Unfortunately, there isn’t a vibrant free web. Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit. Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium. Most breaking news is first available on twitter. Even independent websites, most likely have Google analytics and Google ads.
From a European point of view, the current copyright situation is just a wealth transfer from European companies who have the copyrights, to American advertising companies.
Where you think most content is, or where most content actually is, should have nothing to do with laws targeting all content. To say that there isn't a vibrant free web and counter with what is the majority makes me think you meant to say that a vibrant free web isn't the majority instead of completely, 100% non-existent. Lots of us have sites and stuff out here, and once again the EU is only looking at one big goose to make laws, albeit well intentioned, that will affect the rest of us here in the gander. Always more laws, always more rules, always unintended consequences and lax enforcement; the wise just ignore these governments crying wolf again.
Look at this very site. People link here a lot, quote here a lot, and sometimes say controversial things here.
If every submission had to be pre-moderated, and royalty paid for every substantial quotation, this site would be very different, and definitely less vibrant and free.
If every submission had to be checked by a copyright cop first this site wouldn't exist. Message boards in general wouldn't exist. It would take way too much manpower to run, especially if you have to worry about things like song lyrics in the post and handling multiple languages.
«Article 13; which seeks to shift liability for platform users’ copyright infringements onto the platforms themselves — and which critics contend will therefore push them towards creating upload filters to monitor all content before it’s posted»
> Wikipedia is about the only major non-ad supported website that normal people visit.
Which costs $69 million per year to operate, has 300+ employees and requires six million donations. Your example also isn't free.
> Most user content is probably on Facebook or Medium
Medium is less than 1% the size of Wordpress, both in terms of traffic and amount of content. The majority of all content on Wordpress sites is ad free.
The consumer is paying for all of it in one manner or another. If it's a donation, it's coming out of your pocket. If it's an ad, it's data about you being monetized. There is no such thing as free if you're talking about something the size of Wikipedia or similar services.
I'm not sure what you're implying, but I would say that $69 million per year is incredibly small compared to the amazing benefit that Wikipedia provides the world. Also, this money comes out of the pockets of people like myself who are happy to sponsor it for everyone else. I personally love this patronage model and would be happy to sponsor an ad-free open-access newspaper in a similar way, if I found one that I had confidence in.
Fire is useful, so everyone who uses fire should pay a company some money? No, that's clearly mad. No matter how useful it is if it's poorly optimised or over costly then we should do better, not settle because it's already a great RoI.
Your analogy is silly. Fire is free to make (discounting the extremely little time/effort to make it). Hosting an online encyclopedia with low latency, moderation, etc is not.
Fire costs resources and produces costly environmental impacts, in many of the ways we make it it's an engineering marvel (ICE for example), but yeah it's not the greatest analogy.
There should be a better mechanism for funding sites like Wikipedia that provide what is effectively a global, common, public good. Perhaps a budget from the UN or something should be set aside for funding projects like Wikimedia, Archive.org, etc.
It’s a bit ridiculous that something so important to so many people relies on donations from individuals.
One of the problems with that model is it centralizes power in one organization which is subject to the whims of its members. I’d argue that that might guarantee less stability than the current system.
Perhaps a large endowment, like private universities, could work? Enough money to let them invest in a diversified portfolio and run their sites off of the profits.
Why is it ridiculous? Wikipedia really isn't that expensive to run and clearly they have no problem raising the money. Funding based on volunteer donations seems a very equitable and reasonable way to fund something like Wikipedia - if it were to become totally useless for some reason people would stop donating, and that's good. If it was funded by the UN it'd become a zombie organisation that could never die even if it became irrelevant.
If anything Wikipedia is an example of the opposite problem - a charity that is too successful. Do you really think 300 people are needed to maintain the Wikipedia servers and software? No, of course not, the Wikimedia organisation has grown massively over time and almost all of those staff are working on things the average Wikipedia donator wouldn't even recognise.
I stopped donating to Wikipedia a long time ago, because it was clear that their fund-raising drives had stopped being connected to what the organisation actually needed to perform its mission and simply become a way to channel people's love for the work they had themselves produced together into a giant and very expensive party for a self-important management class.
From a European point of view, the current copyright situation is just a wealth transfer from European companies who have the copyrights, to American advertising companies.