One of the most discussed topics in the past days has been the agreement on the final draft of article 13 by the EU last week. The internet goes crazy about it, youtube is flooded by comments of fear, first demonstrations hit the cities.
But what is it all about and how does it affect us (the SWAT Portal)?
Note: This thread is for information purposes. I won't allow political discussions or bashing of any kind. If you are unhappy with the situation -> Vote (your next chance May 23rd).'
Simply said the EU wants to bring national law of the member states regarding copyrights, legal rights and the way how this stuff can get licensed by the rights owners on the same level.
So far so good actually.
I don't see anything wrong with that intend as it strengthens the rights of content creators and license owners.
All of that stuff is part of the EU Copyright Directive... which btw. already existed before and in most parts already dealt with the rights in a similar way in the past. It is more about detail changes now.
The EU Copyright Directive contains 24 articles and most of them are very positive.
Two of the articles however caused controversity amongst the internet users, content creators and right owners.
Article 11 deals with press publications and how these publications should be licensed/monetized in future based on their usage.
e.g. An online newspaper a writes an article and Google publishes an excerpt on the search results. The newspaper is content creator and deserves to get paid for the written work. But Google comes with the arguement "without us nobody would even find the article". Who is right here?
Article 11 clearly deals with the situation here which could backfire in its current form.
Google soon will need a license to publish such news content (the way it is in Spain since 2014).
Hard to tell how Google will react.
Maybe Google will simply stop displaying news articles at all in the EU (just like done in Spain where access to news articles dropped by ~45%).
Maybe Google will start licensing News and pay a fair share. But I doubt that Google will have a license agreement with ALL the players on the market. And that will cause smaller news outlets to have a disadvantage to get their articles shown in the search entries.
Article 11 does not involve us directly but it will change the way how we all will consume information in the future.
Article 13 is the bummer most people talk about since it might have a much more direct impact on how we use the internet.
But lets start with Article 2 first.
I invested some time this weekend to read through the entire final draft in order to check how bad it really is for us and the internet in general.
Article 2 defines to whom Article 13 applies to.
Quote‘online content sharing service provider’ means a provider of an information society service whose main or one of the main purposes is to store and give the public access to a large amount of copyright protected works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users which it organises and promotes for profit-making purposes.
The red marked part would apply to us as we one of our purposes is to give people access to copyrighted material (Mods and Tools).
The green marked part here would imply an exception for us as we do not host this website and its content for profit-making purposes.
The SWAT Portal therefore is not directly affected by Article 13.
The situation would change if we would run google ads on our Portal (which I always refused to do because of style reasons). With ads we (the Portal) would generate money and that could be considered "profit-making purposes" (probably depending on how high the revenue would be).
The Paypal Donation buttons on the Portal are a debatable feature. I am absolutely not sure how "profit-making" is really defined. That certainly is a matter of court decision.
In case of a dispute I would argument with: "Donations - monthly costs = loss"
Article 2 goes on to define a bunch of exceptions which all do not apply to us (therefore I won't further comment it).
Case closed - Based on Article 2 I don't see how Article 13 has any effect on the SWAT Portal
But lets move on and check what Article 13 really means.
Keep in mind here the stuff below does not apply to the SWAT Portal but for explanation reasons I might bring up examples related to the Portal.
Article 13 consists of a bunch of minor paragraphs in which one paragraph apparently is missing (probably got deleted last minute).
Paragraph 1 defines the general goal and that an user upload already is a distribution done by the plattform.
"Online content sharing service providers" also should obtain an authorization for copyrighted content that is uploaded by the users.
That means I as owner of the plattform I have to obtain licenses for content that other users upload.
Paragraph 2 tells us that the obtained licenses are also valid for content of users which have a non-commercial background.
That means if I as plattform owner have a license you users dont need an extra license (which releases users from some duties). So... yeah ok... fine with me.
Paragraph 3 is a relative meaningless exclusion refering to content of Article 14 (not really interesting to us).
Paragraph 4 deals with liabilities of platform owners in case of violations.
It also defines obligations to obtain authorisations, to remove content in case of violations of rights (if rightholders have provided relevant information) and to prevent future violations... bla bla bla.
That actually is the same stuff that already applies today. e.g. if a user uploads The Avengers to our gallery then I need to take down this content as soon I have the information about the illegal upload of that movie.
There are mulitple subpoints under paragraph 4 which deal with the principle of proportionality of the applied actions and measurements to prevent violations and it sets a bunch of conditions under which platforms generally are excluded from taking measurements to prevent that users can violate copyrights.
This is where it gets spicy.
This part deals with measurements to prevent that copyrighted material can get uploaded.
But in no way it tells how such an upload can be prevented.
This is where the majority of people interprete upload filters into because effectively you can not manually check millions if not billions of daily uploads on the internet by hand.
I can check it on the Portal... yes... I can do that. But do I want to do that?
I can check every image you upload to the gallery and every file uploaded to the filebase. But there the problems already start.
You upload a picture... how do I know that the people on the photo gave their permission that this it is ok to upload the pic?
You upload a mod... how am I supposed to know that you have the permission to use the 3d models in that mod?
Who do I need to contact to get permission of all the content?
With whom do I make a license agreement?
At which point do I have to ask everybody involved for permissions (eventhough I as platform provider have nothing to do with the original work)?
In my eyes Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 4 are conflicting with reality.
It is not possible to get licenses from every person on this planet for everything that potentially could be uploaded in the same way it is not possible to check every upload of users for potential right violations of any kind. The cheer amount of data and administration can not be handled... not by hand... not by an automatic upload filter.
I have mentioned that paragraph 4 contains exceptions.
You are excluded from this control mechanism if all of the following 3 conditions apply
1. your turnover is not higher than 10mio € per year.
2. your average number of monthly visitors is lower than 5mio unique visitors.
3. the services you offer have not been available for longer than 3 years.
If all these 3 terms apply you wont need upload filters.
If you fail to build up your business (you dont have many visitors and dont make much profit) but have been on the market for +3 years you will have to develop or buy an upload filter.
The only (halfway) working upload filter has been developed by Youtube... and did cost 100mio $. I somehow fail to see how other companies can afford that.
Lets move on with paragraph 5.
Here it is said that the cooperation between rightsholders and serivce providers shall not interfere with the availability of the content, especially of legal content of users.
It also contains further exceptions to allow the following content:
a) quotation, criticism, review,
b) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche.
That is good. This one in theory would guarantee fundamental rights of free speech.
The question is if upload filters know the difference between review, caricature, parody and a real copyright violation. I have my doubts that software is able to know such a difference.
Paragraph 6 is completely missing.
(probably it is the paragraph supposed to enlighten us how all of this mess is supposed to work).
Paragraph 7 tells that all the stuff shall not lead to any form of monitoring.
Good.
In Paragraph 8 the platforms should provide a way for users to deal with disputes.
Such disputes based on this paragraph require a human review.
If you need a job.... I assume Youtube, Google and Facebook soon need to hire people... many many people.
Btw. Paragraph 8 also states that personal data must not be submitted. That means if you upload something illegal the Platform must not reveil your identity (at least I would interprete it in that way).
Paragraph 9 only deals with how to turn these rules into national law, how to create guidelines and how to continiously update the best possible ways to ensure the previous stuff can be enfoced.
Just the typical burocracy.
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