This argument is made every time regulation against big companies is brought to the table, and it's almost always made... by big companies. If it were true, and it isn't, why would big companies be spending so much money fighting these regulations?
Automated content filtering fails to meet the requirements of the EU article, so it will disproportionately impact large companies which rely on those systems, rather than smaller ones which use human moderation teams.
This is a case where big companies are fighting against other big companies, so this argument is moot.
Automated content filtering is a required part of the requirements. It is not enough. But neither is human moderation.
Besides. If human moderation would cost less than filtering, big companies would choose that alternative. Instead, they are now able to sell filter access to small companies. So money flows from small to big companies.
> why would big companies be spending so much money fighting these regulations?
Because the costs are onerous to everyone and it's not worth spending ten billion dollars in compliance costs to destroy competitors who were only costing you a billion dollars in revenue to begin with and are very useful to have around to fend off antitrust inquiries.
And if it won't negatively impact small tech companies then why are so many small tech companies against it?
> Automated content filtering fails to meet the requirements of the EU article, so it will disproportionately impact large companies which rely on those systems, rather than smaller ones which use human moderation teams.
Hardly anything disproportionately impacts large entities. If a small entity can do something, the large entity can just do the same thing more times, and then optimize any parts of it that are susceptible to economies of scale.
And converting something you can do to something you have to do will always disproportionately impact small entities. What happens when your moderator goes on vacation? If you're YouTube you have a million more of them, if you're a single person business the moderator is you and now you can never take a vacation from it, even when you're about to burn out.
And you can't just have moderators anymore, now you need moderators who know how to make their moderation comply with the new law. Even assuming the cost of training a moderator is the same, now the larger company has the advantage again because they're using full-time moderators instead of spending the founder's time to learn how to do it themselves even though they only spend 10% of their day doing moderation. And then spend 10% of their day doing that when it used to be 3% because now there are more rules to comply with.
The way you make a requirement disproportionately impact large companies is by only applying it to large companies, say ones with a billion in revenue or more. But they haven't done that.
This isn't a "regulation against big companies" though, this is a direct attack on free speech and a power grab by copyright maximalists, who are feeling that their industries are getting obsolete and want to tax everyone to compensate for their own failures (like the link tax and the like). I'd say let them crash and fail, no one owns them anything just because they can't compete.
It's impossible to argue with your portrayal of the law, as opposed to what it actually says, so I'm going to have to just agree to disagree with you. There is no "link tax", nor is there a "meme ban". Both of these concepts are not actually based in the law, but in marketing of those opposed to it.
That's an additional garbage to Article 13, which is a censorship law (upload filters). Above I commented on Article 11 when talking about obsolete industries trying to leech their more successful rivals.
Article 11 is not a link tax, because it, surprisingly, doesn't tax links. Julia Reda is opposed to the copyright legislation, and has chosen to re-define it as a "link tax" because it helps her push her agenda. She spends a LOT of time meeting with Google and organizations directly funded by Google, which she does, helpfully, disclose on her website.
Article 11 is a very clear attack on linking driven by legacy news and similar industries which are losing money in the Internet age and whining that everyone should pay them now, "just because" (read they can't properly compete).
Additionally, "legacy news" are losing money because tech companies are shifting profits from ads on those news sites to their own platforms. Here's a chart showing how Google has shifted the ad revenue balance since 2004: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1055606344559063040
Essentially, it used to be that Google provided a real service to these news companies, by providing an ad network where both news organizations and Google could profit. But over time, they've shifted their ad revenue away from the model that requires they share it to ads that they alone profit from. This has slowly but surely bled journalism dry.
Essentially, these news companies can't figure out how to reach more people, and because of that, they decided that others have to pay them for what they don't do. I'd call that extortion. It's the same level of stupidity as "blank media tax" and other similar extortion ideas.
Linking is not infringing anything, and should not be taxable. All this "massive theft" whining is complete bunk.
The actual law might not explicitly mandate upload filters but they are the only way to comply with the law other than just shutting down in the EU of course.
This isn't really true. In fact, my understanding is that the text wholly prohibits relying solely on an automated system, as opposed to human appeals and moderators. An appeal process is required to protect your ability to upload content that you have the right to upload, YouTube would no longer be able to arbitrarily punish you with no way of contesting their decision.
It might be financially challenging for large, abusive platforms which are heavily built on pirating copyrighted content, but it shouldn't be much of a challenge for ordinary websites, blogs, and smaller sharing platforms. Consider that a personal website may have the site owner bother to moderate the comments manually. A small business may have to hire a moderator or two. YouTube may need to hire 10,000 people and may have problems.
I've mailed with an MP who wanted this legislation. She admitted the automatic filters are de facto required as there are no better options available. This was unfortunate. She expressed hope that smart people would step up and find a better solution.
So basically the people who voted for this law disagree with you.
It's also pretty dumb to vote for something, knowing it will end up in a mess since there is no good solution for it. Excuse of "someone smart will find one" is outrageous. Let them first find a solution, before voting for something that becomes a requirement already now.
> In fact, my understanding is that the text wholly prohibits relying solely on an automated system, as opposed to human appeals and moderators. An appeal process is required to protect your ability to upload content that you have the right to upload, YouTube would no longer be able to arbitrarily punish you with no way of contesting their decision.
This is a farce. They already have this. The automated system decides to spit out a false positive, then you appeal to a "human" who has neither the time nor the expertise to make a reasonable determination so they just rubber stamp whatever the automated system said and its incorrect determination stands.
EU bigwigs already explicitly admitted, that now everyone has to implement upload filters, despite before lying through their teeth that filters won't be mandatory. Corrupt hypocrites.
Automated content filtering fails to meet the requirements of the EU article, so it will disproportionately impact large companies which rely on those systems, rather than smaller ones which use human moderation teams.