French Court Orders Popular VPNs to Block More Pirate Sites, Despite Opposition
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Such censorship is passed by elected legislators, interpreted by an independent judiciary, and subject to appeal (which NordVPN has already begun). From a procedural standpoint, that is democracy. But it ignores liberty, proportionality and limits on power.
Democratic erosion is how governments today expand surveillance, blocking and platform obligations while still technically obeying democratic rules
Founding documents don't do shit. What one needs is a culture which is perpetually hostile towards power. All problems of power are social problems. No law, founding document, principle is going to prevent people from doing stuff if they want to do it.
If all you've got is uniform hostility to power, you've lost the plot and won't ever get past small scale tribalism.
What is the evidence of that? I see a lot of people wanting a) more centralized power and b) who controls it
Like a sibling comment said: you need a culture that rejects this stuff and punishes it quickly.
>there is no saying how much time you'll spend in prison or how much money you'll spend on lawyers before winning.
Sixth and eighth amendments.
Statistical analysis of how the law actually works is far more valuable than what the law says.
Actually, that is democracy, full stop!
Elected representatives vote new laws, and people react according to their interest.
with a pinch of smark, I dare to add:
1. civilised people know that a compromise between personal freedom and societal good has to be defined; discussions have been going for ages concerning where the limit should be, not about whether it should exist.
2. you don't need to be that smart to realize that private remote communications did hardly exist before modern technology; as such, bashing any such law as if was infringing on human rights is ridiculous at best.
I don't remember any discussions about that. It's always a statement 'to protect the children' or 'fight piracy'.
Both of which make a lot of sense.
And the contrarian view is always expressed as a matter of "privacy", as if remote privacy had ever existed before a couple decades ago.
Laws must be discussed based on their intentions and their expected result. Inventing dogmas doesn't help societal advancement.
We should all be tolerant societies, and the problem with tolerance is that you never have to tolerate speech you like.
"Private remote communications" like sending a letter have been around forever. The right of citizens to privacy is enshrined in the constitution of virtually every democracy. Sure there are some allowances that have to be made for common law vs civil law regimes, but if the right to privacy is routinely being violated that is a problem.
Yes, but it was never more private than the law decided for. Any judge could lawfully have the police tear the envelope apart and read the contents during an investigations. In this sense, the only private communication that ever existed was from mouth to ear.
Today's technology enables actual privacy any anonimity online, and any good and bad deeds can be hidden behind the screen, and nobody should be offended, nor surprised, that civilised societies may want to have a say in the matter.
Good point, if regrettable. Even unlicensed encryption/ciphers have been made illegal by governments as wide ranging as Italy (15th c), France (16th c), Britain (18th c) and the US (WWI)
This is more like a judge ordering phone book providers not to list a phone number for a public organization known to engage in criminal activity. It would be prima facie unconstitutional in America, while the police opening a suspect's envelope can be an authorized legal search.
We do have free speech in Blighty thank you very much. Unlike the current situation in the USA, where speaking out to, or disagreeing with, the president will get you removed from positions of authority (and/or confronting armed police).
If you haven't already gathered, such bogus claims of free speech restrictions in other countries are distracting you from the reality of what is happening in your own country.
Not quite sure what you're referring to here, you can speak out all you want on political matters in the US. -Especially- in the context of criticizing the president.
There is a serious problem in the US. There is also a serious (though different) problem in the UK. The problem in the US is the chilling effect of the vindictiveness and lawlessness of the current regime. I will not elaborate on this because it's too complicated to communicate effectively in a forum post.
The problem in the UK is a set of vaguely and arbitrarily specified-and-enforced laws that enable the criminalization of 'grossly offensive" speech. There is no statutory definition of what constitutes a 'grossly offensive' communication -- all enforcement is arbitrary and thus can be abused. Whether is it actually abused in any widespread fashion is irrelevant.
- Communications Act 2003 (Section 127): Makes it an offense to send messages via public electronic networks (internet, phone, social media) that are "grossly offensive," indecent, obscene, or menacing, or to cause annoyance/anxiety.
- Malicious Communications Act 1988 (Section 1): Applies to sending letters or electronic communications with the purpose of causing distress or anxiety, containing indecent or grossly offensive content.
Another (higher profile) example are the baseless threats of criminal indictments against Jerome Powell -- it is impossible to argue that these threats have been made for any reason other than that he, as a nonpartisan official, defied the president's demands to execute his duties as fed chair in such a way (that is, poorly) so as to put a temporary thumb on the scale for the current admin.
The more important question, I think, is how many folk in explicitly nonpartisan functions are choosing not to break step with the current admin for fear of some sort of (likely professional) reprisal. I'm not alleging that they're disappearing dissenters or anything that inflammatory, but it would be intellectually dishonest to contend that there isn't a long, well-documented trail of malfeasance here.
Jimmy Kimmel Terry Moran
It happened in his last term too - https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Senior-Trump-appointee-fir...
And even worse: people fired for overseeing accurate data about his administration https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/firing-of-labor-statistics...
Forgive, me for being blunt. You must be wilfully ignorant not to observe how many people your president has fired for speaking against him.
Thousands of people were prosecuted for holding I support Palestinian Action signs.[1]
Calling for violence & terrorism crosses the line from free speech in most democracies, including the UK.
Those people who were prosecuted will face a jury of their peers who are perfectly entitled to find them not guilty.
Well, according to that line of thought, people in the US only face the consequences of going against national security and are free to sue the government for wrongful termination/slander/whatever.
Now we can agree that there's free speech everywhere.
What a wilfully ridiculous interpretation of my text!
I'll type this slowly for you: In civilised democracies, inciting violence against ANYBODY is illegal and crosses the line from free speech. Any decision to convict for incitement lies with a jury of 12 random citizens.
Assuming you live in the UK, you're basically saying that losing your job because you criticised the government is a very grave matter indeed, but what happened to Palestine Action is all nice and dandy because jurors.
For those who don't know: Palestine Action is a collective of people protesting the genocide in Gaza, they would occupy/blockade factories of Israeli weapons manufacturers and "vandalise" said weapons. They were recently declared a terrorist group and proscribed, with thousands being arrested for showing support (including by wearing t-shirts) since.
You're right, losing your job because you said something against the government and going to prison because you wore a t-shirt protesting an ongoing genocide are not the same thing.
Speech in the UK's never been better.
Do rights only exist to protect the human condition as we suppose it was "before modern technology"?
1. The "major questions doctrine". This is simply the idea that if the impact of legislation that is passed by Congress and signed by the president is "large" then the Supreme Court gets to overrule the other two branches of government because they want to. Where is that in the Constitution?
2. The "history and traditions text". This is simply the idea that if the political actors on the bench can find (or, in some cses, invent) something that happenned or was "normal" 250 years ago then it is legal precedent. That doesn't seem to apply to abortion however. Benjamin Franklin published instructions on at-home abortions [1]. How is that not "history and tradition"?
3. The court completely invented presidential immunity out of thin air in a country that rebelled against a monarch.
"What's good for companies and their owners?" tends to be a pretty good predictor for what our Supreme Court does.
What we're seeing in France and elsewhere is the dying breath of neoliberalism. Companies are successfully using the courts worldwide to erode individual rights in the interests of profits. The Constitution doesn't protect you from this. The EU's defenses against this sort of thing seem to be eroding, if they existed at all.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-frank...
That is a wildly inaccurate take on the "major questions doctrine". You are actually describing SCOTUS power to determine if laws are "constitutional", which was decided (by SCOTUS) in 1803 (Marbury v. Madison).
2 and 3 are well-made points.
Point #2 is related, as it also connected to a requirement to interpret "intent", which is a tricky thing even at the best of times.
As for point #3, I can't comment. I don't quite understand Roberts' logic about official vs. discretionary, but I feel it has something to do with original framers' intent also.
The Constitutioin also established lifetime appointment and that the court interpreted constitutionality but didn't really specify what that means, which is actually pretty common for the Constitution. It's not that long of a document.
It's up to Congress to establish a lot of the court's powers, the earliest part of which was the Judiciary Act of 1789. The court's ability to review state court decisions didn't come until the 20th century.
A big change was Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review. The court granted itself this power.
My point here is that the concentp of statutory interpretation is not a constitutional authority. And "major questions doctrine" is an issue of statutory interpretation. The origins of this came from a 2000 decision where the court used "common sense" (seriously) to determine what Congress intended [1]:
> The doctrine was articulated as a paradigm in FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. (2000), which advised "common sense" in assessing whether Congress intended to delegate broad regulatory powers
As the court often does, it grants itself authority then later extends that authority so "common sense" under Rehnquist becamse "major questions doctrine" under Roberts:
> It was applied in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA (2014) and King v. Burwell (2015), with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority in the latter.[2] The Court first explicitly called it the "major questions doctrine" in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), where it held that agencies must point to "clear congressional authorization" for the power asserted in "extraordinary cases"
The Roberts court then went on to use this subjective idea of "clear Congressional authorization" as strike down Covid mandates, student loan forgiveness, the power of the EPA and a bunch of other very political ends. Weird.
And once again, none of this invokes any Constitutional protection or language at all.
America's founding documents are effectively toilet paper at this point, and have been eroded to the point of being farce. America has a beholden press, a captured media, is governed by unchecked plutocrats, has a farcically busted justice system, and has the foot on the neck of Americans. Having Americans make proclamations at this point -- while their leader is openly threatening militarily annexing actual democracies that rate higher on every metric -- is simply incredible.
Every American needs to stop the online rhetoric about its once glory and spend some time doing some introspection, because Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous.
> I assume the majority of IPs being pirated are likely from outside their own country
Ever heard of Ligue 1, home to teams like PSG, Olympique de Marseille, Olympique Lyonnais, and AS Monaco, and superstars like Mbappe, Dembélé, and Hakimi? French viewers also watch Spanish, Italian, Belgian, German, and English football/soccer as well.
Seems like most EU countries have this
But it's not enough apparently.
Ask the Disney Cooperation.
A facetious, but true, remark that describes the influence the large American media companies can have in combating piracy over here. Sir should recall the pressure the USA put on Sweden to close down the Pirate Bay; a Swedish site running in Sweden.
In France's case, it's French conglomerates like Bolloré, Lagardère, Illiad, Dassault, and LVMH that dominate media IP ownership.
In Spain, it's Grupo Planeta and Burlesconi owned Fininvest that dominate IP ownership.
In Italy, it's Burlesconi owned Fininvest that dominates IP ownership.
Some other European are much less concerned about the issue.
Spain and Italy are in a similar boat as France in that regard.
"All VPN providers, except ProtonVPN, appeared in court to argue a defense. They raised various arguments, with the “no-log” defense from Surfshark and NordVPN standing out."
Why, because American companies are never forced to do things because of copyright and/or law enforcement?
Kim Dotcom become filthy rich by selling access to copyrighted materials and turned into folk hero of the alt-right. He was selling other peoples work per the kilobyte when kids were persecuted for copyright infringement, videos taken down for using a few second of music or a clip from another video . That is not a fair system.
can you explain precisely why this is a ridiculous concept?
it seems like an extremely reasonable course of action in some situations.
The American Revolution would like a word.
In fact, it is probably the ne plus ultra of law circumvention.
I'm curious about this point. What solution do they have if they want geolocalisation without giving up on privacy ?
"boete" means "fine". With that, I think there's enough loan/brand words that the article lede is readable to any English speaker. Basically, cloudflare has in Italy gotten a 14 million euro fine because it refused to implement blocks for its public dns service 1.1.1.1
Anyway, dns blocks are silly. So long as it's in the dns system proper, you can trivially run a local resolver. Focusing on this now is just a distraction until IP blocks come along and you actually can't reach blocked parts of the internet if the target service doesn't support an overlay network
VPNs have legitimate uses, if the precedence is set it opens the door to DHT blocking i.e. bootstrap nodes/adresses.
Cory Doctorow was talking about it recently. https://youtu.be/3C1Gnxhfok0?si=OzjYwL16yLzQUwuY
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/wireStory/spanish-soccer...
ISP-level censorship is extremely rare in the US. Copyright and piracy is almost always handled by domain seizure ordered by a court, not ISP-level blocking (as is common in the EU).