pühapäev, 17. märts 2019

Myopic EU legislation

This was written in reply presumably to a person from the UK about bad EU legislation.

Stupid EU legislation: Articles 11, 12, and 13 of the proposed update to the EU Copyright Directive. In substance, these would make all websites (including YouTube) responsible for their users' uploads, whether those uploads infringe on copyrights or not. At this moment, it's the users who are responsible for their uploads, and not the websites / platforms.

Article 11 is the "link tax", and Article 13 is about upload filters.

This means, that _all_ websites and services (including YouTube), that rely on user uploads (including forums) would be required to have copyright filters on all uploads, which is censorship.

The filters are not directly in the proposed directive's wording, but the weaselly wording requires the often-erroneous filters nevertheless.

You should seriously consider asking all UK members of the European Parliament to vote against this proposed EU Copyright Directive (to be voted near the end of March) as a signal against myopic lawmaking.

If, due to a possible long extension to Article 50 of the EU treaty, the UK politicians can stand as candidates for MEPs in the next elections to the EU Parliament (due in the month of May), then I recommend, that you ask them what they think of the (still yet) proposed Copyright Directive.

In other areas, I agree with you and Rational Roundhead.

The UK's membership in the EU has protected the UK from most very bad deals that some large and powerful Asian countries "have lined up". Just look at what happened with MG Motors, and the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka.

As a member of the EU, the UK must also follow EU sanctions against enemies of the free world, which are non-free nuclear states with large territories and designs on world domination.

America is no panacea, and is culturally and geographically too far gone now to be interested in the UK. The Special Relationship is mostly symbolic with regard to trade.