When I first read these words (by Cory Doctorow), I was quite surprised. Could an executive entity be so… stupid… ?
The EU Commission has been forced to retract a Medium post in which it patronised and dismissed opponents of the controversial Article 13 proposal that will force platforms to surveil and censor users’ postings with copyright filters, calling them a “mob.”
The Commission characterised the opposition as being stooges for Google, hoodwinked by the company to carry water for it, despite the fact that Google has quietly supported the idea of filters as an acceptable alternative to other forms of regulation (Facebook, too, has supported the proposal).
The answer to my question above is: yes. And just to be clear: I oppose some of the Articles in the proposal, but no-one has paid me to do so!
If you want to read what the EU Commission published, head over to TorrentFreak – they have archived a copy of the text.
Does the text of the Commission in anyway address some of the critiques levelled at the current proposal? Not really. It tries to explain the rationale behind it, but hides that attempt between a number of fabrications that can only be classified as condescending, disrespectful and anti-democratic. How else can you interpret a text that says “Do Google, Facebook or others really need to pay to persuade?“, when you know that such companies are among the biggest lobbyists in Brussel (just check LobbyFacts.eu).
Anyway, let’s talk facts: if you want to know what’s wrong Article 13, head over to the EFF website and read “Artists Against Article 13: When Big Tech and Big Content Make a Meal of Creators, It Doesn’t Matter Who Gets the Bigger Piece“. In short: Article 13 is about filtering content, and no reasonably-size forum can do so without automation. Given that all pattern-recognition software (that’s what AI is about) is strongly dependent on the input used to train it, it’s more than likely that many errors will be made. Obliging the platforms to police the content of its users amounts to a form of privatisation of censorship – without much recourse to a fair trial to redress errors and fraud…
What worries me, as a longtime supporter of Europe, most about the EU Commission’s blog post is that incidents like this one are very likely to diminish enthusiasm for the European unification and for the upcoming European elections; it certainly does so for me. Two decades ago, being an elected official for Europe was an ambition for those with a genuine will to make the European Union a success. These days, it seems more like an extension of local and national politics: you try to be elected because one way or another there’s (big) money to be made there… I know this is a very cynical view – but I can’t help feeling that whoever wrote that EU Commission post as far more cynical about democracy than me!
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