After Insisting That EU Copyright Directive Didn't Require Filters, France Starts Promoting Filters

Armenius

Armenius

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For months Axel Voss, the MEP in charge of the controversial EU Copyright Directive formerly known as Article 13 (now Article 17 as enacted into law), assured everyone who was against the proposal that it did not require upload filters for content submitted through EU member states to the internet. Techdirt is now reporting that France may be the first to transpose the Directive into French Law. The Minister for Culture of France gave a speech just one day after the directive passed (Google Translate), during which he stated he wanted the Directive transposed into French Law "as soon as possible" with a mission of promoting and supervising "content recognition technologies."

...That didn't stop the vote from happening, of course, and the Parliament questionably moving forward with this plan. Still, it's rather striking that just a day after the vote, as pointed out to us by Benjamin Henrion, France's Minister for Culture gave a speech in which he admits that it requires filters and hopes that France will implement the law as quickly as possible in order to start locking down the internet. The quotes here are based on Google translate, so they may not be perfect, but you get the idea. Incredibly, in talking about the Directive, Riester starts off by saying that the passing of the Directive was "despite massive campaigns of misinformation" which seems rather ironic, since it's now clear the misinformation came from those who insisted it didn't require filters, because soon after that he says:

"I also announce that the Higher Council of Literary and Artistic Property, the HADOPI and the CNC will jointly launch in the coming days a 'Mission to promote and supervise content recognition technologies'."

In other words, now that the law is passed, it's time for everyone to install filters.

Riester also suggests that France may be the first to transpose the Directive into French law, meaning that it may be implemented long before required under the Directive. As he said: "there is no time to lose on this subject." If you're a site that has any user-generated content in France, good luck. Your government just sold you out. Of course, if you're a company selling filters, I guess send your lobbyists over to Paris quick and cash in.

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I guess I am still in a little bit of denial about this.

It is so profoundly stupid and will so profoundly harm the internet that everyone uses every day, that I'm fully expecting that as soon as people realize how it is actually going to impact them, something will be done to reverse large portions of it.
 
and people actually want to stay in this clusterFk....
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I guess I am still in a little bit of denial about this.

It is so profoundly stupid and will so profoundly harm the internet that everyone uses every day, that I'm fully expecting that as soon as people realize how it is actually going to impact them, something will be done to reverse large portions of it.
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I think that's likely, though I wouldn't take any bets on how long the "as soon as people realize" and the "something will be done" part will take. I'm thinking months minimum, probably less than 10 years maximum.
 
naib said:
and people actually want to stay in this clusterFk....
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To be fair, the EU has very many benefits, that collectively have to be balanced against some of the drawbacks.

The freedom to travel, live and work anywhere you want within Europe as a citizen of any member state is HUGE. The freedom of transfer of goods is also huge. It greatly benefits business, and whenever something benefits business, it generally tends to result in more and better jobs.

If a good job that matches your skills and pays more than you make today were to become available tomorrow in Berlin, you can take it! That is unbelievably great compared to the way things were pre-EU. Bringing Europe closer together is an overwhelmingly positive thing, but there are always drawbacks. When you are dealing with more people, there are more compromises. You can't always get your way. Well worth it IMHO.

I grew up in Sweden, and I know how limiting it can be to be restricted to just one small country. I no longer live in Europe, but if I did, I'd fight tooth and nail to preserve these benefits. They are more than worth dealing with the occasional boneheaded EU Parliament vote over.

That, and the EU Parliament is no more boneheaded on average than local national governments. They can make stupid mistakes too.
 
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This sounds like it is really a Support Your Local IP Lawyer act. IP law is already a tangled morass of actual law, regulations, treaties, and case law that even large corporations often screw up. Now we add "Does this Internet link violate any IP rights previously established?" Not sure? Litigate!
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
To be fair, the EU has very many benefits, that collectively have to be balanced against some of the drawbacks.

The freedom to travel, live and work anywhere you want within Europe as a citizen of any member state is HUGE. The freedom of transfer of goods is also huge. It greatly benefits business, and whenever something benefits business, it generally tends to result in more and better jobs.

If a good job that matches your skills and pays more than you make today were to become available tomorrow in Berlin, you can take it! That is unbelievably great compared to the way things were pre-EU. Bringing Europe closer together is an overwhelmingly positive thing, but there are always drawbacks. When you are dealing with more people, there are more compromises. You can't always get your way. Well worth it IMHO.

I grew up in Sweden, and I know how limiting it can be to be restricted to just one small country. I no longer live in Europe, but if I did, I'd fight tooth and nail to preserve these benefits. They are more than worth dealing with the occasional boneheaded EU Parliament vote over.

That, and the EU Parliament is no more boneheaded on average than local national governments. They can make stupid mistakes too.
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*cough* €
 
In the end, nationalities and national identities are just dumb. All of them.

It should not matter what random country you happen to be born in.

I like to see the entire planet in one large economic and political union where anyone can go, live and work anywhere they please at any given moment.

The ultimate freedom.


In the short term it would be challenging with mass migration from poorer parts of the world to wealthier ones, but over time it would result in less economic disparity between geographies and more balance.

Borders are nothing but obstacles.


That's probably an unobtainable ideal what with all the authoritarian regimes around the planet. I'd love to bring the U.S. into the E.U. common market though. It would be a huge common market able to counter-balance the rise of authoritarian China
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
The common currency is nice too, but less of a big deal IMHO. Exchange rates aren't THAT annoying to deal with. Besides, the UK doesn't use the Euro anyway...
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That's not my point. The € is fundamentally flawed. When the treaty of Rome was merged into the treaty of Lisbon (and NOTE a treaty was used because every nation the concept of a EU constitution was rejected BY THE PEOPLE: Ireland France Netherlands - treaty are negotiated with govn. No EU citizen [bar politicians] have EVER voted for the EU) two key paragraphs were removed and these two had permitted internal market ballancin

Germany had a massive currency devaluation while Italy/Greece/Spain/France all had inflation. The lack of internal rebalancing permitted rampant imbalance. Italy has never had growth under the Euro and is entering a state of perpetual recession. The target2 internal Ballance sheet shows how bad it is
 
naib said:
That's not my point. The € is fundamentally flawed. When the treaty of Rome was merged into the treaty of Lisbon (and NOTE a treaty was used because every nation the concept of a EU constitution was rejected BY THE PEOPLE: Ireland France Netherlands - treaty are negotiated with govn. No EU citizen [bar politicians] have EVER voted for the EU) two key paragraphs were removed and these two had permitted internal market ballancin

Germany had a massive currency devaluation while Italy/Greece/Spain/France all had inflation. The lack of internal rebalancing permitted rampant imbalance. Italy has never had growth under the Euro and is entering a state of perpetual recession. The target2 internal Ballance sheet shows how bad it is
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The cases of Italy and Greece have more to do with too large of a public sector compared to their GNP than anything else.
 
naib said:
That's not my point. The € is fundamentally flawed. When the treaty of Rome was merged into the treaty of Lisbon (and NOTE a treaty was used because every nation the concept of a EU constitution was rejected BY THE PEOPLE: Ireland France Netherlands - treaty are negotiated with govn. No EU citizen [bar politicians] have EVER voted for the EU) two key paragraphs were removed and these two had permitted internal market ballancin

Germany had a massive currency devaluation while Italy/Greece/Spain/France all had inflation. The lack of internal rebalancing permitted rampant imbalance. Italy has never had growth under the Euro and is entering a state of perpetual recession. The target2 internal Ballance sheet shows how bad it is
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Also, citizens (except for in Switzerland where they have a direct democracy) rarely vote on laws directly. They vote for representative government, which in its turn votes on issues. This is how most modern democracy works. Not something unique to the EU.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It greatly benefits business, and whenever something benefits business, it generally tends to result in more and better jobs.
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Oh come on, that's not true at all. Here's a few things that greatly benefit business that don't lead to more and better jobs:

-Offshoring jobs to places where sweatshops are legal (I guess it results in more jobs that pay a dollar a day though)
-Busting up unions so workers don't have collective bargaining
-Wage theft, unpaid overtime
-Automating your workforce so you need less people
-Paying workers as little as possible
-Stock buybacks
-Cutting corners on safety costs

Workers are an EXPENSE for businesses to keep as low as possible. The only reason "good jobs" exist is because the market happens to be competitive enough for that position that higher pay or benefits are expected to find the right people. If the worker competition for the position is high, the pay and benefits are low, it has nothing to do with how well the business itself is doing.

The vast majority of businesses don't operate on a "we all win" mentality. They operate on maximizing payouts for shareholders with money flowing towards the top as a reward for keeping the bottom in line. What you posted is simply naive.
 
tetris42 said:
Oh come on, that's not true at all. Here's a few things that greatly benefit business that don't lead to more and better jobs:

-Offshoring jobs to places where sweatshops are legal (I guess it results in more jobs that pay a dollar a day though)
-Busting up unions so workers don't have collective bargaining
-Wage theft, unpaid overtime
-Automating your workforce so you need less people
-Paying workers as little as possible
-Stock buybacks
-Cutting corners on safety costs

Workers are an EXPENSE for businesses to keep as low as possible. The only reason "good jobs" exist is because the market happens to be competitive enough for that position that higher pay or benefits are expected to find the right people. If the worker competition for the position is high, the pay and benefits are low, it has nothing to do with how well the business itself is doing.

The vast majority of businesses don't operate on a "we all win" mentality. They operate on maximizing payouts for shareholders with money flowing towards the top as a reward for keeping the bottom in line. What you posted is simply naive.
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You are right. I was over simplifying. There are things that benefit businesses and harm workers, but apart from those outliers, in general, when a business does better it has a greater need for workers.
 
well the uk will sonn be in the euro that will be a condition of revoking article 50, an eu bearaucrat lying about one of his laws im shocked :)
 
naib said:
hahah "ok" that isn't the issue with the €
read this https://gefira.org/en/2018/09/15/all-euros-gravitate-to-germany/
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Next time you try to make a point, try not linking to a far right conspiracy minded think tank.

There is a lot of agenda driven make-believe economics in that article.
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You know, rather than dismiss your source, I should counter some of the arguments. The article you linked mentions a lot of nonsense of bonds trading places which really has no impact on this situation, and is likely there just to make them sound more important. If you boil down their argument it is essentially that money is going to Germany because they have a trade imbalance with Germany. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with having a trade imbalance if you can create enough value domestically to pay for it, but Greece and Italy struggle with this, more on why below.

The key point here is, the Euro is not causing the trade imbalance. These countries traded internationally before the Euro zone, and would continue to do so if they ever left the Euro zone.

Greece and Italy are special cases. All other EU countries have done pretty well well in the post Euro adoption time period. Yes, Spain and Portugal were hit hard during the recession, but they have recovered much better than either Italy or Greece.

For sake of brevity, I am going to use Italy as an example here, but much of this also applies to Greece.

Italy's economic woes did not start with the Euro. Ever since the late 70's Italy has been living beyond its means, spending WAY too much on benefits and public sector compared to its GDP. In Italy it has hovered around 45-55% of GDP for decades now. 55%(!) That's more than half of the countries economy in government spending. That is completely unsustainable for any nation. In the past, before the Euro they would address this by having their central bank devalue their currency, giving their country an artificial competitive edge due to having a cheap currency, and then rinse and repeat. This is much like what most of the world has been accusing China of doing, keeping their currency artificially low to give themselves a competitive edge.

Now, with one common currency, the central bank of Italy no longer has a devaluation lever to pull. So, what is happening? Now the emperor has no clothes. The fact that they can no longer manipulate currency exchange rates means that they have exposed the fundamental weakness in their economy, that they spend an unsustainable percentage of their GDP on their public sector, and in order to correct this, they have to cut back. They can no longer game the system like they could before the Euro.

The problem is, once people get used to a certain level of government benefits, it is very very difficult politically to take them away, and return to a more reasonable level of public spending.

While I generally agree with social spending, you you can't do it with a complete and utter disregard for what percent of GNP you are spending. Continue down that path and you wind up like Venezuela.
 
The EU is an un elected bureaucracy of banksters and corporations imposing whatever laws they want in exchange for handing out some trinkets to the middle/poor classes who fell hook, line and sinker. The euro will fail in time, the UK wasn't completely stupid, they held on to the Sterling and more than half of them want out now. ATP the only country left with a respectable gdp is Germany. France is ripe for the fall, the people are fed up and in the streets, yellow vest anyone? Spain or Italy will be next. Wanna know what will happen? Look what happened to Greece, begging for a bankster handout, most of which goes to pay their debt. "The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough" ~ Mario. Negative interest rates, 50 year bonds, BWAHAHAHA!!!
 
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I always run my 1952 Chateau Margaux thru a active coal filter just to me able to drink the damn stuff. :)

Filters are always good,,,,,,, period.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
In the end, nationalities and national identities are just dumb. All of them.

It should not matter what random country you happen to be born in.

I like to see the entire planet in one large economic and political union where anyone can go, live and work anywhere they please at any given moment.

The ultimate freedom.


In the short term it would be challenging with mass migration from poorer parts of the world to wealthier ones, but over time it would result in less economic disparity between geographies and more balance.

Borders are nothing but obstacles.


That's probably an unobtainable ideal what with all the authoritarian regimes around the planet. I'd love to bring the U.S. into the E.U. common market though. It would be a huge common market able to counter-balance the rise of authoritarian China
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I have to say your post made a lot of sense until that last paragraph which turned it all into yet another hypocrite tirade. Authoritarian China, as bad as it is for some of its people and some neighbours, is not the one that's been pillaging parts of the near east for decades. You don't get to be on the high horse in regards to human rights and even basic decency
 
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