The Frowning Pony
Administrator
13 blinks per minute
https://saveyourinternet.eu/
For all the europeans here, today’s the last day to send out a message to your MEP, which if you’re EU citizen (and I know a lot of you are), you have several of. And they’re there to represent you.
There’s been a lot of talk about this topic, which you’ve mostly heard of as “Article 13”. If you want to know more in detail, click the link up there at the start. The short of it is there’s a directive being voted on (which means it’ll be laws soon) that includes an article with a draconian protection of copyright. There are a lot of interpretations about how bad this actually is, but a fair one is this: if an image subject to copyright is uploaded by a user, the site itself is immediately guilty of violating copyright. There is no assumption of good faith on part of the platform holder as being a host or carrier, but of actively and intentionally violating copyright from second zero. What that leads to is sites implementing filtering systems to nuke anything that looks copyrighted; I’m sure you’ve heard of the horrors of youtube, of videos flagged for containing content under Fair Use, of false copyright holders getting videos deleted because YT doesn’t want to risk getting sued so errs on the side of caution. Well, if this Art. 13, it’ll be that for most every website.
Derpi already has something that could handle this, the dupe reporter. Anyone that’s checked dupe reports on images has seen how that works: false positives are common. Under Art. 13, for this, and more importantly for far larger sites, a false positive means instant deletion; the risk otherwise is litigation. Of course you could just not have a filter and employ humans, but that means every single upload, be it an image or video or sound clip or just text (news articles are copyrighted, remember) needs to be monitored before being published. Even for us, that’s… impossible. And just like with an automated filter, those moderators will err on the side of caution. And of course, it’s not a far step to then use those systems for something worse; I’m sure you’ve all seen how China bans content critical of the regime, right? How every week there’s a new term to refer to something contentious like “Tianamen Square” that gets banned. Well this will a strong step in that direction, whether it’s taken or not (and I trust it will be; if there’s a tool, an asshole will abuse it).
So, if you’re an EU citizen, https://saveyourinternet.eu/. Contact your MEP, let them know you care about your freedom of expression, that you don’t want the entire internet to just resemble the corporate-approved sterility of Yahoo!’s home page.
For all the europeans here, today’s the last day to send out a message to your MEP, which if you’re EU citizen (and I know a lot of you are), you have several of. And they’re there to represent you.
There’s been a lot of talk about this topic, which you’ve mostly heard of as “Article 13”. If you want to know more in detail, click the link up there at the start. The short of it is there’s a directive being voted on (which means it’ll be laws soon) that includes an article with a draconian protection of copyright. There are a lot of interpretations about how bad this actually is, but a fair one is this: if an image subject to copyright is uploaded by a user, the site itself is immediately guilty of violating copyright. There is no assumption of good faith on part of the platform holder as being a host or carrier, but of actively and intentionally violating copyright from second zero. What that leads to is sites implementing filtering systems to nuke anything that looks copyrighted; I’m sure you’ve heard of the horrors of youtube, of videos flagged for containing content under Fair Use, of false copyright holders getting videos deleted because YT doesn’t want to risk getting sued so errs on the side of caution. Well, if this Art. 13, it’ll be that for most every website.
Derpi already has something that could handle this, the dupe reporter. Anyone that’s checked dupe reports on images has seen how that works: false positives are common. Under Art. 13, for this, and more importantly for far larger sites, a false positive means instant deletion; the risk otherwise is litigation. Of course you could just not have a filter and employ humans, but that means every single upload, be it an image or video or sound clip or just text (news articles are copyrighted, remember) needs to be monitored before being published. Even for us, that’s… impossible. And just like with an automated filter, those moderators will err on the side of caution. And of course, it’s not a far step to then use those systems for something worse; I’m sure you’ve all seen how China bans content critical of the regime, right? How every week there’s a new term to refer to something contentious like “Tianamen Square” that gets banned. Well this will a strong step in that direction, whether it’s taken or not (and I trust it will be; if there’s a tool, an asshole will abuse it).
So, if you’re an EU citizen, https://saveyourinternet.eu/. Contact your MEP, let them know you care about your freedom of expression, that you don’t want the entire internet to just resemble the corporate-approved sterility of Yahoo!’s home page.
