Our Internet is under threat! You probably heard about the EUâs upcoming copyright reform. It puts at risk freedom of expression on the Internet, and the very existence of independent forums like edgeryders.eu (learn why). So, we joined a coalition of hundreds of forums and other sites fighting it.
In very short: the European Parliament is soon making a final vote about an idiotic copyright âreformâ law that includes provisions for upload filtering and upfront licencing of all materials that possibly could be posted on a platform.
I was thinking what I or we can reasonably do against this, and hereâs a small list of things:
(1) Persuading EU politicians to pledge against the upload filter article
(2) Go to the demos!
There will be demos on March 23 all over Europe. So if something is happening in your city already âŚ
(3) Internet outage
German Wikipedia will go dark on March 21, and there is a large coalition of 407 mostly German âforums against upload filtersâ that may do the same. I added edgeryders.eu to the list. We havenât decided yet if or how weâll participate in the planned outage. Since we donât have massive amounts of external traffic like Wikipedia, weâd mostly hurt ourselves instead of raising attention
(4) Donât implement
In my personal opinion thatâs the only thing that would help: civil disobedience, just not following this nonsense if it becomes law. Apart from the fact that there is no practical solution for upload filters, an institution passing such a nonsense has lost all moral authority â at least when it comes to regulating our Internet. As the admin of edgeryders.eu, I wonât do a single hour of work to implement âupload filtersâ. We didnât have a single issue with copyright infringing uploads on our platform, so the whole matter is just hilarious.
wondering if anyone around Lausanne is already aware of this issue. Saw there have already been protests (a live stream from Bremen came up) and signed the petition!
Oh, and to infuriate the undecided people a bit, hereâs an âinterestingâ update from the one-and-only Pirate Party member in the European Parliament. Axel Voss is the EUâs head negotiator of the copyright reform and member of German party CDU.
Thanks for alerting us to this @matthias! May I suggest a black out profile image as a marketing strategy to raise awareness? Just place a black profile image or image on your feeds?
Newest updates: todayâs demonstrations in Germany had 100,000 participants combined (from here, so far unconfirmed).
And now a guy called Daniel Caspary, member of the European Parliament for German party CDU/CSU, told a German newspaper in relation to the demonstrations and protests: âWhen American corporations with massive use of disinformation and paid protesters try to prevent laws, our democracy is under threat.â
Which was then spread by the official Twitter account of the CDU/CSU faction in the European Parliament:
Relevant to the ECâs NGI (Next Generation Internet) project in that whatever they decide to do, it will be friendly to the interests of European corporations.
so⌠what is now the scoop? did anyone make a black profile pic?? what is the us disinfo campaign story, really?? ? (a bit confused nowâŚ) ciao for now!
Now that everything has been said and done by the People without power, we have to wait until the vote next Tuesday. I already have a morbid curiosity to know if they will dare to vote this law through.
About the German CDUâs allegation of a U.S. led disinformation campaign to influence the vote: pretty sure thatâs only their conspiracy theory mindset. They did not present any facts beyond that Google has donated >7 million USD over the last 10 years to Wikipedia, and correlate that with Wikipedia blacking out.
That low amount of facts did not prevent them from double down on their claims. Today Elmar Brok, a German CDU member of the European Parliament, lamented a âmassive and algorithmically controlled campaign of the large Internet comaniesâ against the copyright reform (source).
(As for me, Iâm against the upload filter and mandatory licencing regulations because as a website operator who does not want anything to do with anyoneâs copyrighted content, I donât want them to impose any rules, work or expenses on me operating a website.)
yes, we are stuck waiting now, and hoping the politicians arenât too much like the current american model . sigh⌠Of course, for your average âfree internetâ user, to implement those filters would be quite a disincentive to continuing - cutting further into personal liberties. (Google donating to Wikipedia makes sense to me, but you can see how a certain mindset could take that in a negative wayâŚ)
ciao for now!
Time for Edgeryders to think about dismantling hosting anything in the EU, founding a subsidiary company in a progressive country like Nepal, and moving the hosting there. âDemocracyâ, my ass.
ooph.
tough hit â hmmmm
will they have bot enforcement strategies already up soon???
people talk about Estonia for registering cos.
is Nepal the best option for hosting??
donât lose hope!
You probably heard about the EUâs upcoming copyright reform. It puts at risk freedom of expression on the Internet, and the very existence of independent forums like edgeryders.eu (learn why). So, we joined a coalition of hundreds of forums and other sites fighting it.
From four hours ago:
. sigh⌠Of course, for your average âfree internetâ user, to implement those filters would be quite a disincentive to continuing - cutting further into personal liberties. (Google donating to Wikipedia makes sense to me, but you can see how a certain mindset could take that in a negative wayâŚ)