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> Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is: the idea that once something is on

• immibis 1y ago
  Nobody's saying the government shouldn't be able to go after the owner of the site and force them to shut it down. It definitely shouldn't be done by third parties though.
  • mike-cardwell 1y ago
    How does the US government, force a Russian website, hosted in Russia, for Russian people, following Russian laws, to shut down?
    • malfist 1y ago
      It doesn't.
    • hereme888 1y ago
      Dove a bit into this topic superficially out of curiosity. Maybe not shut it down but greatly limit reach: - Domain Name Seizures via ICANN and registrars - Political/legal pressure on CDNs, SSL certificate providers, bandwidth providers. - Propaganda and legal labeling ("malicious actor", "foreign agent", "terrorist") - There are technical workarounds to keep the page up within Russia's sovereign internet (Runet).
      • MeetingsBrowser 1y ago
        Other than labeling, aren't these just different ways to block foreign sites? Some of them are mentioned in the article. > This blocking regulation requires network providers, including CDNs, to comply with blocking notices within 30 minutes. > orders that go beyond regular Internet providers, requiring DNS resolvers and VPN services to take action as well.
    • immibis 1y ago
      Same thing they do to every country, Pinky. Have a small team invade the country and disappear the people they don't like[1]. Or tap the fiber lines at the border and inject RST packets from off-path, which is something the Great Firewall of China does, and is ironically much more transparent than what they actually are doing. Or cut the cables between the USA and Russia, or between the USA and any country that doesn't cut their own cables to Russia. The USA did this to Iran with the banking system and it worked: the USA cuts money transfers with any country that doesn't cut money transfers with Iran. I don't think it would necessarily go their way if they did it right now with the internet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case
    • rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
      They shouldn't.
    • vintermann 1y ago
      It shouldn't be able to, clearly. Not any more than Russia should be able to shut down a US website, hosted in the US, for US people, following US laws.
  • skeledrew 1y ago
    And 3rd parrot parties with enough power, the ones doing the abuse, typically also have the ear of the government, so it becomes circular.
  • loeg 1y ago
    The US already deputizes third parties to enforce its laws. Banks are responsible for KYC / AML. Grocery stores must check ID when selling alcohol. This is nothing special.
    • tastyfreeze 1y ago
      I wouldn't call legal force to be deputizing anybody. If those entities don't do as the law says they will be in trouble themselves. Deputies have authority. Banks and stores are just following the rules and report to authority when required.
      • loeg 1y ago
        You're picking a pretty fine semantic distinction, and IMO if you're going to be a pedant, you should try to be correct. Deputization isn't my invented description for this model; it's more broadly used. E.g., https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-aml-compliance/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-...
    • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      It's accurate that the US already does it, but that doesn't tell you if we should be doing it. It does, however, provide evidence that doing that is dumb. KYC/AML have an effectiveness that rounds to zero while causing trouble for innocent people as the government pressures the banks to do something about problems the banks aren't in a position to actually solve, so instead the banks suspend the accounts of more innocent people because the government is pressuring them to suspend more accounts.
      • loeg 1y ago
        > KYC/AML have an effectiveness that rounds to zero That's factually inaccurate.
        • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
          > That's factually inaccurate. It isn't: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366#abstract https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1... "It finds that the anti-money laundering policy intervention has less than 0.1 percent impact on criminal finances, compliance costs exceed recovered criminal funds more than a hundred times over, and banks, taxpayers and ordinary citizens are penalized more than criminal enterprises."
• iamnothere 1y ago
  > I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is: the idea that once something is on the internet, national law simply ceases to apply and governments should have absolutely zero control over obscene material, IP infringment, harassment, libel, foreign propaganda, money laundering, fraudulent financial services, gambling, and so on - simply because it's hosted in a different country. This has more or less been the default position of most internet users and developers since the beginning, until fairly recently. I’d even contend that it’s what drew many of us to the internet in the first place. If the internet ever becomes cable TV, fully regulated, controlled, and managed, it will have lost its purpose as a place for free and open exchange of information. (Zero control is an exaggeration—the worst lawbreakers still face justice under the current system, and that seems ok. I just don’t think we should be tightening the screws any further.)
  • remarkEon 1y ago
    > Zero control is an exaggeration—the worst lawbreakers still face justice under the current system, and that seems ok. Doesn’t scale.
    • iamnothere 1y ago
      Doesn’t need to. The optimum amount of lawbreaking is non-zero. As long as we are catching the worst criminals and creating reasonable incentives to avoid crime, we are doing enough. Some amount of lawbreaking is to be expected in a free society; it’s literally the price of freedom.
      • recursive 1y ago
        > The optimum amount of lawbreaking is non-zero This is a new idea for me. How is optimality measured here? Aggregate utility for society? What's the independent variable? Is this from the perspective of law-makers? If I was on a desert island, should I do some crime to ensure optimality?
        • iamnothere 1y ago
• Ajedi32 1y ago
  I think if something is hosted in a different country, the laws of that country apply to that service. It's not under your jurisdiction, so you have no say in whether it's allowed to exist, nor should you. You can, of course, pass a law making it illegal for your citizens to communicate with that service, but I think it's really important to understand that that's what's happening. You are passing a law which applies to your citizens and their right to communicate with people in other countries; it's their freedoms you are placing limits on, not the freedoms of the foreign website. Sometimes when you frame things that way, such restrictions stop making sense. (Though perhaps not always.)
  • vkou 1y ago
    You're missing one further step - you can also sanction a foreign business from doing business in your country. So, you can allow it to serve your citizens packets, but if you block it from collecting revenue, it will have little incentive to (unless it's a state-sponsored bad actor, then you can only lean on the two mechanisms you described). All three prongs (ban hosting, ban access, ban revenue) can be used to keep foreign interference out of your country.
    • Ajedi32 1y ago
      True, but I would still frame that as a restriction on your own citizen's freedom to buy services from foreign countries. Unless they're physically shipping stuff across your borders, a foreign website that accepts payment from your citizens isn't "doing business in your country" anymore than a hot dog vendor is by serving foreign tourists in my opinion.
      • vkou 1y ago
        > Unless they're physically shipping stuff across your borders, a foreign website that accepts payment from your citizens isn't "doing business in your country" anymore than a hot dog vendor is by serving foreign tourists in my opinion. We're in the electronic age, 'stuff' includes electricity, media, and remote-provided services. For a concrete example - if you're buying legal advice from a lawyer, it doesn't matter if he's down the street from you, or on another continent - the exchange of money for 'stuff' is the same.
• secretmark 1y ago
  Techno-libertarianism is indeed the water we swim in. I enjoyed this academic-ish book on the topic that interrogates its positions. It shows how radical some of them are https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517918149/cyberlibertarianism/ https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517918149/cyberlibertarianism...
• PeaceTed 1y ago
  It is a tough predicament we find our selves in. A totally free and open network is prone to exploitation by rampant abuse. A controlled and monitored network is prone to excessive restrictions. There is a middle way that can kind of muddle along but it can be attacked by both sides for being both to strict and not being strict enough.
• AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is If you can forget that a position is extreme, doesn't that imply that it's a relatively unoffensive and reasonable position? For actual extreme positions like "reduce housing scarcity by murdering some category of people" or "mitigate climate change by prohibiting human reproduction", does anyone need to be reminded that they're extreme? > the idea that once something is on the internet, national law simply ceases to apply and governments should have absolutely zero control over obscene material, IP infringment, harassment, libel, foreign propaganda, money laundering, fraudulent financial services, gambling, and so on - simply because it's hosted in a different country. Is this any different than the premise of sovereignty to begin with? If you live somewhere gambling is illegal you can get on a flight to Las Vegas. If you want to buy a gun and go to the range to shoot it, or buy a piece of land where you can keep your gun, you can go to Texas, even though there are countries where guns and private land ownership by non-citizens are illegal. If you want to use certain drugs you can go to certain other countries. Isn't the extreme position that a country should be able to control what you do even when you're willingly choosing to do it in another jurisdiction? Do the people own the government or does the government own the people?
  • pjc50 1y ago
    > Isn't the extreme position that a country should be able to control what you do even when you're willingly choosing to do it in another jurisdiction? Well, which jurisdiction applies to Spanish Internet users in Spain and Spanish ISPs? Doesn't the US claim global tax jurisdiction on its nationals?
    • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > Well, which jurisdiction applies to Spanish Internet users in Spain and Spanish ISPs? The Spanish Internet users are attempting to leave the jurisdiction and come back with only information. The ISPs are the equivalent of train operators. How is prohibiting them from taking you to the border not an attempt to prevent you from doing something in another jurisdiction which is legal there? > Doesn't the US claim global tax jurisdiction on its nationals? It's one of the most astounding and outrageous things the US does and it ought to stop immediately, not least because people keep citing it as precedent to justify other bad choices.
• asdff 1y ago
  It is kind of stupid when you think about what this stuff fundamentally is: digital files on someone's computer that you connected to. The analog, well, analog would be if the FBI had cctv into everyone's bookshelf and desk drawer. Some real Orwellian thought policing we hand wave away because the nature of the technology makes such surveillance logistically trivial in comparison.
• vintermann 1y ago
  I notice foreign propaganda has sneaked in there. It wouldn't have been there 20 years ago. Then defending site blocking with the need to stop foreign propaganda would be seen as a huge self-goal. People might even have assumed it was sarcastic, and that you didn't actually want site blocking, if you defended it that way. I think people have forgotten how extreme that position used to be. (Money laundering and anything involving payment and debts are also independent of site blocking - it's neither sufficient or necessary to block sites to do that.
  • mdhb 1y ago
    I think you’re actually just incredibly unfamiliar with history to be honest and might be mixing up a Reagan quote about border control and extrapolating that into something very different. Even in incredibly recent times what do you think the position was regarding the monthly magazine Al-Qaeda published was? It certainly wasn’t the “marketplace of ideas” I’ll tell you that much.
    • vintermann 1y ago
      No Reagan quote here, I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't suggesting that authoritarians hadn't suggested (or succeeded at) suppressing "foreign propaganda" in the past, but then people still knew they were authoritarians, if they found out. You imagine you're not.
      • mdhb 1y ago
        Just checking a real basic assumption here. Is there a scenario in your mind where a government says that legally its citizens can not consume certain material that ISN’T authoritarian? Because I don’t even know where to start with a premise like that to be honest with you.