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As a European, I find both the ability to force others to not distribute information, and the ability for others to restrict my access certain types of sites to
by arghwhat 9y ago
As a European, I find both the ability to force others to not distribute information, and the ability for others to restrict my access certain types of sites to be a disgusting violation of free speech. I would expect this in a certain country in Asia, not in bloody Europe. Not only does it violate free speech, the new ability to perform website takedowns bypass proper law and order, by not leaving any ability to defend oneself in a proper court of law. A copyright infringement claim may be false, for example.
The ability to block content country-wide won't help reduce misinformation, which will always have ways to spread. What are we going to do, make it illegal to be uneducated, have unpopular opinions or be a bad person? Instead, this new power can easily be abused to stop the spread of real information, and unpopular (for example, government-opposing or religious) opinions.
The original ability to delete information is absurd in a similar way, but more limited, as only the subject can request it. Yet it still bypasses a proper trial, leaving it up to you and the service provider to conclude if the information was useful to the "general public". That's definitely going to result in deletion of valuable information.
If you want to give people a way to defend themselves against harmful information, give them the right to amend it instead. Deleting it is wrong. If you want to avoid fake news like you state, educate. Controlling people by removing information is wrong.
- zaarn 9y ago>Not only does it violate free speech, the new ability to perform website takedowns bypass proper law and order, by not leaving any ability to defend oneself in a proper court of law. The law explicitly states itself to be a last measure when a court of law is not an option (ie, overseas or anonymous parties) It is a last resort by consumer protection agencies when they can't use a court or the other party is unwilling to cooperate with their jurisdiction. That is not equivalent to "bypass proper law and order". It's enforcing it. That is the job of the CPA's. >disgusting violation of free speech. Yes but in some parts of Europe there is no Free Speech. Germany for example has Free Opinions, which is a narrower field of speech.
- Trombone12 9y agoWait, you advocate for a law that would grant citizens the right to rewrite server responses on the wire? Because the context here is action against sites where no physical or legal person associated with the site can be found within the EU, so its either blocking server responses or rewriting them in flight...
- Feniks 9y agoFree speech has never been absolute.
- eksemplar 9y agoHow is that going though? People aren't vaccinating their children, bringing back deadly disease that were almost wiped out in western society. A rising number of people believe the earth is flat. Two of the mos popular pro-Brexit sources on social media turned out to be fake accounts run by Russia. America elected Trump. I mean, those things aren't great but at least they won't wipe us from existence. Unlike climate change, which an increasing number of people think is an act of God... I don't like totalitarian approaches, but your approach to "freedom" is not only rapidly ending democracy and the free society, it's quite literally going to kill us all.