Save the Internet from the US | Hacker News Reader

Save the Internet from the US

avaaz.org

207 pointsFice79 comments

Off topic, but the image is apt as it's from a film called "The Lives of Others", set in East Germany in 1984, about a secret police agent who conducts surveillance on a dissident writer. IMO it's a very well done and moving film, and well worth watching, especially given that the period is within relatively recent memory--well, for some of us! ;)

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/ Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lives_of_others/

According to Wikipedia, the film is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics which is a subdivision of Sony Pictures Entertainment, an MPAA member. So by purchasing a copy of this film you will support Internet censorship.

jbarham only said that it's worth watching, not that it's worth buying...

(yarr!)

That's not really how that works.

Off the off topic: why is the English world so intent on translating everything? (Much like the French world I guess)

In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium we try to refer to most movies in their original language (Das Leben Der Anderen, Cidade De Deus, ...), though we do seem to have trouble with Asian titles where we for some obscure reason default to using the English title. Edit: We do translate children's movies.

Because America has few close neighbors (close as in geographically and as in relations) who speak a foreign language and also produce media Americans consume on a regular basis. Americans don't need to learn a foreign language, and when they do it's difficult to get real-world practice. Canadian French and Mexican Spanish are the only two an American would generally run into, and only infrequently. I speak German and Canadian French and struggle to find reasons to use those languages.

It irritates me when Europeans get upset about American lack of "worldliness" (for lack of a better term). The US is bigger than the entire European Union, has only one de facto language, and is removed from the rest of the world by 3,000 miles of water on each side. Of course Americans aren't constantly running into people from other countries/cultures, we have states that are bigger than many European sovereign nations. I can drive 3000 miles (~5000km) from New York to LA and encounter nothing but America and English.

In Europe, that would get you from Brugge to Burgas and back, going through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. And back. Lisbon is closer to Helsinki than New York is to LA.

> Of course Americans aren't constantly running into people from other countries/cultures

Really? Not to sound like a prick but you must live in the middle of nowhere. I live in LA (santa monica, to be exact). I live next to an eastern European deli, kosher jewish, multiple Chinese restaurants, sushi, ramen, and yaki joints, thai, Peruvian, Mexican, Korean, Caribbean/Jamaican/Cuban Vietnamese, French, German, Ethiopian, Greek, Italian, "middle eastern", persian, mediterranean, russian restaurants / groceries / communities / -owned businesses/ the list goes on and on and on. And of course good ol' american BBQ, burgers and beer, standard fast food, ice cream, southern soul food, tex mex, east coast seafood, southern creole, ...

Many people come here from around the world to work in professional jobs, also. And many students and faculty at UCLA, LMU, USC, SMC, etc, etc.

It's just that many of those people all speak English, can act 100% "American" when they need to, and their cultures have become a seamless part of American culture. This is something else many non-Americans don't understand (and Americans don't see even though it's right under their noses).

In fact, if you count the languages that "Americans" including 1st and 2nd generation immigrants speak, it's vast.

Ugly truth: It's just that a lot of Europeans don't count asians, hispanics, blacks, as Americans, so you hear this crap all the time on the internet due to racism and stereotypes of what America is and isn't.

This goes beyond the point at hand. I'm not necessarily disagreeing (I'm not from the US), but we're discussing the compulsive need to translate culture, present in the US but in other parts of the world (like aforementioned french-speaking world).

Trying to define the racial "identity" of what's American and who consider it such is a slight straw man. Regardless of who is or isn't American, and what languages they speak, we're discussing the need for "original" titles.

Here in France, referring to the movie by its title "Das Leben Der Anderen" would raise eyebrows at best, it would often get you dismissed as pedantic douche. In other parts of the world, it's a given that you just don't translate titles.

It's not a strawman, it's the exact argument that freehunter posed (that americans never see 'foreigners'). I'm refuting it by saying no, that's not true, and the global idea of what an american vs. what a foreigner is cloudy at best.

I didn't mean to imply that Americans never encounter foreigners, but that they never encounter an area where they have to speak another language and deal with another foreign culture.

Think of it in this context: when I travel to Illinois, the people there are still American and still speak English. When a Danish person travels to Belgium (same distance, ~400 miles), they are now in a country where they speak Dutch/German/French and have a Belgian culture. There are almost 10 million Belgians in Belgium, there are just over 350,000 in the US. Of those, how many speak French, how many speak Dutch, and how many speak German? I'll bet almost all of them speak English.

I live in a large Midwestern city (not Chicago), so we do have people of other cultures who speak different languages, but like you said, they don't speak other languages to those around them. If a Bulgarian goes to Spain, they have to speak Spanish. Only a small portion of Spanish people will be able to talk in Bulgarian. On the other hand, if I'm in New York and go to LA (a longer distance than Bulgaria to Spain), everyone still speaks English, even if they're not originally from the US.

The US has a wide variety of American cultures, and only a small disparate minority of foreign cultures.

In my experience it is far more likely that the Bulgarian and the Spaniard would communicate in English than in either native tongue.

Another reason why Americans (and Canadians and Brits and Australians) don't need to learn foreign languages: many other people speak English as well. I spent the summer in Germany two years ago. I am conversational in German, but when I would talk to someone they sometimes picked up on my accent or my use of a grammatically proper word that didn't necessarily fit with modern German trends. About 50% of them instantly switched to English. Of those 50%, only about 30% went back to German when I said "auf Deutsch, bitte." What it ended up being was me speaking in German and getting responses in English. They were all too happy to use me to practice their English.

We don't need to learn a foreign language, because a large number of non-English people speak English anyway.

I think you got off topic just to make your point. I grew up in the bay area and have known people from every color of the rainbow, but the only group large enough to use their own language outside of familial situations are latin-americans.

This is why a lot of native-english-speaking Californians speak at least a cursory amount of spanish, but nothing else. (unless they specifically took courses in high school or college, but thats a small amount of people)

Interestingly enough, you will sometimes see latin-american movie titles in spanish (eg El Norte, Y tu madre tambien). I'm sure it doesn't happen as often as in Europe, but it still relates to the original point.

If you grew up in the bay then you should know that Asians and have plenty of opportunities amongst friends and around town to use languages other than English.

Then again, if you're white... you may not have been around during those times.

There are pockets of asian communities, but spanish is ubiquitous.

But you may be right about me not being there. Latin-americans may be more willing to speak spanish around non-spanish speakers. The numbers just work out that way.

My personal theory on this is that spanish speakers have been in California longer than English speakers (thereby having feelings of relative native status), while various Asian language speakers feel the obligation to include non-speakers in their discussions when said non-speakers are around because asians and anglos have been in the bay for roughly the same amount of time (since the gold rush).

Although ... Asian language speakers never feel the need for linguistic inclusion when hispanics are around. Not sure about the dynamics on that one. Might just be good ol' fashioned racism.

He probably does live in the middle of nowhere. I live near DC now (and lived in Germany for 3 years) and run into the same types of places you mention - ethnic stores and restaurants of all persuasions. However, I grew up in Arkansas and you'd be surprised how homogenous it was. In some of the bigger towns (I'm talking >10k) you might start to find ethnic restaurants, for example, but I rarely saw anything else you could call ethnic.

So while your experience is common for the larger cities and urbanized areas of the US, I would wager for vast swathes of the rural areas of the country the experience is more like my time in Arkansas.

Well, that's LA. Most Americans don't live in LA. (Or New York, or the SF Bay Area.)

Beware over-extrapolation of your personal experiences.

Even in these neighborhoods in LA, you never have to travel to an area where the road signs are printed exclusively in the language of a foreign culture or the money is printed in another currency (something Europe is getting on board with at the advent of the Euro).

"why is the English world so intent on translating everything?"

Because in big countries like Germany, France or Spain people could survive without speaking another language, so they do not understand those names and can't remember them. In super-countries like China, USA or Russia this effect is even stronger.

Belgium is a small country linked to commerce in the world, and is fairly typical to have normal people speak 3-4 languages.

An American could die speaking only her native tongue without the need to learn anything else being able to work over an extension that is bigger than Europe, or just ask for using it whenever in the world she is.

Guess: A/B testing confirmed that it led to higher movie sales.

Unlikely to be true A/B testing. More likely that it would be a series of focus groups where they basically get the opinions of a group of people on them. This doesn't measure the actual impact of sales from the title so I'm not sure it's true A/B testing.

On that trend of off topics, I was part of a small movie buff group back in Lebanon. Nothing fancy, we just liked to meet and discuss movies we watched and liked. Clearly no title was ever translated. Movies weren't even dubbed (blasphemy!), subtitled if necessary.

Now I live in Paris, every time I get in touch with my old buddies they make fun of me for referring to movies by their French titles. Sucks big time ...

> Movies weren't even dubbed (blasphemy!)

We subtitle everything, it's quite handy. I learned a great part of my English by watching English language shows with Dutch subtitles.

In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, are there a large number of people who will understand what the original-language titles mean?

German and French titles: yes definitely. Portuguese (like my aforementioned Cidade de Deus)? No, safe some exceptions nobody knows beforehand what it means. Guess we're just used to finding it out afterwards, eg an article about the film could mention a translation in the body.

In some cases, foreign films have English titles anyway without translation. A lot of Japanese anime have entirely English titles, for instance, or are dual-titled in Japanese and English.

Would this still happen if the US didn't invade Japan?

If the US didn't invade Japan, anime likely wouldn't exist.

It was on the BBC recently and it is a fantastic film.

The internet shouldn't need "saving" from any country. The lopsided control that the US has over the internet is kind of an accident. This should start to sort itself out on its own. It might be worth hurrying along where possible by technical means.

Then again, the more crazy the Americans pour on, the faster their influence may wane. "American internet" might start to have the same reputation as American airports.

It's really sad to see some special interest groups trying to put a damper on what seems to be the only industry growing like crazy and disrupting every other industry: tech.

We can keep protesting, but MAFIAA is relentless and they have all the money we keep giving them through DVD sales, movie tickets, album sales, Netflix, Hulu, cable tv, etc.

If you really want to fight them, stop funding their domestic terrorism.

> only industry ... disrupting every other industry

Why are you surprised that they are trying to save themselves? That's the logical thing for them to do. They have no reason to let the internet destroy them, and every reason to try to prevent that. It sucks for us, because we have to deal with it, but it's a very logical thing for them to do.

It would be better if they learned to coexist with the internet, but most of these industries are not known for being innovative enough to do so.

Saving themselves is logical. Saving themselves by adjusting to the new world and being leaders in of "new content" is equally as valid "destroy all that threatens our current model". The later is probably more logical too, as making enemies who then seek to destroy you is less productive than making friends who seek to further the aims and goals of both groups. Right now the MPAA has chosen pyrrhic victory over a win-win, this is by definition illogical.

It may be illogical for the organization, but it's certainly not for the individuals who actually comprise and run that organization. We need to keep in mind that companies, while useful abstractions, are fundamentally just groups of people, and often suffer as a result of individual shortsightedness.

I suspect that many of the people that actually comprise the RIAA's and MPAA's member companies, and many of the decision makers, are "over the hill" of their careers. They're not interested in radical change or reshaping the industry. The industry as it stands has been good to them, and they want to continue to milk that for as long as it takes so they can retire comfortably.

That attitude -- both hyperconservative and with its over-valuation of short-term gains compared to long-term ones -- adequately explains many of the actions taken by the music industry in the late 90s and the film industry today.

It will take a new generation of leaders in those industries for them to make the leap to new business models that will keep them profitable over the long run in the modern competitive environment.

the more crazy the Americans pour on

Pray tell, which sane politicians are you blessed to have reign over you? I'd like to live in your glorious nation!

nowhere else in the world do politicians have such high ratio of globally projectable power to the amount of outside influence being extorted on them

True, but would there be any less crazy poured on if that weren't the case? The rest of the world currently gets American Crazy as opposed to what? Their own "Objective Rationality"?

To be fair to Avaaz.org, this isn't about "crazy Americans" this is about the opportunity connect to a populist narrative, "Save the Internet from the US". In this way non-profits, NPO's, build a donation base using carefully controlled press releases and volunteers world-wide to connect their entity, the NPO, to helping troubled communities.

Right now they are building a mailing list to capitalize on global anti-Americanism. Understandably, they may not use the mailing exclusively to solicit donations, and will most likely sell it to third-parties, "We may share some of your personal information with certain affiliated groups." It all depends on what they consider more important at the moment, the privacy of the volunteers (anyone who gave their email address/tel #), or the helping the greater good of their causes.

References:

http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/20-5050267/avaaz-foun...

http://www.whois.net/whois/avaaz.org

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/privacy/

The bill is only 11 pages and is a fairly easy (for legislation) read. My initial pass through the bill I'm having trouble seeing what is wrong with it. This bill seems to simply allow federal intelligence agencies who are already collecting information on cyber-security threats to share that information with other governmental agencies and non-governmental entities. If the gov't has information that crackers are trying to hack the power grid I want them to be able to share that information with the power company, duh.

If someone can explain why this bill is actually bad I'll be happy to contact my rep, but right now I don't think it is.

It sounds like this gives the government the power to monitor the internet connections of anyone in order to see if they are doing things like infringing copyright.

Woohoo, bring on the downvotes.

In the interest of discussion I up voted you, not sure who is down voting.

Just out of curiosity, where in the bill does it suggest they could, by virtue of this bill, monitor anyone's connection. To me the bill seems to be about the sharing of information, not the collection of it. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Welcome to the new HN. Ever since pg put up his "Kill Hollywood" rant the site has been overrun with script kiddie downloaders.

While the cause is just, I'm not sure I want to sign an Avaaz petition. After all, they are also a (political) lobby, with its own, somewhat questionable, agendas, not a grassroots movement in any way.

I also seriously doubt that a petition is better than US citizens calling their representatives, as was recommended during the last struggle.

[http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/03/07/the-grotesque-and-dis... http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/03/avaaz-sponsoring-fake-r... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/20/avaaz-activism-s...]

Petition? I thought this was a viral lead generation campaign designed to drive donations to the organization. Man, all this time people have been signing these things hoping to make a difference? This is a rather interesting strategy that could have been applied at my startup, had I thought of it sooner.

>I also seriously doubt that a petition is better than US citizens calling their representatives, as was recommended during the last struggle.

The thing is, this affects far more than just US citizens. What is the rest of the world supposed to do? Sit and watch while hoping the US citizens sort it out?

>The thing is, this affects far more than just US citizens. What is the rest of the world supposed to do? Sit and watch while hoping the US citizens sort it out?

As opposed to signing a petition? Seems like the same thing to me.

Contact your own politicians and have them put pressure on your version of what we call the "State Department" to in turn pressure the US to stop this crap. If you indeed think this particular bill is crap, of which I remain unconvinced (see my posting elsewhere in this thread on the subject).

How long should we, the non-US citizen rest of the world, sit back and look at the country battling internal political demons while attacking the Internet every other week with a new law proposal?

I'm not very big on politics, as far as I'm concerned every official, elected or not, of every country in the world is a useless nuisance (some would call them a necessary evil, that's up for debate). On the other hand, I'm very attached to the Internet. I really hope we'd find a way to take this cyberspace out of any political jursdiction; utlimately, what I care about is being able to say and read whatever I want off the internet. Politicians and corporations won't care for that no matter who they are. All they care is for power and money. And in that aspect the Internet is a goldmine.

I really hope we'd find a way to take this cyberspace out of any political jursdiction;

I don't think it can be done.

Because, getting right down to it, the internet lives on wires and computers that have a physical presence. You can't abstract those away and say 'Dear State: those computers, in that building ... none of your business.'

I agree, are we going to hear this every month/week? Are they hoping that eventually the big crowd will just give up because its too much work fighting the government with their own rules. And why? Because companies think that this is the medicine to their failing. Government wants the power they shouldn't have...what's new with that? If China did it so can they right?

You were maybe joking with the China bit, but MPAA Grand Poobah Chris Dodd has seriously made the that exact argument http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/14521817014/mpaa-b...

We need an alternative DNS root zone that is controlled by something like NATO (but for Internet interoperability.)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

This would democratize the Internet an take lots of control away from the US

Or... the United Nations, so that countries like Russia and China would get more of a say in how things are run?

Oh... hrm....

UN would be a better idea.

And while we're at it, let's remove/cancel(? - what's the right word?) the `veto` right too, so that no country can `veto` the decisions made by the whole world (attacking Iraq, Saving a murderous regime like Syria, etc.)

Oh no, not Russia! not China! my government/media/neighbor told me they're Evil.

Let's keep the control to people like Lamar Smith. At least he's <insert bogus excuse with big words like "freedom" or "free speech">

You can observe and read about how the Russians and Chinese behave yourself, no? The great firewall? Syria? Putin's gradual takeover of Russia?

The US has plenty of defects, but is not really in the same league.

Now, that's no excuse at all to not demand better behavior from US politicians, but it is pointing out that "international control" over the internet is no panacea.

Would it be possible to completely do away with centralised DNS roots? Some kind of peer-to-peer name resolution system might be viable, theoretically at least...

It would be asking for (at least an initial period of) anarchy, mind.

Perhaps doing away with the "one name, one website" paradigm of DNS altogether and using something like http://yacy.net to find the relevant IP address for the site you want could work...

namecoin does exactly this (decentralized p2p DNS), arguably the bitcoin model is a much better fit for domains than it ever was for currency.

Just found this: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/05/internet-regulatio... which suggests that the formation of a global body to oversee Internet policy is likely.

as far as I'm concerned every official, elected or not, of every country in the world is a useless nuisance (some would call them a necessary evil, that's up for debate).

I'll split the difference with you, they are useless evil.

I didn't really look into this law, but notwithstanding whether it's really as bad as the site claims, there's one really worrying effect of this: Congress just has to continue trying, and some point people won't care enough anymore to stop it. The SOPA protests were impressive, but I'm doubtful that people will manage to continue protesting like that with every new law that congress is trying to sneak in. A bit like the constant reporting in the news about cruel same wars makes people care less about it.

We need to lobby for strong net neutrality and privacy laws. As much as I dislike regulation, leaving things as a vacuum doesn't work -- pushed by lobbyists, the laws will expand to fill the gaps to the advantage of some party.

That's what constitutions are for: if one of its articles declared that what happens within the Internet is outside the jurisdiction of the Republic, then they won't be able to try and pass any more law like this one. Of course, since the power to modify the constitution has been given to those same politicians, it won't happen. Democratic powers must be carefully redistributed.

Not really new.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips 1852

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." --Thomas Paine

It has always been a tactic to repeatedly go after the same goal over and over. Unlike SOPA that was simply dropped, often you compromise with your opponent and meet somewhere in the middle and the next year you shoot for your original goal (or further) and "compromise" even closer to your original goal.

Looks to me that that is exactly what they are doing.

Well, some good comes from this. It raises awareness. Anyone new to these issues becomes informed.

People want a climax - to win and relax.

SOPA as the goal is framing things wrong. SOPA is merely the product of a broken system.

Shhhh... they don't know it yet !!!

More details about the bill: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120402/04425118325/forget...

As someone has already said here on HN, that since those greedy guys will never stop trying such things, the community must kick them back by taking away their unjustified privileges and "rights", by changing copyright law the way WE ALL WANT IT. I hope that the next initiative involving this big number of people will be about fighting back, not defending.

Who are the hundred 'special ones' supporting such a bill in the first place? It would be really nice if someone could compile profiles of these political leaders/servants, their names, and office of public duty.

Often there are a lot 2 cent/4 cent support staff helping such 100 odd people introducing lame bills too. Call it bureaucracy or whatever. Bring these people online, and connect with them. Confront them, probably.

I think it would be really nice to meet these people, and perhaps interact with.

[Edit: Spell check]

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523

find the link that says "show cosponsors" and click it. click any individual name for more details.

Thanks, camiller :-) This just got interesting for me to dig deeper.

Probably all stories about these negative bills should carry photos and profiles of who's who in the league. If it's about transparency enforcement then the sword should sweep in both the directions.

That's fair to ask, I believe, especially from chairs that are funded from taxpayers money.

For what it is worth, you can also read the text of the bill there. Having done so (it is only 11 pages), I'm not convinced this is a "negative" bill.

We must simplify it: Any *PA bill is wrong.

I think up to some point, the DNS is a result of human laziness. I wish the IP system could be simplified, like phone numbers. Before ability to save every number in your cell phonebook, you had to remember your mom and pop number.

If I would know that Google servers (or main root server/hub) is located in New York, and 212 is area code, all I would have to remember, for example, is 555-821. This would limit ways in which LE can take down the website, when they do not shut down the server/website, but redirect the domain name to their site.

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