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So this is really, really bad.
Technology changes. You can either embrace the future, or try to put the genie back in the bottle and stop change. That's pretty much what this law does.
"Copyright" is an artificial construct that first became meaningful with the printing press. In the beginning, the law protected book publishers, because the startup costs of creating a print run far exceeded the marginal cost of each additional book.
Cheap books led to widespread literacy, and widespread authors. Now authors wanted control, so copyright shifted to protecting authors.
This wasn't because authors had a natural "right" to control copying of their works, but because a limited copyright was in the public interest, encouraging "learned men" to publish stuff, and for scientists to discover stuff.
But it's "public interest" that's important, not "author's interest". That's why you can excerpt a book when writing a critical review of it. It's not in the author's interest that you savage their book, but in the public's interest warning people not to read the drivel.
With the web, technology has radically changed once again, and should make us go back to first principles and re-evaluate what's in the public interest. For example, are emails copyrightable?
Technically, under the current laws, they are, but it's clear that has nothing to do with the original concept of encouraging learned men to contribute works that benefit society.
Article 12a of the directive means that any photograph of a sporting event is owned by the sports organizer. How does that serve the public interest? The answer is that it doesn't: it's the interest of public sports organizers.
Promoting learning is in the public interest. Even such things like the "Avengers" or "Harry Potter" are learning, no matter how much we want to mock them. Sports events, though, are pure entertainment, improving society not at all.
Governments, especially in Europe, are paternalistic. Either something is good and most be promoted, or bad and must be suppressed. One or the other. If sports aren't to be suppressed, then they must be promoted, hence Article 12a.
(Oops, I failed to describe 12a properly. Your photograph of the event isn't owned by the sports organizer, it's just that you can't post it to Instagram, and they have to filter it out).
The European Directive believes in magical technology that big sites like Facebook and Google can use to filter out matching copyright content. This is nonsense on its face because HUMANS can't filter it.
For one thing, humans can't figure out who owns content. We already have fraudsters copying your viral content, then complaining to YouTube that they own the content, then YouTube takes all the advertising money that should've gone to you and give it to the fraudster.
For another thing, humans can't figure out what's legitimate "fair use" in the public interest, like criticism. Again, fraudsters are adept at exploiting the grey area, exploiting automated systems, so it always takes human judgement.
The European Directive means that automated copyright protection tools must always err on the side of suppressing anything that might look like a copy, including fair use of it, especially fair use of it.
It also means small companies and individuals can no longer play on the web. The cost of compliance with the law is so incredibly high that only the big corporations can do it.
A college kid can no longer create a social media platform to compete with giants because it takes $millions to weave through the government requirements of privacy, security, and copyright.
GDPR at least benefits privacy in many ways, even though I don't think its costs are worth it. The Copyright Directive doesn't benefit the public interest in anyway, and is just a gift to special interests.
It's not that I'm against the benefits of LIMITED copyright. I'm against Big Copyright that has become nearly unlimited in duration, and unlimited in the rights of the owners of content, vs. the rights of the people.
I'm sure the EFF will agree with me that copyright should last no more than 14 years, and hence all GPL code before Linux 2.6 should be in the public domain.
(This is humor: the EFF is anti-copyright but pro-copyleft, I'm not sure they've ever opined on when GPL code enters the public domain, but I like giving them conundrums to solve :-).
So, no, the Internet is not routing around censorship and copyright blocks. It's Cory Doctorow who's living in a fantasy world.
Yes, experts, at great cost to themselves, can copy stuff. But no, the masses can't, having the expertise expertise nor the time to figure things out. That's why people are paying to watch movies on Netflix that they can download for free via BitTorrent.
If you aren't an expert to figure it out for yourself, then somebody else needs to figure it out for you, and they aren't going to do that for free. As soon as there's a system for money exchanging hands, the Copyright Cops will go after the money.
Copyright and the Great Firewall of China have proven effective. It doesn't stop the underground from bypassing these things, but they effectively control the masses.
Yea, US/UK copyright is based upon the "utilitarian" viewpoint, what's best for society as a whole, whereas European copyright is based more on "author's rights". Europeans are wrong.
The reason Europeans are wrong is that "rights" go both ways. Your right not to be punched infringes on my right to punch you. Weighing those rights is easy for punching, not so easy for copying.
The Europeans are making arbitrary decisions, like that somehow the sports organizer's "rights" take precedence over your rights in regards to the picture you snapped from your phone while watching the event.
Only 10% of the money in the music industry goes to artists, the rest goes to the music corporations. I'm pro-corporation, so I don't think that's bad. It's what you expect with a surfeit of musicians willing to earn pennies for the chance at fame.
But technology changes. Musicians have other avenues, better avenues for reaching listeners and becoming famous. The existing music industry is largely obsolete. It only continues to exist because of the existing Copyright Regime.
It's as if the buggy whip industry were still around today because they successfully inshrined in law that every vehicle must have a buggy whip. That's what the music industry has done.
Capitalism is about creative destruction. Bankruptcies of old business models are a sign of health, crusty old business models propped up by government regulations are unhealthy. The European Copyright Directive denies technology change propping up obsolete business models.
So in response to this tweet, no, it doesn't allow for things like "criticism" and "parody". It demands automated system to remove copies that cannot distinguish between "rip-offs" and "parody".
Said another way, if your automated system doesn't remove copies of my work because somebody is ripping me off, then I can sue you. However, if your automated system removes my parody, I cannot sue you.
This is a pretty cogent point. The new copyright directives demand technological solutions that don't exist -- because lawmakers wildly overestimate the effectiveness of the solutions that do exist.
