[经济学人] Internet regulation in Europe: Screen grab

Posted on October 10, 2018 本文总阅读量次

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Internet regulation in Europe
欧洲互联网监管

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A new copyright law and a court case are the latest examples of the EU’s technological assertiveness
欧盟面对科技公司立场强硬，新的版权法和法庭诉讼是最新例证

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN has been dead for nearly 200 years. The copyright on his music is long expired. But when Ulrich Kaiser, an academic at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, recently tried to upload a public-domain recording of his Fifth Symphony to YouTube, he was thwarted by Content ID, an automated copyright filter. Mr Kaiser tried again with recordings of music by Schubert, Puccini and Wagner. Despite being in the public domain, all were flagged for copyright violations by the algorithm.

贝多芬去世已近两百年。他的音乐版权已过期很久。然而，最近慕尼黑音乐戏剧学院（University of Music and Performing Arts Munich）的学者乌尔里希•凯瑟（Ulrich Kaiser）想要将贝多芬第五交响曲的一段属于公有领域的录音上传到YouTube时，却被自动版权过滤器Content ID挡住了。凯瑟又尝试了舒伯特、普契尼和瓦格纳的音乐作品。尽管所有乐曲都属于公有领域，却全都被算法标注为侵犯版权。

YouTube built Content ID a decade ago, under pressure from copyright-holders worried that users were uploading commercial music and videos without permission. Ever since users have complained that the algorithm is too aggressive. Now YouTube and other big internet firms may be obliged by European law to employ similar methods there. On September 12th members of the European Parliament approved, by 438 votes to 226, a draft of a new copyright law designed to update the EU’s copyright legislation, which predates the rise of big internet gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook. The rules sparked death threats against MEPs and a million-signature petition against the proposals.

版权所有者担心用户未经许可就上传商业音乐和视频，在他们的施压下，YouTube于十年前打造了Content ID。自那之后用户一直抱怨这种算法过于激进。而现在，YouTube和其他大型互联网公司可能还得依照欧洲法律，在欧洲也实施类似的操作。9月12日，欧洲议会以438票对226票通过了一项新的版权法草案，将用于更新早在谷歌和Facebook等大型互联网看门人崛起之前就颁布的原欧盟版权法。这引来了对欧洲议员的死亡威胁，还有一份百万人签名反对提案的请愿书。

Two provisions are particularly contentious. The first is Article 13, which compels internet firms, whose users upload large quantities of video, music, text and the like, to work with copyright-holders to ensure that anything that breaches copyright can be detected as soon as it is posted. That probably means they will have to deploy many more content filters like Content ID, which are worryingly imp`recise.

Technology companies, and those who advocate an open internet, say the effect will be dire. In the quest to give more protection to copyrighted work, everything from political-protest videos to citizen journalism and viral memes, they argue, risks being squashed by overzealous enforcers. The freewheeling nature of the internet could change, they warn. That is a prospect often wheeled out by the internet lobby and is probably an exaggeration. But some collateral damage seems likely. The effects could reach into unexpected places. GitHub, for instance, is an online code repository. It worries that open-source computer code hosted on its site might fall foul of the new filters.

科技公司和那些支持互联网开放的公司表示，这会带来可怕的影响。它们认为，在为版权作品寻求更多保护的过程中，从政治抗议视频到公民新闻再到疯传的搞笑图文等各种内容都有可能被热心过头的执法者压制。它们警告说，互联网随心所欲的本质可能会改变。这一可能性常常被互联网游说团体搬出来说事，或许有些夸张，但一些连带损害似乎还是可能的。其影响可能会波及意想不到的地方。例如，在线代码库GitHub就担心自己网站上的开源计算机代码可能会与新的过滤器冲突。

Whose internet is it anyway?
到底是谁的互联网？

The second fight was over Article 11, which pits tech firms against publishers. It requires social networks and aggregators such as Google’s “News” search engine to obtain a licence from publishers before displaying snippets of news reports to their users. Firms such as Google and Twitter profit from the attention generated by news that is gathered by others, note Article 11’s advocates, and should therefore share the revenues that result. But critics decry it as a “link tax” that would also radically limit the freedom of internet users.

另一项引起争议的条款是第11条，它让科技公司与出版商陷入对立。它要求社交网络和谷歌新闻搜索引擎等聚合器在向用户展示新闻报道摘要之前，必须先获得出版商的许可。第11条的拥护者指出，谷歌和Twitter等公司靠其他人收集的新闻吸引到的关注获利，因此应该分享由此产生的收入。但批评者谴责它是一种“链接税”，也会从根本上限制互联网用户的自由。

Article 11 is a Europe-wide version of similar rules introduced in Germany and Spain in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Google’s response in Spain was to pull the plug on its news service, to the detriment of publishers that relied on it for traffic. By making a similar law apply across the entire European market, the hope is that Google (and other companies) will be forced to keep services running and share some of their revenues.

德国和西班牙分别在2013年和2014年推出过类似的法规，而第11条则会将它们扩展到整个欧盟。谷歌在西班牙的应对方法是终止其新闻服务，这对那些靠它获得流量的出版商不利。通过将类似的法律应用于整个欧洲市场，欧盟希望谷歌（以及其他公司）将被迫继续运营这类服务并分享部分收入。

Predicting the exact consequences of all these new rules is difficult, says Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, a British organisation that opposed the changes. They must be approved by both the European Commission and the EU’s 28 member states before they can be finalised. But the planned legislation is another example of rising European assertiveness when it comes to regulating the internet—in May the EU brought into force the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a far-reaching privacy law. One result could be yet more “geo-fencing”, whereby the internet becomes fragmented along geographical lines. After the GDPR came into force, some American websites decided to block Europe-based visitors rather than comply.

来自反对这些改变的英国“开放权利组织”（Open Rights Group）的吉姆・基洛克（Jim Killock）表示，很难预测所有这些新规则的确切后果。新规必须得到欧盟委员会和欧盟28个成员国的批准才能最终敲定。但这项立法提案是欧洲对互联网监管日益强硬的又一例证。欧盟今年5月颁布了一项影响深远的隐私法——《一般数据保护条例》（General Data Protection Regulation，简称GDPR）。新规的一个可能的结果是会造成更多的“地理围栏”，让互联网被地理边界切割得支离破碎。GDPR生效后，一些美国网站决定把欧洲的访问者挡在门外，而不是遵守这项法规。

More regulation may be in the offing. The day before the parliamentary vote Google was at the European Court of Justice, in Luxembourg, to do legal battle with the CNIL, France’s data-protection authority. The dispute concerned the “right to be forgotten”, under which the EU requires search engines, in certain circumstances, to remove links to webpages with personal information about European citizens. Google’s approach has been to remove links to the offending pages only for EU users. The CNIL says that, because the tech used to determine where a user is based can be circumvented, links should be removed for all users, anywhere in the world. A ruling is expected next year. Europe may not have its own internet giants, but it is having plenty of impact on America’s.

更多的监管可能即将出台。在欧洲议会投票的前一天，在设立于卢森堡的欧洲法院，谷歌正在与法国的数据保护机构国家信息自由委员会（CNIL）打官司。这场争议涉及的是“被遗忘权”。根据该权利，欧盟要求搜索引擎在某些情况下删除含有欧洲公民个人信息的网页链接。谷歌采取的方法一直是只对欧盟用户删除那些指向违规页面的链接。CNIL认为，因为用于确定用户位置的技术是可以被绕行的，所以应该对全世界各地的所有用户都删除链接。预计明年会做出裁决。欧洲或许没有自己的互联网巨头，但它正在对美国的互联网巨头产生重大影响。

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