June 19, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:47
4124 The Biggest Threat To The Internet As We Know It | Article 13
Save Your Internet: https://saveyourinternet.euSaveYourInternet.EU: "On 20 June, the European Parliament will vote on the Copyright Directive. The votes of 10 Members of the parliament will determine if the Internet remains open and free from censorship in the EU. Tell them you need them to protect your Internet against surveillance and censorship machines, as the defenders of EU citizens! Give them the power to be Heroes!"Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
I don't generally ask you guys to do a lot, but I'm going to ask something today.
This is from Wired Magazine.
On June 20th, which is tomorrow, the European Parliament will set in motion a process that could force online platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and even 4chan to censor their users' content before it ever gets online.
A proposed new European copyright law wants large websites to use, quote, content recognition technologies to scan for copyrighted videos, music, photos, text, and code in a move.
That could impact everyone from the open-source software community to remixers, live streamers, and teen-age meme creators.
In an open letter to the President of the European Parliament, some of the world's most prominent technologists warned that Article 13 of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, quote, takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation into a tool for the automated takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing The directive includes a great deal of useful legislation to update copyright law and better reflect modern technologies.
Article 13 is problematic, so put on your bureaucratic squid free speech shredding helmet because we're going to just do a paragraph here.
Article 13.1.
Are you ready? Worst bedtime story ever.
Information Society service providers that store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works or other subject matter uploaded by the users shall, in cooperation with right holders, take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rights holders for the use of their works or other subject matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject matter identified by right holders through the cooperation with the service providers.
Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.
The service providers shall provide rightholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject matter.
This is an old objectivist argument, which is that tyranny is not iron laws.
Like if it's like, well, there's a death penalty for spitting on the sidewalk.
Well, that's horrible. It's wrong.
It's unjust and it's immoral.
But it's not tyrannical in the way that this kind of stuff is.
Because there's so many vague terms in here.
Who knows whether you're in compliance or not?
And that, of course, is the point.
It's the chilling effect. When you know what the law is, in other words, if it has nothing to do with, say, tax law, if you actually know what the law is, then you can obey the law.
If you don't know what the law is, then it's open to interpretation by bureaucrats, by courts, by all of the activists known to mankind.
So let's just have a look at this.
Information Society Service Providers.
What does that mean? Because there's kind of a rule at the moment that says if you host a website where other people post, like you host a blog or something like that, then you're not responsible for what people post because you can't police and monitor what everyone does and know what all the laws are.
So you are just a passive.
Like the guy who uses the highway to drive the getaway car from the bank robbery, the highway is not responsible for the bank robbery, right?
So you are not responsible for the content of what is there and free speech is relatively simple which is you're allowed to say things you're subject to if you lie about people you may be subject to sanctions but you're allowed to say pretty much what you want as long as you don't include you know death threats and things like that fairly simple now all this hate speech stuff who knows what the reality is or what's allowed or what's not allowed the whole point is to have you back up way away from anything that might be controversial and that's the chilling effect on free speech so look at this Store and provide to the public access to large amounts of works.
What does that mean?
What is the definition of large amounts of works?
You know, large, you just put the word ish or the phrase ish after everything.
Large ish. It's legal-ish.
It's allowed-ish.
It's free speech-ish, which means it ain't.
Ish is ain't.
What does it mean? Large amounts of works or other subject matter uploaded by their users.
Shall in cooperation with right holders.
Okay. So does that mean if you run a blog, you have to contact every right holder in the known universe to cooperate with them?
Take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with right holders.
What does that mean? What are those measures?
Take measures. What does that mean?
I would like it.
Just have a message saying, I would like it if you didn't upload any copyrighted material.
Take measures. Doesn't mean anything.
What are those measures? How do you know if you're in compliance with the law or not?
You see, the whole point is that it's a big, vague, do-what-you-want soft kind of fascism that turns into hard kinds of punishment very, very rapidly indeed.
So you've got to take these measures to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject matter identified by right holders through the cooperation with the service providers.
So, of course, if this is the usual thing that happens with these kinds of vague laws, which is that very large established companies get a huge edge.
Over small startups, because if you're Facebook, if you're Google, if you're whoever, right?
You have armies of lawyers, you've got teams of experts, and you, of course, provide a lot of tax value to the government, so they may not want to ding you too hard, and so...
You have all of these benefits.
It's like hyperregulation.
When there are big regulations, it favors large companies.
Large companies actually often push for expanded regulations because it keeps the small, nimble, mammal-like competitors from nipping at the heels of the large sclerotic dinosaurs, economically speaking.
So what does it mean?
Nobody knows. And also, of course, large companies can take the hit and may even be viewed as heroes of free speech and so on should they get pursued, kind of stuff, but anyway.
So yeah, who knows?
Prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject matter.
You don't know, right? Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies.
Content recognition. So this means that...
The technology is going to scan to figure out which copyright violations might have occurred, which IP violations might have occurred.
This has produced really crazy stuff, like news stations showing footage of old NASA space shuttle launches.
Then NASA puts up a video of space shuttle launches, which obviously I assume belongs to NASA, and NASA gets hit with a copyright because it was already published on a news show.
Effective. See, putting the word effective in, it's like putting the phrase common sense, common sense gun controls.
What does that even mean?
Effective content recognition technologies.
Now, I was a computer programmer at the chief technical officer level, at research and development level.
I was a computer programmer for a long, long time, 15 years as a professional.
And the idea that you can just write code that is going to be able to Handle things like memes, things like sarcasm, things like quoting for the cause or the purpose of criticism.
How much is fair? You can't program these kinds of things.
You simply cannot program for these kinds of things.
Now the idea that this would not be automated makes it absolutely impossible to implement and therefore the law would be rejected.
But you see there's this fantasy magic technology genie that is going to be able to effectively patrol and enforce copyright and IP and all these things and is going to be able to tell what is sarcasm, what is re-quoting, what is a meme, what is not, what is fair use, what is not, what is allowable, what is criticism.
You can't do it. You cannot automate this process.
And that means, of course, that it's going to put a lot of people out of business.
It's going to cause a lot of people to shut down their websites, going to shut down their forums and so on, because nobody knows.
Nobody knows. And I wonder who is going to develop these content recognition technologies.
Well, obviously, it's going to be very, very big companies, of course, most of which would be located in the US. So does that mean that European servers are going to have to ping US servers to figure out if something is allowable or not?
What about the differences in data privacy laws between the two?
I mean, you understand, this is like the two jurisdictions can't possibly work.
And the whole point is it's not supposed to work.
It's supposed to shut down independent thought.
Shall be appropriate and proportionate.
Ah, you see, these are just words.
We want an effective strategy for this and appropriate and proportionate.
It's because, you know, a lot of my laser-like deconstruction of this kind of nonsense is partly because I've been a writer for a long time, but also because when I was in the business world, well, you had to get investors.
And to get investors, you actually had to prove the value of what it is you were doing, what it is you were bringing to market, the value-add proposition for the customers.
You had to do a competitive landscape.
And you couldn't just say, well, we're going to put out effective, profitable, common sense, appropriate, and proportional software, so give us some money.
Like, they'd say, that's garbage.
That's just a bunch. Like, they'd just kick you out of the room.
Because you're not proving anything.
You're just applying a bunch of vaguely positive words to a situation, and then...
What?
Then you gain control. So, what does that mean?
Those measures, such as the use of effective content recognition technologies, shall be appropriate and proportionate.
What does that mean? What does it mean to be appropriate?
What does it mean to be proportionate?
Nobody knows. That's kind of the point.
The service providers shall provide rights holders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of the measures, as well as, when relevant, adequate reporting on the recognition and use of the works and other subject matter.
So there are probably millions and millions and millions of rights holders out there.
You're running some little local blog.
What are you supposed to do?
How are you supposed to say, well, I rely on this service.
I rely on that service.
Okay, so now you have somebody upload something.
You have to figure out how to submit what it is they've uploaded to some third-party content recognition algorithm.
And then that's going to give you back a yay or a nay.
What an astonishing amount of power to centralize and place into the hands and into the control of a particular content provider.
Wow! That is a lot of power to give someone.
Yes or no, you can or cannot post this on the internet.
Wow! Who is going to handle that power well?
How long is it going to take before the usual leftist agitators move into that place And say, well, leftist content is good, and non-leftist content is bad, and this person's a Nazi, and we're not going to post that.
And also, there are so many different forms of blog software out there.
How are you going to figure out in what format you should submit the post to?
And, I mean, come on. This is not even a law.
This is just a soft tentacle choking on the throat of free speech.
And you understand they can't go into any detail because detail is protection.
Detail in the law is protection for the citizens.
Lack of detail in the law is a grave danger to citizens and it gives free reign to bureaucrats and lawmakers and law enforcers to do basically whatever they want.
So the lack of detail is the deep and direct threat of tyranny.
The Wired article goes on to say about this Article 13.1.
It's a direct threat to the established legal notion that individual users rather than platforms are responsible for the content they put online.
This is a quote. Article 13 effectively deputizes social media and other internet companies as copyright police, forcing them to implement a highly invasive surveillance infrastructure across their entire service offerings, says cryptographer and security specialist Bruce Schneier, one of the, I guess, letters opposing this signatories.
Aside from the harm from the provisions of Article 13, this infrastructure can be easily repurposed by government and corporations and further entrenches ubiquitous surveillance into the fabric of the internet.
Now, can you imagine? Everything you post has to go to some central place to be analyzed.
Of course, they're going to store that data.
Of course, they're going to try and identify you.
Of course, you understand.
Could you be prosecuted for posting something that was rejected?
In other words, you tried to do something illegal but were only thwarted by this wonderful magic genie content recognition algorithm.
Are you still at fault? Nobody knows.
The whole point is simply to get you to stop posting stuff that is inconvenient or that might be some sort of gateway drug to independent thought, which is basically what memes are.
Oh, it is astonishing.
So, the fact that they're trying to jackboot backdoor...
Soft, free speech controls into a law is very, very common, right?
So this is from the Wired article.
Although it's primarily intended to prevent the online streaming of pirated music and video, the scope of Article 13 covers all and any copyrightable material, including images, audio, video, compiled software, code, and the written word.
So good luck with your live stream video games, everyone.
If they like you, sure.
If they don't like you, Well, then it's probably because this is optional, right?
This kind of enforcement is optional.
The article goes on to say, internet memes which most commonly take the form of viral images endlessly copied, repeated, and riffed on could fall into a number of those categories, creating an improbable scenario in which one of the internet's most distinctive and commonplace forms of communication is banned.
With no ability to identify context, automated copyright flagging systems are also likely to remove important content because of the incidental appearance of copyright material In the background, ignoring principles of fair dealing enshrined in the copyright laws of many EU countries.
And I quote,"...something like having your protest footage blocked because of a passing motorist whose car radio was blaring a pop song is a match, but not one that infringes copyright." This, of course, gives enormous power to people who want to block protest footage from being broadcast.
So someone's protesting something, you don't like it, you show up and you play some song really loud so that it's picked up and you can't edit it out, well, then that protest can no longer be broadcast and you're done.
This is now how counter-protests are going to occur and it's a way of shutting down the broadcast of free speech.
Now, the idea that the European Union is somehow about laws and enforcement and objective values, come on.
The EU does not enforce laws.
I mean, good lord, they don't even enforce borders.
They don't enforce the deficit, small deficit requirements from member countries.
They don't enforce asylum laws that say you have to stay in the country you first set foot in if you want to claim asylum.
They don't enforce anything!
So the idea that they're just generating up all these laws out of a huge respect for law and order is ridiculous.
What do they want to do?
Well, I think there's a number of things going on.
First of all, the mainstream media is a big friend of the big state, right?
The big state, the tyrannical states, and the mainstream media go hand in hand.
So this gives great advantage to mainstream media providers who have big legal departments and big budgets and they have monopoly profits and all of that because they get licenses and airwaves from the government.
So what does that mean? You're some little guy and if your stuff is flagged as belonging to the mainstream media, well, they can threaten to sue you and you're just going to have to back down because they're big and you're small.
If it's the other way around, let's say the mainstream media posts one of your tweets on a news program or something, well, are you going to sue them, really?
So it's another one of these give massive amounts of power to the mainstream media, make the mainstream media more dependent on the power of the state and thus they will assiduously defend and protect.
That power as one of the sources of their profits.
Now, it's funny because people talk about the great meme wars of 2016.
And the meme wars involved in the election of President Donald Trump.
The meme wars that were involved in the promotion of Brexit and so on.
Memes are extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily dangerous to the status quo.
So memes aren't arguments for the most part.
But they do make you think, and they are very effective at pointing out hypocrisy.
And so, because they're very effective at pointing out hypocrisy, they are generally the enemy of the left.
They're enemy of the collectivists.
And the left has become, you know, sour church lady, humorless, dried-up, spinster old necks.
They have lost their sense of humor, which they had in the 60s when they were the opposition because they've become the mainstream, they've become the dominant political, cultural, artistic, economic, and institutional force, particularly in academia.
So because they have power, The first casualty of power is humor and so once you have power you lose your sense of humor and therefore the me the left is very bad at memeing and the non-left is very good at memeing because they don't have power therefore Their weapon is mockery and criticism and so on.
So memes are very dangerous. They are gateway drugs to independent thought.
They won't make you think, but what they do is they shatter preconceptions and they open you up to examination.
And so memes are very, very dangerous.
Memes are the opposite of propaganda.
Propaganda used to rely on On memes a lot.
You look at those Soviet posters under Lenin and Stalin, the square-jawed workers marching into a red-hued future.
Well, those were all memes.
And so Memes are very dangerous, and therefore you need to pretend that they're violations of copyright in order to control memes, which means to control the sharing of information, the provocation of thought that is occurring in non-institutionalized media.
So, now the weaponization of copyrights, yeah, of course, it's going to be a political tool.
There's a reason why it's just me in a white background.
I mean, first of all, I like the challenge of keeping your attention when it's just me in a white background, but also, I mean, the fact that Copyright was going to be weaponized against political enemies was pretty visible quite some time ago because there is a lot of gray area when it comes to copyright.
Of course, we all know that. And so who you pursue and who you don't pursue, you know, it's like what is abuse?
What is acceptable discourse?
What is hate speech? These are all very vague terms and the reason they stay vague is so that you can apply Sanctions against your enemies and protect your friends.
That's why laws are vague, so that they can be bent to punish your enemies and reward your friends.
And the more vague the language of the law is, the more political it's intended to use.
And that, of course, is going to happen.
Small, localized forums are going to face a big challenge.
And people are going to have to look in the mirror and say, do I want to take this risk?
Do I want to risk exposure?
And there's going to be a flurry of lawsuits and there's going to be a flurry of punishments that are designed to shut down all of that.
And forums, you know, it's interesting because the internet is one of the last, if not the last, remaining safe spaces for men.
For men to gather together, for men to have a community, for men to share ideas and insights and arguments and facts that they won't get anywhere else.
And I couldn't find any data on this, so I'm just kind of going on a gut instinct on a hunch here.
But I'm going to go out on a big wild limb and I'm going to say, I think it's men who create the majority of memes.
And so it is a form of male communication in general, some exceptions, but it's a form of male communication, and it's a form of male humor, and it's a form of male empowerment.
And so that has to be stopped.
Of course, men can't get together, men can't have support forums and support communities, and men can't influence things.
Online forums are significantly, though not exclusively, of course, male communities.
So the internet It's a safe space for males to get together, to share thoughts, to share ideas, to get support, to get community, to have a tribe, to have a collective.
And so the internet being a safe space for males means also that the internet is a safe space for critical thinking.
But maybe not for long.
So please, this is what I'm going to ask you to do.
I'll put a link below. Please go.
And email or call anybody who's involved with this.
Tell them to vote against this.
Tell them to vote against this.
We need the capacity to broadcast and to think.
We need the capacity to stimulate thought.
We need the capacity to feel safe and secure having online communities for sharing ideas and arguments and perspectives.
The website is saveyourinternet.eu.
That's saveyourinternet.eu.
So I'll put the link below.
Please click on it and send messages.
It's late in the day, but it's not the end of the day.
And while the light is still up, while the sun has yet to go down, we can still see the future and change it.
