June 29, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
11:12
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| Time | Text |
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| Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future. | |
| I'm doing my part! | |
| I'm doing my part. | |
| I'm doing my part. | |
| I'm doing my part too. | |
| They're doing their part. | |
| Are you? | |
| Join the mobile infantry and save the world. | |
| Service guarantees citizenship. | |
| On the 8th of June 2018, the BBC published an article entitled, Copyright Law Would Put an End to Net Memes, which caused anyone concerned about free speech to sit up and pay attention. | |
| A motion called the Copyright Directive had been proposed in the European Parliament, described by the BBC as an attempt to reshape copyright for the internet, in particular rebalancing the relationship between copyright holders and online platforms. | |
| Article 13 states that the platform providers should take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rights holders for the use of their works. | |
| There is also concern that the proposals will rely on algorithms that will be programmed to play safe and delete anything that creates a risk for the platform. | |
| Put simply, this means that social media platforms will be forced to regulate the content put on them to an extreme degree. | |
| Social media sites will be forced to develop bots that would catch and remove anything that could be considered fair use, such as remixes, memes, satire and parody. | |
| The free and legal exchange of information on the internet would come to an end in Europe, creating a highly regulated, tightly controlled space. | |
| The founding fathers of the internet have voiced their objections to Article 13 in a public letter signed by 70 highly influential experts, including Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the internet. | |
| Europe has been well served by the balanced liability model established under the e-commerce directive, under which those who upload content to the internet bear the principal responsibility for its legality, while platforms are responsible to take action to remove such content once its illegality has been brought to their attention. | |
| By inverting this liability model and essentially making platforms directly responsible for ensuring the legality of content in the first instance, the business models and investments of platforms large and small will be impacted. | |
| The damage that this may do to the free and open internet as we know it is hard to predict, but in our opinions could be substantial. | |
| A second major problem that is bound up with the copyright directive is Article 11, colloquially known as the Link Tax. | |
| Boing Boing described the situation as, Article 11 is the EU's bizarre proposal for transferring money from Google and Facebook to newspapers. | |
| It creates a special copyright over links to news stories and bans services from linking to the news unless they pay for a license to link. | |
| Boing Boing are right to describe this as bizarre because it's absolutely insane. | |
| European media outlets want Google, Facebook and any other social media platforms on which a news article could be shared to force that social media platform to pay for the privilege of giving the news website free traffic. | |
| And this isn't the first time this has been tried either as Boing Boing points out. | |
| This time they're just going bigger. | |
| It's been tried before in Germany and Spain and the big tech platforms just boycotted news from those countries until the newspapers rolled over and offered the US giants free licenses. | |
| So this time around the EU is planning to make the link tax universal across all 28 member states to force Google, Facebook and the other big companies to pay them. | |
| Not only is this going to punish sites like Wikipedia, it will create a massive barrier to entry to any entrepreneurial startups that wish to create a social media platform by simply pricing them out of the market. | |
| If you can't afford to pay massive news corporations to share their links, you won't be able to allow users to share links on your platform at all because you will be financially liable. | |
| This is part of a power struggle between the European Union and Silicon Valley, and we, the people, are the ones caught in the crossfire. | |
| In this case, I'm afraid to say that we will have to side with Silicon Valley for our own self-preservation, because as you might imagine, if Article 11 goes through, my channel and any others like it will be killed outright. | |
| And as the BBC observed on the 20th of June 2018, the disastrous copyright bill was approved by the European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs, who voted by 15 votes to 10 to adopt Article 13 and by 13 votes to 12 to adopt Article 11. | |
| It will now go to the wider European Parliament to vote on it in July. | |
| The European Parliament's committee has put this to the vote, but to whose benefit? | |
| On the 19th of June 2018, Gizmodo published an excellent article that I recommend you take the time to read entitled, The End of All That's Good and Pure About the Internet. | |
| In response to this, Crispin Hunt, the chair of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, claimed, Critics of Article 13 are weaving a narrative with no relationship to fact. | |
| However, his counter-argument contained no actual argument. | |
| He says, Critics like Jones write or say stuff like, memes, news, Wikipedia, art, privacy, and the creative side of fandom are all at risk of being destroyed or kneecapped. | |
| But of course, this is sheer nonsense. | |
| Article 13's critics are relying wholly on an ability to weave a narrative that has no relationship to fact. | |
| And that assertion is it. | |
| But no proof or even argument is provided to support it. | |
| Crispin thinks that we will just accept his word for it, and Crispin is quite open about his interests here. | |
| The EU can ill afford to be bullied by incoherent messaging orchestrated arguably by tech titans protecting their unfettered commercial interests by masquerading as ideologists. | |
| How dare they? | |
| Doesn't the EU understand that Silicon Valley makes the rules, particularly with respect to their internet, which also happens to be our internet, as if the same concerns don't exist for millions of Americans too? | |
| Silicon Valley and its evangelists appear outraged that we would legislate to protect EU interests. | |
| And not in a protectionist manner, I should add. | |
| They are mad that we place value on art, culture, and diversity. | |
| That we demand compliance with the laws. | |
| That while we recognise the internet is indeed exceptional, that we reject the exceptionalism that we would place on internet-based conduct outside the application of law. | |
| We have had almost 20 years of experience under the existing regime where platforms have almost no accountability to the public in which they are rewarded for their willful blindness and inaction. | |
| Crispin claims that social media platforms used by the public are not accountable to the public who he, in his mind, represents. | |
| So who is Crispin defending? | |
| A quick look at the Wikipedia page, while it's still legal, of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors lets us know that Crispin is writing in defense of multi-millionaire artists and the giant corporations to which these artists are in thrall, all while claiming he is for the people. | |
| Article 11 will enable international mainstream media empires to extract money from social media platforms, benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the public, who simply want to be able to freely share public information. | |
| Anyone who has been following my channel will know how much of a fan of Gizmodo and Boing Boing that I am not, and my support of their work on this demonstrates that this is not a partisan issue, it is a power issue. | |
| Articles 11 and 13 are exactly what one should expect from the EU. | |
| A centralization of power at the top of an almost unaccountable hierarchy to benefit the elites at the expense of the people who are using the internet legally to exercise their rights to fair use and the free exchange of information. | |
| This must be stopped. | |
| We must meet the threat with our valour, our blood, indeed with our very lives, to ensure that human civilization, not German, dominates this galaxy now and always. | |
| So what can we do? | |
| Well, this is where UKIP comes in. | |
| Gerard Batten, the current leader of UKIP, is an MEP and a member of a bloc within the European Parliament called Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy. | |
| The EFDD is a coalition of MEPs headed by UKIP that requested a vote in the Byzantine political structure of the EU in order to put the brakes on the copyright directive. | |
| To put it simply, if everything goes the EU's way, the proposal will be negotiated in secret by the European Council, Commission and Parliament, a group known as the Trialogue, and whatever comes out of these secret negotiations will be voted on by the European Parliament in a few months' time. | |
| The EFDD are demanding a vote to stop this process from being secret, which is the first step in killing the proposal altogether, as it would allow MEPs to make amendments to it. | |
| This is why I joined UKIP. | |
| I have a direct line to Gerard who can inform me precisely of what it is we need to do to help him prevent the march of tyranny. | |
| We, ladies and gentlemen, are in a position where we are able to influence the political future of the entire European continent. | |
| This is why they fear us joining UKIP. | |
| We now have a direct connection to the power structures and we can start getting things done. | |
| So Gerard suggests we do the following. | |
| Ask your followers to email their MEPs in the UK and in every member state, asking them to support the UKIP and Green request for a vote to stop the directive going to the trialogue next week in Strasbourg. | |
| This has to be done quickly and it has to be done efficiently. | |
| In the description of this video and pinned to the comments will be a link by which you can find your local MEP and send them an email making your request as per Gerard's instructions. | |
| Please do it. | |
| I only have one rule. | |
| Everyone fights, no one quits. | |
| You don't do your job, I'll shoot you. | |
| You get me? | |
| Regardless of how you feel about me, UKIP or anything else in this story, if you aren't part of the elite, you will suffer because of this legislation. | |
| This is not a partisan issue. | |
| These are your rights. | |
| So now it is time to stand up and fight for freedom. | |
| Please share this video far and wide to help get people to realize that this will be an existential change for the internet as we all know and love it, and not for our benefit, but for the benefit of the European elites. | |
| Fire up the email cannons, ladies and gentlemen, because service guarantees citizenship and it's time to get on the bounce. | |
| We have the ships. | |
| We have the weapons. | |
| We need soldiers. | |
| Come on, you if you want to live forever! | |
| We need you all! |
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