3 ms·

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.

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.