#8.4 - How the internet is about to become the ultimate dream of a ...

Breaking down the dangers of the proposed Copyright Directive, that we are about to let happen!

(If you can't fight your way through my concerned rage in text-form, there is a TL;DR section at the bottom)

I know that I have rambled on about this issue for 3 posts already, but this is perhaps one of the most important issues I have yet to cover, and I feel that full understanding of this potential catastrophe that the internet currently faces, and what it could mean for the masses, as well as the individual - such as you specifically - because the user of the internet will be the ultimate loosers here, with small businesses, communities and entrepeneurs coming in almost neck and neck, if not even worse in the long run.

If you are a user, it will ultimately affect what you are allowed to post online.

If you host a small blog, online forum or community - of if you are a small business, entrepeneur or disruptor in the social media space - this potentially opens you up to a much larger scope of legal issues on top.

First of all - let's sum up the current state of freedom of speech online, as it stands today.

Today, if you are a user generated content provider - such as YouTube, Facebook, or a local news blog even - you are not responsible for what those users of your platform upload to it. With good reason.

Imagine having to go through every single post on craigslist, or every meme posted to 4chan, just to make sure that someone else didn't make you a criminal, by posting something that is copyrighted. It would be an impossible task, no matter how good an algorithm you can write, and lets face it - no company will employ an actual human, or in some cases litteral armies, to go through everything manually.

Yes - this has led to some misuse of the internet, and the platforms that are available - but this is a necessary trade-of, that needs to be made, in order to actually make something as basic as free speech possible online.

My thoughts keeps bringing me back, to the introduction of a book by Lawrence Lessig, who is an author and current Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School.

Precisely which book escapes me, and I don't have it handy, so their may be slight inaccuracies in my memory of the next section, but nothing that changes the essence or point of the story.

But if you want to educate yourself further on the subject matter of online content as a whole, I would highly recommend that you read Lessig's books, and/or watch his videos, on "remix culture" which I believe is a term he has coined himself.

It told the story of a woman, who had uploaded a video of herself and her young daughter playing around in their kitchen, to share that moment with the absent father and other family members. In the background of the video, a radio plays a then hit-song, and even though this had NOTHING to do with the actual content message in the video, the woman received threats of lawsauits and fines, for uploading copyrighted material, if she did not remove the content from her channel within 24 hours.

Granted - this was the much earlier days of YouTube - and today such an extreme case would most likely very rarely occur, and if/when it does, the reaction and threat of punishment is much more in line with a world that has adapted to one of user generated content platforms.

But it illustrates the point of the dangers of Article 13 perfect in my mind, and we seem to have returned to one of the original problems, that we were forced to deal with as a society, at the dawn of web 2.0 - but we seem to, for some reason, to be asking to undo all the work that has been done to make the internet a free and open communication tool of the information age it has brought about.

And I'm not saying that the current laws are flawless. But they are - or rather were - still catching up to an ever evolving changing technological society - without being to restrictive while at the same time protecting copyrights implemented in an old system, that didn't have the internet in mind - something we can probably agree can be a challenge, and need to be handled very carefully and flexibly.

Which brings us back to the topic at its core.

Today, user uploaded content is already being screened by some entities, by way of recognizition algorithms etc.

The YouTube Content ID system, which has evolved by miles, sine the example above of course, is a good example of this:

When you upload something to YouTube today, it is reviewed by an algorithm which checks for similarity in the images and audio of the video, and flags the content if there is a certain % correlation between the video you are uploading, and something that has already been registered as copyrighted in their Content ID system, before it is published on the platform.

This is a system that YouTube has implemented on its platform, defined and executed as they see fit for whatever reasons, as a privately owned entity, that wants to make money, while satisfying their customers and consumers. A fairly reasonable system, from a market stand point, I would argue.

Vimeo, for instance, has the same right to implement and execute algorithms to the user uploaded content, and strike down on people abusing copyrighted material - but they simply don't. Not using the same mechanisms as YouTube at least. They choose to do it differently, most likely because their business model is vastly different, and aren't incentivized to enforce the same strict vigilance to user uploaded content, for various reasons.

The practical example here, as anyone who has ever tried at least will tell you, is that it is MUCH easier to upload copyrighted material to Vimeo, and not suffer any consequence, than it is to upload to the same content to YouTube.

The difference here, however, is the voluntary action of screening the content before it hits the platform vs. screening the content after the fact, if at all.

That also means, that a forum or upload service run by "two kids in their moms garage", have no need to for massive infrastucture, or help from 3rd parties, to run their own local blog, or online community - say someone is starting a social media competitor... let's call it... "twatter" - their own version of twitter, with 1000 users globally so far - but MAY become the next big thing, once these kids in the garage makes it better than their competitors.

Article 13 potentially reverses ALL of that... and more.

It will most likely - at best - empower the existing powerhouses, while having the potential to push down the smaller start ups in the tech space, and limit what individuals are able to post basically anywhere online, if they feel like it.

In essence - the internet could potentially end up slowly migrating from being one of the strongest technological innovations and means for individual freedom of expression and freedom, to the largest, most wide-reaching, surveillance- and censorship layer in history, which could obviously have near unimaginable consequences when enforced to the extreme, which is the approach one should always apply to rules and laws; if it is not a functional standpoint if applied to the extreme, it is not a principle that holds up at its core, from a philosophical and logically argumentative standpoint.

Many people may look at article 13 as "a small change in the status quo", and/or "not something worth worrying" about.

But it is NOT!

Many may even believe it can help overall, since it would probably be used in some instances of good - like protecting from Russian election spam on facebook - which arguably IS true.

But doesn't make it right!

And to understand why takes more than looking at the just one side of the argument, just like any rational conclusion.

So it is excusable, to some extent, to not be involved in the argument - after all, it is only one of many, it's a 'techy' and timeconsuming issue to understand, and we have things to do. Arguably it is not even the worst of the causes worth fighting for right now. On the other hand it arguably is, IF we value the little privacy we still have over our own private data; the free speech and content sharing we still have left online; and the freedom to engage in competition on the open market, at a reasonable start-up cost.

And the reason for this goes back to applying the law to its extreme, and see if it still serves a good purpose in a enforcable maner - and in the case of Article 13, we quickly start seeing where it falls apart from any freedom protecting perspective.

And here's why: article 13 is so vaguely defined, as these types of laws often are - perhaps in a twisted attempt to not 'overreach through regulation', while opening up for that exact possibility on all fronts.

The article defines everything in such a vague terminology, that it can be interpreted to fit the needs of its usecase, from the first sentence in the article:

"Information society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject-matter uploaded by their users..." forgetting to define what constitutes what a 'Information society service provider' or 'large amounts...' of content IS - that part is completely subjective and enterpretive - and can be applied to anything from your locally hosted online community, your wordpress hosted blog, as well as YouTube, Facebook, reddit etc. - it potentially covers the entire spectrum.

And that is just the first sentence of the article - the rest just makes it worse.

"...users shall, in cooperation with rightholders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers."

A complicated way of saying; "users need to - under decree of the rightsholder - jump through hoops, to make sure that their copyrighted content is not allowed on their platform" - which is earily similar to the example of the mother filming her daughter, with a copyrighted track streaming in the background.

The rest of the article continues in this vague language, and simply defines a vague concept of how user uploaded content platforms, need to be able to screen, and potentially censor content protected by the copyright law.

Nothing about who it applies to or to which degree it applies. It doesn't mention anything about what qualifies as fair-use, how it applies to for example memes, or other types of "remixed" content.

Only that the platforms (forced) use of "...measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate." - which also neglects to define anything about the scope of what is considered 'appropriate and proportionate."

This means that - in theory - that this law (in its extreme) could include ANY platform that allows for user uploaded content, and can be accessed by the public. Essentially - we just have to trust that their judgement and/or interpretation of the wording.

And what if we can't?

What if we can now, but can't in the future?

Do they even know how to define what platforms that covers now?

As to the third question above - my honest guess would be "no, they can't - and that's on purpose".

Vagueness - the ultimate weapon

The vagueness of what these potential content-restrictions apply to, is what one of the most dangerous aspects of this law.

While it seems reasonable on the surface, that the rules will mostly apply to larger platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Wordpress, Huffington post, etc. and probably won't affect the smaller content providers (at least initially) - the vagueness of the potential platforms this could cover, means it can in theory be applied to ANY platform that provides information, and this is where becomes potentially dangerous.

Suddenly Article 13 can potentially be used to passively censor a platform, by simply pricing it out of existence.

Since there will be most likely be only 2 ways of implementing a review method that satisfies the requirements set forth by the EU; by either setting up and using internal infrastructure, and encur major time consuming and/or economic impact on the platform managers - something most of them will not be able to afford or maintain - OR use a pre-approved 3rd party service provider, to deliver the content review service, such as a hypothetical "Google Content Review Service".

Bringing us back to the "two guys in the garage" stereotype...

Imagine they build a small platform grassroots movement, denpendent on user generated content and participation, started to cross certain powerhouses' interests.

Let's say, in a 'worst case scenario' event, that this small grassroots platform started showing a very overall anti-EU based sentiment, and was gaining the potential to become a real problem for the governing body of the law (the EU itself), and it would be in the interest for them to nip it in the bud and shut the platform down.

Suddenly they now have that power, by simply interpreting the wording of the article, to include the platform into one that had to follow the law, and implement a content review system.

If this became the case - unless this small start up can afford to set up a content review system of their own, that satisfies the EU regulations, they will have no other choice than to go to a centralized service provider, such as the "Google Review", which we hypothezised above.

However - even using such a service this could price them out of business, depending on the business, and pricing for such a 3rd party supplied systems.

And using a centralized 3rd party, to provide such a system is a questionanble affair to put it mildly - especially if we imagine a competetive space, where the economic border of entry becomes high enough.

I.E. if it would cost you 30 million in start up costs, to even try to compete with big players such as the Googles, Apples and Facebooks of the world, who will already be miles ahead of you to begin with.

The EU could then, in theory, shut down that small grass roots movements, or censor them through existing or future laws - effectively denying them freedom of speech and assembly, because they litterally couldn't afford it.

And even IF they could afford and justify the expense for such a 3rd party system, NO algorithm is perfect, and potentially targeted censorship could still happen - accidentally, or even maliciously - and maintained 'temporarily' by insanely long-drawn or difficult resolution procedures.

Effectively stifling free speech and right to assembly without actually relating it to those rights, or even need to take them into consideration.

"Time to get out the tin foil hats"

I say this half in jest, but rooted in serious concerns.

First of all - Considering that governing bodies REQUIRE large companies, based on user uploaded content, to screen and potentially store, all uploaded content, sources, etc., should give any believer in privacy the creeps!

What we are proposing is basically, that we slowly roll out surveillance like programmes, that we condemned and raged when we found out about them - anyone farmiliar with the Edward Snowden NSA leaks, will know what I am referring to - the specific NSA operation name escapes me at this point in time.

How did we go from general outrage and concerns of privacy, to arguably legitimize what we were so quick to condemn, and even make that the new global standard?

AND - as if that wasn't enough - subcontract those operations to privately owned entities, who have a proven track record of security issues, and misuse of private data.

Not to mention, that those pre-existing entities already have established relationships to governments and other entities with huge commercial interests and influence, which opens up for another range of reasonable concerns, which could be an essay all of it's own.

Even assuming, that no foul play would arise, it would still be basically taking the workload and cost of government surveillance, and place it in the hands of private companies, that the govenment or bad actors can gather that information from even easier, by just having the platforms do the surveillance, and sweep up the data through some loophole, or plain illegal means, as they are already doing now.

TL;DR

If you value privacy and free speech, and believe in them as fundamental rights.

If you disagree with the surveillance revealed to be performed by the NSA.

If you simply feel, that big companies shouldn't be required to review EVERYTHING you post online, and decide if it's ok or not, before they let you post you, we need your help.

And most importantly - IF you are a EU citizen - and you believe that freedom of speech and assembly is a human right, then it IS your responsibility to retain it.

Visit SaveYourInternet.eu - find out who you need to tweet, write or call, in hopes of stopping this concerning law passing.