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Why must the Europeans be like this? Why do they insist on fucking with a free and open internet instead of addressing the apparently unmet demand that is fueli

Why must the Europeans be like this? Why do they insist on fucking with a free and open internet instead of addressing the apparently unmet demand that is fueling a black market?

amarcheschi 2y ago
Please, do not confuse Europeans with the entities taking such actions. I know of nobody supporting such draconian measures. However, the government, the football league and the guys taking decisions at agcom (which in the past has been a serious and respected agency for the battle he took with tech companies) are, quite apparently, banding together to make the football league will become reality above anything else
- stalfosknight 2y ago
  While I generally agree that one should not conflate private individuals with the actions of their government, I do think it is fair to hold people who live in democracies responsible in a general or aggregate sense for the actions of their elected governments. In other words, I think it is fair to say that Italy pulls shit like this because enough Italian voters want it to happen or otherwise let it happen.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    Heh, I partially agree with general politics, however actions like this are so distant from the average Joe that the chances are they do not even know the pros and cons of similar actions. One might argue that they can get informed, but once you get into technicalities like this, one should spend its entire free time getting informed on similar issues. I see a lack of general discourse about this - in the past it happened to have some Google drive urls blocked if I'm not wrong - because it is not perceived as an issue unless something big happens that (such as drive not working) You also have to add the fact that this issue goes relatively "unnoticed" compared to other issues that are perceived as much more important
  - scns 2y ago
    > I do think it is fair to hold people who live in democracies responsible in a general or aggregate sense for the actions of their elected governments. Are you american? Should you be held responsible for Trumps' and Musks' actions?
    - stalfosknight 2y ago
      I am American. I did not vote for Trump and I think he belongs in prison. I am not responsible as an individual but as an American I do accept that elections have consequences that we are all collectively responsible for. Sovereignty rests with We The People. The Democratic Party lost a crazy contest to a crazy man and honestly I'm even more furious with the Democrats for losing an election that they had absolutely no business losing than I am with Trump right now. Regardless, my point was more that the Europeans seem to delight in their heavy-handed regulations and obnoxious court orders rather than address the real issue of why people feel the need to go out of their way to stream sports events via the black market or rolling up their sleeves and providing compelling alternatives to all of these big bad American tech companies they love to hate but can't stop using.
- drpossum 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    I am not sure if I'm understanding what you're saying. Anyway. What I am against is equating leader's behavior and people's behavior. It's not a nazi Germany situation where the people supported this action, it's a situation where most people don't know about it, and those who know are probably against it. It's such a minor issue that until something very big will happen and go on the news, nobody will care about it since people are mostly trying to make a living without much thought about what happens outside their garden
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      > It's not a nazi Germany situation where the people supported this action, Um, you do know that a good chunk of the logistics involved were about hiding what was going on so that the populace wouldn't object, yes?
      - amarcheschi 2y ago
        Yes, I was doing a bit of overstatement
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Ursula v.d. Leyen, the president of the European Commission, is not voted by the EU people the same way the US president is for example, she's appointed by the European Parliament's own elections who act sort of as a middle man. So in that regard no, we don't have elected leaders, since Ursula, the de-facto EU leader, makes giant trade and political deals in our name, like regarding Covid and Ukraine, but none of us here voted for her, nobody likes her, she's been incompetent as German politician, she's incompetent and corrupt as an EU politician, she's been groomed since youth for this position due to her influential family, and yet we can't vote her out if we don't like it since we didn't vote for her to begin with. So when someone you didn't vote for has sovereignty over you and your country, I'm not sure how people can look at this and say it's a democratic arrangement. Do you think a privileged upper class politician from Germany has any clue about the impact or struggles of the average citizen in say, Bulgaria, when she makes decisions for the whole EU?
- xvector 2y ago
  Europeans consistently support a regulation regime that routinely pushes absurd tech policy. It sounds great to normies so it goes unresisted. But it's a complete fucking nightmare for anyone trying to actually build+ship anything.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    The DMCA is a complete nightmare for Europeans trying to ship anything in the US. The US control over the payment industry is a complete nightmare for Europeans trying to ship anything anywhere.
- dmix 2y ago
  > Please, do not confuse Europeans with the entities taking such actions Both Spainish and Italian governments created laws for which these companies are going after Cloudflare. Europeans elected them and work in those governments and courts. Expecting large companies in any country not to have lawyers figure out how to use and abuse this stuff is pretty naive. Heavy regulatory environments are very popular in Europe and just like America they almost always benefit/protect entrenched powers while being sold (and defended online) as necessary to protect the small players and upstarts. The internet has been warning about the risks of excessive anti piracy laws being anti-open internet for as long as I remember.
miki123211 2y ago
For one simple reason. If the US wants some content gone from the internet, they (usually) have enough might to make that happen. Most major tech companies are registered in the US, and can be ordered by a US court to stop providing services to pirates. This notably includes most major DNS registrars, reputable ad networks and major payment processors. There's no point in blocking a website if you can just boot it off Visa, or force it to show penis enlargement / shady gambling ads or malware popups to survive. Even if a website miraculously has no US links to exploit, there are extradition treaties, good relations with foreign law enforcement, control over the financial system, or even international sanctions if the situation gets dire enough. European countries are far less powerful here, especially when they act alone (as they usually do in these matters) instead of doing it under the auspices of the EU. Site blocking is often the only remedy they have. The US has an opposite problem with scam calls. Because there are so many English speakers in India, and Indian law enforcement largely doesn't care about scammers as long as they scam foreigners, there's little the US can do about the issue. European countries whose first language is not English have it much easier, as there's often no third-world country that speaks the same language and where the scammers could be recruited from.
- yimby2001 2y ago
  What piracy has the US government ever stopped? The pirate bay is up all the free movie tv.com sites are up
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    The US pressured the Swedish government to close Pirate bay, sieze its servers etc. Tried to shut it for the whole world. This is the country that banned Tiktok, inacted the DMCA. Apparently the US has blocked 1.2m websites since 2010. They sieze domains, sieze servers. They stop payment companies working for the sites.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      And TikTok is still available in the US and on the app stores…
kordlessagain 2y ago
You are presenting that the Internet is free and open when it is very clearly not.
dinkblam 2y ago
> Why must the Europeans be like this? because europe is pro-socialism/communism and anti-liberalism.
illiac786 2y ago
I think there’s a balance. It’s too easy to say “let’s not regulate anything, they could exaggerate”, it’s intellectually very comfortable. Germany blocked some putin disinformation site for example, and they were right in my opinion.
Mindwipe 2y ago
Lol. Operation Choke Point. MasterCard's (secret) list of banned terms. FOSTA/SESTA The US has literally never had a free and open internet and has exported much of their toxicity.

Why must the Europeans be like this? Why do they insist on fucking with a free and open internet instead of addressing the apparently unmet demand that is fueling a black market?

amarcheschi 2y ago

Please, do not confuse Europeans with the entities taking such actions. I know of nobody supporting such draconian measures. However, the government, the football league and the guys taking decisions at agcom (which in the past has been a serious and respected agency for the battle he took with tech companies) are, quite apparently, banding together to make the football league will become reality above anything else

stalfosknight 2y ago
While I generally agree that one should not conflate private individuals with the actions of their government, I do think it is fair to hold people who live in democracies responsible in a general or aggregate sense for the actions of their elected governments. In other words, I think it is fair to say that Italy pulls shit like this because enough Italian voters want it to happen or otherwise let it happen.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  Heh, I partially agree with general politics, however actions like this are so distant from the average Joe that the chances are they do not even know the pros and cons of similar actions. One might argue that they can get informed, but once you get into technicalities like this, one should spend its entire free time getting informed on similar issues. I see a lack of general discourse about this - in the past it happened to have some Google drive urls blocked if I'm not wrong - because it is not perceived as an issue unless something big happens that (such as drive not working) You also have to add the fact that this issue goes relatively "unnoticed" compared to other issues that are perceived as much more important
- scns 2y ago
  > I do think it is fair to hold people who live in democracies responsible in a general or aggregate sense for the actions of their elected governments. Are you american? Should you be held responsible for Trumps' and Musks' actions?
  - stalfosknight 2y ago
    I am American. I did not vote for Trump and I think he belongs in prison. I am not responsible as an individual but as an American I do accept that elections have consequences that we are all collectively responsible for. Sovereignty rests with We The People. The Democratic Party lost a crazy contest to a crazy man and honestly I'm even more furious with the Democrats for losing an election that they had absolutely no business losing than I am with Trump right now. Regardless, my point was more that the Europeans seem to delight in their heavy-handed regulations and obnoxious court orders rather than address the real issue of why people feel the need to go out of their way to stream sports events via the black market or rolling up their sleeves and providing compelling alternatives to all of these big bad American tech companies they love to hate but can't stop using.
drpossum 2y ago
[flagged]
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I am not sure if I'm understanding what you're saying. Anyway. What I am against is equating leader's behavior and people's behavior. It's not a nazi Germany situation where the people supported this action, it's a situation where most people don't know about it, and those who know are probably against it. It's such a minor issue that until something very big will happen and go on the news, nobody will care about it since people are mostly trying to make a living without much thought about what happens outside their garden
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > It's not a nazi Germany situation where the people supported this action, Um, you do know that a good chunk of the logistics involved were about hiding what was going on so that the populace wouldn't object, yes?
    - amarcheschi 2y ago
      Yes, I was doing a bit of overstatement
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Ursula v.d. Leyen, the president of the European Commission, is not voted by the EU people the same way the US president is for example, she's appointed by the European Parliament's own elections who act sort of as a middle man. So in that regard no, we don't have elected leaders, since Ursula, the de-facto EU leader, makes giant trade and political deals in our name, like regarding Covid and Ukraine, but none of us here voted for her, nobody likes her, she's been incompetent as German politician, she's incompetent and corrupt as an EU politician, she's been groomed since youth for this position due to her influential family, and yet we can't vote her out if we don't like it since we didn't vote for her to begin with. So when someone you didn't vote for has sovereignty over you and your country, I'm not sure how people can look at this and say it's a democratic arrangement. Do you think a privileged upper class politician from Germany has any clue about the impact or struggles of the average citizen in say, Bulgaria, when she makes decisions for the whole EU?
xvector 2y ago
Europeans consistently support a regulation regime that routinely pushes absurd tech policy. It sounds great to normies so it goes unresisted. But it's a complete fucking nightmare for anyone trying to actually build+ship anything.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  The DMCA is a complete nightmare for Europeans trying to ship anything in the US. The US control over the payment industry is a complete nightmare for Europeans trying to ship anything anywhere.
dmix 2y ago
> Please, do not confuse Europeans with the entities taking such actions Both Spainish and Italian governments created laws for which these companies are going after Cloudflare. Europeans elected them and work in those governments and courts. Expecting large companies in any country not to have lawyers figure out how to use and abuse this stuff is pretty naive. Heavy regulatory environments are very popular in Europe and just like America they almost always benefit/protect entrenched powers while being sold (and defended online) as necessary to protect the small players and upstarts. The internet has been warning about the risks of excessive anti piracy laws being anti-open internet for as long as I remember.

miki123211 2y ago

For one simple reason. If the US wants some content gone from the internet, they (usually) have enough might to make that happen. Most major tech companies are registered in the US, and can be ordered by a US court to stop providing services to pirates. This notably includes most major DNS registrars, reputable ad networks and major payment processors. There's no point in blocking a website if you can just boot it off Visa, or force it to show penis enlargement / shady gambling ads or malware popups to survive. Even if a website miraculously has no US links to exploit, there are extradition treaties, good relations with foreign law enforcement, control over the financial system, or even international sanctions if the situation gets dire enough. European countries are far less powerful here, especially when they act alone (as they usually do in these matters) instead of doing it under the auspices of the EU. Site blocking is often the only remedy they have. The US has an opposite problem with scam calls. Because there are so many English speakers in India, and Indian law enforcement largely doesn't care about scammers as long as they scam foreigners, there's little the US can do about the issue. European countries whose first language is not English have it much easier, as there's often no third-world country that speaks the same language and where the scammers could be recruited from.

yimby2001 2y ago
What piracy has the US government ever stopped? The pirate bay is up all the free movie tv.com sites are up
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  The US pressured the Swedish government to close Pirate bay, sieze its servers etc. Tried to shut it for the whole world. This is the country that banned Tiktok, inacted the DMCA. Apparently the US has blocked 1.2m websites since 2010. They sieze domains, sieze servers. They stop payment companies working for the sites.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And TikTok is still available in the US and on the app stores…

kordlessagain 2y ago

You are presenting that the Internet is free and open when it is very clearly not.

dinkblam 2y ago

> Why must the Europeans be like this? because europe is pro-socialism/communism and anti-liberalism.

illiac786 2y ago

I think there’s a balance. It’s too easy to say “let’s not regulate anything, they could exaggerate”, it’s intellectually very comfortable. Germany blocked some putin disinformation site for example, and they were right in my opinion.

Mindwipe 2y ago

Lol. Operation Choke Point. MasterCard's (secret) list of banned terms. FOSTA/SESTA The US has literally never had a free and open internet and has exported much of their toxicity.