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Comment by h91wka | Hacker News Reader

This is wrong on more levels than it seems from the first glance:

1) I've witnessed creeping internet censorship starting just like this: first it's something as innocuous as "let's protect creators" or "let's protect children from harmful content", then 6 years later you can't criticize the government. They've just created a legal framework for massive automated censorship, and also Overton window was moved. I expect this to happen as soon as this law is backed up with the technical means.

2) People in power are uncomfortable with the current state of the internet, that is a true p2p platform for communication. Can't have that! We just got moved one step closer towards their vision of the Internet, that is nothing more than TV + storefront.

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Case in point: abuse of the DMCA ironically took down this[1] article titled "EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line".

If we look at the DMCA notice[2], you'll see that the claim was made to Google that a song belonging to Real Housewives of Melbourne breakout act, Gamble Breaux, was used on the site. There is no such song on the page.

Here's a few other sites that were taken off of Google with that claim. There's a theme.

- https://savethelink.org/me

- https://www.wbs-law.de/urheberrecht/eu-abstimmung-morgen-dro...

- https://torrentfreak.com/popular-torrent-and-streaming-sites...

- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/leistungsschutzre...

[1] https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-fi...

[2] https://lumendatabase.org/notices/16954705

Thank christ I don't live in Europe.

These pages were censored in the US. We've got our own censorship framework based around the DMCA.

Where have you witnessed creeping internet censorship starting like this? (Not disputing, I'd just be interested to study it)

I don't really understand why this comment is downvoted? OP wrote he is not disputing but want to study it. What's wrong with that? I am curious also and would like to know.

Because we live in an era of increased authoritarianism.

And the reality for those of us that don't like it is that authoritarianism doesn't appear from nowhere. It appears because of the prevailing attitude of large segments of the population.

This means that criticism towards authority is generally received with skepticism and a very high evidence standard is used to judge the 'correctness' or the 'paranoia/conspiracy' of the claim. This while simultaneously accepting authority claims with little questioning and zero, even negative demand for evidence.

I would agree the down voting is uncalled for given the good nature of the question. But given the previous explanation, I'm not surprised by it.

Edit: spelling

In Finland, 2006 the parliament made a law that that Finnish police will keep a block list of foreign web addresses containing child porn, and Finnish internet providers should block access to these.

In 2007, a website appeared, that criticises the law, and claimed that using a web crawler, they had found that actually over 95% of the blocked addresses contain only legal porn. Also legal gay porn was quite overrepresented in the block list. Occasionally also for example www.w3.org was on the block list. And a memorial website for a dead princess of Thailand, which caused a minor diplomatic crisis, since defaming the royal family is a severe offence in Thailand.

And then in 2008, the Finnish police also added the aforementioned criticizing website to the block list, although the law clearly said that it applies to blocking foreign, not domestic, websites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info

Russia. The first bill was passed around 2012. There is one key difference, though. As Russian government generally lacks influence on Western tech companies, they chose to target ISPs, while the EU law in question goes after hosting providers.

It is significant because while network-level filtering is potentially more destructive, the agency in charge of enforcement of the russian law (Roskomnadzor) stumbled upon cryptography (who could have thought!). Their IP-level filters don't work for TLS, so the only option they are left with is all-or-nothing block by IP. This kind of censorship lacks subtlety, therefore big companies have some room for negotiation (small ones get banned without any questions asked).

The EU law doesn't even bother with networks, it threatens companies directly. And the EU market is large, so tech giants won't just shrug, they'll probably choose to comply.

Russian Federation was never like western democracies. It began long time before 2012 in Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, because he wanted to oppose current status-quo in politics. State media are propaganda machines for the state a lot longer too. You can't really compare EU bill to Russia situation, they are at totally different level. The bill you are mentioning was just introduced to keep up with modern media censorship in Russia. Papers and TV were censored a long time ago.

Western countries indeed have functional democracies, but freedom of speech is not sacred here either. Consider Britain for an extreme example. And you're only talking about the current situation, while I am making a pessimistic prediction based on the current attitude towards freedom of information exchange and some past experience.

> And you're only talking about the current situation, while I am making a pessimistic prediction based on the current attitude towards freedom of information exchange and some past experience.

It's indeed a pessimistic opinion but I understand where it's coming from based on where you live. I was born in authoritarian country also and lived in it when I was a kid, I am living now in western democracy in EU and based on my experience, knowledge and after reading most of the legislation myself I am more optimistic.

If it was just censorship maybe, but this is also trying to tax them on essentially all content they link to. No way is google taking this one sitting down, if it actually goes into effect expect first google, then probably others (Facebook almost certainly) to slap blanket bans on all of EU with a nice little landing page helpfully explaining exactly what everyone should complain about to their local EU representative.

TV, storefront and voting. The latter can then be abused to pretend the public agrees.

I totally agree with both of you.

"If you are using the internet to actually learn, you are using it wrong, that is why internet must be reduced to TV + storefront."

Regarding voting too: just compare the number of bits per ballot (log2() of valid number of ways of filling in the ballot) with the number of bits of compressed text of all changes in law during a term. It's not a vote or voice, the information flows in the opposite direction. It just projects the law on our supposed desire. demokratia or demophimia (muzzling/gagging of the people)?

This is just how Western societies are sold China-style censorship and surveillance.

Honest question: why can't China sell it's own surveillance in the same way?

That will be unnessary and inefficient for the Chinese government. The social operation system runs very differently in China. And you can still feel the impact the Cultural Revolution has on how the modern day population thinks in general when it comes to politics (e.g. when you ask people about their opinions on a certain lawmaking decision by the Communist Party).

Speaking broadly, nobody is afraid of Finland or Denmark genociding its own population (or large sections of it) and moving to a Mao or Stalin style authoritarian model.

Liberal democracies are generally given more of a benefit of the doubt when it comes to their anti-liberal policies (eg Patriot Act), as it pertains to the seriousness of the threat they represent to the well-being and freedom of the population. That is, it's not anticipated or widely feared that those policies will next lead to vast gulags and the near total elimination of all human rights.

Human Rights Watch just put out a hundred page report on what's going on in Xinjiang. To paraphrase their findings, what's going on in China is the most repressive large-scale effort seen in the country since the cultural revolution days of mass murder and purge.

With China, given they're already an authoritarian dictatorship with few human rights, and they're regressing rapidly from the small gains they had made, there's a built-in legitimate fear of its surveillence programs being directly used for terrifying things. Indeed, it's happening right now.

No, western societies get spied on by their own governments because terrorists hate our freedom, or some other such nonsense.

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