New EU Consumer Protection Law Contains a Vague Website Blocking Clause (bleepingcomputer.com) 45
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: The European Union (EU) has voted on Tuesday, November 14, to pass the new Consumer Protection Cooperation regulation, a new EU-wide applicable law that gives extra power to national consumer protection agencies, but which also contains a vaguely worded clause that also grants them the power to block and take down websites without judicial oversight. The new law "establishes overreaching Internet blocking measures that are neither proportionate nor suitable for the goal of protecting consumers and come without mandatory judicial oversight," Member of the European Parliament Julia Reda said in a speech in the European Parliament Plenary during a last ditch effort to amend the law. "According to the new rules, national consumer protection authorities can order any unspecified third party to block access to websites without requiring judicial authorization," Reda added later in the day on her blog. This new law is an EU regulation and not a directive, meaning its obligatory for all EU states, which do not have to individually adopt it.
Re:It's for PROTECTION. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I know a protection law when I see one.
That's a real nice website you got there, it'd be a real shame if something happened to it...
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Like many laws originating in the EU, it probably had some noble intentions behind it. Maybe this time it really was trying to limit the ability of scam web sites operating outside EU jurisdictions to harm people when the operators couldn't be pursued directly under EU law.
Sadly, the EU often exhibits a combination of ignorance, apathy and carelessness when it comes to making the actual laws, and consequently it often causes large amounts of collateral damage. I suspect in many cases those responsible genui
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Make no mistake, there are multiple reasons for this law. A good law has good points, but also can cover up less noble intentions as well. The free flow of information, out of the control of self-appointed opinion-shapers and news curators/gatekeepers, is very troublesome to those same people. If the implicit censorship can hide behind the skirt of the "noble intentions", so much the better, and so much the more difficult to discuss it.
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Yes, from the article:
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I have nothing against seeking an efficient justice system that is practically accessible to and affordable by those with relatively minor grievances. Here in the UK, we use tribunals that serve a similar purpose in some situations, as well as a small claims court system, though if I've understood you correctly then our mechanisms have more power to make binding decisions themselves than the Finnish authorities you mentioned.
However, these national differences don't make vague law any better, nor excessivel
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If it were true, they wouldn't need "fact sheets" and "guidance documents" to "claim" this, it would be written in the law.
terrifying words (Score:1)
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
The Help (Score:2, Insightful)
Corporate "help" is optional.
Government "help" is mandatory.
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Coporate "help" is mandatory. Phone dead, find that some credit card agency has wrong records, or that your 401k went from a bank to a holding place that charges a $35/month fee, and has a 0.001% interest rate. Those calls and dealing with that is just as bad, if not worse than the DMV. At least with the government you have some legal resource. Against a private company, you have none.
Cronyism (Score:1)
Is this a joke? Against the government you have NO RECOURSE other than what the government itself allows, due to fabricated myth laughingly called Sovereign Immunity.
Big government + big business = cronyism, the big danger.
https://fee.org/articles/to-fight-cronyism-we-need-a-separation-of-business-and-state/
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I'm sure the locals you're attempting to displace are completely OK with that.
(For those of you just joining us, these are the folks who go around saying, "The State sucks! We don't need no steenkin' State! We'll just go run everyone else out of one of theirs, as long as it isn't Somalia!")
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Their intentions are quite different, yes. Glad we agree on that.
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If you do not like being robbed, you can leave this mafia territory and go to another one.
"Robbed"? By whom? In which "mafia territory"?
Have a problem with getting conscripted into the military and forced to murder? Oh well, you should just go somewhere else. I like conscription.
Assuming you're talking about the US, there hasn't been a draft in over 40 years, and no-one's been prosecuted for failing to register since the mid-1980s.
Not a fan of being censored...[?]
Again assuming you're talking about the US, I wasn't aware that the government there practised censorship.
...or denied life-saving experimental drugs by some lazy bureaucrat? Gee, sorry your terminally-ill kid died, but that drug could have been really dangerous for him. Maybe you should have had your kid somewhere else.
Perhaps you'd be interested in knowing that my mother is alive today because, just 2 or 3 years ago, when her life expectancy was about 90 days, some "lazy bureaucrat" approved her then-experimental treatm
SJW will protect the net (Score:1, Flamebait)
The censored internet is going to get very bland and boring. Just big government, political parties and big brands pushing their SJW ideals.
Celsius 232.777778 the sequel (Score:3)
Re: Idiots (Score:1)
In eu countries there are more than two parties, in the US there are only two. Why?
Re: Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of the idiotic First Past the Goal Post [youtube.com] voting system which degenerates into a 2 party system.
The solution is to use an Alternative Vote [youtube.com] system but the majority of Americans are too fucking stupid to:
a) understand the problem, and
b) do anything to fix the problem.
so they end up with the "best" government money can buy! [cnn.com]
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Don't be silly. It's not that Americans are too stupid to understand voting reform. It's that any elected official got where they are by beating the current system. They have no interest in fixing the system because the current system has clearly benefitted them. If you're crushing it at Omaha you don't call 7 card high low when it's your deal.
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Because of the idiotic First Past the Goal Post [youtube.com] voting system which degenerates into a 2 party system.
The solution is to use an Alternative Vote [youtube.com] system but the majority of Americans are too fucking stupid to:
a) understand the problem, and
b) do anything to fix the problem.
so they end up with the "best" government money can buy! [cnn.com]
Not quite. most countries use Instant Runoff Voting [wikipedia.org] that deal with the issues of FPTP. The problem with the US isn't the FPTP system, its electoral councils and PAC's. What the US needs to do is: 1. Kill the electoral collage and go straight to direct voting. The most votes for congressional candidate John Jackson in the electorate of whatever, Ohio means that Jack Johnson wins it. The most votes for senatorial candidate Jack Johnson in Ohio means he wins and if you want to keep voting directly for your pre
Poor PirateBay! And everyone else... (Score:1)
I guess if you can't beat them in court, might as well circumvent the law...?
Yes it's hyperbole, but the point is salient. I'm sure this will be used under the guise of 'copyright enforcement', but I'm sure this will be effectively used across the whole of EU, to silence opposing political opinions.
This is the kind of thing, we would normally see in response to a significant event happening in Europe. I'd say terrorism, but that is now commonplace in society unfortunately. There is potential this could be a
No EU law (Score:2)
You want to protect me? Great! Here's how: (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Taking down isn't. You're in no position to do that. Morally anyway, and legally in most cases where you simply don't have jurisdiction. Blocking access is enough to protect people.
2) Blocks you implement are made public, with the site blocked along with the reason why you did it.
3) I get the right to overrule your decision and put myself in harm's way if I so please.
After all, you're trying to protect me, right? Not patronize me. You want to keep me safe from Chinese pages trying to steal my money? Awesome. You want to cut access to malware C&C servers? Even better.
You want to censor opinions you don't like? Not quite a good idea, with the provisions above you will not do it, because you would essentially create a who-is-who database of what you want to censor.
Can we agree on these three simple rules? Hmm?
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Would also create a who-is-who database of all the people who opted out of the censorship, which is only one overbearing law away from being abused as a tool to identify dissenters.