In Mar 2019, the EU approved the new #CopyrightDirective by an absurdly slim margin (it passed by 5 votes and later 10 MEPs said they got confused and pressed the wrong button; due to procedural rules, despite an amended total showing a majority AGAINST, it still passed).
1/
Specifically, the part that passed through this bureaucratic, incoherent nonsense was #Article13 (now confusingly called #Article17), which imposed a duty on online platforms to stop their users from infringing copyright.
2/
This proposal has a bizarre history (everything about this is bizarre). It started as a mandate for copyright filters (like Youtube's ContentID, which cost $100m and counting). Then Axel Voss, the MEP in charge of it, said it absolutely was NOT a proposal to mandate filters.
3/
Then Voss admitted that there was probably no way to accomplish the Directive's goals without forcing all online speech through a copyright filter. Then the EU's various legal and human rights bodies said that the proposal could NOT require filters.
4/
Confused yet? So is everyone else.
The EU Commission is now preparing guidance for the EU member states, who must each turn the Directive into a national law. And that brings us to today.
5/
A coalition of giant entertainment companies has filed comments with the Commission that were the most bizarre turn in this saga yet, insisting that this was always about mandating filters and all countries should mandate that all speech be filtered:
They just pretended that subjecting every European citizen's every online utterance to interception and algorithmic processing wasn't a giant, glaring, radioactive violation of the #GDPR, the EU's privacy law (it most assuredly is!):
I. Crisply define what kind of online services this applies to
II. Clarify that while platforms have to try to obtain copyright licenses from rightsholders, the standard is "due diligence" and is tempered by the principle of proportionality and fundamental human rights
9/
III. No tech mandates
IV. No "general monitoring" allowed - governments can't order online services to spy on their user
V. Clarify that the fact that copyright filters exist does not mean that they are "best practices"
10/
VI. Don't burden small businesses with requirements designed for Big Tech
VII. Clarify that filters can't determine whether something is infringing - only humans who understand copyright law can do that
11/
VIII. You can't protect users' free speech rights by taking down their content and then telling them they can appeal the decision
IX: Address the fact that subjecting users' speech to filtering is a massive, illegal privacy violation
eof/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The telegraph and the telephone have a special place in the history and future of competition and Big Tech. After all, they were the original tech monopolists. Every discussion of tech and monopoly takes place in their shadow.
1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Back in 2010, @SuperWuster published *The Master Switch*, his bestselling, wildly influential history of "The Bell System" and the struggle to de-monopolize America from its first telecoms barons:
Like you, I've heard a *lot* about Project 2025, Heritage Foundation's roadmap for Trump, should he win the presidency. Given the Heritage Foundation's centrality to the American authoritarian project, it's about as awful and frightening as you might expect.
1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst breach in history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans, 15m Britons and 19k Canadians, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and readymade identity-theft:
Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just their top execs liquidating their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach - it was also that they ignored *years* of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.
3/
We're living through one of those moments when millions of people become suddenly and overwhelmingly interested in fair use, one of the subtlest and worst-understood aspects of copyright law. It's not a subject you can master by skimming a Wikipedia article!
1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I've been talking fair use with laypeople for decades. I've met so many people with the unshakable, serene confidence of the *truly* wrong, like those who think fair use means you can always take x words from a book, or y seconds from a song, and no more.
3/
EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit - *lots* of it.
1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be *some* personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters.
3/