trachea: All I can say is...first of all, you're overreacting. Second of all, you're not overreacting.
Okay, so let's be real: your sources are terrible. They are a bunch of talking heads. I almost dismissed everything you are concerned about when you posted an Alex Jones link. Don't ever do that again. It makes you look silly.
But then you post a guy who started up his channel to "roast crazy social justice warriors" and some guy in front of a Matrix background. Yeah. As though any of them had anything worth listening to. But the more I considered it, the more I thought maybe you may be onto something.
I think this needs a special mention. I'm sure you've heard of tinfoil hats, and the nuts that wore them. They believe in government mind control projects, like
this (you really need to click this), and that you could protect yourself from microwaves (we were real big on the electromagnetic spectrum at that time, so totally understandable) using tinfoil hats. While they were totally wrong, it turns out they weren't completely wrong, either. Surprise.
How about
this video and
this followup video that describe a "UFO encounter," which any sensible person (and other news agencies) would declare as
another airspace violation by Russia?
And, hey, while we're on the topic of nuts, what about conspiracy theories regarding secret societies? Devil worship? Closed doors meetings? Hm, great for clickbait. But, what if you had a
secret organization of marxists who, upon loosing to Hitler while trying to take over the country, fled Germany and
had a huge influence on the education systems and politics all over the world right out in the open (i'd love to somehow link them to the UN and Agenda 21, but i prefer to deal in facts)?
But, hey, really need to avoid that conspiracy. I just learned that sometimes it can be really, really revealing. I don't know how these nuts get their information, but if you apply the ideas they have to more mundane things, it's almost like they get clues from people with insider information, and consistently manage to fuck it up. After hearing alot from the nuts about "a big alien reveal in 2018," i'm expecting something either religiously oriented or (more likely) something related to certain migrating groups of people.
While conspiracy neckbeards should be largely ignored, what should not be ignored is the EU's history with regards to censorship - but more importantly, with regards to how many countries in the EU simply misunderstand how the internet functions.
The cookie law, the ineffective privacy laws, and i'm really sick of seeing shit for both. I really want Europe to stop, because i'm sick of getting notifications on every damn site and app in existence for all this shit constantly.
Let's pull it back a bit. First of all, let's not attribute this to maliciousness when it could be attributed to pure stupidity. Looking at what is proposed (Article 11 is actually the "link tax", not Article 13), it kind of sort of makes sense that someone would propose something like this. In a very narrow scope, it does make sense. A lot of news organizations are actually not making money because of people leeching off their work. Is this the right way to go about things? Absolutely not. A business needs to fail or succeed on its own. If a business is failing and a governement wants to prop it up, there are more socially responsible ways of doing such a thing.
If an existing law would suffice, but they insist on writing a new one, it's malice. Existing gun laws in the US work, but they're not enforced, hence the gun troubles. The most recent shootings were all committed by people whom we knew, after the fact, were not really legally able to have the guns that they were legally given: because the laws weren't enforced. Nikolas Cruz was a very, very special case, because the gun laws were circumvented by a local law regarding prosecution for "petty crimes," which was championed as a civil rights victory by Obama. Because of this program, Nikolas Cruz didn't have the record that would have landed him in the FBI database. I don't believe i can attribute that to malice, as it's quite a stretch to say that they wrote laws hoping that someday Cruz would've shot up his school. What i do attribute to malice is all the proposals for new gun laws when the existing ones would work if enforced (and the real joke of the issue is that the new ones would most likely be selectively enforced).
Now, what laws? IIRC, the EU as a whole has some pretty good copyright laws in effect, that are stronger than the US'. I was researching how it worked about 10 years ago, when me and a friend from Slovenia were working on an OS kernel together. We didn't want nailed, so it turns out that in the US, you can't copyright something that you didn't write (patents are a special case), copyrights are automatic in europe (without official registration and fees). So we were pretty much protected by our home countries. So, why aren't these rules enforced? Is it because they're sourced and not plagiarized, or is it because the laws go unenforced (i think it's both, really)?
Now, part of the problem is that every country has its own copyright laws, BUT I WOULD ARGUE that while the contents of what is behind a link are not necessarily yours for the taking, what IS public domain is a website link. THAT is information that could argued to be in the public domain. It's like a street address, really. That is at least the argument I would take if I was a lawyer which I am not.
Right, sourcing shouldn't be an issue. I understand that if you write a crappy summary article and source a competitor, you take the competitor's ad revenue if they don't check your source. That is fair, but then you also benefit alot more from covering things better than buzzfeed. If your content is worth reading, people will bother to read it. Otherwise, a rival site will de-clickbait you.
Plagiarism is another issue, but those people are likely to continue doing this and not even source you, since sourcing is more enforceable than plagiarisation.
BUT THEN, let's take this one step further. Let's consider websites like houses. But not just any houses. Open houses with 24/7 access. You are not just encouraged to stop by but also take a look around and hang out for a while! I mean, the website owner COULD have stopped you from having access by simply putting up a password screen, but he didn't.
But it goes beyond that. Sure, you can put up a password access, but that's essentially like forcing someone to prove themselves before you give them a key to your apartment building. It may be secure, but it's not that secure. Someone can still walk in with two armfuls of beers. And you may say to people "I would like it if you didn't come in here with two armfuls of beers but hey...it's your choice if you do want to get wasted and take a shit on my floor."
That is, in essence why you can't truly enforce laws like they are proposing. Even in the EU where everyone has their head up their ass. Even me, because I have just spewed a mountain of poo poo. Well written poop, but still...
I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective: the problem isn't people seeing your articles, but people
not seeing the articles. It's the copyright issue, all over again. If i make baseball bats, people can't just pick up my product and take a copy without paying for it. Books, you still have to print, so you can go nail the printing press. Online digital goods, no.
And the bigger problem, too, is ad-blockers. Most sites make money through ads, and the ads are bad (because ad-blockers only block "intrusive ads"), so people block them. Now you have to unblock the site to see the content. I actually saw a news company in the UK complain (maybe 2 hours ago) about this when it detected my ad-blocker, and asked for a dollar "because we're cool enough not to put up that annoying wall." I almost caved and did, only to stop and realize i ain't coming back, anyway. So, news agencies are loosing business to the ones that haven't figured out how to put a wall up, yet. This is what it really comes down to, and the real purpose, because news companies are loosing money fast, because they're relying on ads instead of patreon like the youtuber media, whom the US companies have been battling (what kills me is that eveyone's denying what's really going on, because it's painfully obvious that the mainstream media has preferential search results in the search algorithm, even if i type in the name of the youtuber i want to see and the title of the video).
What we're seeing is that the mainstream media can't keep up with the times. Will this hurt alternative media if the mainstream media disappears? Actually, probably, since youtubers souce them, too, only to criticize their reporting and steal their thunder. Without MSM, youtubers don't have a source for their stories.
