The EU Copyright Directive Will Have A Major Impact On The Internet

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

By the way the main guy behind this law is a German member of the European Parliament named Axel Voss - member of the CDU, to the German conservatives.

Being 56 years old, German and a lawyer, he's even more clueless about the internet as the worst parodists could dream him up to be. He still doesn't get the difference between ancillary copyright and copyright, but he's in charge of driving this legislation process. Nifty!

Here's a full article on Foss' lack of knowledge: EU-Urheberrechtsreform: Das "absolute Unverständnis" des Axel Voss - Golem.de

Google Translate version: Google Translate

We're ruled by blinds who are talking about colours, how convenient! But he's on Twitter (so yeah): Axel Voss MdEP (@AxelVossMdEP) | Twitter

 

[Cristiano]

 

[Spirits Rising]

And to think that there are some who question why I hold the EU in general in contempt where it comes to anything Internet related ...

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

And to think that there are some who question why I hold the EU in general in contempt where it comes to anything Internet related ...

My problem with this kind of controversy is that I know that media law in general is a highly specialist subject, and so is EU law, and so is international copyright and IP law.

If you have a serious question about any of those topics, then if you're in the UK there are maybe two or three London law firms you'd consult, and they'd charge you top dollar for their services -- it really is very complex and specialist.

I also strongly suspect -- for very obvious reasons -- that when companies like Google and Facebook start complaining about measures that affect their business model, they have a vested interest in the case they're trying to make.

Certainly, in the months preceding this decision I've seen all sorts of claims made in articles in online magazines about the effects this measure which can't possibly have been researched and written by the journalist under whose by-line they appear because even a few minutes' study of the relevant EU directives would have told the author that several of his or her points were obviously factually incorrect (e.g. no fair provisions or no provisions to protect the use of memes or for parody).

So I assume the articles must have been cut and paste jobs from press releases issued by campaign groups, some of which are presumably assisted by the press and media departments of multinational companies like Facebook and Google, whose contributions to the debate are not wholly impartial.

TL;dr -- when there's a dispute between, on the one hand, the democratically elected European Parliament and, on the other, billionaire oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and their acolytes like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, I tend automatically to suspect that the European Parliament's case is the better one.