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The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.  We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below). 

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

offsite link Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
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offsite link The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
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Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Labour?s Changes to Employment Law Are Already Stifling the Economy ? and They Haven?t Even Come in ... Thu Oct 03, 2024 16:17 | Steve Chilcott
Labour's planned changes to employment law ? ramping up trade union power and workers' rights ? are already stifling the economy in anticipation, and they haven't even come in yet, says Steve Chilcott.
The post Labour’s Changes to Employment Law Are Already Stifling the Economy ? and They Haven’t Even Come in Yet appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Starmer Hands Chagos Islands to China-Ally Mauritius Thu Oct 03, 2024 14:03 | Will Jones
Keir Starmer has given up the Chagos Islands, handing the Indian Ocean territory to China-ally Mauritius after 200 years of British rule.
The post Starmer Hands Chagos Islands to China-Ally Mauritius appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Dawn Butler?s Black History Month Poem About Being ?The Chosen One? Says Everything You Need to Know... Thu Oct 03, 2024 11:47 | Steven Tucker
Dawn Butler's Black History Month poem about being "The Chosen One" says everything you need to know about this whole fake festival of institutionalised anti-whiteness, says Steven Tucker.
The post Dawn Butler’s Black History Month Poem About Being “The Chosen One” Says Everything You Need to Know About This Whole Fake Festival of Institutionalised Anti-Whiteness appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Massive Electricity Price Rises Expected as National Grid Confirms Gas is the Only Back-Up for Inter... Thu Oct 03, 2024 09:00 | Chris Morrison
Massive electricity price rises are expected as National Grid confirms that gas is the only planned back-up for intermittent renewable energy, placing Britain at the mercy of global price spikes, says Chris Morrison.
The post Massive Electricity Price Rises Expected as National Grid Confirms Gas is the Only Back-Up for Intermittent Renewables appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link In Episode 16 of the Sceptic: Charlotte Gill on Labour?s Love for Hope Not Hate, Freddie Attenboroug... Thu Oct 03, 2024 07:00 | Richard Eldred
In episode 16 of the sceptic: Charlotte Gill on Labour's links to Hope Not Hate, Freddie Attenborough on the free speech fightback in Ireland, David Turver on Ed Miliband's green cronyism and more.
The post In Episode 16 of the Sceptic: Charlotte Gill on Labour?s Love for Hope Not Hate, Freddie Attenborough on the Irish Free Speech Fightback and David Turver on Ed Miliband?s Green Cronyism appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Stop the European Parliament from Destroying the Internet - The #SaveYourInternet fight against Article 13 continues

category international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report author Thursday February 28, 2019 23:04author by Julia Reda MP Report this post to the editors

All 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) get to vote in March/April 2019 on the negotiated copyright agreement.

THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO OVERTURN THE EU COPYRIGHT REFORM

In September 2018, MEPs voted for a version of the copyright Directive which will indirectly lead to implementing upload filters on most of the services you use online. The European Parliament’s (EP) Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee Rapporteur, MEP Axel Voss, then started the ‘trilogue negotiations’ – closed-door ‘informal’ negations with the representatives of the EU Member States (Council) and the European Commission (EC). These negotiations resulted in a trilogue agreement in Mid-February 2019. Despite massive criticism, the text has been made even worse than the EP’s proposal.

See EDRi’s short summary of the most important developments in the Copyright Reform. https://edri.org/upload-filters-status-of-the-copyright-discussions-and-next-steps/

Article 13 only benefits big businesses

Due to the collateral damage created by the vague and overly broad wording of Article 13, only big platforms and powerful rightholders will benefit from its adoption, to the detriment of all other stakeholders.

Latest Developments on the Article 13 #CensorshipMachine

In a nutshell: You can still make a difference! The Article 13 #CensorshipMachine will soon affect the content you see, upload and share on your favourite platforms, unless you reach out to your Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) today and encourage them to stop this madness! Go to your country page to and ACT NOW to #SaveYourInternet. On 20 February 2019, the EU Member State Deputy Ambassadors approved the provisional copyright trilogue agreement during the meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER 1). At this COREPER 1 meeting, the Governments of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Italy and Finland opposed the agreement – see their joint statement. These countries consider “that the Directive in its current form is a step back for the Digital Single Market rather than a step forward”, and add that “the Directive lacks legal clarity, will lead to legal uncertainty for many stakeholders concerned and may encroach upon EU citizens’ rights”. Belgium and Slovenia abstained from the COREPER 1 vote. In terms of next steps, this means that: European Parliament (EP)
  • 26 Feb, 15h CET – JURI Committee vote: The European Parliament’s lead Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee will vote on the provisional copyright trilogue agreement on 26 February at 15h CET, during an extraordinary meeting.
  • March/April – EP Plenary vote: If the provisional copyright trilogue agreement is adopted in the JURI Committee, then all 751 MEPs get to vote on the agreement in an EP Plenary session in March or April. Possible Plenary sessions for this vote are: the week of 25 March (Strasbourg), 3-4 April (Brussels) or the week of 15 April (Strasbourg). There is also a Plenary session during the week of 11 March, however, it seems unlikely that a vote could take place so soon, but with the copyright file everything seem possible.
Council (= EU Member States) The next step is now the final approval at the Ministerial level. There is no date yet for this vote. It can be expected that the Council will only vote after the EP adopts the agreement at a Plenary vote. Background on the provisional copyright trilogue agreement: On 13 February, the European Parliament and Council, represented by the Romanian Council Presidency, reached a provisional trilogue agreement on the copyright reform. The provisional copyright trilogue agreement that got brokered between the EU institutions, which is basically the Franco-German deal on Article 13 that was reached in Council – read more below, implies that:
  1. Platforms will have to attempt to license all the content that can be uploaded on their platform, which is unfeasible; and,
  2. Failing to licence everything, they will need to do whatever they can to prevent unauthorised content from ever appearing on their platform, which will require them to implement upload filters to censor your content.
  3. These filters will catch everything that even remotely looks suspicious, because failing to comply with the above makes platform directly liable for any possible copyright infringement on their platforms. This means that perfectly legal content will also be caught in the web of the filternet.
  4. There are so-called ‘user safeguards’ and something that the legislators dare to call a ‘user-generated content’ (UGC) provision, but both are toothless and will leave users in the cold. The upfront removal of content will leave users powerless, and complaints will be just a waste of time – especially for time-sensitive campaigning content for human and digital rights organisations. The UGC provision shows that legislators have no understanding of what they require platforms to do, as filtering mechanisms are not able to identify legal content based on conditions which normally require lawyers and judges to interpret them.
See MEP Julia Reda’s analysis and the one from CREATe for more details. https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/ https://www.create.ac.uk/agreement-reached-at-final-trilogue-negotiation/ Background on the Franco-German disagreement and compromise: On Friday 18 January 2019, the EU Member States Deputy Ambassadors gathered in a meeting of the Council’s Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER 1). The Romanian Council Presidency (1 Jan – 30 Jun, 2019) had requested a revised negotiation mandate on, amongst others, the Article 13 #CensorshipMachine. At this meeting, a number of Member States (Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Slovenia) blocked the Romanian Presidency. Portugal indicated that it needs more time to take a position. This led the Romanian Council Presidency to postponing their negotiations with the European Parliament, i.e. trilogue negotiations, which were originally scheduled for 21 January. This ‘blocking minority’ was only achieved thanks to Germany opposing the proposals on the table. More specifically, there was a disagreement between the French and German delegation about the scope of Article 13: the German Government wants to exclude businesses with annual revenues of up to 20 million euros per year, whilst the French Government considers that no one should fall outside the scope of the #CensorshipMachine. The Franco-German disagreement on the fate of small- and medium enterprises (SMEs) got settled in early February, with France succeeding in maintaining all SMEs within the scope of the Article 13 #CensorshipMachine, whilst giving the German some useless SME carve-out that will never be meaningful in practice for any ambitious EU startups, as it is still requires all SMEs to negotiate licensing agreements and only exempts very small businesses (less than 10 million euros turnover) that are less than three years old from the filtering obligations. The result of this Franco-German “horse trading” was poured into a new revised negotiation mandate by the Romanian Council Presidency, leaked by POLITICO, and which was adopted on February 8, 2019. https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Mandate-Romania-February-8.pdf

Related Link: https://saveyourinternet.eu/latest-developments/

Caption: Video Id: A3aoZs-ay7o Type: Youtube Video
#SaveYourInternet - #DeleteArt13: Article 13 is About Filters!


Caption: Video Id: Dzigo9UWbpw Type: Youtube Video
#SaveYourInternet - #DeleteArt13: Big Businesses Fighting Each Other to the Detriment of Freedom


author by anonpublication date Tue Mar 26, 2019 21:55author address author phone Report this post to the editors

As reported here, the EU politicians have sold us all down the river and passed this legislation.

The new EU copyright law closes the book on free speech online. That’s a feature, not a bug.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/454755-article-13-censorship-control-europe/


The controversial copyright law facing a final vote in the EU parliament is less about copyright than it is about hammering a final nail in the coffin of the freedoms the internet once promised. Yes, Article 13 is that bad.

Most laws address themselves toward tangible, human-sized problems. Article 13, the sweeping European copyright legislation that proposes to filter all content on its way to the web to ensure no rights are being violated, isn’t interested in such prosaic stuff. It seeks to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Physics? In my internet? The web operates according to the laws of entropy. It trends toward decentralization – of ideas, of social groups, but most importantly of power. Authority looks at this delightful disorder and sees only malevolent chaos that needs to be reined in. Legislators and the corporations that run their countries have spent a lot of time brainstorming on how to put the cat back in the bag, and Article 13 is the result.

......................

The way the web developed the first time was not ideal for centralized power structures. Only a nuclear option like Article 13 could ever hope to rein in the human potential unleashed by the web and give them a second chance to get it right.

Article 13, the internet’s founding fathers warn, means the “transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.” That’s a feature, not a bug. Keeping out small platforms that could challenge the monopolies that have shown they’re willing to work with governments certainly makes life easier for those governments. The internet once held the promise to liberate humanity. The European Parliament believes that’s too big a risk to take.

 
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