(1) In a hypothetical world where this law has unbounded jurisdiction
What's the scary remedy for a copyright holder if they already provided a license to publish the published content?
User posts don't make every forum into pornhub. Calm down.
The core problem this law is trying to address is that website users are, en masse, contributing content to websites when they don’t have a license to do so. This behavior is against pretty much all websites’ terms of service.
As there are many users with no money all putting illegitimate content onto a few websites with a lot of money, this law seeks to shift the burden of liability onto the websites. As a policy, it’s not completely unreasonable, but makes the mass content-farm websites like YouTube unfeasable.
The lawmakers fear for their jobs if YouTube shuts down because of their new law, so they carve out a bunch of exceptions to let key sectors of the internet continue operating (with some work to comply).
The broadest of these, implementing automated content filters, is expensive and unreliable. Operators of smaller websites, such as a typical Internet forum, have their own exception. The problem is that the boundaries here are vague and (potentially) poorly drawn, leaving sites like HN (if it were in EU jurisdiction) with a bad set of options:
* Hope nobody notices
* Accept the liability and vigorously police the site manually, probably buying insurance against a judgment
* Rely on judges allowing them the small-volume or non-profit-seeking exemptions
* Implement content filters that are expensive and a terrible user experience...? Where are you getting this?
Have you read the current copy of the draft proposal? I did.
None of the restrictions are going to kill sites like Youtube (let alone HN). The proportionality element alone makes the 'we need to invest 200% of our revenue into content blocking' myth absurd.
Will some margin need to be shunted into mitigating unauthorized distribution of works that profit the platform? Yes. But that's already the law. It's literally unjust enrichment 101.
As an aside, my original reply to you was simply trying to correct your statement “HN does not organize large amounts of copyright-protected works” by means of a counter-example. I think you may be reading things between my lines that aren’t there.
I am, and always have been, calm on this matter. I don’t find the situation scary in any way. I simply enjoy exploring the logical consequences of various lines of thought through the medium of writing, even to the point of playing the devil’s advocate for the purpose of a more thorough exploration of the various issues.
I’m really not sure where my opinions lie on this one, so I’ve been free-wheeling a bit more than usual. I’d like to apologize if my mental wandering caused you any distress. It was not intended.
It's just that there's a big disconnect between what people have read out of the article regarding it's applicability and what remedies actually flow out of it.
Hence the ...so what?
Large sites will have a tool like photoDNA or ContentID to be able to flag works so you can't do something like repeatedly upload something like Aquaman an hour after release. That's reasonable. With respect to a site like HN, it's highly probable the entire article literally has zero impact, unless people take to posting book chapters in comments constantly (and if that happened, you'd expect they should take action in some way).
The proportionality requirement alone alleviates almost EVERY concern people are bringing up. I don't think the legislation is perfect, but it's pretty good, fairly clear, and very easily suited to judicial interpretation to create fair results in unanticipated situations.