Proposals come up.. most fail. I admire those responsible for putting up resistance. But.. some succeed. Others partially succeed. Limited to stopping pedophilia, piracy, nazis... Those are bridgeheads.
The direction is monodirectional. Eighty six proposals can fail, but if the eighty seventh succeeds that's just as good. There is no going back. Win, good. Lose, try again. That kind of dynamic guarantees a certain result.
The obvious tautology aside, I wouldn't agree with this in case of the EU (the US, probably.) To me, the EU feels more like two steps forward, one step back - this being the step back but, for example, the GDPR being the two steps (or leaps) forward.
In any case, this regulation seems more misguided rather than malicious. It's targeting real problems that have to be tackled but it does have the fault of granting overly broad powers to the respective institutions.
Misguided, malicious, bootlegger, baptist, real problems, fake ones... I don't think it matters much.
Norms are being established for regulating the web. The "proper channels" for seizing domains, ip blocking, de-indexing etc. There will be a number to call, forms to get stamped, enforcement.. These are growing around the world, at multiple levels of government. The EU is not an exception. Restrictions and censorship is growing at the EU and member state level.
I guess we disagree about the premise: when such channels exist (they basically do now) then they'll be used directly and indirectly in the same way their equivalents are used to regulate every other medium.
These thing are usually icebergs, mostly below the surface. China doesn't have to tell sites what to do most of the time, they "self regulate."
> does have the fault of granting overly broad powers to the respective institutions.
You praise the GPDR in the same comment you lament overly broad powers. Surely the contradiction is clear? Maybe in your case, the fault is not the power but rather that you disagree with the specific uses? I wonder if politicians can differentiate between forms of internet restrictions as easily as we can.
Intent isn't relevant at all - only result.
I don't know if I buy this slippery slope argument. Nazi memorabilia and glorification have been banned in France and Germany for more than 70 years now, and these countries have not yet descended into fascism and further impeding of free speech and other points that we usually hear from offended Americans who learn about this.
I didn't imply descent into fascism. I implied a descent into norms where the internet is more like TV or radio were. Historically, the web has been a uniquely free medium.
There is also a commercial dynamic side to this. Regulations and restrictions favour larger, stabler, more normative companies.
Also, I don't think slippery slope arguments lend too well to analogies. Some slopes are slipperier than others. ..and the overthrow of the Nazi regime was not a democratic one. It was a violent one. All the methods were not part of normative politics. Banning Nazism was a part of that overthrow. What the shelling of Berlin a slippery slope?
That said, i think the ban should have been lifted by later generations, a symbolic nod to freedom of speech and association. If even Nazis in France get free speech, it's a sign that those freedoms are strong.
Why not. Bad laws should be repealed.
This kind of thing is true in every domain of legislation and regulation. Indeed wherever officials have wielded power since the before the building of Babylon. And yet the world has not, in the large scale, been on a march towards ever more tyranny. How is that?
I don't fully understand the process by which freedom has increased in most countries through history but it does exist. So it makes sense for people of good will to think, and discuss and act so as to help it along.
This video has a great outline: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/rules-for-rulers
"3. Competent authorities shall have at least the following enforcement powers:
(e) where no other effective means are available to bring about the cessation or the prohibition of the infringement including by requesting a third party or other public authority to implement such measures, in order to prevent the risk of serious harm to the collective interests of consumers:
- to remove content or restrict access to an online interface or to order the explicit display of a warning to consumers when accessing the online interface;
- to order a hosting service provider to remove, disable or restrict the access to an online interface; or
- where appropriate, order domain registries or registrars to delete a fully qualified domain name and allow the competent authority concerned to register it;"
Seems similar to already existing measures against infringement of copyrights, except that thing about circumventing the courts, as Reda writes. Could this possibly mean websites such as Facebook could be blocked on the grounds of protecting consumers? The document defines 'widespread infringement' as
"(1) any act or omission contrary to Union laws that protect consumers' interests that harmed, harms, or is likely to harm the collective interests of consumers"
What a weaselly term. Bet they spent months trying to come up with something that didn't sound ridiculously biased/anti-consumer and that's the best they came up with. So obviously corrupt.
Sources please.
The EU isn't perfect... But this sounds a lot like an attempt to give consumer protection agencies the powers to block scam sites.
From what I could see Julia Reda (MEP - German Pirate) wasn't unhappy about the intents of this legislation. Merely concerned about:
A) Website blocking without judicial oversight
B) Existence of website blocking infrastructure
C) Inability to force compensations
D) No restitution of illicit profits
I suspect (B) is already a reality, but yeah, I'm no fan. I agree that (A) is concerning, but wording suggests this can ONLY be applied when "no other effective means" are available. As I understand it that implies it can only be used when the owner can be found, sued or prosecuted by other means.
I read that as this applies to faceless scam sites without an address or anyone willing to take responsibility.
As for (C) and (D) I would love to see more of that. But the idea in her blog post that illicit profits (B) could be used for found consumer protection agencies is not something I agree with.
I ask because the EU already has the ability to block sites infringe on copyrights.
To me this law is one of the reactions taken to the fact that foreign powers are using completely faked news papers and social media pages to influence out elections.
Right now consumers have very little ammunition against companies like Facebook. In the EU we have the right to everything they’ve gathered on us and to demand they delete it, but if they went full retard we couldn’t legally block them.
Now we can.
"business which we want to cultivate a protected local equivalent of"
China figured it out; the EU is just playing catch-up.
But if you consider, youtube is exactly the same kind of site, having the copyrighted content uploaded by some web users there since Youtube exists and -- nobody blocks Youtube. And Youtube even still profits from that content as it serves its own ads on it.
And do the biggest pay the taxes?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/05/04/google-pay-...
"Google will pay €306m (£259m) to settle a tax dispute in Italy and end a criminal investigation into whether it avoided paying the full amount on its revenues in the country for more than a decade."
Italy is just one of the EU lands.
The sites blocked are typically things that nobody will take responsibility for.
Note: this law also says, "where no other effective means are available". Prosecution in court or civil law suites are certainly "effective means". But for some websites they are not available.
It's actually worse than 'blocking', they get control of the domain.
Do such a beast even exist?
That required judicial authorisation. Good way of beginning a post, with a lie.
In all the years that this system has been in place in Spain I have never seen it used for anything other than blocking websites that were in breach of the law.
P1. Infra A exists. P2. Infra A has been abused. C1. If we build infra A, it can be abused.
P3. Abuse is bad. P4. This proposal proposes that we build infra A. P5. A proposal to build something that can be abused is bad. C2. A proposal to build infra A is bad.
That's all fine. It's all fine, except P1 still stands even at the time we reach C2. The infrastructure already exists. So the argument sounds funny. Not unsound, but somewhat unconvincing.
It's a much better argument for the proposition that we should dismantle the infrastructure, than that we shouldn't make additional legitimate use of the infrastructure.
I can't find a source on this. Do you have one?
With the upcoming ePrivacy/GDPR in the EU, if you as a consumer sent a DNT header or disagree with being tracked, you can notify anyone doing so and they are under EU law required to delete your data and/or stop tracking you.
If they don't... well the nearest consumer protection office will be interested and they'll probably then follow up with blocking the website EU wide.
So in conclusion; yes this can be used against anyone who tracks you on the internet against your will since the EU law will make that illegal in the future and this law is a broadside against anyone trying to ignore EU law.
"where no other effective means are available", hence, sites with representation in the EU, or owners who can be extradited to the EU, doesn't seem to be at risk.
The masses move like molasses.
When you build a decentralized system it's going to immediately be organically populated by the least desirable demographics in existence. And those demographics can then be used to demonize the system itself. This seems to be a major burden to uptake unless the 'main net' becomes rapidly castrated - but that will never happen. Changes happen slowly and incrementally and like the anecdote of a frog boiling in water - people just don't notice.
Ultimately regulations tend to favour large incumbents.
In the EU 'consumer protection' is the guise of protecting suppliers. For example, protecting consumers from Buffalo Mozzarella means that only 4 regions of Italy may produce it (via the Protected designation of origin scheme) (it doesn't matter if the recipe/methods are correct). This way the consumer is 'protected' from being sold Buffalo Mozzarella from regions that can produce it cheaper.
This method seems to be a way to force compliance online. The EU is great but their digital initiatives are always examples of overreach. Last time it was those ridiculous cookie notices you see on websites notifying you that the website uses cookies.
Producing a product the cheapest way possible is not the end goal. If those cheap products drive the traditional way out of the market (as consumers have no reliable way of distinguishing products) consumers that specifically want the product from that region are harmed. All others can buy generic Buffalo Mozzarella produced anywhere just fine.
We had something like this under "ban pedo" umbrella, now this thing filter anything that is against the party rule
Explain, did you read the text?
The EU law she discusses seems clearly focused on (e-)commerce, and it instructs the government to have websites taken down only when that's the only way to protect consumers from being harmed (e.g. defrauded) by those websites.
News websites, even those encouraging people to show up to illegal referenda, don't appear to be affected by this law?
An example of how that happens and why it is dangerous is the Catalan domains story. The Spanish government is obviously trying to limit speech which is not in its interests.
As if you can prevent that as a website owner. Especially since such a thing would be totally subjective to judge. What it means is they are purposefully giving themselves any reason at all to shut off your site.
I asked one of them about it, I got directed to their legal department. I asked the legal department about the clause and they told me to look for hosting elsewhere given what they assumed was the way in which I conduct myself on the internet.
There is no legal reason. They just want to control information.
A DB of such requests, limited to Italy: https://censura.bofh.it/
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/11/european-...
It's a lot of friction and hoops to go through, especially for smaller companies, to do business that reaches into the EU (directly or indirectly) with these regulations.
Uhm we've had that for a long time, it is how sites with CP and other illegal things are dealt with.
