

EU Adopts Resolution Against US Domain Seizures - Tsiolkovsky
https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-domains-seziures-111117/

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felipemnoa
A very interesting comment on the page:

>>Counter measures please, just like we neutered the Helms Burton act at the
time. It's simple:

Any person/company in Europe that suffers losses due to a unilateral domain
seizure in the US, can sue for damage any US company (and all their holdings
in Europe) for damages + costs, and maybe even plus punitive damages. Board
members of such companies would be denied entry in the EU/EEA.

It worked for Helms Burton it will work for SOPA / PROTECT-IP / E-PARASITES or
whatever bullshit name they give that act. <<

Link to Helms-Burton:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act#Reactions>

~~~
tedunangst
I realize that's not your comment, but the listed reactions to Helms-Burton do
not appear to be anything like the proposed counter measures.

~~~
felipemnoa
From the provided link:

>EU law also applied sanctions against US companies and their executives for
making Title III complaints.

>The United Kingdom had previously introduced provisions by statutory
instrument[8] extending its Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980
(originally passed in the wake of extraterritorial claims by the U.S. in the
1970s) to United States rules on trade with Cuba. United Kingdom law was later
extended to counter-act the Helms–Burton Act as well.

>Mexico passed a law in October 1996 aimed at neutralizing the Helms–Burton
Act. The law provides for a fine of 2.2 million pesos, or $280,254, against
anyone who while in Mexican territory obeys another country's laws aimed at
reducing Mexican trade or foreign investment in a third country.

>Similarly, Canada passed a law to counteract the effect of Helms-Burton

Not the same counter measures as the ones proposed by the original user but it
seems to have the same effect of "neutering" a foreign law.

~~~
tedunangst
I think there's a pretty big difference between "US companies that make Title
III complaints" and "any US company".

~~~
bmunro
The original comment had an reply/update:

*"Mistake: It's any US company involved with the complaint that led to the seizure in the US. Not just any US company."

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darklajid
Finally, some sense.

The internet is no place that any single country should have control over,
whatever the reasons might be.

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WiseWeasel
For some reason, my browser didn't trust the https certificate for this site.
Rather than continuing anyway, I simply removed the 's' in the 'https' portion
of the url, and it resolved. Not sure why the https version was linked in any
case.

~~~
blackRust
Are you using Google Chrome? See this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2662694>

~~~
WiseWeasel
I was using Safari on OS X when I got the error.

Sorry for being dense, but could you elaborate on what I should learn from
that thread you linked? Is there some kind of solution there, maybe if I _was_
using Chrome, that I might have missed?

~~~
286c8cb04bda
To summarize the linked thread: Some browsers, when you load an "https" page
will complain if any of the elements on that page load over "http". For
example, the story above loads some Twitter-y stuff from
<http://platform.twitter.com>.

The technically correct fix is for the site owner to modify the page to load
all these resources over https when the page is accessed over https. Until
they do that, as a workaround, you could install an extension like the one
mentioned by fl3tch[1] to do it in your browser.

N.B. That only works if the resource is available over https, many are not. In
that case there is no fix.

[1] <https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere>

~~~
sp332
_The technically correct fix is for the site owner to modify the page to load
all these resources over https when the page is accessed over https._

The easiest way to do that is with protocol-relative URLs. You're probably
familiar with relative paths in URLs, e.g. if example.com/test/test.html loads
an image at pics/pic1.png, it will really look in
<https://example.com/test/pics/pic1.png> if you loaded it over https, or http:
if you loaded over http.

Simple, right? Well, you can use the same idea for absolute paths and even
resources from other sites! So if a different site links to the URL
//example.com/test/pics/pic1.png (note the lack of protocol before the double-
slash), then it will use https: if you loaded the page over https and http: if
you loaded it using http.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Better yet, redirect all http URIs to the corresponding https URIs, and serve
everything over https.

~~~
WickyNilliams
That is not a better approach, there are issues with client-side caching if
all resources are served over HTTPS. See [http://encosia.com/cripple-the-
google-cdns-caching-with-a-si...](http://encosia.com/cripple-the-google-cdns-
caching-with-a-single-character/)

~~~
JoshTriplett
Easily fixed by serving up a Cache-Control header, as documented in the page
you linked to.

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rmc
This is really just a vague complaint more than anything.

It would be interesting if this resulted in .com/.org/.net becoming de jure
international (they are de facto international domain names now), and removing
them from US control.

------
rickmb
This is an EU parliament resolution, and the EU parliament has very little
real power. That doesn't make it politically meaningless, but it in no way
compels the European Commission or the joint EU governments to actually do
anything about it.

~~~
tarkin2
That's not been true since the 1970/80s really.

The Parliament must approve the EU's budget (and has rejected it for political
reasons before), approve the Commission's staff, the Parliament has even taken
the Council to court about its failure to propose a budget on-time, 80% of all
laws must be passed by the Parliament to come into force, has made plenty of
amendments to directives, and it most famously had its forthcoming vote of no
confidence force the Commission to quit in the 1980s. [1]

In this case, it can use its influence over the Commission to get it to
propose legislature. Has done very similar things in the past. And don't
forget, these MEPs can influence the direction of Council, especially via
countries like Italy who are really keen for the European Parliament to have
more power and influence.

This obviously doesn't mean a directive will appear tomorrow, but such
resolutions are an essential and powerful step towards change in European
Politics.

[1]
[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EOSDFfmFJZYC&pg=PA68&...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EOSDFfmFJZYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=european+parliament+rejected+budget+reason&source=bl&ots=VKjcAQ5VmQ&sig=8tMBFrIg5xoRAH1u4tglv6zYz74&hl=en&ei=fJXFTrvVNYjRhAfvvODbDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
rmc
_The Parliament must approve the EU's budget_

The EU doesn't really have a budget in the same way the US federal government
has a budget (right?), so it's not really a big power.

~~~
tarkin2
€120.7 billion for the year 2007. From wiki.

It's not so much it just has budgetary powers, but it must also approve most
of the EU directives:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Legislative...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament#Legislative_procedure)

