MBB Blog

Gister was er de AMA van Quentin Deschandelliers, assistent van MEP Marc Joulaud, onderhandelaar voor de regel.
En vandaag van Julia Reda, de grootste tegenstander van de wet, van de Piratenpartij. Helaas is er (nog?) geen Tweakers artikel over. (En ik heb ook geen Reddit want ik heb al Tweakers ).

Op zich ben ik nu redelijk overtuigd van de eerlijke intentie van meneer Deschandelliers. En zoals hij de intentie van de wet beschrijft klinkt de richtlijn vanuit dat oogpunt best redelijk.
(Al ben ik het er zelf inhoudelijk niet mee eens. ) Maar hij lijkt de kritieken op artikel 11 en 13 niet serieus te nemen of de angsten te begrijpen.
Hij bijvoorbeeld ziet de automatische generatie van playlists door Youtube als 'bewerking' en vind daarom dat het niet onder de save-harbour van andere hosting mag vallen. En dat er daarom (juridisch) onderscheid tussen gemaakt worden,

Verder is er bewust geen officiele versie beschikbaar, omdat er nog onderhandeld wordt en partijen ruimte moeten hebben om van hun standpunt af te kunnen wijken.
Echter na het definitieve voorstel moet er zo snel mogelijk worden gestemd omdat er nog meer op de agenda staat. Dat hierdoor de versie waarover gestemd slechts kort voor controle beschikbaar is ziet hij niet als probleem; iedereen heeft inspraak kunnen hebben via lobbygroep of parlementariers (blijkbaar stonden ze open voor consultaties met burgers, jammer dat niemand dat wist). En ze
Maar de voorlopige versie is al ruim 2 jaar beschikbaar, en het uitlekken daarvan is heel normaal dus we hebben het toch kunnen lezen

Ik vind Julia Reda dus overtuigender. Op zich zouden de problemen mee kunnen vallen met hoe zei ze voorstelt. Maar met een paar relatief kleine aanpassingen zouden die nu voorkomen kunnen worden zonder dat er straks weer rechters moeten gaan interpreteren.
Ook beperkt ze zich in in haar kritiek op de 2 artikelen, in plaats van de bredere problemen die de Piratenpartij met het voorstel heeft. (geen copyright reform/inkorting, geen beperkingen aan geo-blocking binnen de EU, etc)


De belangrijkste dingen die mij opvielen:

Artikel 11 schijnt recent iets te zijn afgezwakt:

Q: Why do you argue that snippets such as headlines are affected by Article 11, despite a clear exception being made for "very short extracts"?

JR: -The change to include an exception for very short excerpts was added to the text very recently, and you are linking to a general explanatory article which I have not gotten around to updating yet. I indeed believe that with the final wording, at least the posting of hyperlinks that include the headline of the article should be ok. You can find my assessment of the problems with the latest version of article 11 in my most recent blog post. That said, serious problems with article 11 remain. First of all, "individual words or very short extracts" does not cover images, so thumbnails accompanying hyperlinks would not be allowed. The same goes for slightly longer snippets that greatly improve the readability of links but wouldn't count as "very short extracts"

Het is geen Europese wet, maar een Directive, er komen dus nog steeds 27 verschillende wetten uit voort.

QD: First I think a lot of people do not understand what a Directive actually is (and I don’t blame them for it, they’re not EU experts nor lawyers), thus creating a lot of frustration on the language of the text.
A Directive is a category of EU law that defines the general legal principles under which the Member States must work. Therefore, by definition, Directives always deal in general legal principles. It is NOT meant to be an ikea manuel that will tell you exactly and step by step how each service out there has to work. It’s a common legal foundation on which you build.
Furthermore, a Directive provide legal principles, but their exact implementation in practice is always a case-by-case appreciation.

Het gevolg dat Google Spanjaanse kranten wegliet na hun wetgeving ziet hij niet als een probleem; hij ziet Google als slecht, en is niet bang dat ze straks Europese kranten negeren. En we dus massaal op buitenlands nieuws overgaan. Ook dat die kranten toen verlies leden en er geen anderen in het gat sprongen adresseert hij niet.

QD Well, the case you describe find their roots in two things : 1) the market power of Google and 2) the current legal imbalance (that this Directive aims to solve).
For the case of GNews in Spain, I copy part of an answer I made earlier :
"As you mention, the laws in Spain and Germany didn’t provide the results intended. In Spain (where there was a mandatory payment) Google News withdrew from the market, and in Germany it engaged in a judicial battle resulting in the meantime in German publishers giving away for free their rights.
So basically, Google used its place on the market (90%+ on the EU market) to bully its way out of this by forcing the hand of people or making an example out of them for all those who would think about making a move against Google. Beyond the moral judgment on Google’s methods, there’s definitely a legitimate question in asking “why doing it at EU level”.

Hij is zegt zowel dat filters niet als wel verplicht zijn
Notice en take-down blijft bestaan, echter is dat blijkbaar een uitzondering, dus impliciet zouden filters de regel zijn.

Here there are 2 misunderstanding :
That the Directive will result in services having to get licences with every single rightholder
That “filters” are the only option and therefore are mandatory.

...
Or in the case of a platform dealing with content for which a “filter” does not work, a ContentID would be useless.
So what do you do in those cases ? You match the obligations and their means to what is appropriate to the specific situation of the platform. Meaning you could very much have situations where the workable option is the notice and take down system, as it is now, as stated in recital 38b :
“[...]Different means to avoid the availability of unauthorised copyright protected content may be appropriate and proportionate per type of content and it is therefore not excluded that in some cases unauthorised content may only be avoided upon notification of rightholders.[...]”
[/quote]
Verderop stelt hij echter dat op een platform het platform met ID moet werken, die verantwoordelijk is, en de echte uploader en mogelijke eigenaar in geschillen er niet toe doet:

Now on how the licence would be implemented in practice in the case of youtube. Let’s say that Youtube got a licence for an image. As you know, Youtube uses ContentID for it’s licensing implementation. The rightholder would provide technical data on that image to allow ContentID to match incoming content with this image. So new videos would go through ContentID (which is done automatically and immediately), and if one element of the video matches exactly the content (here the picture) then the licensing scheme would apply (so a part of the revenues generated by the video would get to the rightholder).

So Youtube doesn’t have to manually track each video nor try to find the owner of each work present there.

As regards to your situation, the Directive doesn’t prevent you from doing anything. In the case you describe, you are the sole owner of your work, you do whatever you want with it and nobody can do anything against you. It doesn’t force you to do anything. If you don’t ask anything from a platform, the platform will not do anything. What the legislation does is giving you the option, the choice, to have a say about what is done with your work on these platforms. If you’re perfectly fine with your work being used freely and use the platform to be visible and earn a living from it, good for you. But if one day you want to control, then you have the legal tool to do it. Overall, the Directive is a toolbox. None of them are mandatory to use, but you have them if you ever need or want them.
....
On a platform, the relevant person to get a licence is the platform (with a licence that will cover all uses), not the individual user, even if legally everyone is suppose to do so (but never do, and rightholders stopped enforcing this because they know it's useless).

Hij lijkt er geen probleem in te zien dat dit nog meer de grote bedrijven bevoordeelt tov de individuele artiest/ Bijvoorbeeld over usergenerated hosting:

n practice, it doesn’t mean that you need to seek licences for every rightholder that exists, it would be purely impossible. It’s a good faith obligation submitted to a proportionality check.
First one has to know that rights (especially in certain category of works, such as music) are oftenly aggregated within a single organisation, so that you only have a single interlocutor. Meaning that in one deal, you will get authorisation for thousands of works (and not only for your own country).
If you open a bar tomorrow and you have music in there (as it is usual), you don’t have to track down every music rightholder in the world). Either you go by yourself see a right management organisation (Sacem, Gema, etc.) or they come see you to get a licence.

Ten slotte; Meneer Deschandelliers is erg bezig met de tegenstanders af te schilderen als extremisten. Blijkbaar zijn zijn kinderen op school aangesproken op zijn beleid, en hebben voorstanders (doods?) bedreigingen gehad.
En daarvoor stelt hij de tegenstanders collectief aansprakelijk.
Daardoor komt hij hier en daar over alsof tegenstanders als vijanden ziet die het politieke proces manipuleren, ipv burgers en belanghebbenden met tegengestelde meningen.

But the campaign against the Directive unfortunately reduced the whole debate to fearmongering slogans like "The Internet will be destroyed", "Europe is censoring citizens" or "hyperlinks will be taxed".

But we don't make a fuss about the countless insults, the accusation of corruption, the threats (including death threats), that we received, the fact that kids of some MEPs are being harassed at school because daddy/mommy supports the Directive, etc. And when we mention it, most people reply "people are allowed to be pissed or express radical views".

Overall, while the "pro-copyright" side may indeed have said things that made the discussion not very civil, I do put most of the blame on the anti-copyright side, especially the leaders of the movement, who purposefully did everything from the start to inflame the debate and make people as pissed off as possible, and while they claim they never intended to do this I don't buy it for a split second because they are smart people and it doesn't take a genious to know how people will react to a communication strategy. It's not anymore a question of "this person has a different point of view and analysis of things", it's "this person is evil".

2) As far as Mr Joulaud is concerned, he never called the e-mails to be generally fake. However, we are convinced that at least part of it are, due to a campaign orchestrated notably (but not only) by Google. ... The role of Google and other parts of the tech industry was widely documented at the end of last year as well. So yes, there is definitely ground for suspicion and I’m convinced that part of these emails were fake or from a limited number of people

Bedreigingen zijn natuurlijk fout, en zaak voor de politie. Maar een discussie over de wetgeving op internet trekt natuurlijk internet trollen. En ja, de tegenstanders hebben formulieren op internet gezet waarmee voorgegenereerde brieven aan MEPS gestuurd konden worden. En blijkbaar is daar door scripts en anderen misbruik van gemaakt. (Er kwamen massa mails binnen enkele minuten midden in de nacht binnen van valse mailadressen, dus dat klinkt geloofwaardig).
Maar om daarom de meeste tegenstand als 'Bots' van Google af te doen en niet op de argumenten in te gaan lijkt me te kort door de bocht.
Voorstanders zullen soortgelijke acties gedaan hebben tijdens de inspraakronde. Maar door professionele bureaus, die dus hun spam op een nettere wijze geformeerd zullen hebben.dan individuele internetters.

Needing to write a lettter for the https://saveyourinternet.eu/ anyway, I'm trowing it up on my blog. I doubt it will change their minds, but perhaps ideas of it can be of use to someone some day.

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While I agree that journalists provide a useful service, and can concede that they may need some protection, I do not agree that it entitles them to a share of advertisement or tech sector revenue.
Above all, newspapers make money because they were an effective medium to distribute news memes to a wide audience. The public does not exist so publishers can make money.

The problem seems to have arisen from two useful features of the internet; easy worldwide access that exposes them to international competition of larger, cheaper or more expert publishers.
And the ability of everyone to cheaply start broadcasting worldwide, creating competition by local free bloggers and meta-journalists that derive their income through other venues. Or are simply happy to be able to add their opinion to the public discussion and willing to invest their own time to do so. But breaking the internet for all should not be the solution to the problems of publishers.

As far as the publishers negotiation position to advertisement companies, perhaps there is a problem there. But then the action should be taken there, as it would benefit a lot more parties depending on advertisement revenue. Not just protecting large publishers. The EU has already tried to take action there against Google, and its GDPR could help too. But perhaps rather then taking post-fact action against one corporation, it should have created preventive explicit laws against all actions, weather by large or small advertisement companies, to create a more level playing field.

I do understand that because of pressure from industry activists, you do not have the political climate to follow electorate desires or follow societies trend towards a shorter and more flexible copyright protection.

However, I would request that during the upcoming discussions you keep the intention of copyright law in mind; to encourage the creation of new works that eventually will enter the public domain to the benefit of us all.
Republishing is the basis of European civilization; from the translating of ancient works during the renaissance, the distributing of forbidden works during the enlightenment, and the secret publishing of papers during the Second World War. (To which a lot of newspaper publishers of today can be traced back to.)

So I would ask that the EU at least puts in some incentives to have our culture become easier available to the public while it still has value. So we will be free to archive, use and remix, rather then only passively consume.


1) Create incentives in time;

Far stronger then general culture, news memes are of most value when it is fresh, and looses value over time. (In the case of stock news literally; before it is public you can make millions, after a trading stops it becomes worthless. ) While it is understandable that a paper wants to hold an article exclusive the first hours or day(s) of publication, it looses such urgency later. Having the ability to summarize, quote, comment, share, compare and review the article article (in parts or whole) should be possible while the article still has value to society, Not 70 years after death of the author.
Especially in the time of ‘fake news’ and forged science studies, free peer review should be possible without risk of the author suing for copyright.
A good example is Mr Verhofstadt’s open letter on CNN. Under the new law, while any EU citizen may want to cite parts or whole of it when commenting on it on their blogs, both publisher and author would need to be asked permission and paid royalties before allowing such public debate. And even in the rare case where such license would be given or waived, convincing the hosting party (usually a large tech site) of bypassing the upload filter, and having the original derivative content be used for filtering would be troublesome at best.

In the far past, work needed to be re-registered for copyrighted every few decades. While such a system would be problematic with today's volume of culture, it did help to track down the rights owner when wanting to re-publish.
But more importantly, it provided an incentive for the author to not renew copyright, when it was old enough that the expectation of return became too low. Today, not only is the incentive to abandon copyright no longer there, but there is not even a possibility to do so under current law.
Perhaps such an incentive can be re-introduced by exponentially increasing the taxation on royalties depending on the age of the work?


2) Prevent double legal protection.
Rather then adding more laws to restrict the distribution of culture and news among it’s citizens, the EU should be simplifying the law so only one applies at the same time.
On top of the automatic copyright protection, a lot of distributes use additional Digital Restriction Management (DRM) to limit users rights in what they deem appropriate. Unfortunately, this DRM software rarely adheres to user rights as laid out under copyright law. Thereby creating user problems from simple citation up to blocking the blind from using their translation software from accessing our culture.
To add a third barrier, breaking this DRM is itself forbidden by another law, making EU citizens unable to exercise our rights under copyright law.
Therefor it would urge you to put a restriction in copyright law that it only applies to such works where user rights are respected. Thereby still allowing publishers the choice if they want copyright law or DRM protection, but no longer both. Different publishers may even choose to publish the same work under the different laws, allowing even users the choice if they accept copyright or DRM restrictions.

3) Punishment for over-blocking.
To prevent excessive over-blocking in the filters, the punishment for falsely requesting take-downs should at least be equal to the uploading of in frighting content, including legal and administrative fees. Following the publishers logic; even if culture is shared for free, it does not mean it is without value. Providing this link may also encourage them to occasional keep in frighting fees down.
Perhaps wrongful infringement allegations should be punished even more, as the producers of works have created far less themselves that then were created by others. And there are far fewer exceptions for claiming take-down of content that is not yours, then there are exceptions for posting such works. Not to mention that unlike the sharing, it is often done by experts in their field.