Does the EU's ban on RT also ban Tor?

    > transmission or distribution by any means such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.

    Since this is a legal obligation, I fail so see how EU protections against ISP censorship would apply.

My read on this is that this is designed to prevent situations where ISP, cable, satellite, et. al. providers have more direct involvement in its transmission or distribution. Consider cases where companies offer a streaming service that sometimes includes news channels (e.g.: Netflix), or ISPs that offer their own streaming services doing the same. In those cases, those companies are taking an active role in deploying the content, so they would fall under the umbrella of transmitting or distributing it.

     The "court order blocking illegal content" is an example, not an exhaustive list of the ways a legal obligation to censorship could pertain. 

This is also in the context of a blog post wondering if TOR is now illegal because of this. Would that make VPNs illegal as well? How would the EU even consider shutting down VPN service providers in other countries?

I will gladly stand corrected on this if I'm wrong and the ultimate result here is that RT becomes inaccessible to the EU based on this law.

However, it will not affect TOR any more than it would affect VPN providers, anyone offering VPS services, etc.

I really detest this line of thought. What good are the concept of human rights when people declare that private companies by definition cannot infringe on them?

That's not a universal definition, no. E.g. in the EU Facebook and Twitter have lost cases where they blocked posts for "ToS violations" and were ordered to restore them on free speech grounds. (whereas apparently in the US the perspective is more that banning corporations from banning people is violating the corps free speech rights, and doesn't see as much of a balance there)

If so, they learned exactly the wrong lesson. It was wrong for the US courts to do that, but at least they were acting on their own and not claiming some justification in the text of the Constitution. It's far worse to have these exceptions undermining basic natural human rights written directly into the EU charter. The inclusion of Article 11 essentially makes the rest of the charter pointless—you have "guaranteed" legal rights, except when those in power decide that you don't, for what seem to them to be good reasons at the time. I doubt there is an example of any systematic infringement of rights throughout history which wasn't cast as being in support of "public safety" or "national security" or "protection of health or morals", or some variation or combination thereof.

I also note other news networks have been happily spouting anti-Russian propaganda as well (i.e. "Ghost of Kiev", "Miss Ukraine Fighting", and the "Snake Island Martyrs" to name but 3).

I also note none of the Western Media talk about shelling, murder, and rape of the ethnic Russian civilians in the Donbas since 2014. They call it "propaganda" now but 6 years ago these same western media outlets reported that "Fascist Azov Battalion Ukrainian Military were shelling and murdering Donbas "separatists" (now western media calls them terrorists).

News shouldn't have bias, full stop. news should just report the facts and let the viewer/listener decide. However, bar that both sides should have their voices herd in a democracy.

This choice should be up to the individual and their beliefs.

But some administrative authority claiming that it should be closed, then getting it closed in a few hours? with hundreds of actual professional journalists getting shown the door as a consequence? That's just the sort of shit Putin does. I want my country to do better than Putin in all matters, please.

The first is that it's not that EU laws are more important, it's that by ratifying the EU treaties the members have ceded the power to act in some areas to the EU as a whole.

This applies uniformly to all member states, Germany included.

The issue that can arise is when there's a disagreement on whether or not a specific power was ceded or not, the problem being that on the one side we have the national constitutional (or equivalent) courts which are the ultimate authority for the member in question, while on the other we have the ECJ which is defined as the ultimate authority in what the Treaties say

What you're probably referring to is the recent case in which the German ConstCourt said that a judgement by the ECJ was incorrect and adopted its own, it was then resolved by some judicial diplomacy. That issue remains and it's arguably inevitable whenever multiple levels of government share power.

A further asterisk is that this is a freedom of expression issue, which is handled at three distinct levels.

At the EU level the law is likely to be found partially in contradiction with the Charter of Fundamental rights (which only applies to EU law and EU institutions or national institutions executing EU law), I don't think the broadcasting ban in itself would be but I'm pretty sure that someone posting clips of RT for instance would be found protected by the charter

However there's also a national level since the EU doesn't actually have any own enforcement, therefore the individual countries will have to adopt actual punishments and enforcement mechanisms which are then subject to respecting the national freedom of expression requirements (fundamental rights are generally of constitutional significance, so they're at least equal in precedence to EU treaties), technically the EU commission could start an infringement procedure if it deems the actions taken unsatisfactory and that process ultimately ends at the ECJ, however while the ECJ could tell the member state it has to effectively ignore their own court (which the member state can't do anyway) but since that would lead to an unresolvable constitutional crisis the ECJ is unlikely to pick that hill to die on and it has a pretty convenient clause in its mandate saying "we will respect each country's constitutional identity" which would be easily applicable here

Finally there's the ECHR, which is another international court, integrated in the member states legal system by its own treaty (confusingly the acronym is the same for the court and for the treaty) with the sole purpose of serving as a baseline for fundamental rights. The EU is not a party to the ECHR treaty (accession stalled) but all of its members are, so if any member were challenged in this court and said "we're violating article 10 because of this EU law" the ECHR would say "cool story, don't care" (if it finds a breach). This is not immediately a precedent for other countries, but others would likely file similar motions

More realistically however this is just going to be interpreted to prevent the sanctioned entities from setting up shells companies to evade it

It applies everywhere. Germany and Poland courts said that they interpret this principle is against their constitutions. The consequence is that they need to either:

- Change their interpretation of their constitution

- Change their constitution

- Leave the EU

It's a basic principle of participation in a Union. Germany's or Poland's case is the same as if a State of the US decided that some federal law or the US constitution doesn't apply in that territory because their constitution prevails or that the state supreme court can overrule the decisions of the US supreme court.

The EU case is much easier than the US, of course, because EU Member States have the right to unilaterally decide to secede. So they can always just leave if they really don't want to comply with EU laws. They have no excuse whatsoever to whine about them.

To use some abductive reasoning, think about how this would apply generally: the law is clearly not written to ban encryption, even though your interpretation would suggest that any encryption amounts to intentional circumvention. If that sounds wrong to you, it's because you've confused the intent/object that the law is concerned with.

We live in a networked world. There's an unbroken physical connection between your hardwired ISP connection and every device connected to Russia (less so with starlink and woman and 5g, but still. )

It's resilient by design, and damaging that, even for good reasons, has secondary consequences.

Going after tor nodes would be overreaching and shortsighted.

This sections is essentially targeting people who would for example start a "not-rt.eu" broadcasting rt content.

Instead the more important question is whether people running tor have to take measures to block access to RT as they may be ISPs.

Not sure if this strategy is the safest option globally. Russia wants a buffer from nato give them some assurance.

How can you even think about segregating Russia, if China and India aren't onboard? Yes, these two countries are not going to sanction Russia. Or do you want China and India sanctioned too, remember if you sanction everybody then you are sanctioning yourself.

It is a plague that needs to be eradicated. That isn't silencing a nation though, that is silencing a cancerous government that is infecting every nation it can.

This is not "we ban Russia's news", it's "we ban Russia government publications pretending to be news and benefiting financially from it".

It's also pretty clear that they do have the ability to shut out a company from doing business within their borders, so I'm unclear why media corporations should be getting a free pass compared with other industries.

Article 12 is completely unmodified except for the scope of parties involved. Since the original (2014) regulation didn't ban Tor, I think it's a safe assumption that this one doesn't either.

The more detailed answer: the article actually reads as follows:

> It shall be prohibited to participate, knowingly and intentionally, [...]

"Knowingly and intentionally" is the operative phrase here. In order to show that this article poses a threat to Tor's legality, you'd need to show at either Tor's operators or Tor itself intentionally provides service to RT. This is a stronger standard than passive service, the kind Tor actually provides.

[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

Because plenty of people use Tor for accessing things which aren't covered by this particular ban? Sure, many of them may be illegal in other ways, but not all of them. If using Tor isn't enough in itself to prove you're buying drugs, why would it be enough to prove you're accessing banned content here?

same thing can be said about so-called "news" from RT, no?

The entire point of a free country is that people can handle the information. If not, why even bother?

This is a very US perspective I think. Here in Germany there are many that think communism is fairer than capitalism (although perhaps unrealistic to attain). Insulting something/someone by saying something is communist or someone is a commy is not really something that happens here (except perhaps in politics).

[Edit] Just to add some perspective:

Communist parties in european parliament

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

Even large european countries have communist parties, some even voted into office (such as france, spain) and in the case of Spain even in the ruling coalition.

Implying this is a western view neglects to realize how much US vs. Soviet propaganda has shaped the US population.

It has nothing to with the average Russian, but everything to do with the Government, the dictator, and those who willingly support them.

That isn't to say the west hasn't done anything wrong. But by my account, we can pin the following on Russia:

- Installing puppets in foreign governments

  - Schroeder

  - Trump / GOP

  - Pushing for Brexit

- Sent children to war

- Committed 11 distinct war crimes in just 8 days, including shooting civies and children that were fleeing, hospitals, and wearing UN and Ua colours.

Russia isn't the problem, the problem is the person at the driver seat that is actively threatening a nuclear holocaust.

If the West includes new joiners from behind the Iron Curtain, then let me tell you that any "demonisation" of Russia is deserved.

I'm too young to have experienced the communist times, but based on what I heard from my parents and from history, being a forcible subject to Russia sucks. And this is exactly what Russia is trying to achieve in Ukraine (if not just outright destruction instead).

I was willing to give Russia a loan of trust and see how its post-USSR identity evolved. Unfortunately, it seems like that hope wasn't met with reality.

is this not a failure of czech/european society at large instead of RT?

One example: In Germany it's forbidden by law to deny the holocaust, use nazi symbols, greetings or other media from that era.

And some state sponsored TV telling your they're saving people or helping some states while raiding their homes, killing them and using thermobaric weapons is ok ? That this won't create an uproar among all families and relatives ?

You have at least laws against defamation and this is nothing else than lying and laughing into the face of people.

What you certainly do is restrict youtube channels of joe rogan, trump and facebook ads for elections. And nobody did sue for free speech or won a case. So the general direction is pretty clear.