> They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.
The German law that is related to what US citizens call "copyright law" (Urheberrechtsgesetz) (note that I use this careful formulation, since Urheberrecht and copyright are based on different ideas) has no concept of "fair use".
Also, traditionally, in Germany, there is culturally a different understanding of what US citizens call "free speech" (freie Meinungsäußerung).
"Freie Meinungsäußerung", for example, does not include defamation criticism or libel.
So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians, because this concept is simply not ingrained in German culture.
To all the US free speech advocates: why is posting a copyrighted file in the internet not considered free speech and thus copyright law is to be abolished?
IANAL, but the legal answer for why free speech and copyright aren't mutually exclusive is that copyright is an explicitly listed power of congress in the constitution:
The Congress shall have Power To... ...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
and
Congress shall make no law... ...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
So it's implied (by the constitution not being tautological) that there's a balance between the right of the people (free speech) and an power of congress (to implement copyright). Note also that that defamation/libel are not protected by the first amendment, but the theshold for proving it is high - information has to be known to be false to the speaker, and inflict an actual injury. For public figures and politicians, the speaker has to have "actual malice". These are not often proven. For example, "sell more newspapers" would not rise to the level of "actual malice".
Note that the power grant to Congress to establish copyright was in the original Constitution, while freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment, which - as the name says - is an amendment, which, by definition, changes the existing powers.
The legal argument for that, rather, is that all rights are implicitly limited, and that, depending on how important the right in question is, how small the limitation is in scope, and how important the social objective that the limitation is intended to enable, it can be constitutional - with courts being the arbiters of what's important and what's small. The fact that the colonies had slander and libel laws on the book even as they passed the Constitution is often cited as a justification for this point of view.
I think it's a case of parallel construction. The original First Amendment was not a problem to libel and slander because it simply didn't apply to the states at all, only the federal government, same as all others until they were incorporated via 14A. It does, however, clearly conflict with copyright, and there's nothing in the text of the Constitution that resolves that conflict one way or the other, or even sets clear guidelines on how you'd do so. So what we have in practice is mostly judicial precedent - and most of it is constructed out of necessity to make things work (i.e. "we've always done it this way", or "bad things happen if we don't do it this way"). So you have a patchwork of concepts like fair use, creative expression etc.
The most convincing argument that I have heard is that freedom of speech is about freedom to express ideas, not freedom to use specific words to express those ideas. Since copyright only applies to the latter, it's not an infringement. I'm not sure I fully buy it, but it does highlight an important distinction. Stuff like fair use stems from that, to enable you to express an idea that's criticism of someone else's words.
The meaning of free speech has changed dramatically over the past century. This is why things can seem so contradictory.
Like so much of Anglo-American law, Free Speech and Freedom of the Press is an application of the fundamental concept of Due Process of law. One facet of Due Process says that the government cannot single out individuals, groups, or specific types of behaviors unless there's a compelling reason and the targeting is necessary. All laws should be generally applicable and targeted to addressing identifiable harms, on the one hand, or achieving some broader policy objective on the other.
A.V. Dicey's 19th-century treatise on the British Constitution said that there was no need for an independent doctrine of Free Speech or Freedom of the Press because British law never had (at least, not in the then-recent history) and never would attempt to suppress speech as speech, or to single out newspapers as such. Libel, defamation, copyright and other so-called limitations on Free Speech aren't limitations at all because Free Speech isn't about freedom from the consequences of speech or prohibiting the government from remedying ill effects of speech or restricting them from activities that may incidentally limit speech. Those so-called limitations apply equally to everybody, so how could they operate to suppress particular ideas, opinions, or methods of communication? Likewise, Copyright doesn't favor anyone or any idea in particular, so it's not injurious to Free Speech, either.
So why did the Americans feel the need to singularly identify Free Speech and Freedom of the Press? Because continental Europe, and France in particular, had a history of laws that specifically and more strictly regulated the press, and regulated or prohibited particular opinions and ideas. Singling out Free Speech and Freedom of the Press was a way to explicitly reject the continental European approach. Remember, many colonists expressed the view that the enumeration of these and other rights in the Federal and State constitutions was, technically speaking, unnecessary because they were, strictly speaking, already protected by traditional legal doctrines and by the structures of government. The Bill of Rights was a boots & suspenders approach to constitutional law making.
None of this is to say that Parliament didn't pass laws that had the effect of limiting free speech. But how they did so mattered. Note that Free Speech and Freedom of the Press rights were also expressly put into many State constitutions. For well over a hundred years States regularly passed laws that heavily suppressed speech, but they were almost always upheld by State courts because the laws were expressed in terms of general applicability. In modern terminology they were "facially neutral", and there didn't exist a theory of judicial power that permitted courts to look beyond the face of the laws. (At least, not a theory that was widely held or that was thought useful to apply to speech issues.) And courts were far more credulous of State arguments that their laws were trying to prevent violence and mobs.
It wouldn't be until the 20th century that legal interpretations began to shift. Justices Brandeis and then Holmes propounded a novel (even radical) theory of Free Speech which demanded stricter scrutiny of laws and their effect on speech. It's adoption and application by SCOTUS has unfolded over the past nearly 100 years. This process continues today; scrutiny of laws effecting speech has become stricter and stricter every decade, even every year it seems. Moreover, what constitutes speech has expanded dramatically.
Make no mistake: Free Speech as understood in America today, and as defined by modern jurisprudence, is absolutely not an originalist interpretation of the constitution. If you like your modern Free Speech rights (as I do), don't thank the Founders; thank Brandeis and Holmes and their judicial activism.
I'm curious about "boots & suspenders", searching for that gives a lot of porn results! Is this really an idiom in the US, or should it be "belt & braces"? (braces are what you call suspenders, what we call suspenders is the waist garment that secures stockings for the ladies)
As much as this may annoy Angela Merkel, Germany and the EU are not the same thing. We're talking about EU legislation, and translating and relating that to German, French, British, Italian, Romanian, etc. law will always result in awkward translations that are not quite spot on. We are not lawyers, this isn't a court, and we can afford a bit of imprecision to get the point across with finitely many words, can't we?
Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles.
> So free speech in the US sense is no important issue for these politicians
The Eurocrats do not want free speech to establish itself in the EU. That's very important to them.
German law is relevant here because this is a translation of a law that is already on the books in Germany and Spain onto the EU level. The legal restriction of linking without license and using very short text snippets has been part of German law since 2013, and in fact was an initiative by the same political parties that introduced this. It has been through the German courts numerous times and the courts cannot agree on a reasonable interpretation because of how the law is written. So in a sense this is Germany and Spain exporting their local legislation to the EU level. The way the law works in Germany is very much relevant as it informed this proposal. The core concept of Leistungsschutz is to create a new form of copyright, that applies specifically to short snippets that were legal to use under the "normal" Urheberrecht laws.
> Germany has "Urheberrecht" and "Verwertungsrecht", neither of which is exactly copyright, even though that's the most practical translation of either. German law may not have fair use, but it does have §51 UrHG "Zitate", which serves the same purpose, at least in the context of reporting on news articles.
There is indeed an exception for quotes (Zitate) and parodies (for the latter cf. https://www.ferner-alsdorf.de/urheberrecht__urheberrecht-zur... since it is not written down explicitly in the law). But, for example, memes fall into neither category and are thus typically illegal under German law, but legal under US copyright because of fair use.
We do have free speech in the EU, claming otherwise would indicate that the European countries are no democracies. While the extent of free speech might vary from country to country, denying it is there goes way to far.
Sure, there are limitations to it, e.g. denying the Holocaust or using Nazi symbols in Germany, and with regards to defamation. But otherwise just about any opinion can be voiced freely. Thid doesn't mean that thios particular EU law is any good, it just screams big media corporation lobbyism all over it. And yes, this implies some future potential limitations to free speech,l either by technically limiting the reech of smaller players (regardless of what the law states) and by giving governmants a tool to keep things of the internet. Especially the last part is troubling.
What you are describing is a merged set of other named rights, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association, etc. The US (as far as I am aware) is the only country in the world with the Right to Free Speech. Free being the keyword here, "unconstrained".
Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.
You don't have the right to say anything you want in the US either. Free speech is full of exceptions in US law as well, starting with the most obvious example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" [1] (though the original decision the phrase refers to had nothing to do with someone shouting "fire"...) In other words: speech that would be likely to incite imminent lawless action.
The U.S. has many exceptions to free speech. Libel, slander, "fighting words" (see Chaplinsky v. N.H.), "imminent lawless action"(Brandenburg v. Ohio), obscenity (Miller v. California), etc. These have all been interpreted in varying ways throughout history, with the general trend being towards more protected speech (compare Brandenburg/"imminent lawless action" to Schenck v. U.S./"clear and present danger"). Additionally, the government can restrict speech further when acting in a special capacity, such as the FCC's regulation of the speech on the airwaves and public schools' regulation of free speech in classrooms.
It's delusional to think that the U.S. has unrestricted free speech, or to think that "free" implies completely "unconstrained".
>Free Speech doesn't mean having the right to say bad things about the government. It means having the right to say anything you want.
This is a strawman. No EU country restricts free speech to speech criticizing the government.
Well, at least in Germany you can say all kinds of negative Things aboiut the government you want as long as you are not personally insulting anybody. In France as well as far as I know. Wether it is part of freedom of Speech or Freedom of Expression, well I'm no constitutional lawyer.
They do, and free speech and fair use are important issues to them.