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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
Interesting how the vote flipped a majority against to a largish majority in favor of that law. More MPs were present, though.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
The Cyprus MEP’s from the left, voted against in the first round, and abstained in the second as I heard that they had pressure from the press moguls.
Here are my views re the so called link tax, which I understand it more like an excerpt tax.
I do not think that anybody will be preventing links but they will nevertheless prevent excerpts and images to be shown after those links. As far as I know..
- Twitter uses the meta tag cards system, unless a site has those meta tags – the link is shown as is, without image or excerpt.
- fb uses the open Graph system but in its absence, it uses an image from the page and a meta description
- G+, I have no idea what they use, but it behaves similarly to fb when OG tags are absent.
- Google, indexes all pages that allow it. ie those pages which they do not have the
noindexmeta-tag. - instagram, no idea
- pinterest, no idea
In any case, it would have been much simpler if they forced these companies to only include content which clearly allowed by the meta tags or new tags they might develop… Following and extending Twitter’s example, they could add tags to be used in the body/title like <index>content</index> and <noindex>content</noindex> or even <index>some<noindex> content</noindex></index>. If they followed, such methods, no engine would have been allowed to include anything unless the web-masters added the necessary tags. It would probably be really easy to implement. Instead, the web will now be poorer and the ones who will again lose are the small sites.
Yiannis
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
What I don’t quite get is how this affects bloggers with large followings. Say in a fictitious world I have waaaay more than three people who read what I sporadically write. In some article, I link to a Guardian article in the body text to support my argument. Could the Grauniad demand I pay for use of that link if it uses a “substantial” number of words or imagery from the original article heading? Presumably, if it’s financially worth their while to pursue me, they could exercise that right as copyright holder.
Or is this only for automated content scraping from sites that display aggregated excerpted content, such as those Google links to (e.g.) Wikipedia where the first paragraph is displayed directly in the search results, negating the need for me to click-through to the site itself?
Where does the line get drawn?
If those excerpts are effectively outlawed and search results to “press publications” (however that is defined) are no longer permitted to be used verbatim, what will happen to the links?
Will Google pony up?
Will they write a counter-algorithm to excerpt the headline to use an “insignificant” number of words from it?
What if they go back to the non-semantic linking practice of the 1990s and replace all link text to such articles with “Click here to read more about this topic”? That bypasses the law, right? Disguising the content in the same way that wearing a baseball cap can render CCTV useless.
Under either of the latter two, content providers still lose out because such a link becomes non-semantic and people won’t visit the site in exactly the same way as they may not do now due to the excerpt being scraped.
As a user, I tend to find the excerpt more useful than clicking through, waiting for ten seconds while the page loads six metric tonnes of JS and trackers and then try to find the actual content in the postage-stamp size box in the centre of a page surrounded by ads and clickbait articles. Maybe that’s just me.
On Article 13, what I find especially interesting for the masses of today addicted to sharing potted histories of their daily highlights with their followers, is what will happen when their precious darling poses for a photo in a band T-shirt before going to their first gig. Proud mom posts the photo to SocMed site du jour to have it refused as it violates copyright due to the band album cover depicted on the shirt.
Not only can she not share the moment with her friends and family, anyone in that extended social graph of contacts is not subjected to the free advertising the photo might have garnered, which might have led to album or other merch sales. This affects the artist (minimally, as they usually get a pittance anyway) and the record label (to a greater degree, as they get a larger slice).
Ironic, really, that the people that will lose out and have to spend more on conventional advertising are the bigwigs who have been complaining about copyright violations ever since the Internet was devised, because they can’t find a way to embrace the technology and move with the times.
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
Apart from one case that I heard of a german activist suing fb, I did not hear of any other legal proceedings re GDPR, regardless of the fact that 90% of the sites I visit serve their cookies regardless of our accepting their policy or not. Would these laws also prove impossible to implement?
ps.
Yiannis
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
Bloke wrote #313987:
What I don’t quite get is how this affects bloggers . . .
I’m with you on this. I haven’t read all the docs and I don’t plan to anytime soon, but what I’ve been seeing argued in relation to the link filters at least is they are meant to target (as usual) big tech, and the only thing that comes to mind is when you drop a link in G+, for example, and it auto-displays title, description, first photo found, whatever and so on.
I don’t know that metadata would be a problem, and maybe it’s not, but I’m under the impression it’s all the initial information before you even go to the website that they don’t want displayed anymore. In other words, they want the law to encourage visiting news media sites where one might otherwise decide to skip doing so if they have enough from the ‘sneak peak’?
But, as you say, if you’re not a tech giant or a media hund, whichever, you’re just a lowly bloggerknobber, and you don’t display all that meta stuff, you’re links might just look like — go here — are you breaking the law? Will they even care? Or more to my concern, what if I blockquote a passage from half-way down the article with full citation to source to support an argument I’m making… Breaking the law?
Or if you use a picture and give full rights to the source in context of the image (e.g. in caption) without getting an actual ‘okay siree bob’ from the source, are you breaking the law? I doubt it. If you’re giving due credit, who’s going to say anything? But I don’t know.
Or is this only for automated content scraping from sites that display aggregated excerpted content, such as those Google links to (e.g.) Wikipedia where the first paragraph is displayed directly in the search results, negating the need for me to click-through to the site itself?
This is how I understand it. Perhaps incorrectly.
What if they go back to the non-semantic linking practice of the 1990s and replace all link text to such articles with “Click here to read more about this topic”?
These don’t bother me if the author has made half an effort to elaborate the point of why I might go there to begin with. But I would make better link text than that. ;) So this one, really, is just an editorial skill, I’d argue.
I tend to find the excerpt more useful than clicking through, waiting for ten seconds while the page loads six metric tonnes of JS and trackers and then try to find the actual content in the postage-stamp size box in the centre of a page surrounded by ads and clickbait articles.
Yes, but I think this is precisely what the ‘logic’, er, lobbying pressure, is behind this one… By not showing so much up front, you encourage more visitation to the source (where you are then ideally raped and pillaged by ad tech, etc. Thanks for nothing, GDPR.) But again, I don’t savvy it all.
what I find especially interesting for the masses of today addicted to sharing potted histories of their daily highlights with their followers, is what will happen when their precious darling poses for a photo in a band T-shirt before going to their first gig.
Yeah, this could be a legitimate concern under the law, maybe, as people start looking at the law as a way to make money and become copyright sharks. The equivalent of GDPR lawyer sharks, I guess, who have yet to rear their dorsal fins.
Another concern isn’t about what the laws are supposedly designed to do, but how they can be used further as a political tool, as this guy points out. I can’t read the Speigel article he’s indicating, but it’s here.
And there are all the ‘socialities’ who won’t be able to shitpost and meme the same way all day long… They’re not happy either.
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
Destry wrote #313999:
what if I blockquote a passage from half-way down the article with full citation to source to support an argument I’m making… Breaking the law?
Good point. Who knows!
I would make better link text than that.
Of course. I was being flippant. If Google really wanted to flout the system, all they’d have to do would be to let everyone’s content display links and excerpts as-is except all “press publications” where it may infringe copyright or be subject to link tax. If they replaced all such links with “Click here” instead, it’d be interesting to see who caved first: Google because people complained there was no semantic information conveyed in the link text, or the media outlets who received a dramatic downturn in click-throughs from search results.
I can’t read the Speigel article he’s indicating
That DeepL translator you linked to made a bloody awesome job of rendering the content in English for me. I’m well impressed, given the nature of the content. My new go-to translation tool, methinx, thanks for the tip!
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Re: New EU (c) laws -on horizon- are here
Bloke wrote #314001:
My new go-to translation tool, methinx, thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the reminder. I’ll read it now.
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