.Cat Domain a Casualty in Catalonian Independence Crackdown
eff.org
eff.org
Is simply put, bulshit. A court ordered taking down illegal calls to a referendum not approved by a democratic consitution. If that was ignored, someone had to take action.
Of course, Spain is also calling thoroughly pacific demonstrations “tumultuous” so that they can accuse politicians of sedition, so Spain clearly doesn’t care about truth and law.
Is the law is wrong? Maybe, in fact I might agree with the right to vote secession, but (IMHO) this needs to be done with great care, if not, any region of any state can call a vote for independence each time they disagree with the neighbors. In fact this kind of "blackmail" has been used consistently in Catalonia for years: "If you don't vote this bill, we will secede from Spain".
So, I don't think that the law that prohibit referendums for secession is completely nonsense. Exceptions of course can be made, but, is the case of Catalonia an exception? Before answer that, please, think if you have all the data to make that statement.
That blackmail has not used never. If you think so, provide just one example.
If you ask me, I think that was a political (dirty) movement to gain some votes. But the point here is that since some Catalans didn't like the court resolution, they started this "blackmail": "either you accept the estatut or we will secede". We are now at the threat of secession.
Note that the quoted texts are not literal phrases said by anyone, it is just to clarify my point.
You asked one example, here is one. There are many other examples of laws passed in the Spanish congress with the support of Catalan parties in exchange of political favors.
What orders ignored? Do you have any link to newspapers?
And, by the way, PuntCAT is a TLD register, they don't host any site.
Do you know other case where the TLD registar has been seized? Domains are blocked via ISP's, the publisher or the hosting.
> ... .cat domains not connected with the October 1 referendum (including eff.cat, EFF's little-known Catalan language website) have not been affected.
A more accurate title might have been "Individual .cat domains promoting sedition casualties in...", which is not what it currently seems like it means.
Please read this to know the facts: https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...
And by the way, this is a political problem that the Spanish government refuses to tackle politically, making it a criminal issue. Is it criminal to want to not belong to a country that thinks that promoting a referendum is a crime?
Also, El Pais is certainly not partisan, no...
[1]: http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2015/08/20/55d4cbb646163f3c1c8b...: The Spanish Constitutional Court has 12 members, of which 4 are chosen by the congress, 4 are chosen by the senate, 2 are chosen by the governing party, and 2 by the "Consejo General del Poder Judicial".
In European parlance, 'the government' often means the currently in-power group of legislative representatives, which causes much confusion in the US when we hear 'a new government was formed in X', or 'the government will be dissolved in Y'.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/911226994846...
https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/910888878948700160
TL;DR: if you break the law, expect to get punished. The operators knew they were breaking the law, so involved sites in that domain were blocked. I.e. not a ".cat" generic blockage, but a specific action driven from a court.
> First, the content in question here is essentially political speech, which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled as deserving of a higher level of protection than some other forms of speech. Even though the speech concerns a referendum that has been ruled illegal, the speech does not in itself pose any imminent threat to life or limb.
What the Spanish government did is considered censorship under any reasonable system of law. Justifying one "wrong" with another is not gonna get anyone anywhere anytime. But since the Spanish government is fond of censorship, this reaction shouldn't come as a surprise.
The content blocked is content being announced by an official entity (Generalitat) containing information about the unilateral organization of a referendum. The Generalitat as an official organism needs to abide by the existing constitutional laws. The judge as initial measure, has dictated to retrieve all official material with information regarding the organization of the referendum. No other pages from dotCAT have been seized, including unofficial ones with information about the referendum.
The EFF should also take into account that the Generalitat has unlawfully obtained private information from millions of citizens in order to be able to create a list of possible voters.
>Whether it's allegations of sedition or any other form of unlawful or controversial speech, domain name intermediaries should not be held responsible for the content of websites that utilize their domains. If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet.
I'm in favor of a referendum so the catalans can decide if they want to be in Spain or not. But I'm not in favor of a unilateral decision.
Women wouldn't be voting if they never broke the law first.
Giving a Tax amnesty to very rich tax dodgers (as the current Spanish government has done recently) has been ruled to be against the Rule of The Law and the Spanish Constitution, yes? Who is going to jail for this? No one.
The constitution only matters when it matters to some.
I expect this will go further up to the European Court of Human Rights, and, like in previous cases where for example German law (and constitutional changes) conflicted with these protections, the European Convention on Human Rights will be ruled to stand above any national law or constitution.
What's being argued here is that seizing the .cat TLD when a page registered in it was hosting "unlawful" content consists in pure and simple censorship. It would be similar to the US government taking control of the .com TLD because some website hosted on a .com domain is selling drugs. This is censorship.
To quote the article (which apparently you didn't read) again:
> Whether it's allegations of sedition or any other form of unlawful or controversial speech, domain name intermediaries should not be held responsible for the content of websites that utilize their domains. If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet.
In addition, the web is now hosted in another domain, against the law, not because of "free speech", but because of using protected private information from citizens: https://onvotar.garantiespelreferendum.com/on-votar/index.ht...
This is not about "free speech", but about the sublevation of a regional government, against the rule of law, i.e. against citizen's rights.
This is a very dangerous precedent
And yes, I think that the CONTENT is ilegal and I would denunce it if my data is there, but the TLD has nothing to do with that
That's simply put... bulshit, I'm far from supporting the ultra right wing catholic goverment from Madrid, but spreading plain lies to victimize yourself doesn't make them true.
If someone thinks the laws the judges are interpreting are unconstitutional, or against European treaties, they can denounce those laws against the Spanish Constitutional Court, or the appropriate European court.
If they think the interpretation is what's flawed, they can appeal and / or denounce the judges to the Spanish Supreme Court. If the argument would become that the judiciary is corrupt and owned by the Government, from the Barcelona courts all the way up to the Supreme Court; it should be remembered that the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced a Ministro del Interior (like Secretary of State, the de-facto most powerful position after the President) to 10 years in prison.
Note: This is what I read recently regarding this issue, but I am not a law expert, so take this with a grain of salt.
Edit: typos.
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...
That said, the law is just a tool used by the people to live peacefully in a society. If people are not happy about it, the law needs to be changed.
I don't know if the EFF is aware that the site has citizen personal information without permission. Who protects us as citizens against rebel regional government putting online private information against the rule of law?
> Shortly the Government will release the details on the polling stations to be used for the 1st October Referendum.
Time to denunce to AEPD
To be fair, it is very difficult to find unbiased and knowledgeable people writing about this. It is best to not rely on only one kind of source if you want to form an opinion.
If the real intention was to organize a referendum, it could have been done with preparation, lawfully and negotiated with other regional political forces who are also supporting it.
It has been tried for years, not only in Catalonia, but also in Euskadi.
The Spanish law was changed en 2006 to make those referendums ilegal
- judge told .cat TLD to take over some domains, setting them to display a spanish police landing page.
- .cat complied.
- Judge told .cat TLD to censor any domain that does support the referendum in any way.
- .cat replied that they run a TLD, that it's not their job to act as a censorship agency, inspecting each domain and disabling those that host websites that talk about topics that a judge specified are forbidden.
- .cat notified the ICANN of the situation they're in: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/lineros...
- police raided the TLD office, and arrested its CTO at his home.