they may also be required to implement age verification
They are already required. Australia is requiring them to do exactly that. It's a safe bet that this will be ignored for now, at least outside of Australia.
Suppose the fediverse wanted to comply, what do you think the volunteers running it would have to do?
I can't really make sense of that. Do you understand that Lemmy instances are run by just some random people?
I see that you've changed your opinion, OP, but I still have a question.
How did seeing this as positive go together with being on the fediverse? How do the volunteers running this thing cope with these demands?
More generally: How can the open internet survive if every local government makes its own rules about what information or service you may or mustn't give its citizens?
Come join the fediverse. Now illegal in Australia!
It gets my attention but I don't really see the mainstream appeal.
Sensible strategy for both sides, though I think Disney was a bit more desperate for a deal. Licensing characters makes it easier for Disney to win Fair Use cases. Meanwhile, if Fair Use is beaten back, then OpenAI may be able to finally create a moat for itself. Challengers would have to either obtain a license or employ expensive filtering. Both would make it rather harder for start-ups.
Very unlikely, in the eyes of the US court system. They have no EU physical presence, and aren’t advertising targeting EU people.
That's exactly the thing. US courts don't care about foreign laws in the first place. They don't care about a EU presence at all.
Nevertheless, the EU demands that any websites, internet services, ... that are offered to EU users follow EU laws like GDPR. If it's in a language not spoken in the EU, then it's probably fine. If lemmy.today declared that it was specifically for Oregonians, that would likely be fine, too. But anything in English that is offered globally, is a potential target.
That should not be taken lightly. If the 4chan people travelled to UK, they would probably be arrested. They will have to watch out when they travel abroad if the country might assist the UK and arrest and arrest them. If they ever acquire property abroad, that might be seized.
Fedi-servers in the EU certainly have to follow these regulations.
You know how 4chan is doing business in the UK? In the same way, lemmy.today is doing business in the EU.
This ruling is not likely to have immediate consequences for the fediverse, since the GDPR is not enforced much.
I don't think it is actually impossible, as the headline claims. Platforms that have already been on the receiving of enforcement are probably fine, eg Facebook.
No. At least, the last version I saw wanted text messages to be scanned for "grooming".
People want goods and services, as well as jobs. Politicians need to make that happen, and so they listen to the people who know how to make that happen. Sometimes that goes wrong because eventually employers don't have quite the same goals as their employees. There is no good alternative, though.
One player that clearly had a lot of input is the (news) media. EG the press publishers want to license their old news articles for AI training. They can do that thanks to EU copyright law. That's free money. But news articles talk about living people, which means they contain personal data.
Despite competition from social media, the trad media, including press publishers, is still extremely influential. Politicians need their favor to get votes.
I don't see how Big Tech is getting much here. Of course, NGOs need the media's favor just as much as politicians. Pointing the finger at some nebulous forces from outside is certainly the safest choice, politically speaking.
Maybe I’m talking more about enforcement than actual law,
Probably. Different countries in Europe have very different traditions there. I think the former socialist countries are still more relaxed. But the EU-line is rather dominated by countries like Germany.
Come to think of it. Switzerland officially takes a very lenient approach. It's legal to download media files for personal use. But as you can see here, that leaves research and business hanging.
I don't know any European country that has anything like the copyright clause in the US Constitution, or anything close to Fair Use. I don't see the argument.
There's a good chance that European AI companies like Mistral are breaking the law. We will have to see how it eventually goes in court. Recently, there was a decision in a Munich court against OpenAI. By that standard, even Apertus might be in trouble. But I doubt that decision will stand.
Well. Step 1 is monitoring legal requirements around the world. In all the 50 US states, 200 countries, and whatever other kind of jurisdiction feels important.
You have to age gate social media for 16+ in Australia. Some content is criminal in some countries. Some content is 18+ in some countries but not in others. Some countries require such content to be age gated, others do not.
What kind of age verification is acceptable also varies...
You need to constantly have your eye on new laws, legal precedents, or decision by regulators and adapt.
And that doesn't even begin to address the technological problems.