[AnonymousPlanet]

> but on the other hand it's clear that many EU constituents (those who actually pay taxes and employ people in the EU) felt that something had to be done.

Why do you think the EU constituents had anything to do with these laws? The laws were incentivised by the publishers. The crux in the EU is that the biggest part of the industry see the internet just as infrastructure and couldn't care less about net neutrality, censorship, equal access, or ad revenues. The only industries affected by those issues are tech companies and publishers.

The tech companies have a pro liberalisation stance while the publishers hate the internet's guts. Now guess where countries with strong and influential publishers and a nearly non existent tech industry are leaning to. That publications like Süddeutsche, Zeit, and FAZ have been portraying the internet as a bad and dangerous thing for decades now, doesn't help.

[maze-le]

Well, we can at least have solace in the fact that these are the exact same outlets that are suffering financial losses since at least 10 years. They are dying a slow death and this is their final straw -- not that it will do them any good, to the contrary. Good riddance!

[pas]

Is there any efficient alternative to big newspapers with decades long editorial reputation?

I'm not pitying the useless money grab ad-infested publications, but they were the ones that actually spent on good journalism.

Though it would be good to see a lot more numbers/data about this. Also probably with globalisation the market simply consolidates. There's no need for more than a handful big "trust anchors" for news. The local news problem is tougher to crack though :/

[rixed]

While the publishers are dying their slow death, the free, peer to peer internet died much quicker.

[nine_k]

Why, it's not died!

It's just a wee bit less popular than the centralized ad-fueled internet.