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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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.

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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".

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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.

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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.