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MENAFN- PRLog) The European Union has approved a copyright rule that aims to give more protection to artists and news organizations but which critics say will stifle freedom of speech and online creativity and punish smaller web companies.
These reforms are going to hit platforms that rely on user-generated content — like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram — really hard. The copyright battle has been characterized as "Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley," with musicians from ex-Beatle Paul McCartney to Blondie singer Debbie Harry in favor and big tech firms like Google and Twitter against.
So exactly, what does the directive say? The most vigorously debated part of the legislation is a section that makes companies responsible for making sure that copyrighted material isn't uploaded to their platforms without permission from the original creator, reports AP.
Specifically, the new rules puts the legal onus on platforms to prevent copyright infringement but critics say it will end up having a chilling effect on freedom of expression on the internet and could result in censorship. Another section of the bill that caused concern requires search engines and social media sites to pay for linking to or offering up snippets of news articles.
Companies are asking how it will affect Internet platforms? Some sites would be forced to license music or videos. If not, sites would have to make sure they don't have unauthorized copyrighted material.
Critics worry that could lead to costly automatic filtering, says AP. And paying for links could create further costs. That could give tech giants an edge over smaller companies. Google said last year it spent more than $100 million on Content ID, its copyright management system for approved users on YouTube, where more than 400 hours of content is uploaded every minute. The figure includes both staffing and computing resources.
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Sweeping reforms to copyright laws enacted to EU countries today mark a symbolic turning point to a political battle that has pitted tech giants against high-profile media figures.
One big question is how new rules in the EU will shape Internet content? Critics say it could lead to censorship and change internet culture, reports AP. They say the automatic filters are blunt instruments, deleting some material that should be allowed online.
"Despite recent improvements, the EU Directive falls short of creating a balanced and modern framework for copyright," said Maud Sacquet of Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobby group. "We fear it will harm online innovation and restrict online freedoms in Europe."
More than 5.2 million people signed an online petition against the directive. Internet luminaries such as Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales have spoken out against it. And last month, tens of thousands of people marched in cities across Germany to protest against the directive.
EDiMA, an EU tech lobbying group representing a number of Silicon Valley giants, has railed against the reforms, claiming they will infringe on internet users' free speech. Artists and media firms, meanwhile, argue the directive is needed as they're losing out from the unfettered sharing of their intellectual property on online platforms.
What's next? The EU's member countries have two years to comply with the directive by drafting their own national laws. Six countries — Italy, Sweden, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — voted against it, so implementation is likely to be uneven, setting the stage for legal challenges.
Turning to other tech trends, we all hear comments like "big data is getting bigger" and "digital is killing the finance organization. So we thought it might be interesting to push thru the proselytism and take a look at the global financial analytics, which is expected to be 11.4 billion dollar opportunity by 2023.
The key factors driving the financial analytics market include the rising need for reducing planning and budgeting cycles and the emergence of new IT applications and infrastructure, such as big data and advanced analytics, say experts.
In specie, the need of real-time recognition of suspicious activities to safeguard confidential information is driving the adoption of financial analytics towards fraud detection and prevention.
"Fraud attempts have seen a drastic increase in recent times" says ResearchAndMarkets(dot)com in a research report published today. Fraud detection and prevention are very important across all major industries.
For fraud detection and prevention, financial analytics use tools that analyze customer data for missing information and provide a holistic view of suspicious transactions, say experts. Financial analytics tools also screen clients across payment channels, such as wire transfers, checks, fund transfers, deposits, and withdrawals for identifying outliers that might indicate fraud patterns.
Data mining technologies such as decision trees, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cluster analysis, and neural networks are used to generate predictive model for understanding any fraudulent activities across the network.
"Enormous data generation and (the) need for interactive analysis will drive the market in Europe" says ResearchAndMarkets(dot)com
Presently, the small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK, Germany, and France are investing in analytics platforms, but as the period of economic turmoil continues in Europe, enterprises are likely to undertake a stronger cost containment stance sooner. The primary reason for the lesser growth rate in this region could be the Eurozone crisis. Post-Eurozone crisis, business firms are hesitant to make big investments.
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