The EU's trying to break the internet again

[Pergamos]

Well, it passed.  Let's see how this turns out...

[Cain]

The law was passsed.

What no-one has mentioned is how this is to be enforced.  Youtube's own hilariously inept copyright protection system cost them hundreds of millions to produce, and still insists, for example, that Sony owns the patent to a private musician's rendition of Bach.

Google also successfully fought link-taxing in Germany, by threatening to entirely remove news websites from their listings.  There is no new mechanism to stop them from doing this again.

Also, there is a large amount of discretion given to individual member states, so if this was an attempt to put pressure on Google and Facebook, it's going to fail as their lobbyists play small countries againt big ones, and those with strong telecom sectors against weaker ones.

All in all, this legislation won't be able to be properly implemented.  It's just a matter of sitting back and waiting for it to implode.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Luckily I think it still needs to be ratified by the member nations; thank the stars for checks and balances.

[Cain]

There is that too, but I think it's likely to be approved - Germany is in favour of tighter regulations, as is France, the UK wants even more stringent approaches to the internet...Estonia might vote against it, but they won't rally much support, especially with Germany-France on the opposing side.

[Pergamos]

UK shouldn't really get a vote should they?  They are quitting the union.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

the UK wants even more stringent approaches to the internet

IIRC the UK already has heavyhanded automatic internet censorship, right?

[Cain]

UK shouldn't really get a vote should they?  They are quitting the union.

Until they quit, however, they are still a full member, and I believe the vote is scheduled for January.

the UK wants even more stringent approaches to the internet

IIRC the UK already has heavyhanded automatic internet censorship, right?

It's trying.  For some reason, the company I use don't seem to abide by a lot of those restrictions, possibly due to Swiss ownership.  They did try and hand over our entire commerical internet infrastructure to Huawei, a company that has strong ties to China's military.  Then they discussed putting a backdoor in every computer and website in the country.  Then they decided they wanted people to have to enter ID info to access porn sites.  And most recently, they want to ban all Facebook groups with over 500 members, or make them public.

At the moment, the most heavyhanded it can get with censorship is issuing a D-Notice to news outlets, which will mostly abide by them.  Fortunately, this isn't done very often,and it's old legislation dating back to the early 20th century.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

The porn one is the most bizarre. I can't imagine what possible positive effect that could ever possibly have.

The only effects it could ever have are harmful disruptive ones such as making it more difficult for teenagers to get access to porn and reducing revenues of the adult film industry.

It was bad enough in my own youth having to make up a fake birthdate and these shitheads want people to have to get fake IDs to back the fake birthdays up? Thank god I live in America.

[Cain]

I don't know how they intend to try and convince the wider porn community to adopt these measures.  Fortunately, neither do they.

It would especially be hard to get a company like Pornhub, or any number of camera streaming services, which rely on ad revenue and data analytics for income, to threaten their own revenue stream in this manner

[Doktor Howl]

What's awesome here is that the flow chart says "you're fucked" no matter which decisions are made.