Article 11/13 for the EU and future of the site

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 0]

I’ll preface this all with saying it will get into politics. No, its not fun. No, it does not abide by the Scottish pub rules. No, I’m not happy to think of what kind of effect it will have on this community I love.

I love sitting back and watching the silliness of video material that gets thrown about for this site and knowing you all are in Europe I’ve kept an eye out for what might affect you. Being in America I have protections as an individual within my nation that are assured me on a theoretical level. I’ve seen that the EU has passed articles 11 and 13 that fall on copyright and the legal ramifications of not paying for material use on the internet. ‘Fair Use’ seems to be gone. With YouTube, as an arm of Google, being in the crosshairs of quite a bit this should be a concern as I know it was my own browsing on that platform that led me to the site. I don’t know what kind of issues there might be from the link tax that was thrown in, as most of the links go to businesses and Kickstarters, but it might also see changes to the industry in other areas as sites like tabletopgamingnews does nothing but run links to people.

This might mean that the company might settle into its own bubble of video production where all the silliness can run free or it might be that censorship would chew on your content. I have no idea as this is all speculation into waters of legal depths I have no chance in hell of plumbing in my ignorance. I worry about the defense of this community with our shared niche interest.

Good luck out there

[zeker1966 1633xp 1]

I’m also on the other side of the pond and while I think this seriously hinders Google/Youtube and other similar platforms I’m not sure how it will affect OnTableTop at all. Other than not using the small clips from shows that they have done in the past. Pretty sure that 99% of the content that is produced by OnTableTop does not infringe on copyright.

The more damaging thing for OnTableTop might be Brexit but that’s a whole other can of worms.

[warworksdkParticipant 1221xp 0]

I think it’s a bit too early to tell just yet.

I suspect we’ll see sites like YouTube and Facebook take an even more draconian approach to linked materiel. But as for Beasts of War… Not sure… As long as most of the material on the site is produced in-house by the beasts themselves I don’t think it will be a problem. Users linking to external sites though…?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this pans out.

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

I’m pretty certain that the EU has never supported the “fair use” policy employed by content creators in the US. To date, it hasn’t stopped people in the EU from creating memes, sharing stock photos and everything else we’re told is under threat now. There are specific exclusions to EU copyright law, that allow works to be reproduced for reasons such as:

• art. 5.2(c) reproductions by public libraries, educational institutions or archives for non-commercial use
• art. 5.3(c) press reviews and news reporting;
• art. 5.3(d) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review;
• art. 5.3(f) uses of political speeches and extracts of public lectures, to the extent justified by public information;
• art. 5.3(i) incidental inclusion in another work;
• art. 5.3(j) use for the advertisement of the public exhibition or sale of art;
• art. 5.3(k) caricature, parody or pastiche;

Article 13 is basically a means to force platform publishers such as Facebook, Youtube et al to take down copyright-infringing material more quickly and to be legally responsible where such infringements occur. At present, they simply shrug and say “not us, it’s the user who uploaded it”.

I’m sure there will be plenty of inappropriate uses of Article 13 and – like Cheri Blair claiming “invasion of privacy” when the amount tax-payers were subsidising her shoe-buying habit became known – it will probably be abused by people looking to shut down dissent/argument/political discourse.

But the basic laws of copyright have always applied to internet postings – they just haven’t been applied.

I’m not saying that Article 13 isn’t badly drafted and open to abuse. Just that it’s not the “end to the internet” that Google/Youtube/Facebook insist it is.

 

 

[brennonKeymaster 31031xp 0]

According to a BBC interview today it shouldn’t actually affect anything that doesn’t already happen. Memes, image sharing etc and clips should all behave as normal provided that Google, Youtube, Facebook etc buy a licence to bear the brunt of the cost for those that originally created the material.

So, instead of copyright and such hitting individuals, it will hit the businesses that host instead. Now, that might have just been some pie in the sky thinking but I don’t think it will end up doing much to this site.

[mecha82Participant 10037xp 1]

Thing about this is that corporations like to use laws of area that has most strict and most draconian ones world wide so anyone who claims that this doesn’t apply to them because they don’t live in EU area are dead wrong. This is why those two articles are serious matter to everyone no matter were you live and hurts content creators on sites like Youtube. It has already been bad because of broken and easy to abuse copyright bots are but now things could get even worse.

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

Not a legal expert by any means.

Small clips used for parody etc. are exempt, so adding them to Weekenders shouldn’t be an issue but with any law, until it goes to court we don’t really know.

Were I could see issues is game play videos.  If you are playing a game, in theory, you are using copyrighted material so uploading them may fall foul of this new legislation. In some cases it won’t be a problem as the owner of the copyright of the game is playing it with BOW/OTT but my reading and understanding is a company could say you don’t have permission to use their copyright and YouTube/Twitch would be forced to take the video down or play compensation to the rights holder.  Perhaps even painting videos could fall under this – I’m not sure.

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

@robert – I’m not sure this applies; unless things have changed legally in the last few years, the content creator – i.e. the person taking the photo/shooting the video retains the copyright, not the person who created the game/minis. Many years ago, I wrote some software for tracking football scores. I approached every football team in the league and asked for permission to use their team colours as icons/logos. Some were very protective, as you can understand. But I was told (by the FA no less) that if I went to every ground and took photos of a player from every team, I could use the photo as a generic representation of a player from that team without requiring a licence. In the same way a newspaper can show photos of a player scoring a goal without having to pay image rights to Chelsea/Man City, whoever, because their team strip/logo appears in the photo.

I think the same rights would apply re: game playthroughs, photos of miniatures etc.

A few years back I also co-created some unique toys (which Mattel paid for us to fly to LA to demonstrate) and worked with a few people to have photos taken (to create what’s called a “sizzle” in the trade). As I didn’t specifically employ the person taking the photos, they retained all rights. What I didn’t realise what that, after the toy option was turned down by Mattel and I asked them to remove the photos they had taken from their online portfolio site (to retain the option to present to other toy companies in future) I had no legal discourse to require them to do so: they were the copyright holder of the images, even though the content within them was not theirs.

There’s a world of difference between infringing copyright and trademark, just as there is in informing through media and “passing off”.

It’s noticable that the most vocal opponents of Article 13 are the companies like Youtube and Facebook et al, who are most likely to bear the brunt of this kind of ruling. Personally, I don’t think memes are suddenly going to disappear overnight (I can’t decide if this is a good thing or not). I don’t see that BoW/OTT would be adversely affected by this ruling (though GW might try to get a bit “heavy” attempting to shut down sites that are critical of them, while carrying their imagery).

 

 

[tarrox 249xp 1]

The Problem isn’t the content that OTT is creating but everything else. Meaning this forum, the projects, the places and the comments section. For them OTT would need to install and supply a filter and this cost money which is part of the real problem, So less Money for OTT. In addition depending on the implementations of that law. you could have several years of uncertainty and thus the possibility of court cases against you. For a small company as OTT this could be devestating.

The only good part is that the UK wants to leave the EU and thus won’t be affected by it and as long as North Irland remains with the UK so will OTT.

Although given the international nature of OTT you could move the servers to the US and deal with it that way, if problems arises.

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

@blinky465 That is what i’m not sure about.  If I make a video of me playing a computer game, the computer game company still owns the copyright to the graphics, code and music… if the computer game has licensed music from a band, that music is still under the copyright of the band/record label.  While I own the copyright of the video I make, I don’t own the copyright of what I used in the video.  Under this new legislation, it seems that Facebook/Youtube are now obligated to compensate the computer game/music company or take the video down… whether this could apply to board games/war games?  I don’t know.  I could be very wrong.

 

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

@robert – it looks like your usage example would be covered by one of the exemptions in EU law. Maybe:

art. 5.3(c) press reviews and news reporting;
art. 5.3(d) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review ?

In my own case – speaking from experience of an incident from about three/four years ago – the fact that the copyright/trademark for my content (my toys in this case, covered by NDA between me and Mattel) belonged to me wasn’t sufficient for me to request Youtube to take down the video featuring my toys (since the creator of the video was the copyright owner of the content of the video). I did request the video be taken down; Youtube cited the appropriate EU law and refused. Also – as Ben suggested – it’s not you, the individual who would be expected to make any necessary compensations, but Google/Youtube/Facebook, as the platform provider (or they might take down the video).

There may be a question mark about recorded streaming of video games (I understand these to be quite popular) since the only content that appears in the video is footage from the games console. Videos featuring someone playing  a tabletop game, moving miniatures, on a board with terrain etc. would probably be exempt under either incidental (the main part of the video would be the person) or for review (if the camera focussed entirely on the game board).

It’ll be interesting to see how hard content manufacturers push at this law, to see how much money they can squeeze out of Youtube/Facebook and how hard they push back (arguing under one of the many exemptions); the whole thing was supposed to stamp out channels that simply share TV shows/music videos and thus deny income to the online streaming services.

I’m still not convinced that it’s the death-knell to user-generated content that some have made out?

 

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 0]

@blinky465 Thinking about the articles that you cited the OTT videos in general would be exempt under the criticism of a product. The general presence of YouTube in Europe as a commercial entity is what the issue seems to be. If Google decides to refuse the fines imposed by their users’ content then it would likely be banned by Euro ISPs.

NZ and Australia outright canned access to 4chan and 8chan. Governments around the globe block their nation’s ability to access particular information carte blanche for self determination but this may be a move that is different as its the media which is being removed. Tax the paper or ink makers for the written words which might be hurtful.

IMO, OTT posts videos on the platform and it would be a major blow to their global standing without an international media presence. (Yes, OTT is an international company with far reach in the mini market. All I can think of is The Meaning of Life and the sea shanty from the pirate sketch)

[limburger 21711xp 1]

Nintendo has already blocked people from using their games in reviews an let’s play videos ..

As such we already have a precedent of what ip owners can do using current laws

The new eu laws are going to make this the standard for any content publisher who can’t afford the resources for a content filter.

Google is going to get even more aggressive in its use of dmca features

.technically this isn’t a law yet because national laws need to be passed first  iirc the deadline is two years from now  And like the cookie wall everyone will wait until the last minute to do something.

However I expect a zero tolerance policy from smaller platforms they can’t afford the fines..

This is what happens when technically incompetent politicians create laws that are in favor of old  media who refuse to understand the need to match copyright to modern media consumption

The interner as we knew it will be dead once this stupid set of laws is in effect

Brexit won’t help.

 

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 4]

The issue I have with articles 11 and 13 are two fold.

Firstly, while the motives, if you believe politicians, is to “protect creators” it is highly unlikely that this is the case.  The man behind it all, a one Axel Voss, has been on record suggesting that perhaps YouTube shouldn’t exist.  When he speaks about protecting creators, he like to talk about “young, independent creators” when actually his bill, even with the revisions it received, actually protects large corporate channels; companies large enough to have their own legal teams who can ensure copyright compliance BEFORE upload whose content YouTube can trust to be free from copyright infringement.  YouTube have already said that the bill, as it has been passed, may restrict them in their ability to host content from everyone.

Secondly, while the article does indeed make provisions for satire and parody the practicalities of this are much more difficult and will likely just lead to mass censorship by social media companies simply to protect themselves from lawsuits.  While it is technically possible to develop content filters that can look for copyrighted material, these algorithms are massively complex and expensive, far beyond the reach of companies like Beasts of War to develop.  This leads to three outcomes:

1. Beasts of War continue as normal but are massively exposed to the risk of lawsuits.
2. Beasts of War no longer allow users to upload any images to their site because they cannot control what is uploaded.  Also their own content may have to change to only include their own original footage and not contain any images from other companies.
3. Silicon Valley tech giants licence out their own content filter algorithms that companies like BoW can use but which potentially places an additional cost on licensees.

Because of the sheer volume of data uploaded to the net, filtering will necessarily be algorithmic and algorithms cannot detect context which means parody and satire will be blocked.  It is also likely, in my opinion, that algorithms will never be able to identify context because to identify context actually requires a level of subjective and emotional input, it’s not a purely intelligence/logic based decision.  This means that for all intents and purposes, the provisions for Satire and Parody are in fact moot.  The proposal that filtering should be a two stage process with a human element that can quickly identify any satirical or parody content blocked by the algorithm to be unblocked and made available shows a huge lack of understanding on the part of the people proposing the bill.  There are 300 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every single minute.  Just think of the armies of people required to manually review that in order to determine context and then calculate that into a financial cost.  It’s completely untenable, it would put social media out of business or they would cease to be free services.

On top of these issues you can then add to the mix the probable inconsistencies between EU states because it’s a directive, it’s not a law, each nation must pass their own laws to meet the criteria in the directive meaning requirements will be subtly different in each zone and social media will end up catering to lowest common denominator.  On top of this we see time and again that governments constantly over reach and expand laws to take away more and more personal freedoms.  Two perfect examples of this are hate speech and indeed copyright laws.  If you look at the original copyright laws in the US, Micky Mouse would have in the public domain decades ago, but it keeps getting expanded, generally to protect corporate interests.  Hate speech, whether you agree with the principle or not, is an ever growing, ever expanding definition that seems to be encompassing more and more fringe subjects and further regulating what it is and is not acceptable to say.  It’s in the nature of government to act this way, to expand their level of control, and the EU copyright directive will not be any different.  The EU is not on the side of the people nor is it on the side of independent creators.  It’s a global corporatist’s wet dream and this directive is intended to protect the entertainment industry, not small YouTube creators.  It might take a while before we see it but I genuinely believe this directive will hurt Beasts of War.  I also think it will hurt Beasts of War irrespective of whether the UK leaves the EU or not – once it’s codified into British law, does anyone really believe that parliament will repeal it?

And before anyone criticises me for being overly pessimistic, when was the last time a politician, by their actions, gave you a reason to feel optimistic?

[khusrauParticipant 1169xp 1]

I tend to be with Blinky on this one, and I have listened to comments by my MEP. I think the bill as it stands is clumsily drafted, but the intent is clear, it is to make the big providers liable for content. I think that’s a positive step. I think there may well be unintended consequences, but the provisions for artistic expression and criticism will cover much of the uses made by BoW/OTT.

Incidentally, where I live, I have several polliticians who make me feel optimistic, including our local MPs, our MEP, and our First Minister.

 

 

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