EU Backs New Copyright Legislation - The Fat Get Fatter ?

[GhostShip]

Yet more bad news for the Internet generation 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47708144

Copyright laws which critics say could change the internet have been voted in by the European Parliament.
The new rules, including the controversial Article 13, will hold tech firms responsible for material posted without copyright permission. Sharing memes and GIFs will still be allowed under the new laws.

Many musicians and creators say the legislation will compensate artists fairly - but others argue that they will destroy user-generated content.

It's early days yet in seeing just what new stupidity this legislation will dredge up, but such legislation does not pass without a few "donations" and the "rightsholders" groups will be looking to take down some site or service to create a prescedent they can use as a future legial action template.

Watch this space for the rightsholding monopolists to make their move.

[White Stripes]

in this article; https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47239600 it says this;

What is Article 13?

Article 13 is the part of the new EU Copyright Directive that covers how "online content sharing services" should deal with copyright-protected content, such as television programmes and movies.

It refers to services that primarily exist to give the public access to "protected works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users", so it is likely to cover services such as YouTube, Dailymotion and Soundcloud.

However, there is also a long list of exemptions, including:

    non-profit online encyclopaedias
    open source software development platforms
    cloud storage services
    online marketplaces
    communication services

emphasis mine...... communication services? so... soundcloud and youtube are out but p2p is in? p2p is technically a 'communication service' ... or.. wait... what about the internet as a whole? the internet itself is a 'communication service' .......... this law is not very well worded....

[GhostShip]

The weak terminology of the law allows for its usage or abusage depending on the size of the relevant pocket.

Organisations such as Google, Youtube, Spotify and Netflix etc will have lawyers on speed-dial but anyone else is likely to be open to abuse as we saw in the original take-down notices used (and abused)  to force the takedown of material that wasnt always owned by the organisation issuing the take-down request and worse we saw "automatic" take-down requests issued by "bots" despite a proviso of the take-down being based on the "honest belief of infringement" .

It seems to me that we will see simply more abuse and I am always very happy this network is decentralised as in such a case what lawyers wish for is seledom anything they can have any control over.

* GhostShip enjoys the freedom of P2P

[wonderer]

hear hear