows that you have a yeast infection after unprotected sex

you need help with your mental illness - cool that now everyone knows

Seeking help for stress with your boss – they know you wrote it

Trouble in your relationship? – definitely once your partner(s) reads about it on the internet

teenager not sure about their sexuality – they will be outed against their will

woman writing with other video game fans - really looking forward to all the sexist comments

sexworker seeking jobs - cool that now your neighbours and colleagues know

you want to be respected for what you say and not deal with the prejudices you have in your life - not with your name attached to it

have weird hobbies (and I count this blog) that not everyone should know about - hahaha

doing research for a book - the police will be interested in your search about how to get rid of a body

etc.

Be aware of this now! Look out for it. If the EU or maybe Germany proposes such a law, fight it in the beginning. Fight it with legitimate issues why it would affect you negatively. Don’t exaggerate, but explain. This will very likely be a discussion in the next year.  Be prepared!

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Cool. One of the most incompetent woman on the planet was nominated for one of the most powerful positions in the world. Great.

Ursula von der Leyen is nominated as head of the European Commission.

Never mind that she totally fucked up the German Bundeswehr as Minister of Defense in the last 6 years. (Though to be fair, those before her weren’t that much better either.) Some examples:

we have 3 (that’s THREE) out of 125 eurofighters that are ready to fly, with other vehicles it isn’t any better. Meaning that the German pilots can’t reach their minimum goals of hours to be considered active

if there are any NATO exercises, we have to ask other countries to take us with them or we have to borrow stuff

Bundeswehr members started a Nazi-group, and no one noticed anything 

every single day there is a new scandal about corruption and even the people investigating it say they have no idea where to even start. No one in the Bundeswehr can tell them how and why special consultants get money

Ministers have to fly commercial, because the Bundeswehr can’t provide airplanes and those they have are only for the Kanzler and President. They have to fly with two machines, as the chances that one breaks down are like 100% (Seriously. It is super embarrassing to read in the newspaper all the time that official members got stranded somewhere, because an airplane of the Bundeswehr broke down. AGAIN.)

The Gorch Fock (a sailing ship as a training boat for officers) was held ransom by the shipyard, because the Bundeswehr didn’t pay as there was a lot of corruption ? involved

Hey, but we do have special camouflage for pregnant soldiers now. Just in case you want to fight in a war, when 8 months pregnant. Priorities.

The great image campaigns, where they want to attract teenagers with “adventure camps” and “the best multiplayer shooter” there is

Basically we get horror stories about our army on every single day and everyone trying to figure out what the hell is going on there only reports that it is even worse than you can imagine, but they have no idea if it is criminal, because they can’t figure out what exactly is going on. Are they criminal or incompetent?

And Ursula von der Leyen has been Minister of this Nightmare for the last six years. It is a miracle that she didn’t get sacked, but somehow there were more important fuck ups, so she somehow escaped. Now though she doesn’t get sacked, but promoted.  

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Dear UK, the European Court of Justice just ruled that you can cancel Brexit and you don’t need consent from the other states for it. Make something from it!

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Wow. If you want to know how dirty the deal about article 13 is.

So basically Germany gave up on internet freedom in exchange for gas from Russia.

There are rumours (basically all but officially confirmed as often in politics) that France demanded that upload-filters are needed for all companies that are older than three years, but Germany was hesistant and wanted to demand it only from companies that make more than 20 million dollar (huge difference!). Germany always wanted to protect the interest of smaller business. That was the position in January, which would have meant: upload-filters only for facebook and google. 

Then though Merkel suddenly changed the German position against everything that the government had agreed to. It was always very confusing why it happened out of a sudden. Enter: Nordstream 2. Germany depends on Russian gas and we have pipelines from Russia that go over land through the Ukraine, etc. Russia hates that (basically they can’t deliver gas to Germany, without also giving gas to the Ukraine) and demands a pipeline through the Baltic Sea. No more interference possible. There is already one, but that’s not enough, they want an additional one. Germany agreed to that and building is already under way. But everyone else is totally pissed off by that. Trump wants to take away troups from the EU, France is not okay with Germany trading with Russia, when in fact the EU boykotts them, etc.

Then though France signalled that they would be okay that Germany has a gas-deal with Russia, in exchange for the upload filters. And Germany agreed. Because there was additional pressure from German media, so they just thought. Okay, we give up. Fuck the users. And so suddenly in January article 13 was made even worse and the exceptions for small business were deleted.

I’m absolutely speechless. This is so fucking dirty and vile. And I seriously hope that Merkel has to answer for this ugly deal.

[enchantedbyhiddles]

going back to this article 13 subject, didn't axel voss sort of admitted not exactly knowing what was in those articles and when they were going to be approved? because that only makes this situation worse.

Yes, he did.

Well, from what I know Axel Voss wrote those drafts and he is the “mastermind” behind it. Yet when Swedish journalists asked him about some technicalities and details in them and what they would mean for the internet, he was clueless as fuck.

https://qz.com/1389385/article-11-and-article-13-axel-voss-is-surprised-by-eu-copyright-law/

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Trump: Europe is one of our biggest foes.

Tusk - President of the EU council: America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.

[enchantedbyhiddles]

So, worst case scenario, could article 13 mean you can´t even post pictures of yourself anymore if you are wearing a shirt or anything like that with a copyrighted image on it (like a disney princess for ex.) There´s a lot of official merchandise out there and this cant possibly be in the interest of any company.

Hey, dear anon. Complicated question. But I try to answer what I think.

First though: I’m not an expert. I haven’t studied law, I don’t work for the EU, nor do I work for any copyright experts. So whatever I say or think is from a person who is kind of interested in politics, had to learn a lot about law for a job, and tries to keep herself informed. I can only say what I think and whoever has better knowledge and insight is free to correct me.

The problem is we really don’t know anything yet, because it isn’t clearly stated what is copyrighted material and what not. The new law is so different and goes so much further than anything already existing. Right now if you make a picture of a picture and posting that isn’t breaking copyright. So posting yourself wearing whatever merchandising is no problem at all. Judges would very likely rule the same in the future. Especially as that is not the target of the new copyright law at all.  (just make sure that no other person is in the picture, because then you can’t post it! No matter who they are, they could sue you if you don’t get permission from them. >GDPR) 

I think article 13 will really depend on the companies. The idea is that google/facebook/etc. make contracts with publishers so that the publishers get some revenue, but in exchange google/facebook/etc. will still be able to post/search/etc. So there will be some solution. But we have no idea how long it takes, what it will cost and it is likely that smaller users and platforms will be much harder affected than big ones. As you say, it isn’t in the interest of any company to basically not be seen on the internet any longer.

It’s also important that it would never be your or my problem what we try to post. Either it works or it doesn’t. We wouldn’t get sued. Article 13 is only for google/facebook/etc. and that they have to make sure no copyrighted material is posted to their sites. So most likely it would depend on which kind of filters they use and how good they are. Some would recognise the copyrighted picture on your shirt others wouldn’t.

The idea of article 13 is that the data giants have to make sure that copyright is respected and that they compensate their use of copyrighted material. It is not intended to be this big censor thing to users. That’s might be the unfortunate side-effect, because it wasn’t thought through.

(Fun fact: In Germany that is already a problem, because you are promoting something, so some judges argue that you have to tag it as an advertisement, even if you don’t benefit from it and didn’t get any money. There are lawyers that search instagram for posts where people wear something that is clearly recognisable and then they sent cease and desist letters with high penalties for false advertising. The judge who ruled that is an idiot, but sadly he did a few month ago and now we have to wait for new rulings to get rid of that practice.)

TLDR: If google or facebook or instagram use a shitty upload filters, they might make it impossible to post your pic, even though there would be no law against you making or posting pics of your merchandise.

[enchantedbyhiddles]

If I’m honest with you the way Trump and the USA behaved in the last days is worse than anything I imagined beforehand. The reaction of the other countries is also worse.

I totally imagined that Trump would spin his usual ignorant speeches, I didn’t expect him to physically push away leaders to make his way to the front at the NATO-meeting.

I imagined him to be ignorant and uneducated, I didn’t expect that he had to limit the speeches to 4 minutes at the NATO-meeting, that the other country leaders (most of all Merkel and Macron) would take turns to explain to Donald what was going on (Merkel had to tell him more than 11 times in one day that trade deals are done between USA and EU, not between USA and Germany as Germany isn’t authorised for that). Neither did I expect them to actually install a special task force at the G7 summit to try to educate the whole delegation for three days. This is the first time in forever that they actually had to explain what free trade is at the beginning of a summit. 

I didn’t expect the USA to admit after the G7 summit that they found the days helpful as they understood something about climate change. WTF? You should have known beforehand and if you understood just a little bit you’d act.

I also didn’t expect Trump to be that outright stupid and ignorant to not listen to the other leaders at all during their speeches. (When the Italian Prime Minister Gentiloni talked about the refugee crisis, that hits Italy very hard, he was the only one to not use headphones to listen.)

I, as most other people, totally imagined that the summits would end without any results, so I’m actually pleasantly surprised that the USA agreed to install a German-American meetingboard, so that they could work on their trade differences together and so that the US-delegation could understand how international trade deals work.

Most of all I didn’t expect the other leaders of the G7 to so openly mock Trump, so openly condemn his work and ignorance, and to put this in nearly hostile words in an official final note of the summit. 

Basically I imagined some boorish behaviour and ignorance that would end in no results at all. I expected the other countries to stoically take it and say that they are talking at least. It didn’t end though with no results, it ended with the most powerful countries in the world telling Trump to go fuck himself. The USA are now officially isolated and the other countries made it clear that if push came to shove they’d continue without them.