Hacker News Reader

Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

man..I thought brexit was bad, but maybe they're on to something? this isn't the first time EU cracks down on new tech, hindering progress in the process. (this is however the worst such case yet, if it goes through)

View on HN

Brexit is giving the UK politicians the chance to enact some pretty draconian laws _without_ the European courts being able to stop them because it's illegal or goes against human rights.

The fact that the EU is _following_ us into some of this madness is not a good thing and certainly doesn't imply that the UK is onto something good.

Which laws are those?

Even though at the time they only ban neo-nazis, the UK can now criminally charge you for having opinions they dislike. That's not a step forward. Also surveilance and anti-privacy laws in the UK are horrible.

The porn filter springs to mind.

The snoopers charter that got enacted recently keeps getting proven illigal, so they keep changing the law.

Currently politicians have said a number of times that they'd like to get rid of human rights.

There's currently talks about making social media platforms responsible for editing content rather than acting as a transport layer.

There's plenty more, I'm sure others can chime in.

>>Currently politicians have said a number of times that they'd like to get rid of human rights.

That's not true at all. They may want to leave the European Court of Human Rights but that's not the same as suddenly rolling back loads of human rights in the UK.

I'm old enough to have been an adult before Tony Blair signed the European Convention on Human Rights into law in the UK. People's rights didn't massively change for the better when that was signed, so I wouldn't expect them to change for the worse if it is repealed.

Investigatory Powers Act 2016, currently being challenged under human rights laws that are a requirement of EU membership.

Well the British electorate can decide on whether they like those laws and kick out the executive and those laws if they do not. But I guess that's `populist`. Illegal is a loaded term. Bit like 'international law' which boils down to mean international agreements.

Can do that with MEPs, too.

Except that the real power is with the Commission, not the MEPs. It's the opposite of the UK parliamentary system, where the (elected) House of Commons initiates legislation and the (unelected) House of Lords occasionally returns it with small suggestions for change. Here, the MEPs effectively rubber stamp the legislation initiated by the Commission (who knows, they may even make it to the Commission one day if they behave).

It's all very well trotting out the line that "they can can shortcut Parliaments and pass the sort of laws that any right-thinking person should support, or the proles on the street might not understand", but that's the crux of my objection. The democratic rights of the populace were never yours or theirs to subvert or give away.

As Tony Benn wisely said, "I'd rather have a bad Parliament than a good King".

I have never understood why proposing, rather than analysing and modifying, laws is considered more important. Every so often the UK House of Lords gets in the news for “wrecking amendments”. There is enough power in each domain that I am comfortable with only the MEPs being directly elected in the EU, and with leaving the Lords unelected in the UK until (like this will ever happen) there is enough time to replace them with a carefully thought out alternative.

I have to disagree about the House of Lords just as a point of principle, because I don't agree with a higher authority made up of the clergy, aristocrats, and political stooges.

There are some exceptions, but I don't think it's an unfair caricature by the British people that the HOL are symbolic, senile or sedated.

Although I agree with you on the principles, I regard this as the constitutional equivalent of refactoring: it’s a part of the system that smells fishy and was written on punched cards, but it works and there are always more important problems to solve.

Also, there is so much more that also needs to be refactored…

And this article [1] on how Jean-Claude Junker made his chief of staff general secretary of the commission will tell you how corrupt it is.

[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/a-very-eu-coup-martin-se...

agreed, they're most definitely not. I was just trying to express my frustration with this suggested policy.. I accept whatever punishment the internet sees fit for my careless violation of Poe's law

Brexit is bad. The EU is not great and does make some indefensible decisions, but the UK government is increasingly obviously descending into some kind of Greek-style basket case.

As a sibling comment says, after Brexit the UK will most likely try to enact all kinds of bad ideas that it feels it's been held back from by the EU. Most of which will be directed at "immigrants".

US Congress wants to mandate pornography filter: “that’s a bad law”

EU Parliament wants to mandate filter: “lets burn this place down”

People don't seem to understand that the entertainment industry doesn't just lobby in the US, but worldwide. A few years ago we had the SOPA scare which imposed draconian measures to stop copyright infringement, and those were proposed by the US. We'll have to accept that every few years, a lobbying attempt manages to get a concrete proposal to the floor either in Congress or in the Commission, and we'll have to respond with outrage every time.

The worst part is that they only need to succeed once - if the laws are changed it will become exponentially harder to change them back. So they have every motivation to keep dumping resources at this.

Don't forget the UK's own porn filter, implementation of which has been delayed following inability to answer the question of "how on earth is this supposed to work?"

Well, the outcome of American Civil War precludes the possibility of, say, Texas Exit, but France Exit or Dutch Exit are still within the realms of reality.

I'd say it's the same old copyright trolling over and over - unless they switch to the brand new "anti-hate speech" propaganda. Those moves look desperate and what is most depressing is that we're feeding MAFIAA everytime we consume culture - via legal means or not (it's shown that piracy increases sales anyway).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com