9 ms·
Russia Sanctions Add Shock Internet Censorship Twist for UK ISPs
- deepsun 4y agoJust block mail.ru, vk.com (clone of Facebook), odnoclassniki.ru (clone of classmates.com), and gov.ru, and you're good. I'd say it's "reasonable".
- pumpkinprog 4y agoThat is how all the censorship stories start. In the beginning, you censor several "reasonable" resources, and after a while, you get the Great Western Firewall. For example, Russia introduced Internet censorship laws in 2012 with the excuse of blocking some Caucasus terrorist groups' websites and "protecting children". In 2022 it is nearly impossible to surf the net as usual without a VPN.
- DoItToMe81 4y agoWe had considered implementing a very extensive filter in the early 2000s. What started as blocking porn sites with questionable moderation and a fair amount of pedophiles transformed (before it was even codified into law!) into sites being blocked for personal offences, including a dentist's business site with a gif the censor board objected to, and perceived moral degeneration, likesites on safe usage of drugs and how to avoid overdosing. It wasn't even a slippery slope, it was more of a crumbling ledge.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago...it was more of a crumbling ledge. -- DoItToMe81 Sun May 1, 2022
- seniorivn 4y agohackernews is a joke, why do you downvote this? Censorship is bad, is as simple as killing is bad. that's something that should be learned during childhood and be a common ground for a modern society.
- Gupie 4y agoClassic slippery slope fallacy. Censorship is necessary to limit harm to the vulnerable in society. Or are you on favour of allowing rape videos, kiddie porn, ..., of allowing ‘Troll factories’ to spread Russian pro-war lies online?
- seniorivn 4y agosorry for the late reply, but here it is anyway My ideal social network is a network where all kinds public statements are completely free to be published. If you publish something illegal you should be legally liable for that. If something illegal was published anonymously, an author should be given a time threshold when he can prove his/her personality and become personally liable for that content/statement. The only additional feature that would improve user experience without harming people's freedom, is labeling of content by a thirdparty(chosen by the enduser, like i would chose one labeling system of content, that would put the most horrible things under "nsfw" clickwall, and someone else might choose a labeling system that puts under a clickwall(one click away for you to view that) everything that has a chance to offend anyone) Horrible content like footage of crimes presented as entertainment should be treated the same way as described above.
- Amezarak 4y agoI am in fact in favor of “troll factories” being allowed to spread “pro war propaganda” online, because I do not think we should have the norm in place that videos can simply be declared propaganda and censored because they might cause someone to disagree with the foreign policy goals of whatever government they live under. For example, if that was permissible and expected, then I would fully expect a hypothetical video of $ALLY/SELF committing war crimes to be censored as $ENEMY propaganda. Just as the Russians do. If you entrust the “experts” with the ability to tell you what is true, you will not be living in a democratic society.
- deepsun 4y agoI'd agree with you if I didn't see first-hand how propaganda starts wars. And yes, reasonable censorship helps, e.g. YouTube blocking RT is very much positive for the whole world.
- Amezarak 4y agoYes, this is a case where the slippery slope is real. Another example is that Paul Graham and Marc Andressen are on hate speech watchlists run by ex-Twitter employees and funded by the German government. “Hate speech”, “public order”, and “disinformation” are all just very vague banners under which varying groups can implement their preferred censorship. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1516860142737780736 https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1516860142737780736
- deepsun 4y agoIt's not necessarily will become a great wall. E.g. they already censor child porn. Yes, propaganda is very capable to start wars and genocide (see Rwanda). I'm all for reasonable censorship, and it will not necessarily grow into bad censorship. You make it sound like white or black.
- orbital-decay 4y agoThat's exactly how it started in Russia, yes.
- youngtaff 4y agoChallenge is that will get in the way of people doing OSINT from the UK e.g. BellingCat (although they can use someone outside the UK to do the research insteadj
- sorokod 4y agoHow would you reason this?
- deepsun 4y agoSame as the reasoning for US blocking Huawei -- easily access to private communications of US citizens. Just one of hundreds ways it can be exploited -- blackmailing someone in order for them to spy. But I'm also against any propaganda. I was all anti-censorship until I saw what propaganda does to people, that it literally starts wars and genocide (like Rwandan).
- ogurechny 4y ago
- anotherhue 4y agoWasn't rt.com already blocked?
- secondcoming 4y agoNo. I (UK) can access the website through my 5G broadband. I think they prohibited RT's TV station from being broadcast in the UK, but I can't check that because I don't own a TV. RT's live-stream is still accessible.
- guilhas 4y agoIn UK, the RT TV channel was cancelled by the UK gov. The site RT.com was inaccessible for a week, more or less, at same time, except by Tor, but now it's working
- decremental 4y agoThe sanctions involve the government not wanting anyone to be able to read things written by Russians. Shocking. Why, you might catch a nasty case of the ol' misinformation!
- anilakar 4y agoIt's not about misinformation. It is about not being allowed to do business because of affiliation with a sanctioned entity, and playing the freedom of speech card does not give you a pass in this matter.
- decremental 4y agoSo make it illegal to do business with them. If it's illegal to do business, then who cares if you read just a website?
- anilakar 4y agoBecause running that website is a business of theirs.
- decremental 4y agoThis makes no sense. Someone in Russia has to pay for their hosting bill so you visiting that website is now doing business with them? Is your definition of doing business "I visited their website?"
- simonh 4y agoPotentially yes, ‘web sites’ are applications that can provide an almost unlimited plethora of services and business functions. Fortunately in the UK we have a fairly capable and independent judiciary that has a decent track record of interpreting regulations like this in sensible ways. Not perfect, but pretty good.
- MereInterest 4y ago
- anilakar 4y agoSounds like a knee-jerk reaction from the ISPs. I bet they've already had anti-CSAM blocklists mandated by law in place for a long time.
- dathinab 4y ago> I bet they've already had anti-CSAM blocklists mandated by law Not just anti-CSAM, the UK has a mandatory "adult content" ISP filter since years (of which you can opt out, through doing so is annoying). (Which also was used many times already in a inappropriate way by "accidentally" placing websites which are are not adult-only content but politically unpleasant on them because many don't opt out because "it's just for porn/violence right".) EDIT: Just to be clear the law formulation seems to be over the top/vague and a extremely strict interpretation could imply that ISPs somehow have to block users access to sides even if the user uses an ISP or Tor, so wtf.
- denton-scratch 4y agoThe article quotes one of the principals of Andrews & Arnold ISP, which has for a long time traded on providing "real" internet - i.e. unfiltered. Their response to the legal requirement to provide a "filtered" option was a "I want filtering" button on the sign-up page that took you to the results of a Google search for UK ISPs. As far as I'm aware, complying with this legislation could force A&A to impose filtering on all their users for the first time. Would certain mailservers become out-of-bounds? Presumably it would remain possible to ping any IP address, because that doesn't depend on URLs, and the explanatory note seems to say that URL blocking would be sufficient. Anyway: this kind of nonsense is why I run an Unbound recursive resolver.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- elij 4y agothey're also dealing with the restrictions on switching fabrics (that were shoe horned in with the 5G hardware restrictions)
- actuator 4y agoI am appalled at how much censorship is being pushed down our throats with this war and somehow it is gaining wider acceptance that doing this is ok. The writer of this article even seems to suggest that Google or Cloudflare could have blocked them from their DNS, but they haven't been ordered to. We want to censor our opponents at big DNS providers level? Really?
- skocznymroczny 4y agoIn Poland they already blocked some Polish websites on DNS level for spreading "Russian propaganda".
- dathinab 4y ago> The writer of this article even seems to suggest that Google or Cloudflare could have blocked them from their DNS, No the writer is irritated that local ISPs are confronted with a regulation which can be interpreted as requiring them to go _far_ beyond DNS blocking while non local DNS provider aren't required to do any blocking when providing service to the UK.
- jotm 4y agoNever let a good opportunity pass by, I guess. Information should be free imo, though I do not know how to deal with people who believe even the most obvious bs. Can DNS level blocks be bypassed using other DNS services? Google and Cloudflare are by far not the only ones, pretty much every ISP has their own.
- stephen_g 4y agoI’m sure worst case you could run your own recursive resolver locally (on a Raspberry Pi or something) but you do get a bit of a performance hit for sites you aren’t visiting regularly.
- DarkByte8 4y agoWhat other options are there to fight enemy propaganda?
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
- thriftwy 4y agoWhy not sanction telecoms to not dial the phone numbers of affected individuals, then?
- Koshkin 4y agoLet’s admit it, the ‘West’ is in a state of war with Russia, and in a time of war censorship, propaganda, and disinformation are weapons.
- midislack 4y agoSeems like a stretch to think that your personal wifi hotspot device is an ISP, almost like the author is grasping at straws to come up with ways this will affect anybody who isn't an ISP. If we're going to have WWIII this summer, of course everybody needs to make sure the Russians can't get into the Internet. And we will.
- ogurechny 4y agoI see that the West copies the absolute best Russian solutions. Censorship has been in the manual mode here for years, no one even asks useless questions about formal framework. Basically, some official comes running with the message “THEY don't like X, add X to The List of Bad Blocked Things”, and technical details don't matter. Anything gets approved by law offices anyway, and the laws routinely get extended (sometimes post-factum) if it is needed for operation. I'm not a fan of “economystical” models, but here it is quite striking. The business, the not so novel startup idea, is putting a roadblock on a previously open busy road, and acquire the power to decide who can pass. Then you can offer free services to the government (ass licking is the key to success), and paid services to the big copyright holders — something that unites “democratic” and “undemocratic” countries is that corporate piracy fighters are in bed with government censorship, and usually lobby the inclusion of pirate sites. You can be sure that agreeable stance and swift daily updates (through formal law enforcement proxy) cost them a percentage of global revenue. By the way, this is how cities and states on world trade routes operated for centuries. One thing that is missing from the scheme is the reason to start the whole thing. Whether it's “the children”, “the war”, or “starving kittens”, it doesn't matter at all. What matters is the willingness of the people to agree with that execution of the power. Given what we've seen in previous years, people all across the world are going to agree even with checkpoints and searches for the sake of starving kittens, because those, too, could be a part of “natural order” today. The war, in fact, greatly helps things like those.
- stuckkeys 4y agoWhy is this article blocked to the US region lol. I had to use VPN to look at the content. Wooooshhh.
- stunt 4y agoI started reading their website once their TV channel was blocked. Really just out of curiosity too see what all the noise is about. Now, I read both sides every time and I understand both sides tell the story the way they want to tell.