EU Chatter

What this EU deal today with Article 11/13 is about?

It passed today via the EU, and is a 'directive'....which is slightly less than a law.  The soon-to-be 27 members would have to each write corresponding laws to agree with the wording.  The pace of this?  Unknown.

Directives open to interpretation?  Yes, and that makes this somewhat 'weak'.

So the chief feature here is that video-content (via mostly YouTube) can be banned.  For example, if you had seven songs by the Beatles on a YouTube server, the owner of the songs could testy, and you could be in for some legal trouble.

If you taped your dog barking at people?  No.....no trouble.

If you took some 6-minute scene of Star Trek and put it up.....it could be taken down, and you could be fined. 

The fact that it was stored in the US, means no ban.....but someone could force YouTube through enough pain....that they'd just cut off access in Germany to the YouTube site.

The second part of this passage is the ownership of new.  If you went and copied some feature from a German newspaper.....word for word, then they'd expect you to pay for the commentary.  An example, if you used it for Facebook to say something negative or criticizing some political figure....the news owner could demand it to be taken down.

Creating a hassle?  Yes.  Some folks believe that in two to three years....with individual countries writing their legal version on this, that news commentary (either through social media or blogs) would just plain stop entirely. 

This all done to halt the power of the internet, and ensure the survival of the EU?  A number of people believe this.  Let's be honest, once the UK is out, and shown that they can survive without the EU, it's 'curtains' for the EU and their threats.  Maybe it'll take two to five years for the UK to emerge out of this tunnel (the first hundred days will be a mess, I agree), but surviving without the EU stamp of approval will turn out to be very possible in the end. 

The EU does have the perception if you can halt news coverage via social media, and stamp out commentary.....the populist challenge will die off.  Maybe five years ago, it might have been possible to say that.  But the more I look at Trump's use of Twitter, and public outrage throughout Europe, it's a whole new ballgame.