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EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

519 points by jonah-archive 8y ago

tick_tock_tick 8y ago
It's very sad to see the path the EU has chosen to follow in regards to speech and the free flow of ideas.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unconditional in the US; there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. European nations have simply drawn the line in a different place, for entirely understandable historical reasons.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances Such as when government is given too much power over it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - deogeo 8y ago
    Some of us have also learned that censorship can mean censorship of pacifist and anti-war speech: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship#What_was_Censored_3F https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship... I'm sure sympathizing or trying to understand a terrorist's motives (perhaps their home country is being occupied by the US?) can fit under the terrorist content umbrella. Edit: Let's not leave unaddressed the farcical idea that Europe prior to World War I was some bastion of free speech, and that this somehow led to the wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_Empire_(1871%E2%80%931918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_E... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Prior_restraint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766 https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766
    - smsm42 8y ago
      BTW the famous "fire in the crowded theater" quote was used by Holmes exactly to suppress anti-government anti-war pacifist speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States Judge Holmes came to regret his support of speech suppression, but a lot of people still seem to miss the point.
    - mk89 8y ago
      Brilliant! Censorship is a technique used by any person in power so far in history (at least as far as I know), no matter the government type. It has little to do with the "fear of committing the same mistakes as they did years ago".
  - durnygbur 8y ago
    Wasn’t the problem exactly that the government had too much control over the information flow and the general narrative?
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      It didn't start out that way. It started with conspiracy theorists and fake news.
      - jakeogh 8y ago
        Do you know where that first term comes from? It's strongly related to the second.
        ionised 8y ago
        Are you suggesting the term 'conspiracy theorist' is somehow a new thing tied to the emergence of 'fake news'?
        jakeogh 8y ago
        The other way around. Fake news and the older term have the the same origins. Neither are accidental. Both are designed to short-circuit critical thinking. Consider how logically meaningless the term "conspiracy theory" is. A great deal of US law is specifically written to address conspiracies. They are forms of psychological warfare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606
  - klagermkii 8y ago
    > We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Have they learnt the right lesson though? What's the alternate history theory here? You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? None of this solves the underlying issue of there being deep political problems in any country that ends up with this kind of leader getting into power. The hope of free speech supposedly being that someone will eventually put their finger on the real cause of the problems and get people on board with it, rather than an unfortunate group being scapegoated.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? That probably works better if you don't let him out 9 months into a 5 year sentence.
    - Faark 8y ago
      It always fascinating to me when Americans pretend freedom of speech will automatically solve all struggles between people having incompatible worldview while their own political landscape in recent years has become more divisive than ever... I see quite a few similarities with pre ww2 Germany. We'll how fast violence will be on the rise.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        It's not that it will solve all struggles. It's that censorship doesn't solve them, either, but makes everything else worse. And speaking of our own political landscape, last thing I want is a right wing populist government that has been handed laws to crack down on "hate speech" by my fellow progressive do-gooders. If such laws were to pass and found constitutional, I'd expect BLM and BDS to be the first targets in all red states (and Europe has ample precedent for persecuting BDS as "hate speech", so it's not like you'd have any moral high ground on calling them out on it).
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Germans problem was not just "incitement". It was putting Hitler in charge of the government. That wasn't done by "incitement", that was done by actual German top politicians, who thought that putting a strong leader in charge and suppressing opposition (Ermächtigungsgesetz and so on) will solve their stability problems. They did it for security, to keep the tranquility and peace in the nation, so they had the troublemakers arrested and the people who can right the course of the nation assigned the power instead. Too bad those people turned out to be the Nazis. I think the lesson from here is that no opposition voice needs to be suppressed, no group should be excluded, and nobody should be given absolute power over others. Somehow some people in EU think that the lesson if that right people just need to suppress the right things instead. After all, we have so good record in choosing who are the right people and what things they should be suppressing, don't we? We won't make any mistakes again there?
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? It's quite a long list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        That's not a very long list. Several of them fall into his original categories. Incitement, fighting words and child pornography into the second, false statements into the first. (Or more like the first falls into false statements, but libel really is a central example of false statements not being protected.) The big one he missed was obscenity, but that's somewhat understandable given the frequency with which "obscenity laws" get struck down rather than upheld. And the others aren't categories of speech. You can't use someone else's copyrighted work, but you can convey the exact same information in your own words. Government employees et al can't say certain things, but anyone else can say the same things.
  - terryschiavo22 8y ago
    You're being disingenuous. Nazi Germany's rise to power was a composite of many different factors. You make it seem as though free speech was the sole cause of its ascendance.
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      "enabling" and "causing" aren't the same thing.
      - smsm42 8y ago
        Not shooting in place anybody who speaks against the government can be said to "enable" a lot of bad things too. Hitler spoke against contemporary government, so if he had been shot there and then, nothing afterwards would happen. I hope you can see how fallacious such argument is. The reality is, contemporary German government was not shy at all at suppressing freedoms. They had special exception in their Constitution to do just that when the government needs. But they were more afraid of Communists than they were of Nazis, so they gave the suppression machine to Nazis to fix the things. The conclusion from this fail should be "don't build suppression machine out of government", not "give it to Communists instead next time, maybe it'll work better".
  - contravariant 8y ago
    European nations have indeed drawn the line in a different places for historical reasons, however that place is most definitely not the same for all nations. It wouldn't make sense for that to be the case as a line drawn for historical reasons must therefore depend on the countries history which is vastly different for each and every country. I reckon on the whole people have fought more to protect free speech than to limit it, although both have indeed occurred, fascism being the main example of the latter.
  - tikhonj 8y ago
    The exact same argument could be applied to pretty much any right. It certainly applies to, say, freedom of religion—religion is historically dangerous in exactly the same way as speech, and different societies restrict religion to different extents. And yet, if you seriously brought that argument forth, I suspect people would be more disgusted than if you applied it to freedom of speech. What makes religion so much more important than speech? The main difference I can think of is that freedom of speech is primarily a more individualistic kind of right, while religion is inherently more collectivist.
  - Camillo 8y ago
    Absolutely. Having suffered from German imperialism, Europeans understand that the only way to preserve their freedom is to allow it to be restricted as Germany sees fit.
  - oska 8y ago
    > it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances The dangers that come from suppression of speech trump the dangers of free speech by far. And your 'historical analysis' is laughably shallow. Frankly, your comment reads like regurgitated propaganda.
  - meowface 8y ago
    I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal because it may lead to imminent lawless action, such as a riot or stampede which could injure people. European countries ban those forms of speech, and also ban other forms of speech based on subjective non-criminal harm that is perceived to be a potential result of such speech. For example, denying the Holocaust could lead other people to think it didn't happen, which may cause them to view Jewish people more negatively. The US simply doesn't engage in that kind of subjective interpretation of speech. Speech has to be a component of a criminal act, or a clear precursor to an imminently criminal act. You can't play association games like "he said this, which could lead other people to think X, which could lead people to say Y, which could lead to some form of violence", which most (all?) European legal systems seem to do. I do understand the need for certain limited restrictions on speech in times of war and martial law, and perhaps for brief periods after wars end, but the EU hasn't had a major war in a long time. I get banning swastikas and banning Holocaust denial in the 50s. But I'm an American Jew, and I've been to Germany a bunch in the past decade. I don't care (in a legal sense) if someone denies the Holocaust, and in fact think that banning Holocaust denial greatly empowers them and their cause, not just in Germany but globally. I've seen this firsthand, many times.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident [1] The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America. It's a nice platitude, but 'freedom of speech' has always been used as a tool and weapon for those in power to suppress minorities or to bolster their own voices. All you have to do is tie it to some other bogus law or rationale, and you get freedom of speech for me but not for thee. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressional-hearing_n_590929bbe4b05c39768420ef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressi...
  - natch 8y ago
    It’s debatable whether the problem in Europe was too much free speech. Some would argue the problem was suppression of free speech.
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. I’m not sure that current hate speech laws would have been effective at countering Nazi propaganda. The Nazis were not openly advocating their most extreme policies before the war. Even during the war, the worst atrocities were mostly kept quiet.
  - mk89 8y ago
    I used to think the same. However, I see that this fear has become a technique to crush anything else that doesn't follow the same thinking. As usual, extremes are not good, no matter what, and it is in such situations that other extremes take shape.
  - mcv 8y ago
    There's indeed always going to be a line somewhere. What's vital though is that whatever censorship you do enact, is limited, proportional, and most importantly, accountable. Allowing rapid action to block harmless content based on false reports seems to fail those criteria.
  - raxxorrax 8y ago
    > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Evidently not, as that would probably mean we would not be on the road to make at least some mistakes again. We also had hate speech laws in the 19th century... But the real curious argument is that the state was lacking oversight and control over public content. It almost makes you angry thinking about it. Germany had a laisser-faire approach to recent content control. That worked brilliantly. That changed and suddenly we have some really angry people wanting to change some things. Additionally, the far right people want content control as much as everyone. I don't want to see a smug smile while they implement hate-speech laws like in Austria. Using the german experience to justify content control is infantile.
- Bombthecat 8y ago
  With article 17 (former 13) is the past imho
olliej 8y ago
Shocking, who would have thought
zentiggr 8y ago
How do we push back on these agencies for their obvious flawed process?
- ghda 8y ago
  We don’t push back on the process, we push back on the principle. The point of the principle of free speech is not that all speech is beneficial but that we can’t possibly trust any agency with the power to decide what is and isn’t. The “process” probably has no more flaws than any other process designed and implemented by mortals, it just goes to demonstrate why the whole censor-the-internet idea is wrong.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    Where do you stand on falsely claiming "fire" in a crowded movie theater?
    - mjevans 8y ago
      Depends on how false false is. If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing. If someone is clearly doing it with intent to cause harm to others, then that's a crime and they should be charged with such; after the fact. I'm against installing verbal filters on everyone just in case someone might shout 'fire' in a crowded place with intent to cause harm.
      - rhizome 8y ago
        If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing You don't have to wonder, there are long defined and continuously refined standards in operation. But it's irrelevant to the thread, so we don't need to detail them here.
    - solotronics 8y ago
      I'm not a lawyer but am pretty sure it would fall under any number of other laws if someone was to get hurt or you caused a disruption. There doesn't need to be a separate law protecting you from someone saying something you find objectionable. - disturbing the peace ( if nobody got hurt ) - causing bodily harm by criminal negligence - inciting to riot
ars 8y ago
550 in the past week, not in total!
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  I guess someone put a test system on a live server? Doubth they have enough employees to have some just sit there filing takedown claims manually.
  - tastroder 8y ago
    From their website it seems like they perform periodical "action days" where they sit down jointly with different groups and flag content on specific platforms. Might have been one of those.
    - steve_taylor 8y ago
      If it’s urgent enough that websites have to comply within an hour, why on earth do they wait so long to make these requests in batches?
      - SiempreViernes 8y ago
        The one hour compliance is proposed legislation, not actual law. If the requirement makes it in I expect it would be for extraordinary cases at high traffic sites, like the new zeeland terrorist livestrem on youtube.
andybak 8y ago
So underfunded and overworked EU agency is asked to manage reporting for poorly thought out and overly broad legislation. Maybe this is the best outcome as it might provide a valid defense for those who choose to ignore the notices.
- icelancer 8y ago
  > So underfunded and overworked EU agency Like engineers who have never underestimated their time commitments to a project, government agencies have never been overfunded.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
mirimir 8y ago
Hey, someone ought to start reporting EU sites as "terrorist content". Edit: Or better yet, report major MPAA members for copyright infringement, using spoofed accounts for other major MPAA members :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  Wouldn't knowingly sending false reports be a misdemeanour, or even felony?
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Sure. So do it anonymously. All's fair in war.
  - nejlika 8y ago
    Then isn't sending reports without verifying their validity the same thing?
deogeo 8y ago
A clever circumvention of innocent until proven guilty - make disobedience carry huge legal risk. You must obey orders (takedown 'requests'), not backed by any court. If you fail, and one turns out to be legitimate, you get punished. Imagine if you had to stop doing business with anyone reported as a thief (but not convicted).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- stcredzero 8y ago
  The ability to smear through accusation, without proof, without due process, and without the presumption of innocence has always been the province of tyrants in power and the tool of would-be tyrants trying to gain power. Those who accuse and un-person are the villains throughout history. In the past, people were smeared as sexually loose, as belonging to the "wrong" religion, or as having the "wrong" sexual orientation. In the past, people were smeared as being of the "wrong" racial background. Always be wary of those who smear to enforce their power. A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. Evil is recognizable in its epistemological hazards: - Don't ask questions. - Don't read or hear the heretical opinion. - Don't associate with the "wrong" people. The side of good, the side of the long arc of justice, is the side of rational argument and of principles. The side of justice is the one saying, "hear me out." It's the side of evil which uses vilification, seeks to silence, and uses fear against questions.
  - minikites 8y ago
    >A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. How do you square this with the recent surge in flat Earth and anti-vaccination beliefs? The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      The anti-vaxxers are to a large extent caused by the recent rise of anti-rationalist "burn the heretics" nonsense: http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-sick-mother-describes-harassment-by-anti-vaccine-activists/ http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-... Anti-vaxxers are what you get when you use death threats and not civil discourse.
gjs278 8y ago
what the EU thinks is irrelevant. I wouldn't respond to a GDPR notice, a cookie notice, "terrorist content" takedowns. they are free to block my site. I'm free to never visit their 1984 land. good thing the UK is leaving them.
ascendantlogic 8y ago
Politicians do not care about the ramifications of this. They only care about granting themselves power over who sees what when through the guise of combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc. Posting a blog about this will change nothing.
- durnygbur 8y ago
  It’s really hopeless each time one realizes how French and German politicians perceive the internet. For them the internet is not synonymous with the freedom of creativity and expression, but with the freedom to restrain and to control.
  - suddenstutter 8y ago
    Haha, well said.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    Germany is ruled by liberal conservatives for well over a decade. While there is some maliciousness and desire to expand control, I see mostly the lashing out in an attempt to retain the control the state used to have. The internet brings an unprecedented amount of freedom, and that weakens the state. Where previously you could wiretap the phone of a criminal, today you have no way to read his whatsapp. They don't know how to deal with that. Being a conservative party with a lot of old voters they try to slow the change down, but their failure to understand the internet leads to ridiculous attempts.
    - Semaphor 8y ago
      Just as a reminder, the ruling party, specifically our chancellor Merkel, said: "the Internet is Neuland (uncharted territory) for all of us". And that was only 6 years ago.
      - mrguyorama 8y ago
        Was she wrong? The "modern" internet (fast, for everyone, modern sites) was only about a decade old at the time. That's a mere moment in Germany's history
andjd 8y ago
In situations with notice-and-takedown like this, I always wonder why there aren't stronger protections against abuse. Should a platform or user who had their content ordered removed in error be able to receive damages? Should the lawyers or civil servants instigating these notices be disciplined for issuing erroneous, improper, or overly broad takedown notices be disciplined or blacklisted?
- smsm42 8y ago
  I guess the same reason why police and government is allowed to lie to you, but if you lie to police or government you're a felon. Because they can. As long as people vote for such situation to continue, it continues.
- rhinoceraptor 8y ago
  That's how governments work. If you're the president and do something blatantly unconstitutional, the worst case is it gets overturned in the courts. If you're a citizen, you go to jail or worse. Why else would you pursue a role in a system of abuse than to abuse and profit?
macinjosh 8y ago
The EU is a nightmare. Once the UK leaves and people see they are doing better it’s going to start a procession of other countries out the door. Too many regulations and red tape like this make doing business in the EU difficult. I am slightly annoyed every time a cookie banner blocks my view on a website. To think some person in Belgium decided that was a good idea and now everyone online has to deal with it is disturbing.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Regardless of EU membership the UK is very much not on a track to "do better" when it comes to anything freedom related.
  - confounded 8y ago
    Reminder that the European courts are currently restraining the UK from the worst of its surveillance plan, as they’ve found it to be incompatible with the Human Right to Privacy. All signs point to the UK taking an increasingly authoritarian attitude to the net post-Brexit.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I totally agree with you, except the UK are the ones with the cookie banners. At least if each country comes up with their own draconian set of internet laws, it will be easier to ignore them all since there will be less "juice" behind each version of the law.
- munk-a 8y ago
  I don't think that in the best of terms the UK not being part of the EU would be beneficial to the UK - the way Brexit is happening is definitely going to hoop them though. They are taking an antagonistic stance against all their major trading partners and to continue to do business with them they'll end up needing to follow those regulations anyways. I am unaware of major cases of regulatory capture in the EU governance and most regulation proceeding this has been well intentioned - if the cookie banner is annoying then tell your the site to stop tracking you.
smsm42 8y ago
Funny how exactly EU follows the path Russia has recently taken. After Russia passed the law that banned online material promoting terrorist content, suicide, drug information and harm to children, and so on, there was an avalanche of false takedown requests and misidentifications, including attempting to block Wikipedia, ban Bhagavad Gita commentary (yes, really) and many more anecdotes that sound funny unless you live there. Now Russia has progressed to banning "insulting" the government publicly, i.e. direct ban on political dissent. I wonder how long it would be until EU does the same.
- _Schizotypy 8y ago
  Russia banned drug information? What sort of information, like pharmacology?
  - filoleg 8y ago
    It is implied that the parent comment was talking about illegal drugs. Interesting side fact: unlike in english, there are two completely distinct words for illegal and legal drugs in russian language. Which a lot of times makes it easier to spot russian-speaking posters, as they tend to refer to illegal drugs as just "drugs", while referring to legal ones using other more specific terms, like "pills" or something else.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      Illegal drugs, precursors (such chemicals as acetone or sulphuric acid), plants that may contain chemicals that are components of illegal drugs, information that may be considered "propagandizing" using of drugs, etc. > unlike in english, there are two completely distinct words for illegal and legal drugs in russian language Which two words do you mean? I can't think of any two fitting this description.
      - filoleg 8y ago
        “Наркотики” for illegal drugs and “лекарства” for legal. I realize that the first one translates literally as “narcotics”, but it is used in russian language exactly like “illegal drugs” is in english. On a side-note, until I saw your reply, I didn’t realize how bad it was. It is absolutely crazy to me that something like “acetone” would fall under this law. Thanks for posting a concise summary.
comboy 8y ago
Maybe we should have some anonymous (preferably distributed) internet archive which is only available through tor?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 8y ago
  This isn't a bad idea. You don't even need that much resources either - only mirror content that has been taken down from archive.org
- tobias3 8y ago
  Like https://dweb.archive.org/ https://dweb.archive.org/ ?
mchannon 8y ago
Not quite my circus, not quite my monkeys, but I wonder if it's possible to fight fire with fire. Could a committed group of individuals report the most pernicious EU politicians' homepages and facebook pages as similarly banned content? Looks like the firehose has overwhelmed whatever inadequate safeguards they originally had in place.
- r00fus 8y ago
  They’ll just carve out an exception like the US financial industry did in 2006 with specific patent violations. Congress could have addressed the core issue but instead protected their big funders.
- akerro 8y ago
  A few weeks ago there was a case in Poland where a party that strongly supported article 11 and 13 was using copyrighted pictures and banners made by a small artist. The news was big in Poland, the party was notified, but they ignored the case, voted for art 11/13 anyway.
  - krageon 8y ago
    Those articles are immaterial (although they are a little ironic) in this case, because what you are describing was already not allowed. Thankfully a small artist doesn't need media exposure in this case, this is what courts are for.
- omnimus 8y ago
  I think this might be good idea. Now i only have to find out which politicians voted for this and where to submit/report their content.
Not_a_pizza 8y ago
Reporting things falsely as a terrorist action IS a terrorist action!!!!!!
williesleg 8y ago
FAKE NEWS! Fact check FALSE!
williesleg 8y ago
FAKE NEWS! Fact check FALSE! Snopes says: TRUE! what's to believe?
Rebelgecko 8y ago
Interestingly, I can't get one of the linked videos[1] to load, although the other stuff seems to work fine. [1]: https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712 https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712
cseelus 8y ago
Can anyone with a bit more information explain why the EU might have any saying as to what a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library can and can not host? Disclaimer: I currently am a EU citizen.
- 8ytecoder 8y ago
  As they mentioned in passing in the blog, EU might block the site entirely within EU.
  - umhau 8y ago
    Oh, the horror.
    - filoleg 8y ago
      Not for anyone outside of the EU, and not in short-term. However, I believe that it is an alarming tendency that can cause a lot of damage over a sufficiently long time period.
      - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
        It's still a problem for us in the U.S, because there are always politicians in the U.S. that look at dumb things being done in Europe and say, "We should be doing that, too.", and voters who will vote for them.
        umhau 8y ago
        In the long term, though, it could cause noticible implosion of related industries. I'm kinda imagining that this kind of regulation is going to be so clearly harmful that its removed.
        filoleg 8y ago
        Agreed. That's what I meant by long-term, I should have been more clear.
0x0 8y ago
Is this the end of websites being available 24 hours a day? Just switch off the web server every evening when leaving the office?
- pas 8y ago
  The CIO (!) of one of our clients seriously proposed that last year for a new big online B2C service. We were just laughing at that point, knowing the CEO will not go for that, but even the though process was scary, and made some sense.
Proven 8y ago
Just doin their job and slowly but safely moving towards a well off retirement... Why is this surprising or unusual? It doesn't matter to them. Citizens aren't their customers and can't refuse to fund them. What other outcome can one rationally expect?
nydel 8y ago
I could see a TPB-style federated proxy service emerging for archived URLs that are unduly censored.
- ilaksh 8y ago
  Why does it need to be federated? Why not something p2p like IPFS or just torrents?
  - nydel 8y ago
    i may be missing an as-yet-unidentified-by-me core concept here. if a torrent has multiple listings (and perhaps multiple trackers) then isn't it being distributed via federation? how is this different from IPFS?
eridius 8y ago
Why does the proposed EU legislation have a 1-hour deadline? No matter what you think of the action it's trying to take, a 1-hour deadline is preposterous for anyone and seems expressly designed to force people to set up an automated process that acts on takedown notices without prior review. But who benefits from this? About the only thing I can think of is if some big company, think Facebook or Google, lobbied for this because they're large enough that they can actually implement it with review, whereas anyone smaller can't.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  I think the idea of the 1 hour deadline is to pull it offline before others can download and repost it. The police/governments especially in Australia and New Zealand have worked out that there is simply no way to remove a file from the internet if someone else grabs it in time. Its a fruitless effort and very dangerous when misused but thats what I assume they are trying to do anyway.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    And what's the chance that it gets reported before someone's downloaded it? I'd say about none.
  - Carpetsmoker 8y ago
    I'm in New Zealand, and finding the Christchurch shooter's manifesto was harder than you'd think. The "it's not foolproof, so it's fruitless"-argument strikes me as missing the point. We can't prevent many things from happening (rape, thieving, excessive drug use, etc.) but that doesn't mean that efforts to contain this are useless.
    - ric2b 8y ago
      It was (is) one search away on the famous bay of pirates.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      It was very easy to find if you know where to look. If you know the domain for 8chan you could find it in seconds. The massive attempt to hide the video probably made it much easier to find as so many people who saw it saved it expecting it to be gone in the future.
hirundo 8y ago
Thank Uncle Sam for the first amendment. Not that this kind of censorship won't happen in the United States but there are stronger institutional barriers to it here, so it will take longer. But it's coming here too and not slowly. For instance five years ago 48 US Senators voted gut much of the core of the first amendment. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/19/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-re...) After every terrorist attack we hear how the constitution is not a suicide note (and therefore the bill of rights is highly contingent). Pressure to act against (flexibly defined) hate speech is growing particularly in the young cohort of voters. In the not distant future I expect hundreds or thousands of US officials to have the same kind of power that their EU counterparts are seeking here: to automatically switch off almost any domestic web resource if it hurts the feelings of an important constituent. Many of us will fight it, and as in the EU, we'll lose.
natch 8y ago
Blocking the EU seems to be the only viable option here, right? Am I missing any less bad options? Or would blocking the EU still leave publishers vulnerable to some abuse?
matt4077 8y ago
Essentially, this is the DMCA for terrorist content. With a somewhat short time requirement driven by some recent events (New Zealand being the most prominent, but not first). Here's a link to the current EU draft: https://www.laquadrature.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/04/Terr-Reg-LIBE-Final-Compromises.pdf https://www.laquadrature.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019... (It's a document highlighting the latest changes from committee, making it somewhat hard to read but not less interesting) I'm not sure if it's fair to compare notices from the current program, which sends out notices without any legal force, to what this envisages. The directive sets out a process and requirements for notices, including detailed reasoning for each. It also specifically mentions avenues to protest (and sue) in cases of disagreements. I'm no particular fan of this for both practical and philosophical reasons. If youtube had invested in some sort of oversight that prevented this kiwi neckbeard from live-streaming his massacre of innocents, the vote this week would probably have ended differently.
golemotron 8y ago
I can see why the UK would not be excited to remain.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  Ehm, UK probably blocks more internet sites than most other EU countries. Never mind that UK libel laws are notorious; saying that homeopaths are quacks can get you in to serious problems.
- sadris 8y ago
  The UK is doing much worse https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s=21 https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s...
jijji 8y ago
Do any web sites based in the USA have to honor these takedown notices from countries based in the EU?
- sadris 8y ago
  There is an appellate court case pending involving Google and foreign court orders. Depending on how is decided is the answer to your question. Edit: no they do not need to remove content because a foreign entity asked them to https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de-indexing-order-wont-apply-google-us/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de-in...
driverdan 8y ago
What exactly is "terrorist content?" Do calls to arms from the American Revolution against England count? What about other revolutions of the past?
- ilaksh 8y ago
  Yes, I would say that anyone calling for armed revolution would be classified as a terrorist by the government they opposed. Governments tend not to take sides against other governments unless they want to go to war with them in some way. So you can imagine that in many cases most other governments would back the terrorist label. This points out one of the big issues with the use of the word "terrorist" in today's world. It is a label that dominant organizations use against any group that presents a serious threat, regardless of the activities of that group.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    I think the question is, does it stop being terrorist if a revolution happened in the past, but the actions are still recognized as having being terrorism? Are Jacobine writings terrorist in nature, for example? How about a scan of Pravda circa 1918, with headlines like "Long live the Red Terror!"?
gnu8 8y ago
How are we going to punish the EU for this? The penalty for interfering with Archive.org must be so severe that even an international entity would never contemplate doing this again.
throw2016 8y ago
Given US state linked organizations like Atlantic Council, ThinkProgress, Propornot manned by ex US security services personnel are working with Facebook, Google and other social media websites to 'takedown' dissent on US involvement in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, black activism against police brutality, general anti-war activism and socialism leaning content it seems the time to be concerned about censorship is passed. Who can explain these SV 'relationships' with state actors? Anyone who cares about censorship should be extremely concerned about state actors flagging content. Snowden is still in Russia, Assange is virtual imprisoned and Manning is back in prison. Isn't it curious that these basic actions of whistle blowing and dissent are not able to operate freely in the west? Is it simply as transparent as when other countries take down dissent or imprison activists its censorship and totalitarianism and when we do its 'fake news', 'Russian propaganda' or 'some reason'. It's incredible people can ignore everything and talk of free speech, censorship, and democracy as if none of the above is happening.
stefek99 8y ago
Reminds me of: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man-charged-with-leeds-terror-offences-appears-in-court https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man-charged-... > The charges allege that Golaszewski was found with copies of 21 Silent Techniques of Killing by Master Hei Long, The Anarchist Cookbook and The Big Book of Mischief on 23 February in Leeds. It is also alleged that he had in his possession the Improvised Munitions Handbook, Murder Inc, The Book by Jack the Rippa, and Minimanual Of The Urban Guerilla, by Carlos Marighella. The guy is charged with possession of six books, some of these books are likely to be present at archive.org https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel-golaszewski-uk-terror-leeds-arrest-right-wing-a8815116.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel-golaszewsk... > Pawel Golaszewski faces six counts under the Terrorism Act and has been charged with possession of a document or record "containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Six books, six counts. •••••••••• Unsure where is this heading. Does anyone think the law can stop technology?
- int_19h 8y ago
  I knew that UK was pretty bad in this regard, but I didn't realize it's that bad. You know what "possession of a document or record containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" reminds me of? "Contacts leading to suspicion of espionage" - one of the common charges under Article 58 in USSR circa 1930s, according to Solzhenitsyn.
huffmsa 8y ago
I thought Europe got over the whole book burning thing in the 1940s.
xorand 8y ago
Happened in Feb 2019 to a story on telegra.ph archived by me. It was scary first, then I asked the archive.org webmaster and I understood that it was a telegra.ph link, not because of the content. Now the archived link works OK. https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM

519 points by jonah-archive 8y ago

tick_tock_tick 8y ago

It's very sad to see the path the EU has chosen to follow in regards to speech and the free flow of ideas.

jdietrich 8y ago
It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unconditional in the US; there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. European nations have simply drawn the line in a different place, for entirely understandable historical reasons.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances Such as when government is given too much power over it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- deogeo 8y ago
  Some of us have also learned that censorship can mean censorship of pacifist and anti-war speech: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship#What_was_Censored_3F https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship... I'm sure sympathizing or trying to understand a terrorist's motives (perhaps their home country is being occupied by the US?) can fit under the terrorist content umbrella. Edit: Let's not leave unaddressed the farcical idea that Europe prior to World War I was some bastion of free speech, and that this somehow led to the wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_Empire_(1871%E2%80%931918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_E... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Prior_restraint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766 https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766
  - smsm42 8y ago
    BTW the famous "fire in the crowded theater" quote was used by Holmes exactly to suppress anti-government anti-war pacifist speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States Judge Holmes came to regret his support of speech suppression, but a lot of people still seem to miss the point.
  - mk89 8y ago
    Brilliant! Censorship is a technique used by any person in power so far in history (at least as far as I know), no matter the government type. It has little to do with the "fear of committing the same mistakes as they did years ago".
- durnygbur 8y ago
  Wasn’t the problem exactly that the government had too much control over the information flow and the general narrative?
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    It didn't start out that way. It started with conspiracy theorists and fake news.
    - jakeogh 8y ago
      Do you know where that first term comes from? It's strongly related to the second.
      - ionised 8y ago
        Are you suggesting the term 'conspiracy theorist' is somehow a new thing tied to the emergence of 'fake news'?
        jakeogh 8y ago
        The other way around. Fake news and the older term have the the same origins. Neither are accidental. Both are designed to short-circuit critical thinking. Consider how logically meaningless the term "conspiracy theory" is. A great deal of US law is specifically written to address conspiracies. They are forms of psychological warfare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606
- klagermkii 8y ago
  > We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Have they learnt the right lesson though? What's the alternate history theory here? You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? None of this solves the underlying issue of there being deep political problems in any country that ends up with this kind of leader getting into power. The hope of free speech supposedly being that someone will eventually put their finger on the real cause of the problems and get people on board with it, rather than an unfortunate group being scapegoated.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? That probably works better if you don't let him out 9 months into a 5 year sentence.
  - Faark 8y ago
    It always fascinating to me when Americans pretend freedom of speech will automatically solve all struggles between people having incompatible worldview while their own political landscape in recent years has become more divisive than ever... I see quite a few similarities with pre ww2 Germany. We'll how fast violence will be on the rise.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      It's not that it will solve all struggles. It's that censorship doesn't solve them, either, but makes everything else worse. And speaking of our own political landscape, last thing I want is a right wing populist government that has been handed laws to crack down on "hate speech" by my fellow progressive do-gooders. If such laws were to pass and found constitutional, I'd expect BLM and BDS to be the first targets in all red states (and Europe has ample precedent for persecuting BDS as "hate speech", so it's not like you'd have any moral high ground on calling them out on it).
- smsm42 8y ago
  > there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Germans problem was not just "incitement". It was putting Hitler in charge of the government. That wasn't done by "incitement", that was done by actual German top politicians, who thought that putting a strong leader in charge and suppressing opposition (Ermächtigungsgesetz and so on) will solve their stability problems. They did it for security, to keep the tranquility and peace in the nation, so they had the troublemakers arrested and the people who can right the course of the nation assigned the power instead. Too bad those people turned out to be the Nazis. I think the lesson from here is that no opposition voice needs to be suppressed, no group should be excluded, and nobody should be given absolute power over others. Somehow some people in EU think that the lesson if that right people just need to suppress the right things instead. After all, we have so good record in choosing who are the right people and what things they should be suppressing, don't we? We won't make any mistakes again there?
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? It's quite a long list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      That's not a very long list. Several of them fall into his original categories. Incitement, fighting words and child pornography into the second, false statements into the first. (Or more like the first falls into false statements, but libel really is a central example of false statements not being protected.) The big one he missed was obscenity, but that's somewhat understandable given the frequency with which "obscenity laws" get struck down rather than upheld. And the others aren't categories of speech. You can't use someone else's copyrighted work, but you can convey the exact same information in your own words. Government employees et al can't say certain things, but anyone else can say the same things.
- terryschiavo22 8y ago
  You're being disingenuous. Nazi Germany's rise to power was a composite of many different factors. You make it seem as though free speech was the sole cause of its ascendance.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    "enabling" and "causing" aren't the same thing.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      Not shooting in place anybody who speaks against the government can be said to "enable" a lot of bad things too. Hitler spoke against contemporary government, so if he had been shot there and then, nothing afterwards would happen. I hope you can see how fallacious such argument is. The reality is, contemporary German government was not shy at all at suppressing freedoms. They had special exception in their Constitution to do just that when the government needs. But they were more afraid of Communists than they were of Nazis, so they gave the suppression machine to Nazis to fix the things. The conclusion from this fail should be "don't build suppression machine out of government", not "give it to Communists instead next time, maybe it'll work better".
- contravariant 8y ago
  European nations have indeed drawn the line in a different places for historical reasons, however that place is most definitely not the same for all nations. It wouldn't make sense for that to be the case as a line drawn for historical reasons must therefore depend on the countries history which is vastly different for each and every country. I reckon on the whole people have fought more to protect free speech than to limit it, although both have indeed occurred, fascism being the main example of the latter.
- tikhonj 8y ago
  The exact same argument could be applied to pretty much any right. It certainly applies to, say, freedom of religion—religion is historically dangerous in exactly the same way as speech, and different societies restrict religion to different extents. And yet, if you seriously brought that argument forth, I suspect people would be more disgusted than if you applied it to freedom of speech. What makes religion so much more important than speech? The main difference I can think of is that freedom of speech is primarily a more individualistic kind of right, while religion is inherently more collectivist.
- Camillo 8y ago
  Absolutely. Having suffered from German imperialism, Europeans understand that the only way to preserve their freedom is to allow it to be restricted as Germany sees fit.
- oska 8y ago
  > it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances The dangers that come from suppression of speech trump the dangers of free speech by far. And your 'historical analysis' is laughably shallow. Frankly, your comment reads like regurgitated propaganda.
- meowface 8y ago
  I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal because it may lead to imminent lawless action, such as a riot or stampede which could injure people. European countries ban those forms of speech, and also ban other forms of speech based on subjective non-criminal harm that is perceived to be a potential result of such speech. For example, denying the Holocaust could lead other people to think it didn't happen, which may cause them to view Jewish people more negatively. The US simply doesn't engage in that kind of subjective interpretation of speech. Speech has to be a component of a criminal act, or a clear precursor to an imminently criminal act. You can't play association games like "he said this, which could lead other people to think X, which could lead people to say Y, which could lead to some form of violence", which most (all?) European legal systems seem to do. I do understand the need for certain limited restrictions on speech in times of war and martial law, and perhaps for brief periods after wars end, but the EU hasn't had a major war in a long time. I get banning swastikas and banning Holocaust denial in the 50s. But I'm an American Jew, and I've been to Germany a bunch in the past decade. I don't care (in a legal sense) if someone denies the Holocaust, and in fact think that banning Holocaust denial greatly empowers them and their cause, not just in Germany but globally. I've seen this firsthand, many times.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident [1] The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America. It's a nice platitude, but 'freedom of speech' has always been used as a tool and weapon for those in power to suppress minorities or to bolster their own voices. All you have to do is tie it to some other bogus law or rationale, and you get freedom of speech for me but not for thee. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressional-hearing_n_590929bbe4b05c39768420ef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressi...
- natch 8y ago
  It’s debatable whether the problem in Europe was too much free speech. Some would argue the problem was suppression of free speech.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. I’m not sure that current hate speech laws would have been effective at countering Nazi propaganda. The Nazis were not openly advocating their most extreme policies before the war. Even during the war, the worst atrocities were mostly kept quiet.
- mk89 8y ago
  I used to think the same. However, I see that this fear has become a technique to crush anything else that doesn't follow the same thinking. As usual, extremes are not good, no matter what, and it is in such situations that other extremes take shape.
- mcv 8y ago
  There's indeed always going to be a line somewhere. What's vital though is that whatever censorship you do enact, is limited, proportional, and most importantly, accountable. Allowing rapid action to block harmless content based on false reports seems to fail those criteria.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Evidently not, as that would probably mean we would not be on the road to make at least some mistakes again. We also had hate speech laws in the 19th century... But the real curious argument is that the state was lacking oversight and control over public content. It almost makes you angry thinking about it. Germany had a laisser-faire approach to recent content control. That worked brilliantly. That changed and suddenly we have some really angry people wanting to change some things. Additionally, the far right people want content control as much as everyone. I don't want to see a smug smile while they implement hate-speech laws like in Austria. Using the german experience to justify content control is infantile.
Bombthecat 8y ago
With article 17 (former 13) is the past imho

olliej 8y ago

Shocking, who would have thought

zentiggr 8y ago

How do we push back on these agencies for their obvious flawed process?

ghda 8y ago
We don’t push back on the process, we push back on the principle. The point of the principle of free speech is not that all speech is beneficial but that we can’t possibly trust any agency with the power to decide what is and isn’t. The “process” probably has no more flaws than any other process designed and implemented by mortals, it just goes to demonstrate why the whole censor-the-internet idea is wrong.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Where do you stand on falsely claiming "fire" in a crowded movie theater?
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Depends on how false false is. If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing. If someone is clearly doing it with intent to cause harm to others, then that's a crime and they should be charged with such; after the fact. I'm against installing verbal filters on everyone just in case someone might shout 'fire' in a crowded place with intent to cause harm.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing You don't have to wonder, there are long defined and continuously refined standards in operation. But it's irrelevant to the thread, so we don't need to detail them here.
  - solotronics 8y ago
    I'm not a lawyer but am pretty sure it would fall under any number of other laws if someone was to get hurt or you caused a disruption. There doesn't need to be a separate law protecting you from someone saying something you find objectionable. - disturbing the peace ( if nobody got hurt ) - causing bodily harm by criminal negligence - inciting to riot

ars 8y ago

550 in the past week, not in total!

SiempreViernes 8y ago
I guess someone put a test system on a live server? Doubth they have enough employees to have some just sit there filing takedown claims manually.
- tastroder 8y ago
  From their website it seems like they perform periodical "action days" where they sit down jointly with different groups and flag content on specific platforms. Might have been one of those.
  - steve_taylor 8y ago
    If it’s urgent enough that websites have to comply within an hour, why on earth do they wait so long to make these requests in batches?
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      The one hour compliance is proposed legislation, not actual law. If the requirement makes it in I expect it would be for extraordinary cases at high traffic sites, like the new zeeland terrorist livestrem on youtube.

andybak 8y ago

So underfunded and overworked EU agency is asked to manage reporting for poorly thought out and overly broad legislation. Maybe this is the best outcome as it might provide a valid defense for those who choose to ignore the notices.

icelancer 8y ago
> So underfunded and overworked EU agency Like engineers who have never underestimated their time commitments to a project, government agencies have never been overfunded.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

mirimir 8y ago

Hey, someone ought to start reporting EU sites as "terrorist content". Edit: Or better yet, report major MPAA members for copyright infringement, using spoofed accounts for other major MPAA members :)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
Wouldn't knowingly sending false reports be a misdemeanour, or even felony?
- mirimir 8y ago
  Sure. So do it anonymously. All's fair in war.
- nejlika 8y ago
  Then isn't sending reports without verifying their validity the same thing?

deogeo 8y ago

A clever circumvention of innocent until proven guilty - make disobedience carry huge legal risk. You must obey orders (takedown 'requests'), not backed by any court. If you fail, and one turns out to be legitimate, you get punished. Imagine if you had to stop doing business with anyone reported as a thief (but not convicted).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stcredzero 8y ago
The ability to smear through accusation, without proof, without due process, and without the presumption of innocence has always been the province of tyrants in power and the tool of would-be tyrants trying to gain power. Those who accuse and un-person are the villains throughout history. In the past, people were smeared as sexually loose, as belonging to the "wrong" religion, or as having the "wrong" sexual orientation. In the past, people were smeared as being of the "wrong" racial background. Always be wary of those who smear to enforce their power. A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. Evil is recognizable in its epistemological hazards: - Don't ask questions. - Don't read or hear the heretical opinion. - Don't associate with the "wrong" people. The side of good, the side of the long arc of justice, is the side of rational argument and of principles. The side of justice is the one saying, "hear me out." It's the side of evil which uses vilification, seeks to silence, and uses fear against questions.
- minikites 8y ago
  >A free society is one, where people and ideas can show up, be given a chance, and stand or fall on their character and merits. How do you square this with the recent surge in flat Earth and anti-vaccination beliefs? The merits of truth aren't guaranteed to win this battle.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    The anti-vaxxers are to a large extent caused by the recent rise of anti-rationalist "burn the heretics" nonsense: http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-sick-mother-describes-harassment-by-anti-vaccine-activists/ http://www.mysuncoast.com/2019/03/19/it-made-me-feel-really-... Anti-vaxxers are what you get when you use death threats and not civil discourse.

gjs278 8y ago

what the EU thinks is irrelevant. I wouldn't respond to a GDPR notice, a cookie notice, "terrorist content" takedowns. they are free to block my site. I'm free to never visit their 1984 land. good thing the UK is leaving them.

ascendantlogic 8y ago

Politicians do not care about the ramifications of this. They only care about granting themselves power over who sees what when through the guise of combating hate speech, terrorism, child porn, etc. Posting a blog about this will change nothing.

durnygbur 8y ago
It’s really hopeless each time one realizes how French and German politicians perceive the internet. For them the internet is not synonymous with the freedom of creativity and expression, but with the freedom to restrain and to control.
- suddenstutter 8y ago
  Haha, well said.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  Germany is ruled by liberal conservatives for well over a decade. While there is some maliciousness and desire to expand control, I see mostly the lashing out in an attempt to retain the control the state used to have. The internet brings an unprecedented amount of freedom, and that weakens the state. Where previously you could wiretap the phone of a criminal, today you have no way to read his whatsapp. They don't know how to deal with that. Being a conservative party with a lot of old voters they try to slow the change down, but their failure to understand the internet leads to ridiculous attempts.
  - Semaphor 8y ago
    Just as a reminder, the ruling party, specifically our chancellor Merkel, said: "the Internet is Neuland (uncharted territory) for all of us". And that was only 6 years ago.
    - mrguyorama 8y ago
      Was she wrong? The "modern" internet (fast, for everyone, modern sites) was only about a decade old at the time. That's a mere moment in Germany's history

andjd 8y ago

In situations with notice-and-takedown like this, I always wonder why there aren't stronger protections against abuse. Should a platform or user who had their content ordered removed in error be able to receive damages? Should the lawyers or civil servants instigating these notices be disciplined for issuing erroneous, improper, or overly broad takedown notices be disciplined or blacklisted?

smsm42 8y ago
I guess the same reason why police and government is allowed to lie to you, but if you lie to police or government you're a felon. Because they can. As long as people vote for such situation to continue, it continues.
rhinoceraptor 8y ago
That's how governments work. If you're the president and do something blatantly unconstitutional, the worst case is it gets overturned in the courts. If you're a citizen, you go to jail or worse. Why else would you pursue a role in a system of abuse than to abuse and profit?

macinjosh 8y ago

The EU is a nightmare. Once the UK leaves and people see they are doing better it’s going to start a procession of other countries out the door. Too many regulations and red tape like this make doing business in the EU difficult. I am slightly annoyed every time a cookie banner blocks my view on a website. To think some person in Belgium decided that was a good idea and now everyone online has to deal with it is disturbing.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Regardless of EU membership the UK is very much not on a track to "do better" when it comes to anything freedom related.
- confounded 8y ago
  Reminder that the European courts are currently restraining the UK from the worst of its surveillance plan, as they’ve found it to be incompatible with the Human Right to Privacy. All signs point to the UK taking an increasingly authoritarian attitude to the net post-Brexit.
malvosenior 8y ago
I totally agree with you, except the UK are the ones with the cookie banners. At least if each country comes up with their own draconian set of internet laws, it will be easier to ignore them all since there will be less "juice" behind each version of the law.
munk-a 8y ago
I don't think that in the best of terms the UK not being part of the EU would be beneficial to the UK - the way Brexit is happening is definitely going to hoop them though. They are taking an antagonistic stance against all their major trading partners and to continue to do business with them they'll end up needing to follow those regulations anyways. I am unaware of major cases of regulatory capture in the EU governance and most regulation proceeding this has been well intentioned - if the cookie banner is annoying then tell your the site to stop tracking you.

smsm42 8y ago

Funny how exactly EU follows the path Russia has recently taken. After Russia passed the law that banned online material promoting terrorist content, suicide, drug information and harm to children, and so on, there was an avalanche of false takedown requests and misidentifications, including attempting to block Wikipedia, ban Bhagavad Gita commentary (yes, really) and many more anecdotes that sound funny unless you live there. Now Russia has progressed to banning "insulting" the government publicly, i.e. direct ban on political dissent. I wonder how long it would be until EU does the same.

_Schizotypy 8y ago
Russia banned drug information? What sort of information, like pharmacology?
- filoleg 8y ago
  It is implied that the parent comment was talking about illegal drugs. Interesting side fact: unlike in english, there are two completely distinct words for illegal and legal drugs in russian language. Which a lot of times makes it easier to spot russian-speaking posters, as they tend to refer to illegal drugs as just "drugs", while referring to legal ones using other more specific terms, like "pills" or something else.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    Illegal drugs, precursors (such chemicals as acetone or sulphuric acid), plants that may contain chemicals that are components of illegal drugs, information that may be considered "propagandizing" using of drugs, etc. > unlike in english, there are two completely distinct words for illegal and legal drugs in russian language Which two words do you mean? I can't think of any two fitting this description.
    - filoleg 8y ago
      “Наркотики” for illegal drugs and “лекарства” for legal. I realize that the first one translates literally as “narcotics”, but it is used in russian language exactly like “illegal drugs” is in english. On a side-note, until I saw your reply, I didn’t realize how bad it was. It is absolutely crazy to me that something like “acetone” would fall under this law. Thanks for posting a concise summary.

comboy 8y ago

Maybe we should have some anonymous (preferably distributed) internet archive which is only available through tor?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gruez 8y ago
This isn't a bad idea. You don't even need that much resources either - only mirror content that has been taken down from archive.org
tobias3 8y ago
Like https://dweb.archive.org/ https://dweb.archive.org/ ?

mchannon 8y ago

Not quite my circus, not quite my monkeys, but I wonder if it's possible to fight fire with fire. Could a committed group of individuals report the most pernicious EU politicians' homepages and facebook pages as similarly banned content? Looks like the firehose has overwhelmed whatever inadequate safeguards they originally had in place.

r00fus 8y ago
They’ll just carve out an exception like the US financial industry did in 2006 with specific patent violations. Congress could have addressed the core issue but instead protected their big funders.
akerro 8y ago
A few weeks ago there was a case in Poland where a party that strongly supported article 11 and 13 was using copyrighted pictures and banners made by a small artist. The news was big in Poland, the party was notified, but they ignored the case, voted for art 11/13 anyway.
- krageon 8y ago
  Those articles are immaterial (although they are a little ironic) in this case, because what you are describing was already not allowed. Thankfully a small artist doesn't need media exposure in this case, this is what courts are for.
omnimus 8y ago
I think this might be good idea. Now i only have to find out which politicians voted for this and where to submit/report their content.

Not_a_pizza 8y ago

Reporting things falsely as a terrorist action IS a terrorist action!!!!!!

williesleg 8y ago

FAKE NEWS! Fact check FALSE!

williesleg 8y ago

FAKE NEWS! Fact check FALSE! Snopes says: TRUE! what's to believe?

Rebelgecko 8y ago

Interestingly, I can't get one of the linked videos[1] to load, although the other stuff seems to work fine. [1]: https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712 https://archive.org/details/002Baqarah_201712

cseelus 8y ago

Can anyone with a bit more information explain why the EU might have any saying as to what a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library can and can not host? Disclaimer: I currently am a EU citizen.

8ytecoder 8y ago
As they mentioned in passing in the blog, EU might block the site entirely within EU.
- umhau 8y ago
  Oh, the horror.
  - filoleg 8y ago
    Not for anyone outside of the EU, and not in short-term. However, I believe that it is an alarming tendency that can cause a lot of damage over a sufficiently long time period.
    - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      It's still a problem for us in the U.S, because there are always politicians in the U.S. that look at dumb things being done in Europe and say, "We should be doing that, too.", and voters who will vote for them.
      - umhau 8y ago
        In the long term, though, it could cause noticible implosion of related industries. I'm kinda imagining that this kind of regulation is going to be so clearly harmful that its removed.
      - filoleg 8y ago
        Agreed. That's what I meant by long-term, I should have been more clear.

0x0 8y ago

Is this the end of websites being available 24 hours a day? Just switch off the web server every evening when leaving the office?

pas 8y ago
The CIO (!) of one of our clients seriously proposed that last year for a new big online B2C service. We were just laughing at that point, knowing the CEO will not go for that, but even the though process was scary, and made some sense.

Proven 8y ago

Just doin their job and slowly but safely moving towards a well off retirement... Why is this surprising or unusual? It doesn't matter to them. Citizens aren't their customers and can't refuse to fund them. What other outcome can one rationally expect?

nydel 8y ago

I could see a TPB-style federated proxy service emerging for archived URLs that are unduly censored.

ilaksh 8y ago
Why does it need to be federated? Why not something p2p like IPFS or just torrents?
- nydel 8y ago
  i may be missing an as-yet-unidentified-by-me core concept here. if a torrent has multiple listings (and perhaps multiple trackers) then isn't it being distributed via federation? how is this different from IPFS?

eridius 8y ago

Why does the proposed EU legislation have a 1-hour deadline? No matter what you think of the action it's trying to take, a 1-hour deadline is preposterous for anyone and seems expressly designed to force people to set up an automated process that acts on takedown notices without prior review. But who benefits from this? About the only thing I can think of is if some big company, think Facebook or Google, lobbied for this because they're large enough that they can actually implement it with review, whereas anyone smaller can't.

baroffoos 8y ago
I think the idea of the 1 hour deadline is to pull it offline before others can download and repost it. The police/governments especially in Australia and New Zealand have worked out that there is simply no way to remove a file from the internet if someone else grabs it in time. Its a fruitless effort and very dangerous when misused but thats what I assume they are trying to do anyway.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  And what's the chance that it gets reported before someone's downloaded it? I'd say about none.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago
  I'm in New Zealand, and finding the Christchurch shooter's manifesto was harder than you'd think. The "it's not foolproof, so it's fruitless"-argument strikes me as missing the point. We can't prevent many things from happening (rape, thieving, excessive drug use, etc.) but that doesn't mean that efforts to contain this are useless.
  - ric2b 8y ago
    It was (is) one search away on the famous bay of pirates.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    It was very easy to find if you know where to look. If you know the domain for 8chan you could find it in seconds. The massive attempt to hide the video probably made it much easier to find as so many people who saw it saved it expecting it to be gone in the future.

hirundo 8y ago

Thank Uncle Sam for the first amendment. Not that this kind of censorship won't happen in the United States but there are stronger institutional barriers to it here, so it will take longer. But it's coming here too and not slowly. For instance five years ago 48 US Senators voted gut much of the core of the first amendment. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/19/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-re...) After every terrorist attack we hear how the constitution is not a suicide note (and therefore the bill of rights is highly contingent). Pressure to act against (flexibly defined) hate speech is growing particularly in the young cohort of voters. In the not distant future I expect hundreds or thousands of US officials to have the same kind of power that their EU counterparts are seeking here: to automatically switch off almost any domestic web resource if it hurts the feelings of an important constituent. Many of us will fight it, and as in the EU, we'll lose.

natch 8y ago

Blocking the EU seems to be the only viable option here, right? Am I missing any less bad options? Or would blocking the EU still leave publishers vulnerable to some abuse?

matt4077 8y ago

Essentially, this is the DMCA for terrorist content. With a somewhat short time requirement driven by some recent events (New Zealand being the most prominent, but not first). Here's a link to the current EU draft: https://www.laquadrature.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/04/Terr-Reg-LIBE-Final-Compromises.pdf https://www.laquadrature.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019... (It's a document highlighting the latest changes from committee, making it somewhat hard to read but not less interesting) I'm not sure if it's fair to compare notices from the current program, which sends out notices without any legal force, to what this envisages. The directive sets out a process and requirements for notices, including detailed reasoning for each. It also specifically mentions avenues to protest (and sue) in cases of disagreements. I'm no particular fan of this for both practical and philosophical reasons. If youtube had invested in some sort of oversight that prevented this kiwi neckbeard from live-streaming his massacre of innocents, the vote this week would probably have ended differently.

golemotron 8y ago

I can see why the UK would not be excited to remain.

Carpetsmoker 8y ago
Ehm, UK probably blocks more internet sites than most other EU countries. Never mind that UK libel laws are notorious; saying that homeopaths are quacks can get you in to serious problems.
sadris 8y ago
The UK is doing much worse https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s=21 https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1116005544236650496?s...

jijji 8y ago

Do any web sites based in the USA have to honor these takedown notices from countries based in the EU?

sadris 8y ago
There is an appellate court case pending involving Google and foreign court orders. Depending on how is decided is the answer to your question. Edit: no they do not need to remove content because a foreign entity asked them to https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de-indexing-order-wont-apply-google-us/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/06/judge-rules-canada-de-in...

driverdan 8y ago

What exactly is "terrorist content?" Do calls to arms from the American Revolution against England count? What about other revolutions of the past?

ilaksh 8y ago
Yes, I would say that anyone calling for armed revolution would be classified as a terrorist by the government they opposed. Governments tend not to take sides against other governments unless they want to go to war with them in some way. So you can imagine that in many cases most other governments would back the terrorist label. This points out one of the big issues with the use of the word "terrorist" in today's world. It is a label that dominant organizations use against any group that presents a serious threat, regardless of the activities of that group.
- int_19h 8y ago
  I think the question is, does it stop being terrorist if a revolution happened in the past, but the actions are still recognized as having being terrorism? Are Jacobine writings terrorist in nature, for example? How about a scan of Pravda circa 1918, with headlines like "Long live the Red Terror!"?

gnu8 8y ago

How are we going to punish the EU for this? The penalty for interfering with Archive.org must be so severe that even an international entity would never contemplate doing this again.

throw2016 8y ago

Given US state linked organizations like Atlantic Council, ThinkProgress, Propornot manned by ex US security services personnel are working with Facebook, Google and other social media websites to 'takedown' dissent on US involvement in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, black activism against police brutality, general anti-war activism and socialism leaning content it seems the time to be concerned about censorship is passed. Who can explain these SV 'relationships' with state actors? Anyone who cares about censorship should be extremely concerned about state actors flagging content. Snowden is still in Russia, Assange is virtual imprisoned and Manning is back in prison. Isn't it curious that these basic actions of whistle blowing and dissent are not able to operate freely in the west? Is it simply as transparent as when other countries take down dissent or imprison activists its censorship and totalitarianism and when we do its 'fake news', 'Russian propaganda' or 'some reason'. It's incredible people can ignore everything and talk of free speech, censorship, and democracy as if none of the above is happening.

stefek99 8y ago

Reminds me of: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man-charged-with-leeds-terror-offences-appears-in-court https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/man-charged-... > The charges allege that Golaszewski was found with copies of 21 Silent Techniques of Killing by Master Hei Long, The Anarchist Cookbook and The Big Book of Mischief on 23 February in Leeds. It is also alleged that he had in his possession the Improvised Munitions Handbook, Murder Inc, The Book by Jack the Rippa, and Minimanual Of The Urban Guerilla, by Carlos Marighella. The guy is charged with possession of six books, some of these books are likely to be present at archive.org https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel-golaszewski-uk-terror-leeds-arrest-right-wing-a8815116.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pawel-golaszewsk... > Pawel Golaszewski faces six counts under the Terrorism Act and has been charged with possession of a document or record "containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Six books, six counts. •••••••••• Unsure where is this heading. Does anyone think the law can stop technology?

int_19h 8y ago
I knew that UK was pretty bad in this regard, but I didn't realize it's that bad. You know what "possession of a document or record containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" reminds me of? "Contacts leading to suspicion of espionage" - one of the common charges under Article 58 in USSR circa 1930s, according to Solzhenitsyn.

huffmsa 8y ago

I thought Europe got over the whole book burning thing in the 1940s.

xorand 8y ago

Happened in Feb 2019 to a story on telegra.ph archived by me. It was scary first, then I asked the archive.org webmaster and I understood that it was a telegra.ph link, not because of the content. Now the archived link works OK. https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM https://imgur.com/a/eJd4FeM