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Thank you for this very good summary. This is the most factual recount I've seen in numerous HN threads to date (which have been quite unhinged frankly). However I don't see how this forces content filtering. Service provider has to take responsibility for served content by having a process to help the complainant in the cleanup in contrast to just hiding behind users with a token “sorry for that, we'll now allow you to play hide and seek with them, sorry again”. Apart from shifting that burden, which I find reasonable, I see no difference to current mechanisms.

In particular I see no preventing publication, and the rightholder has to actively take part to indicate/identify the matter.

Beisde, the most recent text I see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&mo... is a wasteland. Articles 13a, 13b and 13c popped up into existence, article 13 got itself a point -1 (that's a minus one). No wonder the Parliament requested further work. Which is what it did contrary to misleading reporting of rejecting anything (in particular any of the articles specifically).

Also, the text functions in a whole context of European law and reuses lots of notions. For example who is a commercial service provider seems to be lifted directly from a law being in force since the year 2000.

Most European law is peppered with calls to scale and proportion you take issue with, and yet they exist and live on with little problem.



> In particular I see no preventing publication, and the rightholder has to actively take part to indicate/identify the matter.

Sorry, that's inaccurate.

The rightholder has to provide the service provider with a list of content and the service provider has to prevent anything on the list from becoming available. How do you propose to do this except by filtering content before publication? As soon as something that is infringing is published, the service provider is on the hook. So either you filter or you're in violation.

As a proposal of a proportional way to do the same without opening the door to active censorship, there could be a content identification system that identifies content to the rightholder on upload, and then allows them to file a takedown request. This solves the problem of automated blocking of misidentified uploads, and leaves room for fair use by the mechanisms of existing takedown claim and counter-claim processes. But that's not what the law requires - it requires preventing availability.


But I see no mention of lists, much less preventive lists. Yup, this is one of the possible mechanisms, but nowhere do I see it mandated as THE mechanism. For me it's business as usual just that now I fingerprint all files and maybe have a cron job for reuploads. I don't even see myself having to be accurate, just take care. I'm liable if negligent.

The most unfortunate thing I find about this is that's just a broad directive for each of the member states to implement its own way. But that's a general argument about every EU regulation.


The mention of lists is from Voss's blog post, where he says that the rightholders will provide inputs to the filters, and the filters will filter only what the rightsholders told them to filter (which is a problematic statement in itself, but I'll take it at face value because eh if the author of the law doesn't know what he's talking about I don't know where to start)




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