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Comment by Zamicol | Hacker News Reader

Where are you going?

Where can Internet refugees go?

I'm moving all my stuff into Europe. My main Server is hosted at OVH which has no HQ in the US (OVH in the US is a separate corporation specific to US customers of OVH).

I'm moving my mail to Protonmail, away from my current mail provider (which I was planning to do anyway once the contract ran out since they are against net-neutrality but I'll speed things up now)

My DNS is also currently hosted in the US, via Cloudflare and another provider. I will move those into OVH too but I'll have to wait for atleast two contracts to run out for that too.

Considering the GDPR, I guess the EU is the current bastion of privacy and a free-er internet.

With the passing of the CLOUD act, moving your server or email outside the US likely won't help. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/cloud-act-dangerous-ex...

I'm not in the US so if I'm pulling my stuff out of the US, I don't believe the CLOUD act will bother me.

Nowhere, just use end-to-end encryption.

The tools for building apps with it already exist: https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi...

I doubt it'll help since the bill makes it problematic to facilitate any illegal behavior. So E2EE won't help, they'll just slap you for facilitating stuff.

It is like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know if it is illegal or not if you can't decrypt it.

If someone finds out someone did do something illegal with it (obtaining plaintext through various means or someone is being convicted by other means) then you're definitely in for it.

Then every single P2P host will have to take it down, which might take a long while with how slow DMCA/whatever takes.

Myself, personally, I'd comply with legal takedowns because I don't want to get thrown in prison. But that doesn't mean it won't be exceptionally hard for things to be removed from a cryptographically secure P2P network.

Maybe float your servers in international waters or boost them into orbit?

There's a decent chance bad US Internet laws will be struck down by the courts on constitutional grounds, but most other places never had protections for those freedoms to begin with.

On the other hand, if you're going to be an outlaw anyway, you might as well do it somewhere where your bribes will actually buy you some measure of protection.

If you're in space or international waters you have to due so under the auspices of some particular country and obey its laws. Otherwise you have no recourse if someone comes and takes your stuff.

OTOH, you're moving to international waters because you think its likely if you remain in most countries, someone will come and take your stuff.

Germany

Not really, no. You can't even torrent there without getting threatening letters in the mail. Also wifi/responsibility issues. Copyright nonsense is running strong in Germany. There are freeer countries than that WRT internet freedom in EU.

I know people who have gotten those letters in the US; the companies that send them are contracted by major media corps and don’t care about where you live.

Will you get letters for torrenting legally, or only when you download copyrighted stuff?

Only copyrighted stuff and sometimes its bogus, so the best turn is to have a lawyer friend, write a nice letter and never hear from them again.

Not to Europe, I am afraid. Europe is a bureaucratic shit-show with a big-brother more than willing to regulate what you say, how you say it, how to listen, how to remember and forget and soon how to think...

Just watching the GDPR mess makes you understand Brexit.

What? GDPR is for avoiding Cambridge Analytica/Facebook disatasters, Equifax breaches and other cases when companies collect data that they dont need store it like there is no tomorrow and at the end dont give a shit when people get screwed over by a 3rd party. Great Britain has the worst laws in the EU when it comes to internet regulations. People are jailed for funny videos while the GHCQ hacks corporations, and they have the most invasive security laws at all.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Socialist

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/217478-uk-introduces-law...

What are you talking about???

> GDPR is for avoiding Cambridge Analytica/Facebook disasters

And SESTA/FOSTA is for avoiding human trafficking.

Complex far reaching laws often don't end up having the result they were said to be intended for.

> People are jailed for funny videos

It’s not like most of the mainland European countries are better in this regard. Few of them have strong legal protections for free expression, and some of them (like Germany) have explicit political censorship laws just like the UK.

The UK has made all appearances of going forward with GDPR principles independently of the EU, and as with almost everything in terms of EU regulations, we will likely have to comply with GDPR whether we stay inside or outside of the EU formal structures especially given its extra-territorial enforcement. The UK already has a lot of data protection legislation (more so than the US), and is making no indication of wishing to repeal.

GDPR will be a pain for a lot of businesses, but seems to be well designed to protect citizens by to reducing abuses of surveillance by private companies like those in the news right now with Facebook.

GDPR is the appropriate response to decades of giving industry an opportunity to self regulate its data collection practices (the "cookie law" was a warning shot ignored by industry), which has evidently spectacularly failed should you open any broadsheet newspaper this morning.

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