EU Considering Regulating Video Bloggers 351
Aglassis writes to tell us that recent proposed EU legislation could require anyone running a website featuring video content to acquire a broadcast license. From the article: "Personal websites would have to be licensed as a "television-like service". Once again the reasoning behind such legislation is said to be in order to set minimum standards on areas such as hate speech and the protection of children. In reality this directive would do nothing to protect children or prevent hate speech - unless you judge protecting children to be denying them access to anything that is not government regulated or you assume hate speech to be the criticism of government actions and policy."
Taxman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
Taxman!
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
Don't ask me what I want it for (Aahh Mr. Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more (Aahh Mr. Heath)
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cos I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me
Taxman!
-George Harrison
How much more stupid are politicians going to get? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thin justification (Score:5, Insightful)
As for protecting the children, I think they'd be more interested in regulating MySpacesterKut et al. I mean, that's where all the pedophiles are gathering, which represents an ACTUAL threat to children, rather than the viewing of naughty videos, which represents... well, no real threat at all. I mean, WTF?
But more to the point: anytime someone wants to do something "in the interests of the children", doesn't your bullshit detector go off like crazy? Mine did, so I thought this through:
1) Hate speech and naughty content can occur equally as well via the media of text and pictures. Video doesn't necessarily add anything to either one. In fact, any smart, savvy Holocaust denier will tell you that text is a far more efficient and cost-effective method of defaming Jews.
2) Text (chat, specifically) is really the ONLY thing for which you can make a halfway-serious argument about the protection of children online. The idea that videos will somehow threaten children (they'll come get you in the middle of the night!) is just inane.
3) Broadcast license fees open up a new revenue source for the government, which can be used to directly tax internet content (which so far is nearly unheard of).
I mean, this is practically a QED: It's about money, specifically taxes.
Where are they headed? (Score:3, Insightful)
So... how long? (Score:5, Insightful)
How long until we see countries leaving the EU? I mean, I really like the idea of a common currency, but given the number of problems and the obvious attempts to create a single government to rule over Europe, how long until the UK decides to leave?
Can anyone point out to me how the UK benefits from being in the EU (as opposed to the EEA)? When (not if) the Conservatives come back to power, what reason do they have to remain in a union that subsidises crappy French farming?
Too many problems of history are wrapped up in the EU. Germans are afraid of their past, and so is everyone else. France wants to get the EU Constitution so it can try to run Europe as a rebuilding of Napoleon's empire. A lot of poorer nations have joined to get subsidies. It sounds really nice, but the cost is egregious.
The current face of censorship: "Hate speech" (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks to all those who are "offended" by ignorant, belligerent, and on rare occasions insightful opinions, we have the PC phrase "hate speech." This phrase is a wonderful thing, being so flexible that it can be applied almost without limitation. Today it's used against people who are pro-life, against racial and gender quotas, practice or identify their faith publicly, or oppose illegal immigration. Today, it will also be used to justify modding down this post. Tomorrow, it will be used against you to place you in prison.
You reap what you sow.
Re:Never going to work (Score:5, Insightful)
But we have gotten used to the side benefit and lost track of the original purpose for the licensing infrastructure, which is almost gone. The only reason to have broadcast licenses anymore is to control what people are allowed to say and which words are to be included in the infamous unutterable seven, and to collect the fines levied on people who say the wrong thing.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:3, Insightful)
That was Ben Franklin. Not a president.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm attacking the current administration - I live in the USA. I like the USA (well, the parts I've managed to visit, anyway). I like the people. I loath the administration and what they've done to the fundamental rights of humans, all in the name of "protection". I loath the callous manipulation of people just to maintain their grasp on power. I loath the casual attitude to human life if it's not the life of one of their voters.
If I'd read the last 5 years in a sci-fi novel, I'd say the author was high - no-one would be able to do that to the USA, would they ? Sadly, they could, and they did.
Note the lack of personal attacks in this too...
Simon.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a fair amount of criticism of this latest insult to human rights, and it's not just on CNN. The right of "habeus corpus" is the fundamental right of a prisoner to demand a *fair* review of why he is a captive. If you don't have that right (which by the way, your constitution prevents being suspended unless you're being invaded or you're in rebellion), pretty much any other right in the bill of rights is irrelevant. You can be held indefinitely, and suffer any indignity because they never have to free you.
[from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]]
According to Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel, "nothing could be less American than a government that can indefinitely hold people in secret torture cells, take away their protections against horrific and cruel abuse, put them on trial based on evidence that they cannot see, sentence them to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and then slam shut the courthouse door for any habeas petition, but that's exactly what Congress just approved."
Simon.
Why video? (Score:1, Insightful)
So what about radio and tv, broadcasters need a licence. Thats because the airwaves are owned by the government, which rent frequencies to broadcasters. This gives governments power over who broadcasts in advance, which has pros and cons, but ultimatly hampers free speech.
Bas
This will discriminate against he deaf (Score:5, Insightful)
Video communication would be severely curtailed, compared to voice communication. As ridiculous as it may sound, one unintended consequence of this directive would thus be discrimination against a specific disability, which itself is prohibited under EU law. This needs to be fought tooth and nail, for more than just free speech reasons.
Re:Never going to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Come now, you don't think this legislation has anything scientific reasoning behind it, do you? It's just a convienent way for the govenment to exercise control over free speech and raise revenue.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:3, Insightful)
And suspension of HC (I'm sick of typing it out!) _is_ a big deal. When the UK introduced the RIP bill [wikipedia.org] (another odious piece of legislation) that would bring back the Star Chamber [wikipedia.org] for some offences if part-3 ever gets passed, there were many protests, even some civil unrest at one of them, IIRC. If they'd tried to remove HC, I can't believe it would have gone over as smoothly as it seems to have done here... You lot don't even get the Star Chamber...
As a foreign national living in the USA, it obviously concerns me a lot more than your average slashdotter, but the language of who this bill affects is sufficiently vague as to probably include US citizens as well.
Now perhaps I'll stop replying to people, and the thread can die a natural death - next time I'm irritated by someone, I'll not bother posting, I reckon!
Simon.
sounds fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
They STLL don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
So how does the EU plan to regulate a website run from say, Uganda, exactly? Sanctions? Boycott? Censorship?
Not about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Europeans need EU to stop from killing each oth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Who sets the rules on acceptable content?
The Iranians would say that publishing an image of their God is blasphamy or a womans face is obsense. Liberal European countries laugh at the US for it's puritan ways (such as obscuring womans nipples in advertising - MTV, Naked Wild On).
Here's the core of the problem
[1] The Internet connects many networks in different countrys together
[2] Each country has different laws. USA laws do NOT work outside of the US - Really! - no BS there, I really do mean that last remark.
So..... [1] If you don't like something on a web site, do visit the web site again.
[2] If you want your childern to see something unsuitble then bring them up to understand right from wrong and sit with them when they use the Internet
[3] Just don't try to force your point of view onto other ppl.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all! We are talking about people who are "designated enemy combatants". They may have been captured anywhere, at any time, and may not have committed any crime at all, let alone war crimes.
Jose Padilla, for instance, was arrested in Chicago, when he got off the plane at O'Hare airport. Not on a battlefield at all.
The Bush regime would like you to think this: "these repressive laws apply only to dangerous criminals - if you aren't a terrorist you have nothing to fear". But until people have had a chance to defend themselves, how can you possibly know that they are criminals? Answer: you can't. Well over 200 people held as "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo have been released and allowed to return to their homes. These people turned out NOT to be enemy combatants after all, didn't they? But it took years for this to be established, not least because they were unable to offer any defence to the charges which were made against them because they did not know what the charges were! How can you offer an alibi to disprove a secret denunciation? "I wasn't there your honour!" "I didn't do it!".
On the basis of secret "evidence" (oxymoronic - secrets are by definition not "evident"), Guantanamo inmates were held in pretty ugly conditions, for years. Shackled, abused, some of them literally beaten to death. Some of them despaired and committed suicide. They are denied the basic human right to justice which the US constitution supposedly guaranteed. This is legalised now! Now, under US law, you are no longer innocent until proven guilty. The president can legally just pick up the phone and "designate" you, and you can be "disappeared". What's to prevent abuse? How you can have any confidence that these disappearances are even based on good intelligence? Going by the record, I wouldn't trust the intelligence agencies to sit the right way on a toilet seat.
You are all forgetting something I reckon (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything this only bring video web site up the SAME standard as other media. Which is IMO not a bad thing (having the same standard that is).
Now you can argue to death that thougth crime are bad and should not be penalized, but this is forgetting TWO THING :
* USA with its constitutional amendment is the USA, and never had global war on its soil except texas mexican war, and indep war (19th century all of it, isn't it?). No I do not really count as "global" war.
* EU still bear the scar of WW2 in some place, and certainly bear the scar of nazism at least in its culture, and has at least 2 global war on its soil in the last 100 years. Some are still alive to remmember what the Nazi at that time did.
In other word you are judging OUR culture with the "mass and measurement" of YOUR culture. All I am saying is that you might get a conclusion that such a law is bad for your cultural stand point, but this is like judging the egyptian culture : it is quite easy to judge your neighbours or somebody foreign to you, but another to judge itself.
Frankly if I wanted to spark a real debat I would say "why are you all screaming murder for this simple broadcast law, whereas you aren't on the street taking arms when your own governement suspend habeas corpus, and can make people disappear like in a very bad dictature ?"
Think deeply on tat before modding me either up or down.
Re:Taxman! (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just like Reagan have said: "If it moves - tax it, if it still moves - regulate it, if it cease to move - subsidize it".
The same greedy career hunting bureaucrats having had M$, now look for something new to profit from. True image of EU :-(
Re:How is Bush any different...... (Score:1, Insightful)
Can you provide a SINGLE example of where someone did nothing but criticized the President and was imprisoned or even just detained?
Given the evil doings of Kim Jong Bush, that shouldn't be a hard request, right?
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Also, why don't we just abandon the whole court system and let the cops just lock people up directly (after agood beating)? After all, this only applies to the criminals they catch. Why bother about their rights?
Some of us have more than two synapses, are familiar witht the concept of "checks and balances", and are able to see the problem with a "guilty by accusation" policy.
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of the legal mumbo-jumbo, how can you possibly subscribe to a system of human rights that you only believe apply to citizens of a certain country? Either those values are applicable to all of humanity, or your laws are based on hypocrisy and selfishness.
Re:So... how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, for one thing, some people welcome a culturual interchange - even a union - of European countries. I wouldn't mind seeing a single, federated government for Europe, as long as it's a sensible and democratic one. I certainly feel that way, and I certainly feel a certain bond to other people from European countries, the UK in particular because I'm fond of your language. It's sad that it doesn't go both ways, but such is life.
A more practical approach is that joining forces is really the only way the countries in the EU have any chance of remaining a political power on a global scale. The individual countries, including very much the UK and France already are fairly minor compared to the rising powers or, of course, the US. Great Britain in particular has seen an almost catastrophic loss of power over the course of the 20th century, or even the post-WW2 half of it. Even with a common foreign policy, the EU will have a hard time bargaining with Russia and Asia in 20 to 40 years, as individual states there is just no chance at all. Of course, predicting the global state in 20 to 40 years is prone to enormous errors.
Furthermore, political union makes sense as a step after economic union. For instance, there are currently plans to have a common level of taxation on cars and gasoline. As it is, people from Germany routinely drive over the open borders to fill up their cars, saving on taxes in the process. The reverse is true for other goods. This kind of competition might be good for the consumers, but it's not good for the states who lose tax revenue and a political means of rewarding fuel economy (or restraint from alcohol, or whatever), so they have a reason to level the playing field in those regards. And since by definition our governments represent us, of course we consumers want the playing field levelled, too.
Re:So... how long? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The only thing without frontiers is (Score:3, Insightful)
we have over the years become exactly what we hated - we have become the same as the nation we broke away from.
Oh, one more thing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the whole Gitmo thing is unconstitutional, even though it is occurring on foreign soil to non-US citizens (some of whom may indeed be terrorists), because the abuses there are being perpetrated by the US federal government at a time when a declaration of war is not in effect.
All the lies of George W Bush, Dick Cheny, and others do not alter this fact, nor does the recent passing of clearly unconstitutional legislation by the US Congress that tries to give more powers to the President than those to which he is entitled.
By violating his oath of office (which includes the phrase "protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America"), George W Bush (and others, including those members of the US Congress, be they Republican, Democrat, or "Independent", who voted for the "Rubber Stamp Anything That The President Does That Furthers His Imaginary War on Terror" Act) are comitting treason.
They should be impeached and removed from office ASAP, and then be tried for their crimes (in a Constitutional manner, of course).