Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry · 2019-04-09 12:07:02

It’s my understanding, Colak, that only platforms that have a commercial objective are subject to the filtering requirements, or at least have anything to worry about penalty-wise. So Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest (it will be interesting to see what happens to that one), etc. are definitely subject (and the main targets of the law), but this forum, for example, is not. That is, nobody is going to suddenly take Team Textpattern to court, for example, because you posted that YouTube video.

Also, it’s not that content is being shared, but that to much of the content is being made part of the links. So in Google+, for example and all of those social platforms, in fact… Someone shares a link and it’s designed to show title, description, hero image, author… whatever they pull. That is what the laws are not happy about. If those platforms only shared the URL, there would be no problem. (Come to think of it, the timing of Google Plus’s demise is rather curious.)

So it seems to me that any platform concerned about being in violation of this law only needs to downgrade their link tech so it shows a text URL only, not all the meta-gloss too. I see Facebook, for example, already back-pedaling and looking about nervously from the long and unrelenting trail of bad press it’s getting. If this copyright law is a further kick to FBs ribs, dropping the beast, I’m not complaining.

Where I see people unhappy, and maybe this is where you sit too, is fearing they can’t share pictures of something they found online, or whatever. Something that is not their own creation. Well, again, if you just point a link to the source instead of re-posting the artwork on your platform, there is no problem. Or, if you get a license from the source, as copyright laws generally require, there is no problem. Everyone keeps saying, like in this video, the ‘danger’ of this. We’re all going to be living under totalitarian rule…

Well, I don’t know. I think the world is already somewhat totalitarian, some places worse than others, and we face much bigger and far more critical problems in the near future than worrying about infringements. That much I would agree to here. And that speaks to proponents of either side on these laws, not just one or other. Such energy should be focused on other, more-critical problems in society, like oil dependency and species loss, in my opinion.

In any case, I’m happy to be shown wrong, but that’s my understanding of the policy. So let’s dive into the actual policies, if necessary, to find out what it really says there, like we did with the GDPR, rather than listen to the opinions from people who just want free access and use of the creativity of others.

Here are some questions I would have:

If you’re a creator and freely share your work with a public license, can others then freely use/share it as allowed?
If you get permission (rights of use license) from the creator of copyrighted work, can you then use it as requested?
If copyrighted work exits the 70-year protection period, becoming public-domain, can we then use it in our work?

I would think the answer to all these questions is ‘yes’, same as it’s always been. So where is the problem for the little guy, exactly? Nothing changes as far as I can see. Those big tech social platforms that so clearly trample our rights, on the other hand, are going to feel the heat. I’m not bothered by that.

That’s my jaded position. Show me where I’m blind.

colak · 2019-04-09 17:42:11

Hi Destry
You phrase the situation in a way that it is hard to argue against but I think that the net is a much more complex place, behaviourally-wise.
For example there are the memes which are so important in today’s net culture and activism. There are large curated sites or accounts residing in platforms which can only pass their message through serial copyright infringement. Check out this one for example.

The problem with the law (as with all such commercially orientated laws) is that it does not consider context.

michaelkpate · 2019-04-09 22:54:14

Destry wrote #317571:

Also, it’s not that content is being shared, but that to much of the content is being made part of the links. So in Google+, for example and all of those social platforms, in fact… Someone shares a link and it’s designed to show title, description, hero image, author… whatever they pull. That is what the laws are not happy about. If those platforms only shared the URL, there would be no problem. (Come to think of it, the timing of Google Plus’s demise is rather curious.)

If you don’t want people to share your content on a social network, don’t include the markup tags.

With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experiences to Tweets, helping to drive traffic to your website. Simply add a few lines of markup to your webpage, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a “Card” added to the Tweet that’s visible to their followers. – Optimize Tweets with Cards

Facebook is trickier because it will guess.

Most content is shared to Facebook as a URL, so it’s important that you mark up your website with Open Graph tags to take control over how your content appears on Facebook. Without these tags, the Facebook Crawler uses internal heuristics to make a best guess about the title, description, and preview image for your content. Designate this info explicitly with Open Graph tags to ensure the highest quality posts on Facebook. – A Guide to Sharing for Webmasters

You can also disallow their crawler bots specifically in your robots.txt.

The issue in Germany and Spain was not that the content was being shared. It was after the mandatory licensing laws were put in place Google specifically stopped sharing their content.

Rather than risk paying licensing fees for using snippets of Axel Springer’s stories, Google removed everything except the headlines from their results. After that, Axel Springer’s web traffic fell off a cliff: visitors from web search fell 40 percent; from Google News, they fell 80 percent. The company’s chief executive said they would have “shot ourselves out of the market” if they’d continued with the policy, according to Reuters. This isn’t a tiny company fighting a monolithic corporation, either: Axel Springer publishes Europe’s top-selling daily paper, Bild. – German publisher caves to Google News after massive traffic drop

The publishers wanted their content shared so that they could get paid for it. In Germany, publishers could opt out and they all did after Google stopped sharing their content. In Spain, the law was specifically written so that publishers could not opt out and Google shut down Google News in Spain.

I presume something similar will happen in 2021.

Here are some questions I would have:

I am going to use YouTube specifically for this one although there are other applications.

1. If you’re a creator and freely share your work with a public license, can others then freely use/share it as allowed?

In theory, yes. The problem is that it is very difficult for YouTube’s Content ID system to determine the license for something.

While Youtube requires that people who want to make ContentID claims go through a vetting process, the process is very lightweight and allows all kinds of bad actors in, who can then steal creators’ revenues by falsely claiming copyright over their videos. No one expects Youtube to be perfect, but it also fails with a remarkable lack of grace. The small number of humans available to review contested claims means that people who fall afoul of machine error, sloppiness and criminal mischief are often unable to get a fair hearing or justice. – Blackmailers use false copyright claims to shut down victims’ Youtube accounts, offer to lift them in exchange for Bitcoin

With YouTube now liable for every false negative, I doubt the system is going to get much better.

2. If you get permission (rights of use license) from the creator of copyrighted work, can you then use it as requested?

In theory, yes. Here’s a case I ran across the other day: A YouTuber recorded an original background track and put it up years ago. Recently, the video was claimed to be infringing on another work. It turns out the claimant bought the track from a third party who claimed it was their own original work, added vocals, and released it on her own channel. So neither the original creator nor the new one did anything wrong. But it will be difficult to sort out under existing law let alone Article 19.

3. If copyrighted work exits the 70-year protection period, becoming public-domain, can we then use it in our work?

In theory, yes. Although I don’t know where you are getting the 70 years from.

Currently in the US, Copyright for something created by a person is 70 years from the death of the author, not the publication of the work. Copyright for work-for-hire is 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication, whichever is shorter. It actually used to be worse because there used to be a renewal provision. That was one of the reasons Google has pretty much dropped their Book Scanning Project, even after winning the suit with the Author’s Guild.

At this point, the safest thing for major companies to do is just keep all EUCD content off their sites. Which again is not actually what the rights holders want.

Destry · 2019-04-10 07:44:44

michaelkpate wrote #317577:

Currently in the US, Copyright for something created by a person is 70 years from the death of the author, not the publication of the work.

From death of the author is what I meant, sorry. I’m guessing many signatory countries in the Berne Agreement use the ‘70yrs after the author’s death’ measure. But I don’t follow every country’s specific rules.

As for the rest, I trust what you’re saying, but it doesn’t concern me. I’ll keep repeating it: I don’t care about news media or social media platforms. I think news media sold its soul a long time ago and social media has proven itself corrupt. I don’t care about either of those flimflam industries. Burn ‘em down, I say, and throw national television news into the flames too.

colak wrote #317576:

but I think that the net is a much more complex place, behaviourally-wise.

For sure it is, Colak. You are right. Same as human society is behaviourally complex offline. (Offline is where society needs to return its focus, in my useless opinion.)

My oversimplifying the situation was intentional and necessary. If we don’t break it down in fundamental ways to talk about it, then people are easily caught up in making sweeping generalizations. Gloom and doom cries to get others to act incoherently. ‘The sky’s falling’ extremism. The ‘danger’ is coming, people. I think the world is in as much danger as it’s going to get without suddenly exploding. We can only ensure a certain end at this point or do something to make it better. I’m not holding my breath. But that’s a different conversation.

There are the memes which are so important in today’s net culture and activism. There are large curated sites or accounts residing in platforms which can only pass their message through serial copyright infringement. Check out this one for example.

I think the correlation of ‘memes’ and ‘important’ is very subjective. This is less about context and more about individual values. In my opinion, society made a big mistake gulping social media down like a hungry dog — at least as it was rolled and sold.

Crying over internet memes is the least of my worries. Look how valuable those were in 2016. I dread the next US elections, frankly, just for the CO2 it will release, to say nothing of the noise and visual pollution that I’ll have to endure. The world’s biggest clown show. Believe me, the armies of sociopath troll racists are way better at social media memes than we are, and it benefits them more too. I mostly see memes as garbage that clogs up servers and releases carbon. Speaking of clowns, that seems to be Pepe’s new shtick. I’m so glad I’m out of mainstream social media.

In my occasional research into the 19th century, I’m constantly reminded of how society dealt with ‘memes’, if you will, in politics, industry, and so forth, and it was always by artists creating original works (e.g. political cartoons, magazine covers, street sign posters, etc). And these original works were clearly delineated by author, publisher, etc. Other artists did not take these images, change them, and redistribute them for whatever agenda they had. Rather different artists came up with their own art and interpretations in response, or in addition to. Likewise, you didn’t have every numbskull citizen with no art or writing skills stealing your stuff and warping it out of context for questionable agendas. Newspapers were in control and a natural kind of filter. If you didn’t like the socialist rag, you drew for the commie rag, whatever. Minds were swayed (or not) by the skill of a writer to convince in a cogently written argument, not by gaming the intertubes with algorithms and fake news.

colak · 2019-04-10 16:39:03

Well, cultural appropriation of images were there far before the net (think of the punk movement, Duchamp’s Mona Lisa and the objet trouve or even many of Warhol’s silk-prints). Meme’s to me follow this tradition and transport and disseminate it to the net-admittedly unfortunately-through centralised social media.

As much as I agree with you that social media is hugely problematic, as well as over-rated, the fact remains that they became the major platforms where ideas are communicated, be that in a totally unacceptable way where the AI is implanting fake and racist recommendations, eventually actually promoting extremist ideologies. I come from a place that has the highest fb usage/capita but I do not have a fb account and I never did.

In my view, if we are to over-simplify this, there are 2 ways to study social media.

their impact (negative) based on their algorithms
their impact (positive) based on how some users are managing to drive positive change in and information about the physical world.

I think that to date, the negative algorithmic impact far out-weighs any positive issues spread through such platforms. Proper academic evaluations about social media are constantly been produced. To cut to the chase, my view is that more legal restraints have to be put in place regarding the commodification of users, rather than imposing any copyright laws which have already been proven that they seldom help the artists as most of them do not have the necessary money or the know-how to demand their rights.

michaelkpate · 2019-04-10 21:10:54

Destry wrote #317583:

I’ll keep repeating it: I don’t care about news media or social media platforms. I think news media sold its soul a long time ago and social media has proven itself corrupt. I don’t care about either of those flimflam industries. Burn ‘em down, I say, and throw national television news into the flames too.

I can be as critical of the “Mainstream Media” as anyone. But we do actually need some form of reporting so we can find out what is going in the world. Or in our local communities.

For sure it is, Colak. You are right. Same as human society is behaviourally complex offline. (Offline is where society needs to return its focus, in my useless opinion.)

It isn’t useless but I can still remember actually subscribing to a print newspaper and getting it delivered. Going back to that is going to very difficult, especially for young people who have no experience with that.

Believe me, the armies of sociopath troll racists are way better at social media memes than we are, and it benefits them more too. I mostly see memes as garbage that clogs up servers and releases carbon. Speaking of clowns, that seems to be Pepe’s new shtick. I’m so glad I’m out of mainstream social media.

I think The Left can’t meme has been one of the most successful memes the Alt-Right morons have put out.

In my occasional research into the 19th century, I’m constantly reminded of how society dealt with ‘memes’, if you will, in politics, industry, and so forth, and it was always by artists creating original works (e.g. political cartoons, magazine covers, street sign posters, etc). And these original works were clearly delineated by author, publisher, etc. Other artists did not take these images, change them, and redistribute them for whatever agenda they had. Rather different artists came up with their own art and interpretations in response, or in addition to. Likewise, you didn’t have every numbskull citizen with no art or writing skills stealing your stuff and warping it out of context for questionable agendas. Newspapers were in control and a natural kind of filter. If you didn’t like the socialist rag, you drew for the commie rag, whatever. Minds were swayed (or not) by the skill of a writer to convince in a cogently written argument, not by gaming the intertubes with algorithms and fake news.

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso

jakob · 2019-04-10 21:50:34

Destry wrote #317583:

In my occasional research into the 19th century, I’m constantly reminded of how society dealt with ‘memes’, if you will, in politics, industry, and so forth, and it was always by artists creating original works (e.g. political cartoons, magazine covers, street sign posters, etc). And these original works were clearly delineated by author, publisher, etc. Other artists did not take these images, change them, and redistribute them for whatever agenda they had. Rather different artists came up with their own art and interpretations in response, or in addition to. Likewise, you didn’t have every numbskull citizen with no art or writing skills stealing your stuff and warping it out of context for questionable agendas. Newspapers were in control and a natural kind of filter. If you didn’t like the socialist rag, you drew for the commie rag, whatever. Minds were swayed (or not) by the skill of a writer to convince in a cogently written argument, not by gaming the intertubes with algorithms and fake news.

Have recently translated a fair bit about the time a little later on – pre-Bauhaus developments from turn of the century up to WWI and again directly after – and the avant garde of the day’s social media was a) debates and b) chain letters. There was plenty of riffing off each other, and considerable disagreement too, but, as you say, the means of reproduction were not so widely available, ideas were redrawn / painted / sketched or rewritten, which as a method is creative in itself, and ultimately transformative. It also required time, effort and engagement.

michaelkpate · 2019-04-10 23:31:16

Maybe we do need rules for culture, and maybe we even need laws for culture, but they shouldn’t – and can’t – be the rules we designed for industry. – Cory Doctorow

Destry · 2019-04-11 15:14:41

Regarding the 19th century stuff, I’m not saying there was never any riffing. I’m not that jaded. There are no original ideas, as they say. My point was that it has become way to easy to do it. People who have no purpose or point can, and do now, riff and rip in counter-productive ways for no other reason than the sake of it, en masse, in a carbon-releasing way. For laughs and giggles. For likes and faves. For the shitposting glee of it. It’s gone way beyond value into downright environmentally destructive, ergo destructive to human society. The internet has made the mindless glut possible.

Likewise, I’m not saying the Internet has never been good, though that was a very short and piecemeal window, IMO. As soon as the assholes smelt the money, as Iggy Pop would say, that was the end of it. I don’t want to cross-mix conversations that are out of scope here, but there will be no internet when society collapses. It will be one of the first things to go, I’m quite certain. My point here is that collapse is probably something that should consume human attention more than whether or not we can freely riff on the internet. Making our own newspapers from ad-pulp and sunshine may be a worthwhile skill in a few decades. Viva la solarpunk!

If people have problems with 11 or 13, and it miraculously gets turned around. Good for those who it makes happy. I won’t care either way. I’m neither concerned about nor invested in anything either measure will impact. That’s all I’m saying.

More critical than either 11 or 13, for those who really put weight on this kind of pointless thing, is the Terrorist Content measure, and here’s a good example why. That does concern me more, though there’s nothing I can do about that either. It’s one thing for the Archive to respect requests from site owners to be removed from their archives — and they do honour those requests, I can vouch — but it’s something else for countries to make sweeping demands on content they didn’t even create.

jakob · 2019-04-11 19:12:45

Destry wrote #317595:

Regarding the 19th century stuff, I’m not saying there was never any riffing. I’m not that jaded. There are no original ideas, as they say. My point was that it has become way to easy to do it.

Of course, agree entirely in that respect. And just for the record – because sometimes things perhaps come across differently to how they were meant – I was just adding an anecdote that picked up what you had written earlier; it wasn’t meant in any away as a retort.

Destry · 2019-04-11 20:21:44

jakob wrote #317599:

just for the record – because sometimes things perhaps come across differently to how they were meant

I understood. No worries. I only followed up on that point because all three of you commented on it, so it’s not meant to single any one person out. I always try to use the comment feature when doing that. But I did want to capitalize on that nice word, ‘riff’. ;)

Destry · 2019-04-11 23:35:11

Destry wrote #317595:

I don’t want to cross-mix conversations that are out of scope here, but there will be no internet when society collapses. It will be one of the first things to go, I’m quite certain. My point here is that collapse is probably something that should consume human attention more than whether or not we can freely riff on the internet.

Haha…

Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure

The results of our overlap analysis show that ∼4.1k miles of fiber conduit will be under water and over 1.1k colocation centers will be surrounded by water in the next 15 years. We develop a geo-based metric to assess Internet infrastructure risks in local areas and find New York, Miami and Seattle to be the most vulnerable areas, and that large service providers including Century Link, Intelliquent and AT&T have the most infrastructure risk. We believe that these results highlight a real and present threat to the management and operations of communications systems and that steps should be taken soon to develop plans to address this threat.

h/t to Sacripant for that one.

And that says nothing about all the other low-level municipalities in the world that face the same situation. Nor does it speak to the innumerable other ways — foreseen and yet-realized — our impact on the environment is going to hit back and cripple life as we know it. And that’s just in the next 20 years.

So, yeah, much bigger worries in my book. And just the investment of energy to remediate these problems is more carbon release. But as Jem Bendell and others have already calculated, all the best efforts to stem CO2 and temperature rise won’t make a difference now. We’ve already done the things that will continue to release latent carbon and warm the planet, even if industry stops using oil today (lol), which is impossible.

This is probably worth sharing too, though I think I did once before, 12 reasons why people refuse to address the idea that we’re headed for near-term societal collapse.

Dang, I went off topic.

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#13 2019-04-09 12:07:02

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

#14 2019-04-09 17:42:11

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

#15 2019-04-09 22:54:14

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry wrote #317571:

#16 2019-04-10 07:44:44

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

michaelkpate wrote #317577:

colak wrote #317576:

#17 2019-04-10 16:39:03

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

#18 2019-04-10 21:10:54

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry wrote #317583:

#19 2019-04-10 21:50:34

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry wrote #317583:

#20 2019-04-10 23:31:16

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

#21 2019-04-11 15:14:41

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

#22 2019-04-11 19:12:45

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry wrote #317595:

#23 2019-04-11 20:21:44

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

jakob wrote #317599:

#24 2019-04-11 23:35:11

Re: Just in: Articles 11 and 13

Destry wrote #317595:

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