Message boards, smaller search engines, small news organizations, product reviews, distro platform sites...

Actually, the link tax would be if you LINKED to another site right? Hmmm... what if we just copied the story and hosted the story on the local server and dropped all ads and useless information from the site? That would remove the need for the link tax, but if 50 news sites do this you have 51 copies of a news story that was sourced from one news source... cutting traffic to them as well as not getting updates (although also not disappearing if they decided to ban the source because they would have to contact all 51 or more web pages and that's less likely).

Hmmm

It's mentioned that Spain tried to do something similar and Google and other sites just pulled out, and they lost traffic, and after a year they repealed their stance and dropped it all because it was hurting them so much...

So in exchange, perhaps all of the UK would basically become a black hole, and HUGE riots and protests because the internet plug of the EU/UK would be pulled since no one would able by those rules (Because they are impossible to follow).

More and more it feels that every law to 'do something' does the exact opposite of what it says it will do.

The answer, is more liberty, more freedom, not regulation censorship or control.

They're not impossible to follow, just really unrealistic. It's not impossible to follow the rules in the bible, but it doesn't happen, either. Government is incompetent. Imagine that. You're funny. You think the people causing this trouble care that they're causing trouble.

I wish I had seen some of the posts in this thread sooner but for some reason because they were low-rated, they were hidden from me. I just wanted to point out how shitty that was, particularly the direct response to my post. If I was not curious as to the status of this thread, I would have remained blissfully unaware of how people responded to me and that is awful especially considering that it was a legitimate dialogue that was opened, not simply trolling or hateful garbage. Just someone who may have disagreed with me had their voice stifled because X number of users happened to think that person's point was not valid.

And maybe it was not valid. But I had to go out of my way to determine for myself whether or not those points were valid because they were hidden. I could have remained blissfully unaware because they happened to be downvoted (and yes I am using that term specifically to draw parallels between Reddit and this forum.) And in the end, that is a terrible way for this forum to be run.

Downvotes are arguably worse than simply removing someone's posts. What if several people in the community decide that User X deserves to be targeted and thusly downvoted and thusly have their voice ignored en masse? I may disagree terribly with conspiracy-think, but does that mean that people who believe in BELIEF X deserve to be silenced because they may disagree with me or carry an opinion that is considered wrong by the group? I have a hard time justifying this.

Certainly there are beliefs worth rooting out and expelling. I am certainly not implying that everyone deserves a platform. But simply spouting an unpopular opinion is not something that deserves to be silenced for. And after experiencing the semi-libertarian view of GOG's stance on DRM, I am shocked that the downvote system would be implemented into GOG's forums. Again, I am not addressing particularly vile or vulgar opinions. I am addressing the fact that someone voiced an opinion that was somewhat unpopular, and as such, they were silenced by "the community", whatever that might mean.

All I know is that tonight I had to make a conscious choice to engage with someone's respectful opinion and that to me is something that will never sit right. I fully admit that I have been wrong in my life. I am imperfect. How can I possibly expect to grow if differing points of view are stomped out like campfire embers?

Look guys, linking has been alleged as copyright infringement in many court cases, where the linking party was sued for copyright infringement and none of the judges in those various cases threw out those cases. Out of touch politicians or not not; even many sane / well meaning and educated judges don't know or care more about linking than about other forms of copyright, and that's copyright in the old fashioned way; which is strictly enforced and watertight, or not enforced at all. My Information Technology Law exam was just a few days ago and I can say with quite a bit of certainty that there have been no cases where judges recognised linking as beneficial / promotional in nature, like most of us on the internet correctly do.

Intellectual property law in relation to the internet is still in its infancy, and any attempt to pigeonhole linking into law that doesn't recognise its differences to traditional all-or-none copyright is bad, and anyone should be able to see this even if the people trying to do it is their precious, innocent little EU.

What I don't understand is why rtcvb32 did not post the most relevant and trustworthy link of all: from a member of the EU parliament actively discussing this issue. Julia Reda from the Pirate Party. I have already called and written to my EU representatives. I shall do it again. This is all silly talk. The problem is that the people discussing this are politicians, not tech-savvy people. They have no idea of the impact such measures can have.

Yeah those law are very concerning and could have, depending of their interpretation and implementation, terrible consequences. Sadly the EU has proven times and times again that just because a law is stupid, badly written, and inapplicable, it doesn't mean that it won't be voted.

So uh, could someone explain to me how exactly this is going to "break" the internet, as these people are claiming? I mean, I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I've read those articles 11-13, and it sounds pretty much the same as the DMCA in the US, up to the point of having a "safe harbor" provision?

DMCA isn't exactly a good thing, but it didn't break the internet, either.

I found this on KiA; https://juliareda.eu/2018/06/saveyourinternet/
I don't know what most of the parties here believe (ie wtf are pirates?) but it seems most people in favour are right wing?