Article 13 and Russian servers

I now have all but one of the author contracts back for Underdog Anthology 8, I have started assembling the book and have a cover image. This one was a lot of work – 12 authors, 21 stories and 12 poems! RooBeeDoo and I have finished editing, all authors’ edits are back and it’s still going to take a few days to assemble it. It will be out on time.

Also I have a new toy. A tiny 2 cm cube that holds a 32Gb memory card and takes HD video with the option of infrared for low light. It came from a Chinese seller on eBay and cost less than a tenner. I’ve had it clipped to an OO scale truck and run it around my little test track. I don’t seem to be able to put the video directly on here so I’ll probably have to upload it to YouTube…

…if the new EU rules will let me. A lot of the models are copyright of Hornby, Wrenn, Lima and many others. The video copyright belongs to me, yes, but the copyright of the things in it do not.

Article 13 is so far reaching that if I were to quote any part of the linked article I would have to pay. I’m not clear on whether I would have to pay just for the link but if so, articles, newspapers etc won’t get any more traffic from bloggers. We don’t get paid for this and we can’t afford the expense.

What if I were to link to, and quote, an article from outside the EU? Is that covered by the silly new law? I’m not clear on that either so wouldn’t risk it. As long as we are inside the EU, we’re going to have an internet the Chinese will laugh at.

And let’s face it, our government has absolutely no intention of leaving the EU. All those banners from the March of Rejects saying ‘Tory Brexit’ are total bollocks. It has nothing to do with the Tories. None of them want to do what the referendum said, despite so many of them at the time claiming they would. It’s a stitch up, and that was clear from the start.

Will Article 13 change Tessie Maybe’s mind? Hahaha! Total control of the internet is her sweatiest wet dream and has been since she was in the Home Orifice. She already has the ‘porn filters’ coming (ooer missus) that we know will filter far more than porn. We also know they will not work. In fact they will do a lot worse than just not working – the youth of today know all about VPN and TOR and will descend into the Hell of the Underweb where they will see a lot more than a bit of rumpy-pumpy.

The political morons already have the Great Data Protection Racket (GDPR) that means a lot of non-EU news and other sites have to either comply with it, or more often, simply block EU access. You need a VPN to use the real internet already, more rules won’t change that at all, and will only have the effect of driving more and more people onto VPN and TOR.

I’ve seen people on Twitter claiming that Article 13 passed because there are too many UKIP MEPs. I’ve seen the list of UK MEPs who voted for it. Not one of them is UKIP. If there had been more UKIP MEPs it might not have passed. ‘Stay in,’ they say, ‘and fix it from within’. Cameron tried that and was sent home with a very sore arse. When will they grasp this? It cannot be fixed!

Well, if we stay in, TOR and the VPN providers will make a fortune. On the Euternet, YouTube will be worthless. No point even clicking on it, and you might as well delete the app. The same will be true of Farcebok and Twatter and most other sharing sites because they have taken the smoking-ban approach.

Instead of going after the copyright-infringer, they will go after the platform. The host will have to act as unpaid police to ensure none of their visitors break the law – or the host gets sued. Just like that pub landlord who gets prosecuted for ‘allowing smoking’ on his premises. So all those sites will take the easy option and just block pretty much anything within the EU.

They have to. They are dealing in millions of uploads per month. They can’t check every single one. They’ll use an algorithm and it will be set to overkill to make sure they don’t get sued. Smaller ones will simply cease operating within the EU altogether. Only the blandest of the bland will get onto YouTube when this takes effect.

Will this affect Leg Iron Books? Maybe. I’ll still be able to load books onto legironbooks.com but if the cover image was made by someone else I’ll have to get their permission to show it. In writing. If the story description was written by the author I’ll need written permission to show that too. I will have to police comments, here and on the Leg Iron Books site, in case someone posts an image or snippet of text from someone else’s copyright. How to easily wreck a site you don’t like? Just post a comment containing some fanfiction or a copyrighted image and they’re fined out of business and probably in jail too.

Potentially worse – will Amazon etc refuse to load books or at least refuse to show them in the EU in case of copyright infringement? They cannot possibly check with every uploader. Besides, I can’t put in a block-licence on copyright because, like any other reputable publisher, I don’t own other authors’ copyrights. Every author would have to do it individually and even Amazon would find it hard to cope with that. It will make anthologies a nightmare.

I expect ‘Click to look inside’ to vanish from every EU version of Amazon. No more teaser samples. If your title is picked out by the algorithm as similar to someone else’s, or could be fanfiction, you’ll get no sales in the EU because nobody will see it. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and the rest cannot check every single book and they will take no chances.

There are books in my catalogue in Dutch and in French. They don’t sell much but whern they do, it’s in the EU. As you would expect. If the Dutch and the French can’t see them, who will buy them?

Well, they’ll still sell to those who have VPNs that make them look like they are in Russia, which is rapidly becoming hte most free nation on the planet. If Kim Jong Jinglejangle gets a brainwave, he could make his country very rich indeed. All he needs is a couple of geeks and some servers and his people need never know. Imagine that world, where you circumvent the EU restrictions by routing through North Korea. It could happen.

This is only the beginning. The EU will make the internet unusable. We won’t even go back to Compuserve forums, it’ll be used for email only unless you want to read EU propaganda. Those who bought Amstrad’s daft email phones will be laughing, they will be more useful than any smart phone or tablet soon.

Until they start checking email content. Then it’s time to get back to snail mail because it’s still a bit faster than a pigeon…

…until it isn’t.