23 ms·

New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

227 points by cameronhowe 9y ago

zyztem 9y ago
You people definetly should fight this. We had something like this under "ban pedo" umbrella, now this thing filter anything that is against the party rule
- jopsen 9y ago
  > now this thing filter anything that is against the party rule Explain, did you read the text?
golemotron 9y ago
I read "prescribes" in the title as "proscribes." There's an argument for that too.
maxsavin 9y ago
This is horrible
porfirium 9y ago
>To give a recent example, independence-related websites were blocked in Catalunya just weeks ago. That required judicial authorisation. Good way of beginning a post, with a lie.
- cma 9y ago
  They didn't say it was blocked using this proposal. Just that it was expedited through website blocking infrastructure that was put in place for other purposes.
  - squiggleblaz 9y ago
    I think the argument runs something like this: P1. Infra A exists. P2. Infra A has been abused. C1. If we build infra A, it can be abused. P3. Abuse is bad. P4. This proposal proposes that we build infra A. P5. A proposal to build something that can be abused is bad. C2. A proposal to build infra A is bad. That's all fine. It's all fine, except P1 still stands even at the time we reach C2. The infrastructure already exists. So the argument sounds funny. Not unsound, but somewhat unconvincing. It's a much better argument for the proposition that we should dismantle the infrastructure, than that we shouldn't make additional legitimate use of the infrastructure.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- eugeniub 9y ago
  I don't see how the fact that it required judicial authorization contradicts what the author said. Many abuses happen with the full backing of courts.
  - porfirium 9y ago
    We should abolish prisons then? It's a ridiculous argument. Abuses can happen with full backing of the courts, but I expect them to not happen. In all the years that this system has been in place in Spain I have never seen it used for anything other than blocking websites that were in breach of the law.
    - sverige 9y ago
      Wait, what? How do you get abolishing prisons out of that? Back to the subject, what if a law is bad, but the mere act of saying publicly that the law is bad is, in itself, breaking the law? That's where this is all heading. It starts with prohibiting the utterance of specific words because they hurt someone's feelings, but hidden under "consumer safety" or "public order." No one speaks against it because "of course we shouldn't hurt the feelings of others with mean words."
      - porfirium 9y ago
        So what? We have hate speech laws in Europe. Try saying "the holocaust never happened" or "homosexuals are vile creatures" and you will see what can happen to you. There's no free speech in Europe anyway.
    - peeters 9y ago
      The point wasn't that it was extrajudicial, she was just demonstrating that a tool instituted "for consumer protection" can, once implemented, easily be used for democratic suppression or censorship.
- snvzz 9y ago
  >That required judicial authorisation. I can't find a source on this. Do you have one?
sassenach 9y ago
I think this is the relevant paragraph in the document (page 27 in http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/commissions/imco/inag/2017/07-11/IMCO_AG(2017)608048_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/commissions/imco/inag/...) linked from the article: "3. Competent authorities shall have at least the following enforcement powers: (e) where no other effective means are available to bring about the cessation or the prohibition of the infringement including by requesting a third party or other public authority to implement such measures, in order to prevent the risk of serious harm to the collective interests of consumers: - to remove content or restrict access to an online interface or to order the explicit display of a warning to consumers when accessing the online interface; - to order a hosting service provider to remove, disable or restrict the access to an online interface; or - where appropriate, order domain registries or registrars to delete a fully qualified domain name and allow the competent authority concerned to register it;" Seems similar to already existing measures against infringement of copyrights, except that thing about circumventing the courts, as Reda writes. Could this possibly mean websites such as Facebook could be blocked on the grounds of protecting consumers? The document defines 'widespread infringement' as "(1) any act or omission contrary to Union laws that protect consumers' interests that harmed, harms, or is likely to harm the collective interests of consumers"
- digi_owl 9y ago
  > Competent authorities Do such a beast even exist?
  - pilsetnieks 9y ago
    It's "competent" in the legal sense, i.e. the ones having jurisdiction over the matter. It doesn't imply anything about actual competence.
- tankenmate 9y ago
  As if the ICANN compliance department don't already have enough on their plate squaring the circle over the WHOIS / GDPR / RA / RAA imbroglio. 'in with the good' 'out with the bad'
dalbasal 9y ago
This feels like a fight we're going to lose eventually. Proposals come up.. most fail. I admire those responsible for putting up resistance. But.. some succeed. Others partially succeed. Limited to stopping pedophilia, piracy, nazis... Those are bridgeheads. The direction is monodirectional. Eighty six proposals can fail, but if the eighty seventh succeeds that's just as good. There is no going back. Win, good. Lose, try again. That kind of dynamic guarantees a certain result.
- seszett 9y ago
  > Limited to stopping pedophilia, piracy, nazis... Those are bridgeheads. I don't know if I buy this slippery slope argument. Nazi memorabilia and glorification have been banned in France and Germany for more than 70 years now, and these countries have not yet descended into fascism and further impeding of free speech and other points that we usually hear from offended Americans who learn about this.
  - atmosx 9y ago
    Not yet, but if something doesn't change dramatically in the EU the countries you mentioned are on their way extremism (AfD, LePen)
    - seszett 9y ago
      Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? I think these two things are completely disconnected from each other. What we're talking about here is legislation, and legislation has not slipped towards censoring free speech more and more in the last seventy years (in France and Germany).
      - atmosx 9y ago
        > Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? No I'm not. Your statement is so far off that I can't help myself but wonder how did you arrive to this conclusion?!
amelius 9y ago
I'm against this ... unless they block Facebook :)
- kakarot 9y ago
  I realize you are joking to some extent, but if we are to demand net neutrality, we must be willing to enforce it even against our own motives. Facebook as a website shouldn't be treated any different than any other website. Of course we can legally attack Facebook from other angles like its nefarious business practices.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Kenji 9y ago
One very important thought... If you can be told what you can see or read Then it follows that you can be told what to say or think Defend your constitutionally protected rights No one else will do it for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FI6D8ZXpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FI6D8ZXpc
seomint 9y ago
Whenever I see news like this I think of John Gilmore's quote, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Perhaps decisions like this will hasten a move toward a decentralized and an encrypted Net where politicians and their corporate sponsors have far less influence.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Maybe but as long as they leave the mainstream porn sites alone I don't think it'll speed it up that much.
- indubitable 9y ago
  The thing I find disconcerting is that the most recent numbers I could find put about 30% of people as using adblockers. Installing an adblocker takes about 10 seconds and a single click to yield a vastly improved internet experience. The masses move like molasses. When you build a decentralized system it's going to immediately be organically populated by the least desirable demographics in existence. And those demographics can then be used to demonize the system itself. This seems to be a major burden to uptake unless the 'main net' becomes rapidly castrated - but that will never happen. Changes happen slowly and incrementally and like the anecdote of a frog boiling in water - people just don't notice.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  That's a nice thought, but I think we're beyond that stage. The web is a lot more centralised today. Google and FB aren't routing around government restrictions in 2019, not the EU's, Turkey's... They may actively object on certain one sided moral issues (eg anti-gay) stuff, but they'll do what's legal or advisable in most cases. They're being normative companies. Ultimately regulations tend to favour large incumbents.
urbanxs 9y ago
The us has and the fbi have been able to this fir years. Lets hope this is not yet another anti eu propaganda piece.
ucarion 9y ago
I don't see the relevance of Ms Reda's example of Catalonian domains being taken down. Using such an example seems more like a scare tactic than anything else. The EU law she discusses seems clearly focused on (e-)commerce, and it instructs the government to have websites taken down only when that's the only way to protect consumers from being harmed (e.g. defrauded) by those websites. News websites, even those encouraging people to show up to illegal referenda, don't appear to be affected by this law?
- smsm42 9y ago
  The relevance is direct - while the argument may be about some specific case, the power given does not have any limitations to this case, except vague requirement to serve "collective interest" of consumers, whatever that could be. It also builds the legal framework for extrajudicial control over the content on the Internet, which means the government may now control speech in order to serve "collective interest" of the consumers, which will inevitably be defined by the government itself, in a self-serving manner. This opens wide potential for abuse, and a stepping stone for implementing other extra-judicial limits on speech - if it's ok to protect consumer from fake watches, why not from fake news? Why not from "bad" viewpoints and "harmful" information? Thus the government gets full control over the online speech, for your own good, of course. An example of how that happens and why it is dangerous is the Catalan domains story. The Spanish government is obviously trying to limit speech which is not in its interests.
emptyfile 9y ago
Consumer protection is a bad thing?
- Romanulus 9y ago
  Nope! We should also ban steak because babies have a hard time eating it.
- neximo64 9y ago
  Only if it actually protects consumers instead of national interests. In the EU 'consumer protection' is the guise of protecting suppliers. For example, protecting consumers from Buffalo Mozzarella means that only 4 regions of Italy may produce it (via the Protected designation of origin scheme) (it doesn't matter if the recipe/methods are correct). This way the consumer is 'protected' from being sold Buffalo Mozzarella from regions that can produce it cheaper. This method seems to be a way to force compliance online. The EU is great but their digital initiatives are always examples of overreach. Last time it was those ridiculous cookie notices you see on websites notifying you that the website uses cookies.
  - germanier 9y ago
    Anybody anywhere can produce Buffalo Mozzarella. The protected term in the EU is "Mozzarella di Bufala Campana" which has the region already in it's name. The scheme has been introduced as trademarks protection of such terms that often have been associated with a specific region for centuries is not possible. It's really no different than regular trademarks for modern brands. Historically those schemes were introduced over a hundred years ago after faked products misled consumers. It's also a weaker interference in the free market than copyright protection: Anybody can start producing Mozzarella di Bufala Campana in the region while the rights to Kraft Cheese belong to a single company. Producing a product the cheapest way possible is not the end goal. If those cheap products drive the traditional way out of the market (as consumers have no reliable way of distinguishing products) consumers that specifically want the product from that region are harmed. All others can buy generic Buffalo Mozzarella produced anywhere just fine.
dingo_bat 9y ago
We must realise that there is nothing like "rights". There is only what we can secure for ourself, by way of voting or by way of revolution. You must fight for your rights, always. The moment people start thinking that their rights are inalienable, government starts eroding them.
choward 9y ago
Man am I naive. I read the title as the EU wanting to provide a way to block web sites that do things like track consumers.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I don't think that use is specifically excluded.
- petre 9y ago
  You can block those at your router anyway, no need for legislation that does it "for us" without judicial oversight. Or have the domains blacklisted and redirected to localhost by your DNS cache. We could build public DNS blocking caches just like RBLs used for mail to make this even easier.
- jopsen 9y ago
  No, it looks more to do with blocking scamming sites. "where no other effective means are available", hence, sites with representation in the EU, or owners who can be extradited to the EU, doesn't seem to be at risk.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Technically that could be a fallout. With the upcoming ePrivacy/GDPR in the EU, if you as a consumer sent a DNT header or disagree with being tracked, you can notify anyone doing so and they are under EU law required to delete your data and/or stop tracking you. If they don't... well the nearest consumer protection office will be interested and they'll probably then follow up with blocking the website EU wide. So in conclusion; yes this can be used against anyone who tracks you on the internet against your will since the EU law will make that illegal in the future and this law is a broadside against anyone trying to ignore EU law.
maxsavin 9y ago
This can be used to shut down services like Bitcoin, can't it?
Kequc 9y ago
This has been going on for a while but all the way down to the web host it seems like companies are on board with this stuff. I've found that terms of service for web hosting companies generally includes a clause that specifies one of your users harassing another one of your users. As if you can prevent that as a website owner. Especially since such a thing would be totally subjective to judge. What it means is they are purposefully giving themselves any reason at all to shut off your site. I asked one of them about it, I got directed to their legal department. I asked the legal department about the clause and they told me to look for hosting elsewhere given what they assumed was the way in which I conduct myself on the internet. There is no legal reason. They just want to control information.
hw 9y ago
This is great. Companies will now have to deal with this, along with the General Data Protection Regulation (which is a huge fine if in non-compliance) It's a lot of friction and hoops to go through, especially for smaller companies, to do business that reaches into the EU (directly or indirectly) with these regulations.
gioele 9y ago
The sad truth (and missing detail) is that most EU countries already have national laws that allow extra-judicial bodies request ISPs to block websites at the DNS/IP level with minimal oversight. A DB of such requests, limited to Italy: https://censura.bofh.it/ https://censura.bofh.it/
yason 9y ago
I tend to agree: "There is something bigger brewing here. Something much bigger. This is one to keep on the radar." https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/11/european-union-just-decided-to-block-websites-without-due-process-for-consumer-protection/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/11/european-...
pimmen 9y ago
So this is how democracy dies.
Feniks 9y ago
"website blocking infrastructure" Uhm we've had that for a long time, it is how sites with CP and other illegal things are dealt with.

227 points by cameronhowe 9y ago

You people definetly should fight this. We had something like this under "ban pedo" umbrella, now this thing filter anything that is against the party rule

jopsen 9y ago
> now this thing filter anything that is against the party rule Explain, did you read the text?

golemotron 9y ago

I read "prescribes" in the title as "proscribes." There's an argument for that too.

maxsavin 9y ago

This is horrible

porfirium 9y ago

>To give a recent example, independence-related websites were blocked in Catalunya just weeks ago. That required judicial authorisation. Good way of beginning a post, with a lie.

cma 9y ago
They didn't say it was blocked using this proposal. Just that it was expedited through website blocking infrastructure that was put in place for other purposes.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  I think the argument runs something like this: P1. Infra A exists. P2. Infra A has been abused. C1. If we build infra A, it can be abused. P3. Abuse is bad. P4. This proposal proposes that we build infra A. P5. A proposal to build something that can be abused is bad. C2. A proposal to build infra A is bad. That's all fine. It's all fine, except P1 still stands even at the time we reach C2. The infrastructure already exists. So the argument sounds funny. Not unsound, but somewhat unconvincing. It's a much better argument for the proposition that we should dismantle the infrastructure, than that we shouldn't make additional legitimate use of the infrastructure.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eugeniub 9y ago
I don't see how the fact that it required judicial authorization contradicts what the author said. Many abuses happen with the full backing of courts.
- porfirium 9y ago
  We should abolish prisons then? It's a ridiculous argument. Abuses can happen with full backing of the courts, but I expect them to not happen. In all the years that this system has been in place in Spain I have never seen it used for anything other than blocking websites that were in breach of the law.
  - sverige 9y ago
    Wait, what? How do you get abolishing prisons out of that? Back to the subject, what if a law is bad, but the mere act of saying publicly that the law is bad is, in itself, breaking the law? That's where this is all heading. It starts with prohibiting the utterance of specific words because they hurt someone's feelings, but hidden under "consumer safety" or "public order." No one speaks against it because "of course we shouldn't hurt the feelings of others with mean words."
    - porfirium 9y ago
      So what? We have hate speech laws in Europe. Try saying "the holocaust never happened" or "homosexuals are vile creatures" and you will see what can happen to you. There's no free speech in Europe anyway.
  - peeters 9y ago
    The point wasn't that it was extrajudicial, she was just demonstrating that a tool instituted "for consumer protection" can, once implemented, easily be used for democratic suppression or censorship.
snvzz 9y ago
>That required judicial authorisation. I can't find a source on this. Do you have one?

sassenach 9y ago

I think this is the relevant paragraph in the document (page 27 in http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/commissions/imco/inag/2017/07-11/IMCO_AG(2017)608048_EN.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/commissions/imco/inag/...) linked from the article: "3. Competent authorities shall have at least the following enforcement powers: (e) where no other effective means are available to bring about the cessation or the prohibition of the infringement including by requesting a third party or other public authority to implement such measures, in order to prevent the risk of serious harm to the collective interests of consumers: - to remove content or restrict access to an online interface or to order the explicit display of a warning to consumers when accessing the online interface; - to order a hosting service provider to remove, disable or restrict the access to an online interface; or - where appropriate, order domain registries or registrars to delete a fully qualified domain name and allow the competent authority concerned to register it;" Seems similar to already existing measures against infringement of copyrights, except that thing about circumventing the courts, as Reda writes. Could this possibly mean websites such as Facebook could be blocked on the grounds of protecting consumers? The document defines 'widespread infringement' as "(1) any act or omission contrary to Union laws that protect consumers' interests that harmed, harms, or is likely to harm the collective interests of consumers"

digi_owl 9y ago
> Competent authorities Do such a beast even exist?
- pilsetnieks 9y ago
  It's "competent" in the legal sense, i.e. the ones having jurisdiction over the matter. It doesn't imply anything about actual competence.
tankenmate 9y ago
As if the ICANN compliance department don't already have enough on their plate squaring the circle over the WHOIS / GDPR / RA / RAA imbroglio. 'in with the good' 'out with the bad'

dalbasal 9y ago

This feels like a fight we're going to lose eventually. Proposals come up.. most fail. I admire those responsible for putting up resistance. But.. some succeed. Others partially succeed. Limited to stopping pedophilia, piracy, nazis... Those are bridgeheads. The direction is monodirectional. Eighty six proposals can fail, but if the eighty seventh succeeds that's just as good. There is no going back. Win, good. Lose, try again. That kind of dynamic guarantees a certain result.

seszett 9y ago
> Limited to stopping pedophilia, piracy, nazis... Those are bridgeheads. I don't know if I buy this slippery slope argument. Nazi memorabilia and glorification have been banned in France and Germany for more than 70 years now, and these countries have not yet descended into fascism and further impeding of free speech and other points that we usually hear from offended Americans who learn about this.
- atmosx 9y ago
  Not yet, but if something doesn't change dramatically in the EU the countries you mentioned are on their way extremism (AfD, LePen)
  - seszett 9y ago
    Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? I think these two things are completely disconnected from each other. What we're talking about here is legislation, and legislation has not slipped towards censoring free speech more and more in the last seventy years (in France and Germany).
    - atmosx 9y ago
      > Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? No I'm not. Your statement is so far off that I can't help myself but wonder how did you arrive to this conclusion?!

amelius 9y ago

I'm against this ... unless they block Facebook :)

kakarot 9y ago
I realize you are joking to some extent, but if we are to demand net neutrality, we must be willing to enforce it even against our own motives. Facebook as a website shouldn't be treated any different than any other website. Of course we can legally attack Facebook from other angles like its nefarious business practices.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Kenji 9y ago

One very important thought... If you can be told what you can see or read Then it follows that you can be told what to say or think Defend your constitutionally protected rights No one else will do it for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FI6D8ZXpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-FI6D8ZXpc

seomint 9y ago

Whenever I see news like this I think of John Gilmore's quote, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Perhaps decisions like this will hasten a move toward a decentralized and an encrypted Net where politicians and their corporate sponsors have far less influence.

noir_lord 9y ago
Maybe but as long as they leave the mainstream porn sites alone I don't think it'll speed it up that much.
indubitable 9y ago
The thing I find disconcerting is that the most recent numbers I could find put about 30% of people as using adblockers. Installing an adblocker takes about 10 seconds and a single click to yield a vastly improved internet experience. The masses move like molasses. When you build a decentralized system it's going to immediately be organically populated by the least desirable demographics in existence. And those demographics can then be used to demonize the system itself. This seems to be a major burden to uptake unless the 'main net' becomes rapidly castrated - but that will never happen. Changes happen slowly and incrementally and like the anecdote of a frog boiling in water - people just don't notice.
dalbasal 9y ago
That's a nice thought, but I think we're beyond that stage. The web is a lot more centralised today. Google and FB aren't routing around government restrictions in 2019, not the EU's, Turkey's... They may actively object on certain one sided moral issues (eg anti-gay) stuff, but they'll do what's legal or advisable in most cases. They're being normative companies. Ultimately regulations tend to favour large incumbents.

urbanxs 9y ago

The us has and the fbi have been able to this fir years. Lets hope this is not yet another anti eu propaganda piece.

ucarion 9y ago

I don't see the relevance of Ms Reda's example of Catalonian domains being taken down. Using such an example seems more like a scare tactic than anything else. The EU law she discusses seems clearly focused on (e-)commerce, and it instructs the government to have websites taken down only when that's the only way to protect consumers from being harmed (e.g. defrauded) by those websites. News websites, even those encouraging people to show up to illegal referenda, don't appear to be affected by this law?

smsm42 9y ago
The relevance is direct - while the argument may be about some specific case, the power given does not have any limitations to this case, except vague requirement to serve "collective interest" of consumers, whatever that could be. It also builds the legal framework for extrajudicial control over the content on the Internet, which means the government may now control speech in order to serve "collective interest" of the consumers, which will inevitably be defined by the government itself, in a self-serving manner. This opens wide potential for abuse, and a stepping stone for implementing other extra-judicial limits on speech - if it's ok to protect consumer from fake watches, why not from fake news? Why not from "bad" viewpoints and "harmful" information? Thus the government gets full control over the online speech, for your own good, of course. An example of how that happens and why it is dangerous is the Catalan domains story. The Spanish government is obviously trying to limit speech which is not in its interests.

emptyfile 9y ago

Consumer protection is a bad thing?

Romanulus 9y ago
Nope! We should also ban steak because babies have a hard time eating it.
neximo64 9y ago
Only if it actually protects consumers instead of national interests. In the EU 'consumer protection' is the guise of protecting suppliers. For example, protecting consumers from Buffalo Mozzarella means that only 4 regions of Italy may produce it (via the Protected designation of origin scheme) (it doesn't matter if the recipe/methods are correct). This way the consumer is 'protected' from being sold Buffalo Mozzarella from regions that can produce it cheaper. This method seems to be a way to force compliance online. The EU is great but their digital initiatives are always examples of overreach. Last time it was those ridiculous cookie notices you see on websites notifying you that the website uses cookies.
- germanier 9y ago
  Anybody anywhere can produce Buffalo Mozzarella. The protected term in the EU is "Mozzarella di Bufala Campana" which has the region already in it's name. The scheme has been introduced as trademarks protection of such terms that often have been associated with a specific region for centuries is not possible. It's really no different than regular trademarks for modern brands. Historically those schemes were introduced over a hundred years ago after faked products misled consumers. It's also a weaker interference in the free market than copyright protection: Anybody can start producing Mozzarella di Bufala Campana in the region while the rights to Kraft Cheese belong to a single company. Producing a product the cheapest way possible is not the end goal. If those cheap products drive the traditional way out of the market (as consumers have no reliable way of distinguishing products) consumers that specifically want the product from that region are harmed. All others can buy generic Buffalo Mozzarella produced anywhere just fine.

dingo_bat 9y ago

We must realise that there is nothing like "rights". There is only what we can secure for ourself, by way of voting or by way of revolution. You must fight for your rights, always. The moment people start thinking that their rights are inalienable, government starts eroding them.

choward 9y ago

Man am I naive. I read the title as the EU wanting to provide a way to block web sites that do things like track consumers.

yorwba 9y ago
I don't think that use is specifically excluded.
petre 9y ago
You can block those at your router anyway, no need for legislation that does it "for us" without judicial oversight. Or have the domains blacklisted and redirected to localhost by your DNS cache. We could build public DNS blocking caches just like RBLs used for mail to make this even easier.
jopsen 9y ago
No, it looks more to do with blocking scamming sites. "where no other effective means are available", hence, sites with representation in the EU, or owners who can be extradited to the EU, doesn't seem to be at risk.
zaarn 9y ago
Technically that could be a fallout. With the upcoming ePrivacy/GDPR in the EU, if you as a consumer sent a DNT header or disagree with being tracked, you can notify anyone doing so and they are under EU law required to delete your data and/or stop tracking you. If they don't... well the nearest consumer protection office will be interested and they'll probably then follow up with blocking the website EU wide. So in conclusion; yes this can be used against anyone who tracks you on the internet against your will since the EU law will make that illegal in the future and this law is a broadside against anyone trying to ignore EU law.

maxsavin 9y ago

This can be used to shut down services like Bitcoin, can't it?

Kequc 9y ago

This has been going on for a while but all the way down to the web host it seems like companies are on board with this stuff. I've found that terms of service for web hosting companies generally includes a clause that specifies one of your users harassing another one of your users. As if you can prevent that as a website owner. Especially since such a thing would be totally subjective to judge. What it means is they are purposefully giving themselves any reason at all to shut off your site. I asked one of them about it, I got directed to their legal department. I asked the legal department about the clause and they told me to look for hosting elsewhere given what they assumed was the way in which I conduct myself on the internet. There is no legal reason. They just want to control information.

hw 9y ago

This is great. Companies will now have to deal with this, along with the General Data Protection Regulation (which is a huge fine if in non-compliance) It's a lot of friction and hoops to go through, especially for smaller companies, to do business that reaches into the EU (directly or indirectly) with these regulations.

gioele 9y ago

The sad truth (and missing detail) is that most EU countries already have national laws that allow extra-judicial bodies request ISPs to block websites at the DNS/IP level with minimal oversight. A DB of such requests, limited to Italy: https://censura.bofh.it/ https://censura.bofh.it/

yason 9y ago

I tend to agree: "There is something bigger brewing here. Something much bigger. This is one to keep on the radar." https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/11/european-union-just-decided-to-block-websites-without-due-process-for-consumer-protection/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/11/european-...

pimmen 9y ago

So this is how democracy dies.

Feniks 9y ago

"website blocking infrastructure" Uhm we've had that for a long time, it is how sites with CP and other illegal things are dealt with.