EU pushes forward on law against hate speech, illegal content. Hosting companies required to take websites offline

[Alpha1]

The EU commission has just approved this directive.

Once an internet company hosting content uploaded by users (like Facebook or YouTube) that offers their services in the EU has received a removal order from the competent national authority, they will have one hour to remove it or disable access to it in all EU member states

It seems that admins will no longer be allowed to sleep or be offline. The penalty seems similar to that of the GDPR.
The summary only mentions terrorist content. I have not found the full text yet.

Terrorist content online should be removed within one hour, says EP | News | European Parliament

Internet companies should remove terrorist content within one hour after receiving an order from the authorities, to combat radicalisation and contribute to public security.

www.europarl.europa.eu

“The proposed legislation is another worrying example of a law that looks nice politically during an election period because its stated objective is to prevent horrendous terrorist content from spreading online. But worryingly, the law runs the severe risk of undermining freedoms and fundamental rights online without any convincing proof that it will achieve its objectives”, said Fanny Hidvegi, Europe Policy Manager at Access Now.

The next step in the process are trilogues negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and Member States. Negotiations are expected to start in September / October 2019.

EU Parliament deletes the worst threats to freedom of expression proposed in the Terrorist Content Regulation - Access Now

While we welcome the improvements to the initial European Commission proposal on this file, we doubt its objectives will be achieved. No meaningful evidence has been presented to demonstrate the need, nor the efficacy, of this new European counter-terrorism instrument.

www.accessnow.org

“This propaganda can be linked to actual terrorist incidents and national authorities must be able to act decisively,” he said. “Any new legislation must be practical and proportionate if we are to safeguard free speech. Without a fair process we risk the over-removal of content as businesses would understandably take a safety-first approach to defend themselves. It also absolutely cannot lead to a general monitoring of content by the back door.”

Big Tech has faced intensified scrutiny since a video of last month’s attacks on two New Zealand mosques was shared repeatedly on several social media sites.

Tech firms could face EU fines for failing to remove terrorist content within one hour

The new law would see tech firms fined up to 4% of their global turnover if they "systematically and persistently" fail to comply.

www.cnbc.com

One aspect of this discussion is a xenforo forum (kiwi farms) which published the manifesto which seems to have inspired the new Zealand attacker.

U.K. lawmakers published a proposal for new legislation on Monday that would slap companies with hefty fines, block websites and hold executives personally liable if their platforms host harmful content.

Last week, Australia passed a similar law that could see tech firms and their executives fined or jailed for failing to remove harmful content from their platforms.

 

[Brad Padgett]

Does anyone believe these new laws have something to do with Brexit? Honestly, I do. I'm seeing each day all these new laws constantly being made in the EU for no apparent reason then only to complicate the system much further. This seems to be an EU response from the UK receding and it's a bit unfair if you ask me. This thread is pretty old but I still wanted to say that's my opinion and I believe it's a good one. Apparently law makers are not thinking clearly whatsoever and now want to ban freedom of speech. What's next, are we going to put a camera in everyone's bathroom to make sure they aren't doing drugs.... This just seems to be an obvious cause if you ask me.

 

[Alpha1]

Did you read that the UK is way ahead of the EU in this regard? While the EU is still debating and as it looks now has at least shown some restraints, the UK has gone full censor. Apparently the UK doesn't need the EU to implement stupid laws like this and takes it quite a few steps further.

The UK is going after Big Tech over harmful content: Here's why it matters

Britain just announced plans for a tough new law aimed at forcing tech giants like Facebook and Twitter to clean up their platforms.

www.cnbc.com

UK Government Proposes Digital Harms Legislation to Regulate Online Content

Two of the most powerful Ministers in the UK government, the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the secretary of state for the Home Department, have published a document, titled Online Harms White Paper,

www.securityweek.com

Websites face being blocked in UK by new 'online harms' regulator

Tech companies have got away with avoiding responsibility for their content for too long, say ministers, announcing legal change.

news.sky.com

No ID, no entry | The Spectator

The government wants to stop children watching porn, but will it really work?

www.spectator.co.uk

As it looks now, if your website has content deemed harmful, then the UK censoring agency will block it akin to the great firewall of China.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I understand arguments on both sides of this:

1. Freedom of speech should allow people to incite acts of violence against others (based on race, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs.
2. Freedom of speech should not allow people to incite acts of violence against others (based on race, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs.

My personal leanings are towards (2)

 

[sbj]

Tackling illegal content...

I think hate speech should be punishable, I'm all for it. If you are a minority of some kind of, you know why it is important.

However, I find intellectual property rights should be adjusted according to our times. I find those regulations are too much in favor for copyright holders.

 

[Claverhouse]

I'm sure it's universal that elected bodies are having a blitz on Free Speech and online content. Alfa1 mentions both Australasian governments bringing in restrictions because of the Mosque Shooting [ and whilst I have no great interest in guns and consider gun nuts rather ridiculous, the immediate ban brought in in New Zealand seemed a classic hysterical over-reaction.

in Britain more laws are coming into place mentioned in other threads;

every few years France tries to bring in a 3 Strikes Law for piracy [ I remember when Sarkozy's government tried that time, it turned out that the Presidential palace had done some downloading... ];

Russia is tightening the Internet, and even planning a private parallel Internet;

America has lost all moral values with the Affaire' Julian and the Affaire' Russe: not only doing bad **** in the first place like shooting civilians on camera, but prosecuting those who revealed the facts online, extraditing aliens [ a terrifying democratic senator: "He is our property and we can get the facts and the truth from him." ] [ although kindly taking the death penalty off the table for the alleged extraditable crime of hacking a password ] and trying to prevent publication of poorly guarded DNC emails --- and apart from the penalties in all the Patriot type Acts, America has a thriving industry in censorship laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_law_in_the_United_States


Reporters Without Borders has a lot of countries designated as Enemies of the Internet, including France, Belarus, America and Britain, few of whom are in the EU.


In Alfa1's post, his comment 'It seems that admins will no longer be allowed to sleep or be offline.' seems very fair --- and not for myself, but I feel for the unfortunate denizens of Facebook and Twitter etc., who as I have said are --- due to the overblown histrionics of excited people --- now expected to police every fecking line.

 

[Mr Lucky]

However, I find intellectual property rights should be adjusted according to our times.

Do you mean you would like to redefine what rights artists have over their own works? I don't see how anything in recent times would justify taking away artists' rights or their income.

 

[sbj]

Do you mean you would like to redefine what rights artists have over their own works? I don't see how anything in recent times would justify taking away artists' rights or their income.

Well, I find it highly unreasonable, when most people have to create actual work in order to get paid. Whereas "artists" can release let's say one song of 3 minutes and perpetually create revenue out of it for 70-90 years. 1 single thing can be duplicated for free millions of times and sold to millions of people. I don't think this is fair.

The balance is just not right. The put work behind the creation of the "art" and the revenue you can get out of it is not proportional in any sense. Normal labour work or any other kind of work doesn't have that, because you have to put actual work and time, ALL THE TIME, if you want to get paid constantly. And even then you get paid just the minimum fees most of the time. You can't become millionaire the next night, day, week, year, lifetime.
Whereas so called "artists" can become that. With so little effort so much revenue. In the digital era where we can copy bytes and bits with 0 costs, it is just unfair in my opinion.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Well, I find it highly unreasonable, when most people have to create actual work in order to get paid. Whereas "artists" can release let's say one song of 3 minutes and perpetually create revennue out of it for 70-90 years. 1 single thing can be duplicated for free millions of times and sold to millions of people. I don't think this is fair.

Hmm, I make a decent living from my work which thankfully does have some protection. I have worked very hard and like most artists have made a small to medium income. A very very few make huge incomes and there days even there megastars probably make more from live performances than they do from intellectual property.

Granted, I might have made more if the copyright laws were enforced with more teeth, hence I'm optimistic for the new EU laws.

 

[sbj]

I have worked very hard and like most artists have made a small to medium income.

I don't want to say artists don't work hard, they do, like all other people. But the revenue you can get from your hard work is not at the same level as normal people's work, because you can somehow duplicate your outcome of the work millions of times for free and reap the outcome in an unbalanced amount of way.

 

[Chris D]

I've done a little bit of repairing in the last few posts, but just to be clear; I think we can have this discussion without making reference to the religious affiliations of some terrorists. I'm certain no offence was intended, but we should err on the side of caution there and just omit religion from the discussion entirely.

 

[Brad Padgett]

Did you read that the UK is way ahead of the EU in this regard? While the EU is still debating and as it looks now has at least shown some restraints, the UK has gone full censor. Apparently the UK doesn't need the EU to implement stupid laws like this and takes it quite a few steps further.

The UK is going after Big Tech over harmful content: Here's why it matters

Britain just announced plans for a tough new law aimed at forcing tech giants like Facebook and Twitter to clean up their platforms.

www.cnbc.com

UK Government Proposes Digital Harms Legislation to Regulate Online Content

Two of the most powerful Ministers in the UK government, the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the secretary of state for the Home Department, have published a document, titled Online Harms White Paper,

www.securityweek.com

Websites face being blocked in UK by new 'online harms' regulator

Tech companies have got away with avoiding responsibility for their content for too long, say ministers, announcing legal change.

news.sky.com

No ID, no entry | The Spectator

The government wants to stop children watching porn, but will it really work?

www.spectator.co.uk

As it looks now, if your website has content deemed harmful, then the UK censoring agency will block it akin to the great firewall of China.

Yeah I wasn't aware of this although just making the assumption Brexit was the reason simply because it's happening around the same time. Even with the UK doing the same type thing it seems GDPR and all this nonsense has all happened close to the same time period. So regardless it makes you wonder. If it had nothing to do with these new laws then why is it all around the same time period? Just makes you question the real reason these bureaucrats are making pointless laws. And @sbj I agree certain content should be regulated but still you got to understand that most of this content already has laws per the type of content it is and doesn't need extra laws regulating them. I don't even need to say which that is. I think we all know the main stuff that's illegal on the internet. All of those things should be regulated however hate speech, while still a terrible thing should not warrant jail/prison time for unless it's seductively displayed on a website in a form of where the site itself is provocatively displaying the content and inducing it in a matter that it reflects the entire site as a whole. I can't imagine how someone could agree with putting a company in jail simply because a user in their forums said something that was not monitored properly and was hateful. A lot of these forums have hundreds if not thousands of users on every day. Unless they have an enormous staff team, a lot of this content really does go un-monitored.

The point is, most of these laws their making don't have any feasable means not only to be properly regulated (this means everyone, not just a small handful they can catch) and not just that but most of them (excluding GDPR because obviously it's not as hard to comply) are not legitimately possible to comply with for everyone. Yes if you have 10 members on your site a day you can probably regulate that but how can anyone with thousands of users comply with such backwash laws? It doesn't seem like these law makers are expecting the law to be followed but merely giving a guideline border wall basically giving a guidance law to keep forums in-line rather than to regulate them with an actual law. In other words "watch what you do, we won't watch you". The only ones who would even be affected by this in my opinion legitimately speaking are corporate giants that have much to lose. Yes of course there's going to be a handful of people who get in trouble that were small time forums (EU Speaking) but the majority of those affected will have much more to lose then someone with a hobby niche. Just my thoughts....

 

[Walter]

It seems that admins will no longer be allowed to sleep or be offline.

For smaller companies/forums its not a 1 hour deadline but 12 hours.
Source: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/mel...lte-binnen-einer-Stunde-loeschen-4402105.html

 

[Alpha1]

As I read it, for small sites the first offense has a 12 hour deadline. After that its 1 hour.

 

[sbj]

@Brad Padgett
I wasn't talking about that site owners should be charged for everyrhing their users do or say. I was just saying that hate speech cannot be seen under the umbrella of free speech. Otherwise I can start insulting everybody right and call it "free".

And I wasn't saying jail time, just it needs to be punished. How? That's up to the communities.

 

[combatgamez]

so you host in a country that doesnt follow these laws, good luck finding me and good luck suing me..

all the EU and UK are doing is ostracizing themselves from the rest of the world, its not going to end well when you try and act like communists,,,,,..

 

[Mr Lucky]

all the EU and UK are doing is ostracizing themselves from the rest of the world, its not going to end well when you try and act like communists,,,,,..

What is communist about respecting property rights? (almost the opposite I would have thought). The idea of an individual owning intellectual property is more of a capitalist concept isn't it? Also, there is nothing inherently communist about making laws against incitement to be violent towards a group of people.

 

[combatgamez]

reduction of freedom of speech = communist = control the people.

sorry being simplistic here but its true.

 

[Mr Lucky]

communism
/ˈkɒmjʊnɪz(ə)m/
noun

1. a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
   

   synonyms:

   collectivism, state ownership, socialism, radical socialism; More

It's probably also worth looking at (international) current definitions of Freedom of speech and see if it includes incitement to violence

Freedom of speech - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury.

 

[combatgamez]

please seriously... words cannot be an incitement of violence but hey you believe what you want to....I guess.

and no words cannot offend.

hopefully next you can post some buzzfeed or vox references for additional information and fact.....