I suppose you missed Article 11, which a link tax: https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/extra-copyright-for...

That's an additional garbage to Article 13, which is a censorship law (upload filters). Above I commented on Article 11 when talking about obsolete industries trying to leech their more successful rivals.

Article 11 is not a link tax, because it, surprisingly, doesn't tax links. Julia Reda is opposed to the copyright legislation, and has chosen to re-define it as a "link tax" because it helps her push her agenda. She spends a LOT of time meeting with Google and organizations directly funded by Google, which she does, helpfully, disclose on her website.

Article 11 is a very clear attack on linking driven by legacy news and similar industries which are losing money in the Internet age and whining that everyone should pay them now, "just because" (read they can't properly compete).

If you want more in depth review of this, check Techdirt articles on the topic: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=article+11

But I doubt you would - since you simply will say "it's not that". I see no point in arguing then.

Article 11 is a protection against massive content theft by large companies against smaller ones. A great example is what happened here: https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynet...

Additionally, "legacy news" are losing money because tech companies are shifting profits from ads on those news sites to their own platforms. Here's a chart showing how Google has shifted the ad revenue balance since 2004: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1055606344559063040

Essentially, it used to be that Google provided a real service to these news companies, by providing an ad network where both news organizations and Google could profit. But over time, they've shifted their ad revenue away from the model that requires they share it to ads that they alone profit from. This has slowly but surely bled journalism dry.

Essentially, these news companies can't figure out how to reach more people, and because of that, they decided that others have to pay them for what they don't do. I'd call that extortion. It's the same level of stupidity as "blank media tax" and other similar extortion ideas.

Linking is not infringing anything, and should not be taxable. All this "massive theft" whining is complete bunk.

The actual law might not explicitly mandate upload filters but they are the only way to comply with the law other than just shutting down in the EU of course.

This isn't really true. In fact, my understanding is that the text wholly prohibits relying solely on an automated system, as opposed to human appeals and moderators. An appeal process is required to protect your ability to upload content that you have the right to upload, YouTube would no longer be able to arbitrarily punish you with no way of contesting their decision.

It might be financially challenging for large, abusive platforms which are heavily built on pirating copyrighted content, but it shouldn't be much of a challenge for ordinary websites, blogs, and smaller sharing platforms. Consider that a personal website may have the site owner bother to moderate the comments manually. A small business may have to hire a moderator or two. YouTube may need to hire 10,000 people and may have problems.

I've mailed with an MP who wanted this legislation. She admitted the automatic filters are de facto required as there are no better options available. This was unfortunate. She expressed hope that smart people would step up and find a better solution.

So basically the people who voted for this law disagree with you.

It's also pretty dumb to vote for something, knowing it will end up in a mess since there is no good solution for it. Excuse of "someone smart will find one" is outrageous. Let them first find a solution, before voting for something that becomes a requirement already now.

> In fact, my understanding is that the text wholly prohibits relying solely on an automated system, as opposed to human appeals and moderators. An appeal process is required to protect your ability to upload content that you have the right to upload, YouTube would no longer be able to arbitrarily punish you with no way of contesting their decision.

This is a farce. They already have this. The automated system decides to spit out a false positive, then you appeal to a "human" who has neither the time nor the expertise to make a reasonable determination so they just rubber stamp whatever the automated system said and its incorrect determination stands.

EU bigwigs already explicitly admitted, that now everyone has to implement upload filters, despite before lying through their teeth that filters won't be mandatory. Corrupt hypocrites.