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

General_Effort@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 749 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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GDPR has plenty provisions where other laws or considerations may be more relevant than it, negating it in such cases.

I still do think the GDPR is extremely important, but it is no silver bullet,sadly.

But just in general, how can you have the right to be forgotten without the right to anonymity? They're inherently bound together

Not really. Why would you need to be forgotten if no one knows who you are to begin with?