rysiek ✅ is a user on mastodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

This is very important:
juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyouri

"Article 13 of the Copyright Directive will force internet platforms (social networks, video sites, image hosts, etc.) to install upload filters to monitor all user uploads for copyrighted content, including in images – and thus block most memes, which are usually based on copyrighted images.

(...)

It will come down to every single vote. (...) The NGO EDRi has made a list of key swing votes: edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_

This will affect .

rysiek ✅ @rysiek

I have sent e-mails to the MEPs. Have you?
juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyouri

Every e-mail counts. I know this, because years ago I was an activist fighting similar odds on the ground: rys.io/en/70

So send your e-mails, call your MEPs. Block Article 11 and Article 13 of the Copyright Directive.

· Web · 38 · 16

@rysiek the links to write a mail (or otherwise contact your MEP) are in the second comment, in case someone misses them in the article as I did.

Article 13 requires online platforms to filter content upon upload.

This is ridiculous - whether or not particular use of copyrighted content is legal tends to be a complicated matter, with years of court proceedings to establish that.

Expecing an algorithm to make a decision like this in a split second is asking for trouble.

So, here's a couple of decisions made by algorithms already used by YouTube for a very similar purpose.

You tell me if this makes sense.

1. NASA's Official Mars Landing Video Got Taken Off YouTube Over Bogus Copyright Claims
gizmodo.com/5932089/nasas-offi

"The Curiosity Rover may have landed safely on the surface of Mars, but like all good things, it's not invulnerable to completely bogus takedown requests.

(...)[T]he video was rendered unavailable due to a copyright claim by Scripps Local News."

2. YouTube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music
yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/2

"I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content"

3. YouTube Content ID is flawed for Classical Musicians
linkedin.com/pulse/20141109004

"Content ID (...) often mismatches commercial classical recordings with original performances of the same classical music which are in the public domain. So when classical musicians post their original performances on YouTube, there will often be advertisements to monetize that video. The uploader is not the one who profits, but rather it's the record label that owns the rights to the commercial recording."

@rysiek Exactly this happened to Valentina Lisitsa. YouTube algorithm confused part of her performance with the recording of Glenn Gould. And guess what they did. They just removed 1.5 minutes of music right out of her performance.

wqxr.org/story/valentina-lisit

This is not just "flawed'. This is outrageous.

@rysiek Good god, man. You're on social media, stop providing evidence of your arguments, you make the rest of us look bad

.@sullybiker fun fact #2: this uploaded Spiderman meme would get blocked under Article 13.

Call your MEP!
juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyouri

@rysiek Intellectual property is a joke and shouldn't be an idea enshrined in law in any form

@faissaloo well then you would not have copyleft licenses, and megacorps could just take any software and make it their own -- and there would be no way of forcing them to release the modified source code.

That means no OpenWRT, ever.

Careful what you whish for.

@rysiek It is a worthy sacrifice in order to attain true ownership of my hardware including the ability to legally do dirty-room reverse engineering, as far as I'm concerned copyleft is only a means to an end to spite the people who keep these laws alive.

@faissaloo this would create an even bigger imbalance of resources.

Megacorps would pour resources into their software (which we would have to reverse-engineer), and would just take what they want from the FOSS world.

FOSS world would have to do both reverse engineering and writing our own software,

I don't believe your suggestion would have the outcome you expect.

And copyleft already proved effective to have positive outcomes.

But we can have both -- rev-eng is partially legal in the EU.

@faissaloo and we can work to make more of it legal, including requiring firmware code to be released, making it legal to use own firmware (and making it requried by law to make it possible), etc, etc.

Copyright needs to be severely limited -- from 70y after author's death to (say) 20 after publication date, too.

But completely abolishing it doesn't seem to me to be the best way forward.

@rysiek It needs to be completely abolished because the logic behind it is completely nonsensical, ideas are infinite and it makes no sense to treat them like property.

@rysiek I'm ok with that, it is much more important that companies aren't able to legally strongarm citizens for producing things with their own tools. We wouldn't have things like the MP3 patent stunting the development of software, it would be fair game to use and redistribute the leaked Windows source code.

@faissaloo patents should not in any way be valid for software, period.

Again, we can have that (we mostly do!) without killing copyleft.

@rysiek Patents shouldn't be valid period, they prevent healthy competition and prevent people from using resources they legally earned to produce the things that they need.

@faissaloo sure, but then a small inventor would have no way of protecting himself from Big Pharma or Big Whatever using his ideas on a scale, without paying him a dime.

It's already bad, this would make it even worse.

@rysiek They should be able to do that, that is fairness. The small inventor still has advantages of their own, they know their product better, they can provide a more personal brand and they have a headstart at improving it.

@faissaloo I feel you *massively* underestimate the advantage that big money, manufacturing infrastructure, established distribution avenues, and marketing budgets, would give to the industry incumbents.

Small inventors would get even more shafted than they are now. They wouldn't have a single bargaining chip.

This is not fairness, this is a free-for-all, winner-takes-all, dog-eat-dog system, where only big players would thrive. Everybody else would get screwed.

@rysiek I think you're not considering the advantage it would provide to the little guy at all, I could legally manufacture many things without depending on a particular company for it. The massively inflated prices of life changing pharmaceuticals would have to go down to compete.

@rysiek Big pharma is a predatory industry that thrives on patents.

@rysiek @faissaloo Idea for software patents: a hardware patent is intended to disclose the methods used to accomplish some task.

The methods used to accomplish some task in software are the source code.

So, I'm OK with software patents, if the source code of the patented software is part of the patent, and the patent terms are much shorter than the current 17-21 years in practice (with software copyright being shorter yet).

@bhtooefr @faissaloo 17-21y in software means several epochs. That won't do, patents have no place in software. Software is already covered by copyright.

Patents have some place in the physical world, but I'd agree they're massively abused.

Both copyright and patent systems need overhaul.

But outright dismantling them would not end well for FOSS, nor for small inventors.

@rysiek @faissaloo Note that I'm calling for much shorter terms for both software copyright (maybe 5 years?) and this hypothetical software "patent" (really extended copyright in exchange for releasing source code to the public domain - maybe 10 years?)

@rysiek @faissaloo The idea here being to reward developers for releasing their source code by giving them more copyright protection than developers that don't.

@bhtooefr @faissaloo patents are not on software, they are on ideas. This is not the way to go.

If you want to reward developers who release their code? Great! But let's not get patents into this, this will end badly.

Instead, perhaps make FLOSS a requirement for public tenders? Or at least a strong preference?

@rysiek @faissaloo @bhtooefr That last point is a very hard to achieve goal, the induced failure of the project of moving the Munich city administration to Linux instead of Windows demonstrates why

@elomatreb @faissaloo @bhtooefr this is true, but letting software patents into the software world would not improve that -- quite the contrary.

The crucial word in your toot is "induced". I would really like someone to really dig deep and see if there perhaps were any dealings between Microsoft and people who induced that failure. Would not be surprised, in the least.

@rysiek is it prudent for non-EU citizens to email? In other countries, representatives will ignore anything outside of their local populace.

@rysiek do you have specific advice for non-citizen residents of the EU? Or can we call too?