Home › Forums › News, Rumours & General Discussion › EU link tax – Article 13
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limburger 6 years, 3 months ago.
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May 31, 2018 at 12:36 am #1194576
Ok, the initial reporting on this seems to be generally concerned with news outlets as far as “major media” but seeing as I get my gaming news for random things in the nerd arena from this provider (in this respect BoW you’re a major news source) I wonder how this will affect the format of things to come. If this extends to taxation of banner link revenue just as advertisements (I’m unfamiliar with UK taxation and general EU regs) what might be the impact on producers of our hobby material that aren’t the scale of GW?
I think I might need to break the piggy bank for you guys. Minis or the guys who tell me about mini crack? *Slaps inner arm opposite elbow* Damn this addiction to figures…. crack might be cheaper… *hands over the porcelain pig* but I won’t know about all the other minis
June 1, 2018 at 8:07 am #1195624The proposed link tax is dangerous. It’s almost as dangerous as net neutrality being threatened. If I’m reading this right (and I’m open to correction as I haven’t seen the actual legislation, just reading a couple of articles on it) – It introduces a mandatory licensing fee when anyone links to a site. It’s not just news media.
That means every time BoW links to GW, GW collects a fee. Every time they link to Asmodai, Asmodai collects a fee. If anyone links to BoW, BoW collects a fee.
This is mandatory, meaning companies are required to collect the fee and cannot waive the fee in any circumstances.
It undermines the foundations of the internet. It is driven by large outdated media companies, but the draft legislation has consequences so much more far reaching than a few old media companies getting a fee for being linked to. It will stop people linking altogether. Try getting around the web without being able to hop between sites.
petition your MEP to vote against this legislation
June 2, 2018 at 12:35 am #1197238Reminds me of the old “BT tried to claim patent of the hyperlink” case, I think it was BT, basically tried to say they invented the hyperlink, and thus everytime a site used one, it should have owed them a fee.
It seems totally impractical to say all links would need to be charged this way. I’d be curious what the underlying intention behind such legislation is.
June 2, 2018 at 10:37 am #1197894Large content producers and old media groups got together and decided they wanted the traffic going to smaller sites, bought legislation from the EU to tax links to their sites.
It’s an absurd, unworkable, idiotic bit of legislation. There’s also no point asking your MEP to intervene. Despite the hype, law comes form the Commission. If the Commission wants it made law (and as the intent has been bought and paid for), europarl is just a convenient farce.
It’s just another attempt to pervert the web to suit a group who are frightened of losing control.
June 3, 2018 at 12:37 am #1199343I fear we are in the dark waters of talking about politics on BoW, something that should be avoided if at all possible here.
That being said, this seems to be a good article explaining what is going on
EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line
Looks like the next key vote is on June 20th, with it currently looking like MEP’s will vote it onto the next stage. Which will take effect in about 2 years if that is the case. Weirdly seems focussed on news for links, and specifically, depending on the interpretation of a key paragraph in the draft legislation, it might be that links themselves are fine, it’s only if you actually include the text from the article that is liable, but there is debate whether the link itself having, say, the title of the linked article in would actually constitute a significant piece of text from the article.
June 3, 2018 at 1:14 am #1199369It’s unenforceable, and for once gdpr will probably trump it as without a tracking cookie it would be impossible to account it, also Google, Facebook, youtube and Twitter would be bankrupted by it so what politico will want killer of social media as their career epitaph…
Censorship machine is laughable in its nieivety also, if it passes it just hastens the demise of the luddites in power, and is trivial to circumvent just host your site on a server outside the EU, would be a positive outcome for Brexit if those in power had the guts to use the fact that 80% of EU trans Atlantic net is routed through the UK and if the UK said safe harbour to this then it just goes away, invest in icelandIc UK and Norwegian data center companies and file this under the same doesn’t understand how it works category as encryption backdoors for law enforcement and spooks (ya know the same idiots who print off hard copy versions of encrypted/secret files and leave on trains after happy hour, who honestly think they won’t loose control of the secret keys, nevermind the certainty it would be cracked independently, security by obscurity is as secure as a combination bike lock..)
June 4, 2018 at 8:43 pm #1201513One really has to wonder what kind of bribes they’re taking when they created this monstrosity.
It’s like the flockin’ cookie law all over again.Part of this reads like the EU version of the DMCA :
“Upon notification by rightsholders of an unauthorised protected work, an online content sharing service provider will have to take urgent steps to remove the work and prevent it from becoming available in future. ”I doubt that moving the servier outside of the UK would help.
Google, Twitter and Facebook already have had to automate censorship because of this stupidity.Oh … and we have this :
vs (original archived text) :
“… German publishing giant Axel Springer, the largest digital publishing house in Europe, with several well-known brands, such as Bild, Die Welt and also joint owner of Politico, is reportedly among those championing the new EU-wide legislation.
But the German EPP party has been accused of “openly lobbying” on behalf of Axel Springer by contacting members of the legal affairs committee and urging them to back the proposals in a vote by the committee on 20 and 21 June. …”
“… It is claimed that some committee members have been told of “possible repercussions” if they fail to support the proposal.
They have allegedly been told that to “stay away” from the meeting if they intend to reject the new law, with substitute members, who are more sympathetic to the plans, lined up to vote instead. ….”
Something rotten in the state of EU is all I’m saying.
And there’s this little beauty research that basically states that taxing links will do more harm as they already had to give Google ‘free’ access after the amount of visitors plummeted :
What the Commission found out about copyright infringement but ‘forgot’ to tell us
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