Calls For European ISPs To Filter Content Could Be Illegal 60
jfruh writes Last week, justice ministers from EU countries called for ISPs to censor or block certain content in the "public interest." But a legal analysis shows that such moves could actually violate EU privacy laws, since it would inevitably involve snooping on the content of Internet traffic to see what should be blocked.
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It's only illegal if a SWAT team shows up at your house, blows your front door up, hits your child with a tear gas cannister, and shoots you for resisting arrest. This is how you can be sure what you are doing is illegal.
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Re:I hope it works (Score:4, Interesting)
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Hmmm. Turns out it is difficult to censor free speech *legally* in countries that have laws establishing freedom of speech, press, privacy, etc.
Imagine that!
Those pesky liberties!!!
Re:I hope it works (Score:4, Informative)
They don't actually block content. If you use your ISP provided DNS service then lookup requests for certain domain names will be hijacked, and redirect to a "This page done bad" website.
As the article states, actually blocking content requires snooping on content and that's not just expensive, it's legality is questionable. As such, if you want to torrent and whatnot, you are still free to switch to a public, unfiltered DNS service á la Google or OpenDNS.
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Re:I hope it works (Score:4, Informative)
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The system used in the UK, Cleanfeed, does not use DNS blocking. It intercepts HTTP requests. The justification is that it is automated and (the claim) does not log, so is not interception. They may have a point, legally speaking, as things like caching proxies are legal and likely immune from both claims of interception and copyright infringement.
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Perhaps true, but such transparent filtering proxies have also been in use for a long time. Around 1998 my university had one for ad filtering - Privoxy was it? In any case, the fact that there is substitution doesn't seem to affect the arguments being made here, it's the interception that is in question.
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I run my own DNS. I think it is strange that there is no easy DNS server available for Windows. And by basic I mean Install and forget (perhaps point your DNS to 127.0.0.1). So no additional settings. Just a very basic caching server for a single user.
Doesn't Windows come with one of these built in? I might be remembering from the Server version, as it's quite a few years since I last ran Windows, but in Windows 2000 it was something you could enable in the services management interface.
Acrylic (Score:2)
Acrylic DNS works well for me
http://mayakron.altervista.org... [altervista.org]
Our work DNS is sometimes very laggy. Using Acrylic even with the default configuration fixes that instantly.
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It started with child pornography, although in the UK the system used (Cleanfeed) has no oversight or accountability and occasionally blocks legitimate sites such as Wikipedia. It isn't DNS based, it actually intercepts HTTP requests. Of course, it is very easy to bypass.
The system is now being abused on a massive scale. In the UK for example, the BPI (music industry body) has managed to get some ISPs to start blocking sites it does not like, mainly torrent sites. Again, the blocks are easy to bypass, but t
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the use of the concept of "child porn", is that its so morally objectable, you can rely on the entire breadth of the political spectrum to instantly fork over their rights, to avoid any association with child porn. I used to agree with this when I was younger, but as I got older, I somewhat realized what
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I'd rather side with pedos than with censors. Simply out of opportunistic self interest, there is exactly zero chance that pedos will ever target me.
I'm too old for that shit.
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More likely, a voluntary blocking of opinions that the ISP doesn't like.
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It's already happening I tried to visit http://www.gilad.co.uk/ [gilad.co.uk] on my mobile and was surprised that it is blocked by default by O2, to view this page I was supposed to prove to the provider that I was 18 in order to get this site of a musician and political commentator unblocked. Gilad's crime - being Jewish and not supporting Israel.
We are more than half way down the slippery slope.
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Oh come on, it's got lad in the domain name. It's obviously a site for child porn!
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China? Of all countries on the planet you want someone to move to CHINA if he wants to get away from capitalism? China is the current poster child of unfettered capitalism. Crony capitalism, sure, but what other kind is there?
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Illegal is ... getting caught and not being able to buy a get-out-of-jail card.
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Bureaucrats defining "public interest" (Score:3)
Here is a crazy idea, don't block any content and let the public decide as individuals what content they want to look at, and what content they don't. That would actually be the definition of the phrase itself so lets not get our hopes up.
Freedom of speech should be paramount (Score:3, Informative)
It drive me nuts that the European Convention on Human Rights makes censorship so easy. Article 10 starts off so well:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
But it then proceed to open the door to all sort of restrictions:
The exercise of these freedoms... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Man, you can drive a truck through that. "for the protection of morals" - whose morality? Who defines it? "for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" - what the hell does that mean?
We need to resist this creeping censorship - stomp on it whenever some idiotic politician brings it up.
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The exercise of these freedoms... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
In these cases the authorities should be forced to prove the necessity of these measures especially if claiming the 'protection of morals' reason.
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It's an attempt to pre-empt the decades, centuries of arguments over the US constitution's limits. For example, you have free speech, but documents can be classified and made illegal to reprint or to read out in public. You can't legally name protected witnesses or victims of certain crimes if due legal process says so. There are a whole number of restrictions that had to be decided by the Supreme Court.
I don't like the exceptions either, although even with them the benefits have been huge. It's also worth
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in the interests of national security
Distribution of classified information?
territorial integrity or public safety
Not sure what the former is, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater?
for the prevention of disorder or crime
Threats? Fraud? False advertising?
for the protection of health or morals
Obscenity? Showing porn to minors?
for the protection of the reputation or rights of others
Libel and slander? Copyright?
for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence
Doctor-patient privilege, attorney-client privilege?
maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary
Judges can't bias the jury? I don't know.
Seems to me most these loopholes are alive and well in the US too, despite the constitution not having any exceptions whatsoever. Yes, it's really hard to come up with a constitution that properly captures all the sma
Who gives a shit (Score:1)
Recording all phone metadata is illegal too, but they still did it, out in the open. And let's not pretend that they stopped or that they restricted it to metadata. Modifying data in transit is illegal as well, but there is hardly a mobile network provider that doesn't "optimize" pages as they pass through their systems. A unique identifier added to every request? Come on, they're just trying to help you get better ads. The home network providers can't be far behind. The law is for the meek and small.
VOIP? (Score:3)
Voice over internet protocol, basically private phone calls via the internet. So filtering content, censoring person to person phone calls and deleting speech the corporations disagree with. Exactly where does the limit on internet censorship reach, apparently right in your home. Hey, why stop at deleting people's speech, why not replace the deleted speech with approved speech, the US government already does it with seized web sites. Why stop there, why replace person to person speech upon a individual basis, computers can do it quite readily.
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Lies and falsehoods are easy to counter
You make a huge assumption that most people are rational, they are not.
Your own petards (Score:2)
Heisted by them you have been..
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Hoisted... nooooooo
No problem (Score:2)