European Parliament approves copyright bill slammed by digital rights groups

Legislation now goes to a three-way negotiation within the EU.

Read the whole story

 

[raxx7]

Who are the shadow actors behind this bill? I can't imagine this just spontaneously entered the minds of the parliamentarians, and web publishers don't seem to have enough organization.

Basically, a wide range of people involved in the news, music and film _business_, from big company CEO to relatively unknown but _professional_ artists.

They're all blinded by the fear of losing their job and can't see the facts.

 

[raxx7]

Considering the number of websites that have abandoned European users post-GDPR, wouldn't this only serve to exacerbate that fragmentation as companies cease to do business to avoid liability? Since non-European entities make up the majority of popular services at this time, I can't see continental alternatives meeting local demand quickly enough (who is going to have the money to EuroGoogle?).

A lot of websites have blocked EU users but they don't make much revenue from EU and it would cost them more to implement EU GDPR compliance than to block the users.

On the other hand, Google, Facebook, et all while they are not EU companies they derive about 1/3 of their revenue from EU. They will rather comply than risk that revenue.

 

[raxx7]

I’d be interested in reading a bit more about whether this initiative will actually effect small internet companies. Copyright is still a territorial right, so if smal-YouTube-competitor doesn’t implement European style content filtering, they might be in violation of Belgian law - but if they don’t have any assets in Belgium, who cares? Similar story with link tax. Good luck getting an Austrian Court to collect a judgment against a California company.

True, this will disincentivize small internet companies from opening up offices in Portugal as they grow - but, well, that’s Portugal’s problem. Isn’t it largely the internet behemoths who already have offices in Ireland that need to worry about this?

If someone starts a US-based video sharing site that complies with US law and doesn't solicit European customers, they might be able to get away with ignoring there new rights in Europe. So in practice, the effect might be less to squelch innovation overall than to drive innovative companies in these sectors out of Europe.

Yeah, that’s my sense as well. But I’m not sure why a company would even have to care about whether or not they solicit European customers. They’re not going to want to put offices or infrastructure in Europe, but I don’t see how a European country could gain an ability to collect against US (for example) assets just because there are European customers.

There is zilch chance EU can collect anything against an US company.
But EU (member states) can easily block EU banks and companies from doing business with a particular US company.
That is the one and only leverage EU holds.
For someone like Google, Facebook, etc that is a lot of revenue lost.
For many other US companies, it's irrelevant.

 

[raxx7]

Ugh, this bill is still terrible; it was defeated before, so hopefully it will be defeated again, as it is absolutely the opposite direction of where copyright should be going.

Unlikely.
The European Parliament was pretty much our last hope to defeat this.

Now only the member states' governments stand in the way but it's a known fact they are keen to approve it.

 

[raxx7]

I’d be interested in reading a bit more about whether this initiative will actually effect small internet companies. Copyright is still a territorial right, so if smal-YouTube-competitor doesn’t implement European style content filtering, they might be in violation of Belgian law - but if they don’t have any assets in Belgium, who cares? Similar story with link tax. Good luck getting an Austrian Court to collect a judgment against a California company.

True, this will disincentivize small internet companies from opening up offices in Portugal as they grow - but, well, that’s Portugal’s problem. Isn’t it largely the internet behemoths who already have offices in Ireland that need to worry about this?

If someone starts a US-based video sharing site that complies with US law and doesn't solicit European customers, they might be able to get away with ignoring there new rights in Europe. So in practice, the effect might be less to squelch innovation overall than to drive innovative companies in these sectors out of Europe.

Yeah, that’s my sense as well. But I’m not sure why a company would even have to care about whether or not they solicit European customers. They’re not going to want to put offices or infrastructure in Europe, but I don’t see how a European country could gain an ability to collect against US (for example) assets just because there are European customers.

There is zilch chance EU can collect anything against an US company.
But EU (member states) can easily block EU banks and companies from doing business with a particular US company.
That is the one and only leverage EU holds.
For someone like Google, Facebook, etc that is a lot of revenue lost.
For many other US companies, it's irrelevant.

Time and time again it is stated that EU can block banks dealing with a non-compliant company based outside of EU. That is at best only partially true.

I wrote EU member states exactly because EU's power is limited.

I live in an EU member state.
A court in my country decided Uber was illegal.
It ordered banks to stop processing payments to Uber.
Our central bank sent notices to banks.
Done, without a hitch.

The new EU law will become law in the member states.
If it follows existing copyright, it may well fall under our criminal code.

Is it so far hard to understand countries will do whatever they can so that their laws aren't trivially bypassed?

 

[raxx7]

Yes: it is rather hard to understand tell me how exactly did the EU or indeed EU member states acquire the legal right to govern how a US company operates whose entire staff and assets are based in the US and which is fully compliant with US law and does not conduct any business in the EU - note EU companies buying ads on a US website is not conducting business in the EU but rather the EU conducting business in the US

I just gave you an example.
A Portuguese court decided that Portuguese law was being violated in Portugal and these violations were being instigated/enabled by an US company.
Among the actions dictated by this court, it directed all banks, credit card issuers and etc, operating in Portugal and thus subject to Portuguese law, to stop processing payments to this US company.
And this was swiftly carried out, as the banks and etc would otherwise risk having their license to operate in Portugal suspended and it's senior staff (which is either in Portugal or within the reach of an European Arrest Warrant) jailed.

Another example of reach:
The UK is against death penalty and in 2012 approved law banning the export of drugs for use in death penalty application.
Which the pharma's manufacturing drugs in the UK promptly complied, requiring their US distributors to ensure no drugs manufactured in the UK and exported to the US would be sold for lethal injection.
The rest of the EU followed suit, leaving US states which use lethal injection scrambling for reliable supplies of drugs to apply death penalty by lethal injection.

As for your example, it's simple: there is no EU law which covers workers' rights outside EU.
Therefore, no violation of EU/country law is happening.
First, EU/country would need to approve legislation (like UK's ban on export for lethal injection) stating that any company violating EU/country rules on workers is a violation of EU/country rules.

Back to copyright:
If a company X from country A is found to be enabling/instigating copyright violations which happen within the country B or affecting country B's copyright owners, you can expect country B's justice system to whatever is within it's reach.
Possible and common actions include issuing arrests for company X's senior staff (which puts them at risk if they travel to country B or to a country with whom country B has an arrest warrant) and/or making it illegal within country B to have business with company X.

And if you still the above is just rambling, look no further than the fate of Kim Dotcom, facing a possible extradition to the US.

 

[raxx7]

A nice ramble, but everything you list is the way things work under the current set of legal systems.

Not clear: are you disagreeing with me?

Or put in another way.
Imagine an US company which
(a) has zero assets in the EU
(b) has EU citizens/companies as clients and is getting paid by credit card, bank transfer etc.
(c) has a business in violation of the EU copyright law.

Do you think it's possible or impossible that following a complaint filled in a EU country's courts, that country courts to order the banks operating within that country to stop processing payments to that US company?

 

[raxx7]

"We're enormously disappointed that MEPs [Members of European Parliament] failed to listen to the concerns of their constituents and the wider Internet," said Danny O'Brien, an analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

The European Parliament is largely a rubber stamping exercise for legislation created by unelected EU Commissioners. It doesn't create legislation in the same way that many other governing bodies do, although it does have the power to vote down proposals. The folk that you really need to lobby are the Commissioners themselves, not the MEPs who have limited powers.

That is missing the forest for the trees.

The Commission drafts the law but the Commission cannot approve the law.
The law MUST be approved by both the European Parliament and by the member state's Governments.
And both can add amendments.

Have no illusion:
First of all, the majority of EU countries Governments support this aberration.
And the major (and not so major) political parties across the EU support this aberration.
The Commission would have not bothered drafting this if they didn't think it had a good chance of being approved.

The lobbying work starts at home.
In fact, the snippet tax is pretty much copy-paste of a failed idea which already exists in two EU countries.