...yup...
well...it was in good faith that such measures were implemented...
so families and next of kin wouldn't be screwed out of the hard work of the loved ones who have left...
and to as well...try to keep the corps and businesses from easily acquiring said copyrights...

of course it has been all turned on its head...
and now ..
the world is in threat of shutting access ...to a great deal...
a "brown age" ...if not a dark one...
culturally, artistically it is the equivalent of castration ..
or so I see it ...

There is a statement on upload filters at openstreetmap.de [1] (in German) that mentions some sort of "Wikipedia exception".
I don't know what that's supposed to be, but I believe the EU parliament truly didn't have in mind to destroy Wikipedia. So they vaguely thought of "something", but I guess even they don't know in legal terms what that "something" is or should be.

This EU decision however is just a framework, which, when it takes effect, needs to be implemented by individual laws of the EU states. I think it's safe to say that this will create a whole zoo of individual laws with all kinds of incompatibilities.

If you are affected by these laws, then I guess it will come down to whether you are "too big to fail". I think Wikipedia is, so they will get their more or less individual exception, either by the EU or its various member states.
However, Openstreetmap seems to think they are not "too big to fail". According to their statement the see a problem in the character of their data. Usually when you need to evade copyright problems with competitors you make your product sufficiently different from theirs. But because their product is "the reality" as they put it, they don't see this as an option. A street in Openstreetmap will always essentially look the same as in the product of any commercial competitor, because there is only one way of displaying it correctly (direction, length, curvature, etc.).


I think the copyright holders will create hashes of their IP (or parts thereof), upload these hashes to some central DB, and whenever someone else uploads new content somewhere, the upload service will hash that new content and compare it to the already existing DB.
So technically speaking, it doesn't even prevent someone from uploading copyrighted material, because the data needs to be uploaded in the first place to compare it against the DB. It's just that the algorithm will decide to publish the uploaded material or not. In any case, the upload volume will tax your data plan (if you are on one).


In Germany you are allowed to create a "personal backup copy" of your media, assuming you don't circumvent any "effective copyright protection" in doing so.
Now, what makes a copyright protection "effective" or not is a constant point of legal debate. It's certainly not as simple as in: "If it can be broken it's not considered effective anymore."
I'm no lawyer, but I feel the general approach is, that it is considered "effective" when it had not been already broken at the time it was first implemented.

To circumvent this "right for personal backup copies", publishers have changed their approach on selling their stuff. They often claim to sell you the physical medium along with a license to consume it's content, but they don't sell the content itself. This way they say you are not allowed to copy the content, because it doesn't belong to you.

Strangely enough though, we pay taxes on storage media (HDDs, empty DVDs, USB sticks - anything, even whole computers) to compensate for the financial loss that copyright holders may experience due to copyright violations.

You just have to pay enough for it. In "TNG:Parallels" the makers decided it's not worth it and had the crew of the Enterprise sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" for Worf instead. [2]

In Germany there have actually been lawsuits over this, because people were hearing music or TV too loudly while their windows were open. The GEMA [3] considered this to be a "public performance" which requires you to register it in advance and pay a fee for it.


[1] https://www.openstreetmap.de/uf/
[2] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/P..._%28episode%29
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEMA_%...rganization%29

That sounds like a diversion technique to me. Yes, OSM's problem is in the character of their data. But not because it reflects the reality. The main problem is how their data is collected. The number of volunteers walking round with handheld GPS receivers and laboriously taking down the data and drawing them on the map by hand is negligible. OSM's data is an amalgam of those and other sources, including digitizing paper maps which are copyrighted. This is the source of their headache. It might be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish which part of the OSM's map was collected in which way, unless it is somehow tagged. They may get away with it for a while but over time they may end up being asked to provide the proof of the source.

That will have to be a very clever hash, then, to avoid being fooled by slight modifications.

Good point!

Not sure, if "hash" is the right term here. If you have some checksum algorithm in mind (md5, sha), then you'll end up with a lot of false negatives and virtually no false positives, because every single switched bit will change the checksum completely. This is obviously not what you want for the detection of copyright infringement.

Think of picture comparison algorithms instead! One I know basically gradually reduces the resolution of two pictures and keeps checking whether the color info of the remaining pixels is identical (or similar).
Taken to the extreme you'll end up with a single pixel for each picture and then you'll check whether their RGB (or HSV or whatever) values match.
With such an algorithm you don't just get a binary true or false result but some fuzzy resemblance factor.
In this case the copyright DB would have to store the equivalent of a thumbnail of the copyrighted picture at the resolution you consider to be your resemblance threshold.

Well there's another take to that too. I'm not absolutely sure that inheritance is a very good thing in the end, if taken to extremes.
For yer nomal middle-class people who get a house or a piece of land, an old car and some miscellaneous furniture inheritance is OK.

However If pop's a successful businessman and builds a fortune then in the end what's the reason the brats should get the loot when he hits the pit?

OK, I grant it some piece of the proceedings could be handed out to the offspring, no need to take it all off but think about it for a while; amassing any kind of fortune is most likely based on theft and extortion so it would even out it a bit for the state to take it in possession as taxes.

It would benefit the kids too, in the end, as they'd not grow up to be slothy worhless billionares but be encouraged to get real jobs and contribute to the society.

Fixed that for you!

That depends on who "the state" is in this context.
If "the state" is a community of people then you're totally right, but if it's just some bureaucratic entity then it doesn't change anything.

If the biggest land owner in a village dies and his children can't take over, then it's totally fair to redistribute his fields to his farming neighbors.
On the other hand, if the local government just sits on the land and waits for some rich external investor to polish the mayor's budget, then it doesn't improve the situation.

I'd be totally fine with being a slothy worthless bilionaire, because I could still decide to contribute to the society whenever I wanted. On he other hand, my real job does not allow me the decision to be a slothy worthless billionaire from now on.

These kinds of comparisons always have the same flaw: The compared options are not mutually exclusive.
"I'd rather have brains than pretty looks." The pretty guy (or gal) can still have brains.

Primarily, for the same reason they have separate taps for hot and cold water in the UK: Because It Has Always Been Like That™

But look at it from the successful businessman's PoV. Who would you like to benefit from you working yourself to death and building a successful business? The "society"? Or your own kids?

Luckily I don't need to make that choice; my brats are not in position to inherit a fortune from me and have been raised from the beginning to be thinking creatures capable of making their own choices in the world.
Granted, they think daddy is soft-headed old socialist and take after a more individualist tone but wtf, it's going to be their world anyway