Tag: European Commission

Posted on

That god-awful upcoming european copyright directive revision…

So the European Comission and Parliament wants to give more power to the copyright maximalism extremists, sorry… to revise the european copyright directive…

Among other issues they want to:

  • tax links to news sources (article 11)
  • censor before pubication anything citizens want to publish online under the excuse of “protecting” against copyright infringement (article 13)

Article 11

The first one is moronic, andI will do all my best to lead to the death of the publishers of news sources who support this.

No more sharing of article, no more links.

I may personally not be liable BUT any social network I participate in is, and if they deem my website as commercial in any way or form even I may be liable because of what users publish as comments.

This is absurd, links drive potential customers to you, guys. Wanting to cash-in because a link and a short excerpt points to your page is a very misguided idea driven by avarice.

This is what you deserve: a very slow death by nobody using your services because nobody knows of links to you.

I will do my best with this regard. If you can die slowly and painfully (as a business, not as persons), I will watch with a smile on my face.

Ear to ear grin, guys. Not a slight Amazon-like smirk. Ear to ear…

Article 13

Guys… this is censorship at the full extent of the meaning of the word. Government mandated rules that prevent publishing for some specific reason.

If you believe that software can properly detect copyright infringement, then I have a good piece of land on  the moon to sell you really cheap. I promise to provide a good deed of proof of ownership! Really!

And if you needed any proof, then here it goes… a most recent and obnoxious case where Sony claims copyright of Bachs works on Facebook. Seriously?

Do not even dream for a second that is will get refined and work in the future.

It won’t. Artifical Intelligence will sooner take over our society and replace it with repetitive robotic work than do this properly.

And this leeds to a slippery slope of censorship where other rules will be added to the censorship machines…  and in fact… really… they’re already doing it… now they’re adding the “rules against terrorism”, I wonder how many steps until you can’t say something against the european authority…

Posted on

Sobre a mudança (ou não) de hora… Venha a hora Primavera/Outonal

Parece que a Comissão Europeia está a dar até Abril do próximo ano para os Estados-membro indicarem qual a hora que pretendem manter: Verão ou Inverno.

Nota: teria aqui um link para os artigos d’O Público sobre isto, mas na sequência da mais que provável aprovação da diretiva europeia que legitima a cobrança de taxas pelos links, não pretendo mais colocar links para qualquer órgão noticioso tradicional..

Acho que é de louvar que pelo menos uma vez a Comissão Europeia dê ouvidos aos cidadãos sobre algum tema, seria de esperar que tivesse a mesma atitude no que diz respeito à revisão da diretiva europeia sobre direitos de autor, pelo que de momento temo apenas por… “what’s the catch“…

Que 79% dos portugueses prefiram a hora de verão não me admira nada, como país que por causa do turismo só tem a ganhar com mais exposição solar durante o dia, sobretudo no verão, seria algo muito preferencial.

Por outro lado, há quem diga que isto também tem outros efeitos nefastos.

Ou seja, independentemente de qual a opção tomada, há vantagens e desvantagens.

Qual o caminho a seguir?

Eu pessoalmente acho que a UE podia toda ajustar apenas meia hora e ficar algures a meio sem mudança de fuso horário daí para a frente.

Este meio-termo parece-me mais viável e algo que equilibra os argumentos a favor e contra cada um dos lados. Chamemos-lhe a hora da Primavera-Outonal…

Posted on

#EU #Copyright consultation model responses, very useful to help you reply

Some of you may know that the European Comission is having a public consultation inviting all interested parties to offer their thoughts on how the european copyright rules should evolve.

This has been going on since the 5th of December and will go on until the 5th of February, in 2014, which is but a month and a half ahead.

It has 80 questions and looks very daunting specially for people who only care about a few issues on copyright, and others don’t care at all.

You don’t have to reply to all, but if you want to help some part of it evolve positively, rather than the negative way it has evolved these past decades, having a map is very, very useful.

You may want to take up on the suggestions and expand your views but, as Amelia Andersdotter says, «The  Commission is more likely to take your views into account if you present  your position in your own words!», so grab some help, sure, but please to to write your own text to those issues that matter the most to you rather than just copying the suggestions to all 80 questions.

If they’re strong enough already you can just use the map in order to go straight to the questions that matter the most to you, but please participate.

It is very important that the European Comission knows what it’s citizens and organizations think of this matter, because otherwise they only hear for paid lobbyists, and you might have seen how bad it has been:

  • DRM is emptying you of your rights to lend and format shift works
  • Quasi-eternal copyright durations prevent you from creating original artworks derived from things that happened during your own lifetime
  • Drying the well of the public domain
  • Persecution of people sharing their favorite artworks with their friends and family
  • There are greedy people who want to charge you money for the disks where you store your home pictures, movies, work, your cellphone, your tablet, your computer, all just in case you make a lawful copy which should be your right, anyways, and not merely a copyright exception
  • Songs like “Happy birthday” are in a copyright mess, did you know about that?

Amelia Andersdotter, MPE, Pirat PartietAmelia Andersdotter is a Member of the European Parliament, elected via the Pirate Party and has a nice map filled with suggestions, should you feel like borrowing some fine words to help you explain what you feel while replying to the consultation.

Please do so, it is very important that you help, because then the European Commission needs to understand that this is a very important issue that matters to a lot of people and they’re the only ones who can start a legislative package of copyright reform.