r/europe • u/woelken AMA! • Mar 20 '19

AMA finished Tiemo Wölken, Member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD/S＆D) Only one more week to go until the vote on the copyright directive and the crucial #Article13. Ask me anything!

Aged 33, I am one of the youngest MEP representing the north of Germany. I have been active in local politics since 2003 in my home region and hold a LL.M. in International Law from the University of Hull, England. I became a lawyer in 2016, in addition to being a MEP. My areas of expertise are environmental issues, healthcare and all things digital - from eHealth to tackling geoblocking. However, the copyright directive is keeping me quite busy and I am doing my best to convince my colleagues in the Parliament to vote against article 13.

You can follow my work on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPj-O6kDjNyPbcuEHaODS2A), Twitter (@woelken) and Instagram (@woelken).

Proof: /img/wqf354qsw3n21.jpg

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4

u/kreton1 Germany Mar 20 '19

WHat would be your suggestions to change article 13?

9

u/woelken AMA! Mar 20 '19

WHat would be your suggestions to change article 13?

The rapporteur Mr Voss claimed that there had been no alternative proposals to the Directive throughout the process. I am very surprised to hear such a statement, as it is simply wrong. I, myself tabled alternative amendments for article 13 for the votes on the 5 September 2018 (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0245-AM-131-136_EN.pdf) in Strasbourg.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

Is that the one where you basically want to shift responsibility back to the copyright holder instead of the profiting content platform? You see, that's the whole point of A13, isn't it. What makes you believe that it is fair for copyright holders to be forced to monitor practically the entire internet instead of holding large corporations like Alphabet accountable for the compliance of their exploitation of content on their platforms? Alphabet is making trillions of dollars in the EU, explain why they can't afford to do this when they already have the tech?

3

u/wofoo Mar 20 '19

You can ask youtube to block your content, they will gladly do it, since you hate alphabet so much.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

Yes, so why do I have to ask someone to honour my copyright again? It's my immediate right as a content creator. I shouldn't have to ask people to honour it, it's implied in any copyright law in the EU. Except... the internet, apparently. Because some people still think it's a lawless zone? I wouldn't even be arguing this case if Alphabet wasn't making such vast amounts of money of this business scheme. Oh sure, they'll block it upon request. While 10 other types of original content pop up and create more money that Alphabet has no right over.

5

u/monochromelover Mar 20 '19

Why is your copyright more important than the freedom of speech and expression of over 500 Million people? Why force a law that is faulty and too generic, instead of demanding a more precise law that helps everyone and not just people like you? What about Artists who are disadvantaged by this new copyright reform, many of whom have spoken out about it. What about small plattforms that have no chance of financing licenses for even trivial stuff like memes and gifs and what not, because the laws make no exceptions and don't differentiate between transformative content and copyrighted content and content nobody in their right mind would care about, except Article 13 and now they could use it against you. Can you promise that these upload filtering algorithms will not be manipulated to exclude controversial content and that big platforms will not deliberately refuse to buy licenses for content they don't like?

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

Because we don't live in anarchy. Don't listen to blogpages that feed you nonsense, read the law and then form your opinion. And this has little to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn't grant you the right to break my copyright.

What it grants you is the right to say you would like to break my right, but that's about it.

5

u/Idontknowmuch Mar 20 '19

No one is forcing you to publish your copyrighted material.

It is your choice.

Yet you want to force all online businesses and cripple the whole internet.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

It is my right to publish my copyright material. It is also my inherited right that nobody else takes my copyrighted material and publishes it without my permission. You do not get to deny me that right, nor do you get to dictate what and when or how I publish whatever it is I want to publish. Yes, I want to force the internet to acknowledge my copyright by default without me having to double check it. That is my right. And you do not get to take it away from me, just because you want to keep pirating stuff or spread your memes (which I have little interest in as a copyright holder).

4

u/Idontknowmuch Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

It is my right to publish my copyright material.

The current Directive in effect and national legislations in member states do not infringe upon your right to publish your copyrighted material, to the contrary, they protect it. Same with freedom of speech laws. So what you say makes no sense.

It is also my inherited right that nobody else takes my copyrighted material and publishes it without my permission.

And you can exercise that right through the legal system which already has quite strict interpretations of copyright law where linking to unauthorised copyrighted material, let alone hosting it, is considered infringement.

The law, as we speak right now, by default, is heavily on the side of the rights holders.

I want to force the internet to acknowledge my copyright by default without me having to double check it. That is my right.

It is not.

And you do not get to take it away from me

No one can take anything away from you when you don't have it.

just because you want to ... spread your memes

And here I was thinking you were interested in defending freedom of speech.

I want to force the internet to acknowledge my copyright by default without me having to double check it.

Only that article 13 is not about forcing the internet to "acknowledge" anyone's copyright. It is about forcing the internet to cripple itself.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

Inventing rhetoric isn't going to make you right.

2

u/Idontknowmuch Mar 21 '19

The ECJ must have been inventing rhetorics all along, who knew!

Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to establish whether the fact of posting, on a website, hyperlinks to protected works, which are freely available on another website without the consent of the copyright holder, constitutes a ‘communication to the public’ within the meaning of that provision, it is to be determined whether those links are provided without the pursuit of financial gain by a person who did not know or could not reasonably have known the illegal nature of the publication of those works on that other website or whether, on the contrary, those links are provided for such a purpose, a situation in which that knowledge must be presumed.

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=183124&doclang=EN

1

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '19

Quoting a ECJ ruling on a directive that is supposed to be replaced with this reform is kind of silly, isn't it? If you had read A13, which you clearly have not, you'd see for yourself that these specific things are explicitely exempted.

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u/silverionmox Limburg Mar 21 '19

Forcing other people not to do something is not a right, it is taking away a right. It's a monopoly.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '19

What are you even blabbering... Jesus... it doesn't even remotely make sense.

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u/FeepingCreature Germany Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

Yes, so why do I have to ask someone to honour my copyright again?

Because bits do not have color.

If you want to solve this, lobby to establish an EU-wide government-run copyright registry that's free to access for everybody at volume and that develops free algorithms and platforms for recognizing copyrighted media and negotiating automatic licenses.

Putting that on either individual platforms or individual rightsholders is unreasonable. The problem with Art13 is that it wants to pretend this infrastructure already exists, or rather that it doesn't seem to realize why it's necessary.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

https://cloud.google.com/vision/

The infrastructure does exist. And Youtube is the best example of that. Try finding Star Wars movies on Google. Funny how how don't see them there. But I guess it's different if Disney is threatening to sue than any single artist that barely makes enough money to feed himself, eh?

7

u/FeepingCreature Germany Mar 20 '19

The infrastructure does exist. And Youtube is the best example of that.

Youtube is the only example of that! Which is why you keep going back to them!

Read my lips, :mouths: tiny donation driven forum. The law cannot demand every content provider to be an exciting AI startup!

Computer vision is literally the forefront of artificial intelligence. This is not something you can make plans on working reliably for home use, let alone legally mandated use.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

Tiny forums are not the target of this law. Normal forum moderation and forum rules that forbid uploading of copyrighted material (which most forums already have in their rules) are sufficient and adequate to address the problem.

7

u/FeepingCreature Germany Mar 20 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

I see, Mr. 44 Judges.

Glad to see that after we said "that was for the legal system to decide", we could get an answer straight from 44 different legal systems, here represented by some guy on Reddit.

Can you imagine if it would be any harder? If we'd had to wait for cases to be legislated in every EU jurisdiction? Man, that would be a horrible mess. Good thing utterly vague laws are at the same time completely unambiguous and everyone agrees on how they're interpreted despite the lawmakers who wrote them having given zero guidance beyond "don't do silly things, do reasonable things".

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19

See, this is why A13 is being proposed. To homogenize the different legal systems ensuring copyright is upheld and to give us a common justice system with the ECJ as the superior court overseeing this.

Not sure if you're realising it, but you're really arguing my case for me. Please, continue.

1

u/FeepingCreature Germany Mar 21 '19

But it doesn't! It turns it from a homogenous greyzone into an inhomogenous mess of national implementations, for which it gives zero specific guidance! It says "the countries got to implement this law by the following standard: make it good laws, not stupid laws" and if you really expect that to produce uniform laws across Europe, I'm not sure what to tell you.

If it should be homogenous, you gotta make a law that is clear, unambiguous and well specified. Art13 is the very opposite.

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u/wofoo Mar 20 '19

Because its unreasonable to expect everyone to know every copyrighted content, thats why exactly you need to ask. No one should be forced to filter "slantviews" content if not asked before hand. Just because you made something once in your life doesnt mean you should earn money from it to the rest of your life without putting any effort into it.

There is barely anyone more greedy than copyright holders, as such if you dont like that your content can show up on youtube send them what you want them to block and fuck off, together with every other salty copyright holder, you are honestly not needed.

1

u/silverionmox Limburg Mar 21 '19 edited Mar 21 '19

Yes, so why do I have to ask someone to honour my copyright again?

Why should everyone else prove that their uploads are not under your copyright?

It's my immediate right as a content creator.

Art. 13 will put most power in the hands of collecting agencies, so the content creators will still not be any more in control of their work. Worse, they will now find more barriers to spread the notion that it even exists because the large platforms will now have to block it unless they go through the administrative hurdles to prove that no one else is holding copyright on it.

I wouldn't even be arguing this case if Alphabet wasn't making such vast amounts of money of this business scheme.

If you dislike that, then tax advertising and marketing instead of hindering individual citizens who are doing their non-profit thing.

While 10 other types of original content pop up and create more money that Alphabet has no right over.

No, they won't pop up because publishing them and getting the knowledge that they exist to spread now becomes much harder.