Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/26/eus-parliament-signs-off-on.html
…
3 Likes
What’s next? Catalogue the abuses when the EU directive gets translated into national laws. Find ways to recommend revisions. Collect data, and don’t let them move the goalposts. Prove that the windfall for creators was a lie, an illusion sold by Axel Springer and Elsevier who happily keep stiffing the artists and using bogus takedowns to stifle criticism.
What’s next is that we never give up the fight for change.
7 Likes
I think it’s about time to attach a licensing clause to my personal (copyrighted) comments charging for distribution in the EU. If I get firewalled at the Great Firewall of Europe, all the better.
1 Like
So everyone pays an artist tax and then every digital art is available to everyone for free? I mean, that seems to be the natural outcome of that policy.
2 Likes
What happens next is you vote them out and vote in people who will repeal it.
Something like this happened in Canada. The music industry convinced the government to charge a fee for blank media (we’re talking cassette tapes) to combat copying music. Then at some point someone got taken to court for making a mix tape and their defense was, “Well, I already paid for that when I bought the blank tape.” (Alternatively this story is apocryphal nonsense since it is something I heard when I was a teenager)
4 Likes
I don’t see that happening, but I will send out an email to the candidates in my voting district asking them on their position, and arguing they will only get my vote if they repeal that decision.
4 Likes
Fuck this timeline. How is it possible to approach reality with anything but a sense of dejection anymore?
4 Likes
Oh well, can’t say as I’m that surprised. Keep fighting, i guess? Even though our options are rapidly dwindling along with the internet we have enjoyed up until now. This week isn’t progressing how I hoped!
2 Likes
Makes me proud to live in America, where no fuckery like this would ever…
Oh fuck it, I can’t say that with a straight face.
</the sarcasm is down>
4 Likes
It’ll probably get paid to a collection society. In many countries of Europe those societies can collect royalties int he name of artists without their consent, and give nothing to artist.
1 Like
Sounds par for this shitty course.
1 Like
I don’t have much hope for EU. They don’t care about what citizens want, even with such impressive protests as in Germany. In the next EU elections I’ll vote for most assholish, eurosceptic party possible just to watch them cause chaos in European Parliament (said party strongly values personal freedom, and that is its only positive quality).
I wouldn’t be surprised if it went that way - there were already cases in Poland with collection societies suing artist for legal distribution of his own work, and even confiscating CDs, because they didn’t have collection society sticker.
But they don’t cause chaos. They turn up and act like dicks and insult people and then do nothing useful. The problem is precisely because EU elections are not taken seriously.
3 Likes
They definitely act like dicks, but I just checked and they voted against copyright directive and voted for considering amendments.
If this directive eliminates all the smaller forums and internet communities leaving only giants like Facebook, I don’t care about anything other, them doing nothing useful is a good thing. Insulting people and thus making EU parliament more unpleasant place is even better as long as they do it to the establishment. I’d like to see EU fall like USSR and Warsaw Pact did.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
That’s probably our difference. I’d like to see the EU succeed, in large part by sorting out its democratic deficit.
4 Likes
One little side note: almost all of the German newspapers seem to be in full-throated approval. Some are especially disdainful of the protestors, calling them dupes of the American internet giants Google and Apple. A quick scan shows that it isn’t just the biggies like BILD and Süddeutsche Zeitung, but also smaller ones like Nürnberger Nachrichten and Nordbayrischer Kurier. So far, only Berlin’s TAZ is calling it a mistake, as well as Germany’s answer to The Onion, the Postillon. This is going to make it harder to get people concerned about the outcome.
Nice, how you insinuate that the EU is like the USSR. That just cost you a bunch of credibility. Reading the rest of your comments, apparently you are of the “burn it all down” mentality that electing authoritarians and racists is good because it makes government fail?
3 Likes
EU did a lot of good things, and I’d like it to succeed too, but not at the price of severely restricted personal freedom of citizens. If internet gets reduced to Facebook, the good things won’t matter for me anymore.
Not really, with atrocities committed by USSR I don’t think EU can be compared to it. But failure mode can be quite similar, with overgrown bureaucracy becoming so inefficient and corrupt that it finally consumes itself. If European Parliament is such a circus, I’ll do my part in helping elect clowns they deserve. I wouldn’t vote for authoritarians or racists though. Just rabid libertarians to stir the stuff up and just for the European Parliament - in the national elections I’ll vote for more moderate, progressive party that won’t remove national health care or government funded higher education.
Having said that, if there was an option that was progressive and valued freedom (someone like German Pirate Party), I’d vote for them. As @heng said, having EU succeed would be best option, but removing important freedoms isn’t my definition of success.
Once you sign the distribution rights to your stuff over to a collection society, then of course you’re no longer allowed to distribute your own stuff without involving the collection society. It’s part of the contract. Whatever did you expect? That’s what the collection society is for! (If you’re playing live gigs it’s usually whoever books you for the gig that is liable for the collection society fees.)
So far this is all right in the sense that technically, no artist is forced to sign their stuff over to a collection society. The problem starts when there is a presumption that the collection society is in charge of all material that is in any way interesting. For example, here in Germany there is a collection society called GEMA which is essentially administering musical performance rights for live and recorded music (the details are a bit more complicated but that’s what it comes down to). GEMA operates under the presumption that they own the rights to virtually all music, and if they get wind of your event where music is being performed in public they will send you a hefty bill (and double the usual amount if you didn’t register your event with them beforehand). The only way to avoid this is to prove that they have no rights to anything that was played – including only one GEMA-controlled tune in an otherwise public-domain set list will make you liable for the same fee that you would have had to pay if the whole night was all GEMA material. I play traditional Scottish dance music, all of which is in the public domain, and dealing with GEMA is a huge hassle, but depending on circumstances the GEMA bill could come to a few hundred euros so it’s worth the trouble.
The CDU’s thinking seems to be that they can start a collection society for Internet content which will operate under the presumption that it controls the rights to all digital material on the Internet. Web site operators would be forced to pay fees to this collection society, and it would be up to the actual rights holders to make their works known to the collection society so they get a share of the collected fees once they are distributed. It’s safe to assume that the distribution scheme will be skewed to give an advantage to “Big Content” and especially Axel Springer Verlag.
Having said that, it is also safe to assume that even if YouTube pays the collection agency fees it will not suddenly become legal to upload anything and everything to YouTube no matter who controls the copyright. Netflix’s business model will remain secure.
1 Like
The problem is that, at least in Poland, they don’t need any contract with artist.
1 Like
