Spanish Court Orders Google To Delete App Used For Catalan Independence Vote (reuters.com) 118
From a report: Catalonia's High Court on Friday ordered Google to delete an application that it said Catalan separatists were using to spread information about a disputed independence vote this Sunday. The court said the "On Votar 1-Oct" application on the Google Play smartphone app store opposed an order in September from Spain's Constitutional Court to suspend the referendum while it determined its legality. The court also ordered Google to block any future applications developed by the gmail address "Onvotar1oct@gmail.com', according to a written ruling. Nobody at Google in Spain was immediately available to comment.
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By "decentralize", do you mean like what has happened with git, where nearly all git users have centralized on GitHub because it's damn near impractical to use decentralized systems?
And what the fuck would stop a government from requesting that the blockchain client app be removed from app stores, or otherwise deeming such an application illegal to use? Nothing! Nothing at all!
"Blockchain" is a lot like the Rust programming language. It sounds so great to the dumb, but anyone with even just an ounce of inte
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Github is an amazing example of an insidious centralization of the decentralized.
Consider: Does your employer use GitHub? Do you know what would happen to your ability to work for them if your account got flagged (perhaps by an automated system) for breaching the Terms of Service? Would you have difficulty if you needed to submit a pull request or issue for open source software? What would happen on your next job interview when someone asked to see your code on GitHub?
Re: decentralize (Score:1)
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Absolutely. We need core information infrastructure that is extraterritorial (distributed around the planet, fully encrypted) and the providers of such infrastructure need to not be trying to make money by staying friendly with all the governments of the world. Google would be in a conflict of interest here. We need to avoid this kind og situation by changing the architecture to route around this kind of censorship.
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Then it seem we just need thousands of small servers, each of which back up random subsets of each others data, and performs a small amount of search queries.
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Legal problems like this aren't solved by technology; the Catalans could conceivably vote however they want but it won't matter one bit if the courts ignore the result.
Re: decentralize (Score:1)
Re: decentralize (Score:2)
Judicial tyranny is one of the great problems of our age. The very idea of "fair", "impartial" courts is a utopian fantasy with no basis is historical reality.
Re: decentralize (Score:1)
Well, Obama provided him with a spectacular template.
125 Bday (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love how Spain is celebrating Franco's 125th BDay.
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Gotta love how Spain is celebrating Franco's 125th BDay.
How how the rest of Europe are having fun watching the show instead of saying something...
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What should Europe say? Butt in on the local problems of a country? Nothing here is happening that is against any EU laws, and I'm not sure the rest of Europe really gives too much of a damn.
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I thought the EU required basic protections of things like free speech, in addition to granting Brussels the power to regulate eggplant purpleness!
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I thought the EU required basic protections of things like free speech
They do. No one is being arrested or impeded from speaking in any way they want. The EU also places restrictions on things like the rule of law. e.g. the Spanish Constitution which with a ruling from the high court upholds the fact that a local referendum on a national government issue is illegal. The only people who are being arrested are Catalan officials and people attempting to hold the poll, something that would probably come with the EU's blessing in upholding the law.
in addition to granting Brussels the power to regulate eggplant purpleness!
The EU never regulated any eggpl
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What should Europe say? Butt in on the local problems of a country? Nothing here is happening that is against any EU laws, and I'm not sure the rest of Europe really gives too much of a damn.
This is not a local problem. Not at all. Lots of what's happening here is against what the EU is supposed to stand for, by the way.
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Lots of what is happening here is exactly what the EU stands for. e.g. Upholding of court decisions and the local constitution.
Did you have some actual examples in mind or were you hoping I'd just buy the word "lots" and change my mind?
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It is not much discussed in the media, but people watch it eagerly like they watched the Scotland vote for secession from the UK a few years back.
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Excuse me, the UK said something. It was along the lines of "This is just one of the reasons why you can't have Gibraltar back, you noon-napping bunch of dago cow-torturers".
When I say the UK, I mean Boris.
Well, Google wasn't expecting . . . (Score:5, Funny)
. . . the Spanish Inquisition!
Their main weapons are fear, surprise, and a Catalonia's High Court order for Google to delete an application!
Yes, "High" Court, indeed.
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. . . the Spanish Inquisition!
They definitely know as much about internet as Torquemada...
Just make a web site (Score:1)
Why an app? Just make a web site.
Re: Just make a web site (Score:2, Informative)
The App was done after the government closed more than a 100 mirrors of the website.
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You mean the monsters that thwart censorship and destroy government's delusion that they can dictate what people may read, write and ponder?
Re: Gotta grow up. (Score:1)
Re: Gotta grow up. (Score:1)
No the monster that allows any government to control what people read, write and think and not just the government that controls the land they live on.
Lowest Common Deniminator (Score:1)
One of the unavoidable pitfalls of being a global company is that you have to follow the laws of each and every country you do business in. In the end, you have to follow the most restrictive rules in order to avoid sanctions in any part of the globe.
Once Google gave into one countries demands (say like China), they no longer have a leg to stand on when the next country comes along with it's demands. Just the latest round for Google and just the next round for other global tech companies like Facebook and T
Ever notice something about Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ever notice something about Europe? (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe the US-centric news site, Slashdot, just doesn't pay attention to European startups as much? Notice, too, that this particular court action was about essentially a US based company. In other words, it may affect the US, too. Same with how Apple was buying a company; didn't make the news until Apple came into play. ;)
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Bullshit. If it were about persecution of ideas, Puigdemont would have been barred from public office months ago. What Spain is doing is cracking down on spending public money and using the personal data of millions of citizens to carry out actions which have been clearly ruled illegal by the supreme court.
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Hardly ever does something appear about a European startup, or how such-and-such out of Europe is transforming an industry, or how the Europeans are taking over something.
Yeah... not being in English causes a real disconnect for the US-centric crowd.
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As someone from Germany: he's not wrong. There are no big startups here. They simply cannot compete.
High taxes, tons of reguations, etc. make sure our startups never get big. We don't have the benefit of making a shitton of money in easier markets like the US and then tackling regulatory nightmares like EU countries.
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Getting acquired by Apple is a legit exit that happens to many American companies. So, it seems that your French machine vision company is an example of how the Europeans did out-compete some Americans in tech. I'll also point out that the entire AI fad was driven by DeepMind (in London) and based on research at Canadian universities (for MS's latest AI breakthroughs).
Long story short, Europe seems to have fewer "I'll ignore the law because it's on the Internet" companies (Uber, AirBnB), but still some pr
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Because once a company becomes succesful enough to gain news recognition they are no longer a European company but a global one. The same is true for "American" megacorps, but the patriotism of the editors here prevents them from realising that. They think of IBM as an American company, but T-Mobile as a 'global' one. It's not like there weren't recent stories about apps used by some colonials with a certain ideology getting banned from app stores, it just wasn't specifically pointed out that it happened in
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They think of IBM as an American company, but T-Mobile as a 'global' one.
T-Mobile is a publicly traded American company. They are headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Deutsche Telekom is the majority shareholder, but that doesn't make it a German company. I'm not disagreeing with your point, but your example is pretty poor.
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Namely, that whenever news comes out of Europe about anything tech-internet, it almost always is about court actions, fines, and the like. Hardly ever does something appear about a European startup, or how such-and-such out of Europe is transforming an industry, or how the Europeans are taking over something. I saw article this morning about a French company that was apparently pretty good at machine vision...and how Apple was buying them.
That's something called observation bias. There are plenty of positive stories from Europe, in some cases even about startups, AND covered on Slashdot [slashdot.org] Mind you we don't expect the USA to get too much coverage of European startups and innovations. Your culture is so fundamentally different than many startups in Europe work their way down to Australia before they even bother trying the USA market which is fundamentally different from the rest of the western world. Plus with double the population here there r
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And ... we learn our relaxed views because we start sipping wine with 14 to 16, and can have a beer at the evening, too!
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Too right! Actual beer. Not that weird yellow coloured water that the Americans drink too.
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There is something to what you say, although there are many factors at work, and others have rightly pointed out the home focus of US news as one element. Other relevant elements include:
Re: Ever notice something about Europe? (Score:1)
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Hardly ever does something appear about a European startup, or how such-and-such out of Europe is transforming an industry
Spotify and Deezer as music steaming. SoundCloud for music sharing. Skype for communications. MineCraft in computer games. A fast duckduckgo search found this [tech.eu] if you are interested in more examples of European tech (the article is from 2013). I suspect that the reason that you do not hear so much about European tech companies is that slashdot is US based and, surprise, surprise, also US centric in its reporting.
That is simply because US ignores advanced EU tech (Score:2)
Just to mention one recent example: There's an online translator that dwarfs the likes of Google's or Microsoft's translators [deepl.com] made by a relatively small German company - and even though EU press covered this comprehensively, a site like Slashdot did not even mention this.
Re: Ever notice something about Europe? (Score:2)
Have you seen how little the euro capitalists pay programmers? It's no surprise at all that their software industry is puny and worthless, despite having a well educated workforce and a huge internal market.
Unsure about this (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Unsure about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one that thinks the timing of part of Spain wanting to break away and become a (tiny little) independent country is rather.. susupicious?
Yes, you're probably the only one. The movement for Catalonia's independence isn't something new. It's been going on for three centuries. There has always been a certain proportion of the Catalan population who wanted independence from Spain, but in the last 10 years the Spanish government has been restricting our autonomy, attempting to take over our institutions and instigating a wave of hate against Catalans and Catalonia in order to gain votes in the rest of Spain.
This is what has fueled the pro-independence sentiment in so many of us. Russia has nothing to do with it.
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My understanding is that three centuries ago the movement was for the restoration of the furs. I would characterise that goal as a return to federalism rather than a bid for independence. Is that a disagreement in interpretation or were there two separate movements with different goals?
Re: Unsure about this (Score:1)
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You're wrong. I'm Catalan and grew up in Barcelona. Most of my family and friends live there.
There has never been a wave of hate against the rest of Spain in Catalonia. There's discontent now about the current government of Spain because of the many cases of blatant corruption, but that's a thing in all Spain, not just Catalonia. On the other side, there has always been a certain amount of aggression against Catalans coming from the rest of Spain. This became worse when in 2006 the current government of Spa
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You’re wrong again.
The 2006 Estatut where the Catalan Government tried a power grab of such length as to pave the ground to later claim independence defining Catalonia as a nation? Which was obviously was ruled Unconstitutional.
Bullshit. This Estatut was approved by the previous government of Spain, and later ruled unconstitutional by the current ruling party. The funny thing is, the same provisions that were ruled unconstitutional for Catalonia are allowed for granted Basque Country, Spain’s other autonomous region.
Alright, The children of Catalonia can only study in Spanish in 34 private schools [google.com]
Public education is bilingual in both Spanish and Catalan because both are official. If you want Spanish-only education then sure, go to one of those private schools.
Oh yes, I forget that if there are someone whom keeps the +40 years dead dictator alive and well are the nationalist. What make those supposed ex-members now, 80?
Rajoy is 62. Sáe
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Keep fucking the Franco chicken, AC.
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At least one Spanish newspaper claimed a few days ago that this was happening [elpais.com]. But as to the timing, this has been brewing for a few years. I think it's better explained by a comment I saw yesterday (and I wish I could remember where to credit it properly) that as a universal rule of thumb, nationalisms get a big popularity boost in times of economic difficulty.
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Yes, it's just you and your sick mind.
No, so far has not been a proof of Russian _influence_ in the US election, no proof that Russians broke into DNC server or podesta's email account, and no proof that Russians leaked anything to wikileaks. All we have is a bunch of allegations by highly politicized heads of our dear three letter agencies. Funny how CIA/NSA/etc were caught red handed doing nasty shit like a million times, and how they were always the least trusted US agencies, but as soon as they make sta
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Don't you worry--you'll get that pesky moose and squirrel some day, I'm sure.
Hugs to Natasha,
Z.
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There are plenty of regions in Europe that sooner or later will separate from their current country and become independent, hopefully staying in the E.U.
Catalonia, Basque, probably Mallorca (under catalan reign, but they hate that even more than the catalonians hate the rest of spain, because Catalonia forbids teaching of the native language in Mallorca, but insists they can teach their own native language in Catalonia).
Probably Bavaria, most likely Scottland.
Belgium might split into two, but a recent refer
Confusing wording (Score:2)
For anyone else who may have been confused by the wording in "(the app) opposed an order in September from Spain's Constitutional Court to suspend the referendum while it determined its legality," the legality in question is in regards to the referendum, not the app. The fight over the app is just an extension over the fight in Spain over whether Catalonia is legally allowed to have a referendum for a vote of independence from Spain.
Google's response (if they have balls) (Score:2)
A big splash screen for Spain reading
Dear Spain,
Google services have to be suspended due to the Catalan vote for independence. Please check in again on (voteday+1), the day after it's held.
Yours,
Google
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Also maybe we should have checked with the court that we voted for a legal candidate in the last election.
That argument about the ideal size of government? Maybe the court should be figuring that out.
You know in Soviet Russia, the geniuses of the court helped people figure out where they should live and how they should dress and all that.
Courts understand all the
So Google...Don't Be Evil...How's that workin'? (Score:2)
So...are you a good corporate citizen, or a corporate tool?
Are you about freedom and open expression? Or are you going to toe the line when it might cost you some of your $billion$?
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Hypocrisy, much? (Score:1)
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For those of you who are challenged by URL de-obfuscators: Yes, that's a goatse link.