Will this forum be available in Europe if Article 13 passes?

I'm breaking my usual rule for this very important topic. The antiquated fossils in the EU and the unholy French German alliance are back at it with the terrible Article 13.

Most analyses I've seen indicate that the compromise between French and German proposals is the worst of all worlds and the EU has reacted in typical arrogant fashion referring to opponents of the law as a 'mob'....

If this legislation atrocity is passed would this forum be available at all? Yes.

It may you please to hear that this law has as many adversaries in Germany as elsewhere. Most people just bump their heads on the table about its stupidity! *groan*

Frankly I doubt it will work and will soon become an embarrassement for all supporter!

PS: After my informations the following platforms are NOT part of this mess:

Wikipedia
ebay
Dating platforms
Software developing platforms (like GitHub)
Dropbox
Blogs
private Homepages
all "passive " Platforms

Only platforms who made it their business model that user can upload copyrighted material have a reason to be concerned. (They will need to install some "recognition software").

PF isn't one of those, so it should be in the clear!

PPS: Memes and Quotes are still allowed! :)

Actually the negotiations have been going on behind closed doors and many report that supposedly exempt sites won't be exempt at all.... None of the information that I've found is reassuring at all on that front.


Germans are mostly pretty smart, so I'm not surprised. But it's a testament that the EU keeps on persisting with this.... thing despite overwhelming citizen opposition (at least among those who understand what it could do...)

One of the big problems of the EU is that it often gets the idea that it needs to do something when the best response is to just sit there.

In Poland there was an underground publishing even during a hard times of martial law in the early 80's. And in the era of the internet there's no way to stop Poles from sharing their even the most radical views.

Most Poles would do it in spite of an oppressive article 13 exactly just because some bureaucrat have decided to limit our liberties. Poles loves free speech and hate censorship in any form, including self-censorship.

So I imagine that what would happen is that for each single banned forum there would be few new created in its place straight away. Just like with PirateBay proxies.

I blame Merkel for this!

As the new gov was being build back in 2016 there was a thing called "coalition treaty", the CDU and the SPD compromised on things they want to do during their term in government.

Article 13 was one of them, it was understood that the new german gov would be AGAINST IT!!!!

But now Merkel breaks this coalition treaty in favour of the EU-commission, they talked her into it....and I guess she has no idea what it is actually about. She might have been a quantum physicist in her earlier days but has proven barely an idea (totally clueless!) about all things Internet, social media and digitalization generally...it's a sham!

Why wouldn't it be? There's nothing in the proposed legislation that says sites will be removed from the internet. Basically, if the law passes, every EU member state will have to draft their own individual legislation and it's up to each country how to enforce the law. As BB says, they'll have to install some kind of software to filter stuff. But knowing how badly a lot of software is made and how full of bugs it is, good luck with that! Especially if someone has to come up with new, more advanced software, it'll take years to produce.

Also it's worth remembering that however much one may disagree with the law, it's been arrived at democratically. It's been voted on by MEPs who've been voted into their positions by their own national electorates.

It'll probably end up being impractical to enforce in real day to day life. Who's going to police the internet to see that sites are compliant?

*nods*

It won't work!

Yup. It'll cost too much money to enforce. Like all things that are government instigated it has to be administrated and administration costs money.

Existing software that can do even a half-arsed job probably isn't comprehensive enough and new software will have to be developed. No individual nation is going to take on the funding of that though various private software companies located in technology hubs will have a go. But like I say, it takes years and the testing would have to be very thorough. Then once software is available, it has to be affordable. Otherwise sites won't use it. Finally, as mentioned previously who is going to check sites? Governments would have to fund a new department to take care of it. Nobody will want to pay for that either. Doomed.

Correction: That coalition treaty is from 2018

bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/koalitionsvertrag-zwischen-cdu-csu-und-spd-195906

Here the passage about Article 13 (page 49):


How dare Merkel to break that agreement just like that??? Our own german minister for digitalization is against it....*shakes head*

PS: Some call these upload-filter already "Merkel-filter"....what a stupid legacy!

@Atch, Semi-democratically to be precise. It was written by the EU bureaucrats and submitted to MEP's to accept [or reject] it. It didn't come from citizens dying for an internet censorship and not even from MEP's themselves.

And I have a feeling that if it gets rejected it will be bypassed like a Lisbon treaty referendum in Ireland.

She is not going out gracefully and seems to be determined to leave as many stink bombs behind her as possible.... not that I'd expect anything else by now. She did an okay job years ago but is long past her due date and is in position to only do damage by now.


Exactly, this is not in response to any expressed need by EU citizens (quite the opposite).

Spike, no laws are written by politicians. They're written by the government's legal team and submitted to parliament to vote on. If a majority of the parliament doesn't like the legislation they can reject it. Citizens have a share in the democratic process but are not experienced enough in the nitty gritty of matters of state and economy to govern a country. Brexit is a perfect example of what happens when you ask 'the people' to decide the nation's future. Chaos. But that discussion is not for this thread.

And regarding Lisbon, I am blue in the face from explaining that at various times on this forum. The Lisbon treaty was rejected by the Irish people (who incidentally are well accustomed to voting in referendums) because of lack of clarity in certain areas of it. Irish people will not vote 'yes' to something they don't fully understand or have doubts about.

The text of the treaty was amended to guarantee Irish control over our neutrality and abortion laws and was presented again at which point it passed. Ireland gained guarantees concerning its military neutrality, and on the Irish EU commissioner, competency over tax rates, abortion, neutrality, and workers' rights.

It's actaully a perfect example of what happens when the government is so divorced from the people that it can't understand the most basic of messages and thus cannot implement the people's will no matter how clearly expressed.

Well, politicians have the right and the power to write the law. In Poland Sejm is the Executive Power and Senate is a Legislative Power.

In Poland also regular citizens have power to write the law. It is called Obywatelska inicjatywa ustawodawcza. To propose a new law you'll need to gather up a team of smart and determined people, write the statute down, and get 100k signatures from adult Poles with voting rights. The parliament will have to take it into consideration, debate over it and either accept it or reject in the process.

If the most of law is written by legal teams it is only because there's so many, often contradicting laws, that you need a huge team of qualified people to dig through it and write something which will make a remote sense. In the EU there a big problem with mass production of glitchy, irrelevant, overly complex law. In Poland it is called a "legislative diarrhea".

It's certainly an example of gross ineptitude on the part of the British government to have cobbled together a referendum in a country that rarely holds them, on the smug and complacent supposition that it would go their way. The public were not properly prepared and informed about the consequences of a 'No' vote and didn't go into it with eyes open. Nobody either in government or the public, ever thought for a minute about the Irish border which is now the chief stumbling block to Brexit. The UK, both government and Brexit voters, were so certain that they would be able to negotiate a very favourable deal for themselves, never imagining that they would be facing crashing out with No Deal. The UK is in a very serious crisis situation as a result of the combined stupidity of the government and half the electorate.


That's interesting. Which laws have been made in that way?

I can see there are 15 of them on the list for the years 2012-2019

orka.sejm.gov.pl/proc8.nsf/0/0F0AF1FC671F7BC8C1257F180052F244?Open

Yes, that's a list of proposed legislation,some of which I see received negative responses from the government. The problem I can see with it, is that the citizens would really need legal advice from professionals in order to argue their cases effectively. In that sense it makes the process somehow, window dressing rather than substantial. I think you'll find that a contentious piece of legislation won't make it past the proposal stage. On the other hand, the Polish government can change the constitution of Poland, without consulting the people and that's quite a serious matter which affects the lives of every single person in the country.

Negative or not, it raise the awareness of an issue and it had to be processed in the Parliament. And only after that process it can finally be rejected [or accepted].

And a 100k signature threshold guarantee that it won't produce legislative spam.

Sure, some of them will be successful and some of them will not. But there's a way for citizens to mobilize and to change and improve the law.


There are non governmental organisations, like Ordo Iuris, which provide professional legal advice for citizens.

The job of the government is to act on the expressed will of the population (where not prohibited by binding laws) and not to protect the citizenry from themselves.


Oileán amháin tír amháin!... solved! You're very welcome! United Ireland forever!

Getting back to Article 13, I think the biggest difference between our positions is that you inherently trust EU institutions and I'm always a bit skeptical (of course I trust you, but I'm going to count the change anyway!)

And again, Article 13 is not in response to any problem expressed by the citizenry so no need for the EU to act at all....

In a case like Brexit where the will of the population is no more than the half.....what is the will of the other half who thinks differently worth?

Especially if its found out that many of the arguments for a Brexit have been based on lies (NHS anybody)? And people rethink their decision?

Which will should the gov beat through?


Well....there exists copyright laws outside of the Internet for a good reason. Artikel 13 was just a try to bring these totally acceptable laws into the digital world. The way it is done is a mess and will fail.

(And yes, any artist will tell you that he likes his copyright laws...he would starve without them)

If only it were that simple. I dislike your implication that we, the Irish, North and South, are somehow responsible for the divisions on our island and should be left to stew in our own juice. The situation is due to a bunch of lowland Scottish inbreds and successive British governments. Northern Ireland and the border is the UK's responsiblity "but we'll say no more about it, 'cos I would not want it to come between us pet". Do you ever watch Catherine Tate?? You'd like her :)


I don't especially trust them, any more than I do any government. There are always agendas and stuff going on outside the public domain but I don't particularly distrustthem either.

Or course I know the real Irish (for lack of a better word) aren't responsible for the division and I think brexit is a great chance to tell the inbred scots to get used to living in the united Poblacht na hÉireann or swim back to scotland (assuming they'd be taken back, which is I guess not so obvious....)


you realize of course that creators are almost never the copyright holders, don't you?

I'm not going to defend this law! It's a mess made by wishful thinking and digital ignorance...

For once, I absolutely agree with the protests about this. It's a total mess, and it appears to be the result of some very awful consensus decision making.


You mean they provide legal advice designed to further their agenda. They certainly won't help you if you want to ensure that people can access services that they're legally entitled to.

paraphrasing a longish quote:

It's not that bad, we can easily get this legislation overturned in the very democratic and representative EU.

All we have to do is vote for MEPs that will vow to overturn this legislati... uh no, wait... democratically elected MEPs can't propose or repeal EU legislation.

Okay, that just means we'll have to hope that enough countries in the EU vote into power political parties that have pledged to overturn this legislation, then they can stack the European Council with ministers that will do just htat.

Except... the European Council can only propose legislation, that then needs to be approved and introduced by the European Commission, and... the European Commission is comprised of ministers that swear an oath of loyalty to the EU. They will only approve legislation that they believe is beneficial to the EU* itself.

So our chances of getting this legislation or any dictatorial, censorious, oppressive legislation like it overturned is about.... NIL (cue Ode to Joy....)

*By which I'm pretty sure is mean EU institutions and not member states and/or the citizenry...

The European Council does not propose legislation. It's the Commission who proposes it and Parliament who approve or reject it.


MEPs can't directly propose but can ask the European Commission to propose legislation.


You're confused between the Council and the Commission. The Council is comprised of the heads of state of each EU country so there's no choice in who sits on it.

I bow to your knowledge of unnecessary EU institutions, the question remains, what provisions does the EU have for democratically overturning unpopular legislation?

Oh Maf, would you ever come off it? Forget about the EU for a minute and look at individual nations and what democratic provisions they provide for the overturning of 'unpopular' legislation within their own countries. What do you have in America?

This is a problem with the EU that should have been rectified before expanding in 2004. The problem is that decision-making in the EU is a torturous process that requires agreement from a broad section of the EU, but once legislation is in place, it's very difficult to change it because of the aforementioned torturous process. As it stands, the President of the European Commission is chosen by the European Council, so you end up with some bland politician who was chosen as a compromise. A good first step would be for the President of the European Commission to be chosen by the European Parliament.

If you ask me, the European Commission should be appointed by the European Parliament with no requirement for individual countries to have a commissioner, while the European Council would only exist to deal with treaty changes. The only concession should be that new laws should be supported by MEP's representing 2/3rds of the EU population, while amendments could be on the basis of a simple majority.

The current system is essentially more about protecting national interests than anything else. In particular, the model for appointing commissioners is dire, as it depends on agreement from all 28 countries before they can be in place.

If you ask me, the system needs to be simplified so that it can be understood by all European citizens. As it stands, the method of doing business just makes people perceive the EU as undemocratic, although it is.

Who told you that BS? You seem to have never once in your life read the Constitution of Poland.