EU Speaks Out Against US Censorship 477
bs0d3 writes "The EU Parliament has adopted, 'by a large majority,' a statement warning the US to refrain 'from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names' due to the 'need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communications.' This resolution highlights both the practices prescribed in SOPA/PIPA... but also the actions of Homeland Security and ICE in seizing domain names. By adopting a resolution against domains seizures the European Parliament recognizes the dangerous precedent the pending SOPA legislation would set, and it wouldn't be a surprise if more foreign criticism follows. No country should have the ability to simply take over international domain names, and surely the US would feel the same if this plan was put in motion by a foreign country. Or as some 60 press freedom and human rights advocate groups put it in their letter to the US representatives: 'This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.'"
US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
US is much worse than China. They try to force their views and laws globally. They install their own law enforcement agents inside other countries in the name of "providing training" to manipulate. They revoke IP addresses and domains used by non-US people. They try to extradite people from other countries to jail them for years in US soil. Have you noticed that most of world has actually sane amount of years you have to spend in jail if you do something bad? In US the minimum seems to be at least 10 years. Usually you can go in for life. Sometimes several lifes. In most civilized countries, you're only going to be spending more than 10 years if you kill somebody. In the same way, the sentences are longer if you physically harm someone. Not for downloading a fucking song off the internet.
This doesn't even only apply to copyright laws. This is just common practice with everything. For example, in most of Asia and South America there was nothing wrong with using some drugs. That is, before US started their whole war on drugs thing and couldn't just keep it within it's own borders. They had to start going around the world telling people what to do. Don't you seriously have better things to spend money on, like fixing your damn problems first? Regardless, there is nothing wrong with smoking some pot. It's both more relaxing and healthy than alcohol, which causes several health problems in people (and makes some people really aggressive).
And yet, US acts all surprised when they are told to get the fuck out, after which they bring out the guns and start shooting people. US is the only country in the world that has been constantly in war with at least one country. Usually there is several enemies. The whole world would be much saner, happier and peaceful place without US.
US to erect Great Atlantic Firewall (Score:5, Insightful)
3.. 2.. 1..
For all the ills of Europe, they seem to have a pretty good grip on freedoms which are eroding in USA and Australia.
That does it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to replace DNS (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a sign that DNS needs getting replaced with a non-centralized system.
Is there anybody working on such a thing?
Re:US, get out (Score:4, Insightful)
Amen
(embarrassed to be an American)
EDIT: Captcha was Justice
Re:Time to replace DNS (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a sign that DNS needs getting replaced with a non-centralized system.
Is there anybody working on such a thing?
Good luck with that. This is an industry that hasn't replaced IPv4 despite 15 years of warnings. An industry in which horrifyingly broken and insecure protocols such as SMTP and FTP are still ubiquitous. Once something is widely deployed, it basically cannot be changed, or only changed over the span of decades.
Careful Europe.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As a US citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they can and should condemn us when we act in ways contrary to the universal declaration of human rights. They aren't telling us what to do, just telling us we are being jerks.
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
But your idea is good, in a way. We just need to move the control out of US. We should have done so ages ago. Move what ICANN and the global TLD's under some new body that only has certain established rules and doesn't mandate any single country's laws to their policies. Or move them under United Nations.
US can keep their
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trolling? (I'm not, btw, but can't tell from your tone)
> I was in college during Tiananmen Square. Chinese students studying in America were persecuted for things they said on the internet here once they got back home.
China being China, why do you want to justify US actions based on their example? Are you living in United States of China, by chance?
> Other countries do that to. US forces are trained by foreign countries at the Center on Global Counterterrorism.
Come on! What bases from other countries are operating on US ground? I hope you're not being paid too much!
> In all fairness the US is essentially policing the world right now.
What's fair about this? Unless you define policing like Rodney King.
> And generally the country that the people are being extradited from is glad for the US taking the case.
Yes, you're doing them a favor. Right.
It's guys like you who create an awful image of the USA for us foreigners.
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
In all fairness the US is essentially policing the world right now. It is not exactly an even comparison.
They're policing the world in the same sense a bully "polices" his classroom. In either case, nobody asked them to and nobody wants them to.
Not that often. And generally the country that the people are being extradited from is glad for the US taking the case.
Orly? Who will be glad for the US taking the case when Julian Assange gets extradited?
Re:US to erect Great Atlantic Firewall (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. I mean, sure there are lots of great advantages in the eu compared to the us, like not locking up such large proportions of poor darker skinned people, not such a deep and wide economic chasm dividing the people, vacation, health care... And now recently also this freedom thing...
I'm kind of surprised about this. Maybe everything in the halls of power in Europe hasn't turned completely to shit just yet. If it isn't just posturing, then great, but I won't get my hopes up about a non-retarded world to live in.
Were headed for the same authoritarian privatized stratification. The same ideology with the same bizarrely rich people on top is shaping our world too. We're just a bit behind due to some legacy cruft in our culture and politics.
Re:Hypocrites! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ostensible protection of children is used to justify all kinds of unjust violations of freedom and privacy, and many such violations actually don't do much if anything to make children safer.
If you want someone to gladly become your slave, just insist that you are taking control of their lives "to protect the children" (whether that is true or not).
Here is a good quote on the subject:
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."
--Mein kampf, Adolf Hitler.
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrites! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:US, get out (Score:2, Insightful)
Julian Assange will. He'll get the massive publicity that he craves, plus the smug satisfaction that he was right.
Re:US, get out (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe you. The problem with US citizens is that when they can cast their vote for the federal elections, there's a button "D" and a button "R" and, at least for privacy (PATRIOT) and intellectual property rights (MickeyMouse/DMCA/ACTA/E-PARASITE/SOPA) it makes no difference which one they press. The "D" and "R" agree as well that there should never be anything like proportional representation, ensuring the continued validity of their oligopoly.
Re:Hypocrites! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. The EU is slamming the US for proposing a law that includes censorship of other countries by way of a unilateral decision that "if we can access it from the US and it's technically possible to shut it down, we're allowed to" and the conditions under which SOPA would "allow" this are so vague as to be applicable to just about any site that they want it to.
The EU directive in question permits member states to block access to sites containing child pornography for their own citizens if they so choose.
I'm not saying that the EU is inherently right in what this directive permits or forbids, but to say that the two things are comparable is seriously misstating the situation.
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hate America, but I do tend to hate its leadership. The two are distinctly different. Same with China--I don't doubt most of those billion citizens are great people who, language barriers aside, I'd be happy to be friends with. Same, indeed, with most nations that we're not politically aligned with.
If only the politicians, corporate officers, media moguls, etc, were the people in the trenches when the wars come.
Re:Time to replace DNS (Score:5, Insightful)
Since DNS servers request from other DNS servers (and there can be multiple of those), individuals don't have to have secondary DNS. Anybody running a DNS server can add hooks into a parallel DNS tree. Which is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the system. DNS owners who are corrupt or hostile can link into shadow DNS trees that contain fake entries. So long as the shadow tree has its own DNSSec keys, DNS won't notice any difference at all. Equally, DNS owners who are benign can do exactly the same thing, only pointing to DNS trees containing validated and "good" entries. Essentially undetectable.
Then those hundreds of millions of Americans would see everything in the shadow trees and never know that they were looking into the shadows.
Authorities trying to track down where the shadows lie (outside of Mordor) will need to invent a traceroute for the DNS protocol and had better hope all DNS servers (a) respond to it, and (b) always pass such packets to the shadow realms (a bloody stupid thing to do). Otherwise, the link(s) into the other tree(s) could be almost anywhere.
they are not "international domain names" (Score:1, Insightful)
The ".com" domain is the domain for US commercial entities; there is no other. Because the US is fairly laissez-faire about it, a lot of foreign registrants have been able to get .com domains, but that doesn't make the TLD "international".
Europe has jurisdiction over .eu, .fr, .de, and other TLDs. The US has jurisdiction over .com, .edu, .org, ..net and a few others.
Re:US, get out (Score:2, Insightful)
bigass [citation needed]
i've yet to hear anything but paranoid speculation that the US will go after Assange when the UK send him to Sweden.
say what you will about the EAW, and the circumstances involved in issuing it, the guy has a case to answer, and he doesn't seem to realise that clearing his name is the best way to win back the trust of the world. right now he's just a paranoid manchild who things didn't go right for, and he's grumbling.
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in college during Tiananmen Square. Chinese students studying in America were persecuted for things they said on the internet here once they got back home.
China was monitoring US internet communication back in 1989?
Other countries do that to. US forces are trained by foreign countries at the Center on Global Counterterrorism.
CGCC is not another country. It is an American "research and policy institute".
And a government hiring private instructors to train its law enforcement/military is not the same thing as should that government provide its own law enforcement or military as "advisers" to other governments or forces within other countries.
One of those is a public act well within the domain of any government.
The other thing is usually the result of a government trying to wage a secretive war without getting its hands dirty or without the consent of its people.
In all fairness the US is essentially policing the world right now. It is not exactly an even comparison.
Well, you're right about that. No other country in the world could dream of reaching USA's score. [wikipedia.org]
Not that often.
And why should they? When they can simply "render" them. Extraordinarily. [wikipedia.org]
And generally the country that the people are being extradited from is glad for the US taking the case.
All the best generalizations start with "Generally...".
Old Hat (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it's pointless to argue with people like you, you might be a little bit upset perhaps, but your claims are all more or less unfounded.
The EU is more than capable in many respects, however it currently lacks a [full] military arm [which will eventually replace NATO]. The Eurocorps [wikipedia.org] is changing that.
The EU has taken charge of military missions using European national forces in Europe, Africa and not least the naval operations outside Somalia in the Indian Ocean. I would love to see [my]Europe leave NATO, never again aiding the US
To accuse Europe of not being capable is both laughable and imprecise, there is no "Europe" as such to accuse. We will see in the future however as the EU consolidates. NATO has been the foundation of both American and European operations. You fight your wars with our help, not just the other way around. Despite your [increasingly invalid] superiority complex and extreme nationalism, you're not actually protecting Europeans at all, just your own interests. How exactly does the Ramstein Air Base protect Germany? Why are Europeans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?!
It's ironic that you dare to speak about nationalism and facism, your country is the prime representative of both at this point in time! Oh, and you're awfully good at both genocides and apartheid. Your own history is far from respectable. And if we're to be blamed for past mistakes we also take full credit for Democracy, Magna Carta and the Republic!
The NATO committments you referred to are not exactly in our best interest. What possible reason do we have for spending a fixed percentage on non-essentials? The Cold War is over, that threat has passed, the need for arms has changed for Europe. The US uses its arms for other less admirable goals than promoting peace!
Why should we care about your strategic and economic goals? Defending Israel and other dicators (from Egypt to Saudi Arabia)! We should use our[European] armed forces and funds on other fronts such as border patrols, anti-terrorism and rapid reaction forces.
Europe (EU) is at peace for now, but our neighbors are not (see the Middle East, ex-Soviets and Africa). That's what we should care about!
This is not so-called anti-Americanism, that passed decades ago. The US isn't even remotely on the agenda in Europe in general. Why would we hate you? The EU is actually a lot more "hated" by people than your irrelevant foreign government. I think you're an old man, stuck in the past.
The Libyan operation is testament to Europe's growing self-confidence and ability. The French lead those attacks on Libya, joined by the British, before the US even acted! That's despite the lack of NATO and EU support.
At least you are correct when you claimed that what's going on is exactly what some European nations did in the past; playing The Great Game. The empires of Britain, Spain and France fell, and the American empire will also fall...
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad being a US citizen gives me the right to say just about anything I want. Europe doesn't provide you with those same protections. If you think it does trying saying the Holocaust didn't happen in Holland, or wear a Nazi symbol in Germany
You do know that it was US that made those laws, right?
Re:US, get out (Score:2, Insightful)
As an EU citizen, I find US practices completely unacceptable.
Oh, ok. I find some European practices unacceptable. For example, I don't think european countries should ban religious symbols or headscarves. I also don't think Europe should be allowing piracy. I know everyone likes to get stuff for free, but pirates don't have a sustainable economic model for the creation of digital media - except for the cheapest kinds, like TV shows (paid for by commercials) and YouTube videos. I hate to see what the world will become if piracy were the norm. I think europeans are being jerks by allowing groups like the PirateBay to continue operating. (Which is not to say that I agree with SOPA, but I do agree that things need to change.)
Even China doesn't try to restrict other countries.
That's good. Oh wait, wasn't there a recent story about Chinese hackers trying to take down a Fulun Gong website that was located outside China?
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/238655/china_hacking_video_shows_glimpse_of_falun_gong_attack_tool.html [pcworld.com]
Say, wasn't it China that put pressure on the US and other countries to shut-out the Dali Lama?
China Warns U.S. on Dalai Lama Trip, October 16, 2007 - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/world/asia/16cnd-china.html [nytimes.com]
China: Obama visit with Dalai Lama has 'harmed Sino-U.S. relations' - Jul 16, 2011 - http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/16/dalai.lama.white.house/index.html [cnn.com]
China pushes Mongolia to cut short Dalai Lama lecture, Nov 08 2011 - http://mg.co.za/article/2011-11-08-china-pushes-mongolia-to-cut-short-dalai-lama-lecture/ [mg.co.za]
They do what they have to do inside their country, but they have never tried to block or manipulate other countries to do the same.
See above.
Yet US has the balls and hypocrisy to accuse China about its censorship practices, as do most US citizens here on Slashdot.
Stoping piracy is not censorship and you will lose this argument if you claim that it is. And cracking down on political and religious dissent is not the same thing as enforcing copyright. If you're going to make that comparison, you might as well compare one country's jailing of political dissidents with the US' jailing of criminals. There are political dissidents in Chinese jails for the crime of speaking out against the Chinese government.
US is much worse than China.
This should be interesting. By the way, as much as I dislike some of the things going on in the US, I do not like the way you're providing political cover for Chinese policies.
They try to force their views and laws globally.
When you say "views" and "laws" - those are very broad terms, as if all US views and laws must be enforced globally, which obviously is not the case. Let's talk specifics.
They install their own law enforcement agents inside other countries in the name of "providing training" to manipulate.
Not even clear on what you're talking about here.
They revoke IP addresses and domains used by non-US people.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, the problem stems from the fact that the internet is global. What this means is that, either the world enforces copyright or there will be some country which doesn't and everyone in the world will be able to side-step all the copyright laws. What we're talking about here is that one of the two extremes will win-out. It doesn't help at all that the PirateBay was operating for years, serving up pirated material to the whole world while sendi
Re:US, get out (Score:5, Insightful)
As a US citizen, Believe me when I say that most other US citizens will agree with you. ...well, most sane ones. The number of which is rapidly dropping.
The number is dropping at a logarithmic rate. I almost got into a flamewar on FB with a person almost 40 years my junior who thought that censorship, by the government was not only good, but necessary to protect its citizens from the dangers of...she didn't actually say what, and she spelled coup (as in coup d'etat) as "Coo", and she states in her info page that she is a graduate of a university, having a degree in education.
"Jesus wept".
Re:And you are any different? (Score:5, Insightful)