Top EU Court Says There’s No Right To Online Anonymity, Because Copyright Is More Important

General_Effort@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 751 points –
Top EU Court Says There’s No Right To Online Anonymity, Because Copyright Is More Important
techdirt.com

The key problem is that copyright infringement by a private individual is regarded by the court as something so serious that it negates the right to privacy. It’s a sign of the twisted values that copyright has succeeded on imposing on many legal systems. It equates the mere copying of a digital file with serious crimes that merit a prison sentence, an evident absurdity.

This is a good example of how copyright’s continuing obsession with ownership and control of digital material is warping the entire legal system in the EU. What was supposed to be simply a fair way of rewarding creators has resulted in a monstrous system of routine government surveillance carried out on hundreds of millions of innocent people just in case they copy a digital file.

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If copyright were abolished, all FOSS and Creative Commons licenses would be rendered null and void, since they depend on copyright law to work.

Aren't they a bandaid to a copyright problem (certain parts of it)? If the copyright is gone the root of the problem would be gone.

Companies could take and steal as much as they want from smaller artists in that case

As will small artists to companies.

Shit even the value of art would be intristic to am individual, almost impossible to capitalise on, but totally viable for an individual working directly with people

As they already do, you mean? Like, look at the recent Spotify scandal, with artists complaining that they don't earn enough and a higher up of Spotify saying that "nowadays content creation is very inexpensive", basically implying that Spotify deserves to keep most of the money since the artists' job is super easy. Most musicians already get most of their money through concerts and merchandising. Copyright already de-facto doesn't protect the artists nor the scientists.