I think it's going to work like jaywalking - it's illegal, but I've done it, and it's fine as long as it doesn't cause a bigger issue, and as long as enforcer isn't overzealous. It's true though, that it's a weapon waiting to be used for political reasons, and the perspective of that happening is no good for anybody.
Yes, the OP did also state that point as well. The comparison was just to illustrate that this law is unenforceable at large scale so people might just disregard it. The danger is, as he and yourself have both stated, you then have a situation where the law becomes a weapon to be abused rather than legislation to safeguard businesses or consumer interest.
Unfortunately, it's quite enforceable. That's the whole point of this legislation - it goes after those entities that it can be enforced against (businesses), forcing them to turn around and enforce it against the smaller fish in their domain.
You're missing the point being made. We are not saying "it cannot be enforced, period". What we are saying "you cannot police every single website on the internet." Thus what will happen is this law will be used as a weapon to target sites that publish reviews that paint a particular product in a bad light, or user contribution sites that compete with big social networks. Or even, in the worst case scenario, forums which are critical of a particular government party.*
A law like this can and likely will be selectively enforced since it will be impossible to police every single independent thought published on the internet.
* I appreciate those points may not be in breach of the new legislation per se. But there is a pretty good chance that some content on sites of those style would be in breach. So it's a little like police using a broken tail light as an excuse to stop and search a car.
You cannot police every website on the Internet, but you certainly can scrap the Internet. It is easy to forget how much regulation surrounds the physical infrastructure of the Internet and how easily the government could just shut it all down. A key property of the Internet is that there is a single public IP address space; there is no technical reason why the address space could not be divided into "client" and "server" addresses, with only "servers" being allowed to host applications, and we are already halfway there with NAT (IPv6 does not help either, as it could easily be fragmented and we already have things like ULA). It would be easy to require a special license to receive a "server IP address" and I can see the EU doing exactly that based on their recent pattern of behavior.
Europe has a long history of doing such things when confronted with new, disruptive technologies: the effort to license printing presses in various European countries is what eventually led to copyright law as we know it today.
The copyright law introduced during the invention of the printing press is nothing like the copyright law we know today.
Back then ideas were still believed to be free so the point of copyright law was just a short term reward for the author. A bit like how patents are supposed to work.
I would normally post some citations here (like a famous quote about copyright from one of the British monarchs) but on phone about to drop kids off at school so apologies there.
You don't need to police every comment. You just need to randomly poke at things, and make an example of anyone who lets something slip thru. Then individual businesses are going to be scared into policing their specific turfs. And when it's decentralized like that, it's quite possible to police every single website on the Internet (or at least on your section of it).
Why do you think so? The question isn't whether sites distributing pirated stuff exist - the question is, how many more would have existed if not for policing, and how many people would have used them that are deterred under the existing regime.
Effective policing generally doesn't mean that people can just flout the law whenever they want. That would suggest to me that particular law cannot be effectively policed. However I'm willing to concede that "effective" is a subjective term so we could both argue our points are correct.
I think this is spot-on. Laws like this are inherently unenforceable at a global scale, and therefore are selectively enforced. The enforcement agencies have limited resources and therefore will focus on politically strategic targets. This is a political weapon.
Unfortunately, the downstream effects will hurt everyone else.
No enforcement agency is required to enforce this law. Rightholders will sue non-filtering platforms over potentional lost sales due to their "wilful negligence".
And if the offending platform has any business in Germany (or another country with similar laws) this will be a gold mine for any law business issuing cease and desist letters in the name of competing plattforms.
And as long as you aren't of the wrong demographic. Laws that are selectively enforced allow racism and sexism to flourish among the police. In consistent enforcement of a law should be a valid defense of violating the law, and a very cheap one to employ.
