

Europe council unanimously decide to "block websites", enabling web censorship - lloeki
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/jha/130727.pdf

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fchollet
As long as a court order is required, then this seems to me to be more of a
freedom-protecting measure than a freedom-destroying one. Freedom is not about
the absence of enforcement, it is about having reasonably just laws, and
processes that ensure the law will be enforced reasonably justly.

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lloeki
Actively blocking websites requires some infrastructure to be in place, and
the underlying fear is that this infrastructure gets abused at some point,
whether by introduction of new laws or unintentionally through bribery or
incompetence. The previous french President Sarkozy was actively looking at
putting much more than child pornography in such blocking systems, in very
vague and worrisome wordings of which a translation could be "along with any
illegal or order-troubling website".

Also, the worry is that the risk and cost of such an infrastructure is too
high, especially considering the target has already moved and such blocks are
completely inefficient.

Ironically, just at the time when European MPs decided that any form of
censorship is bad and net neutrality matters, council turns around.

 _PS: When submitting the link I tried to be as neutral as possible within the
80 chars limit, precisely to spur constructive discussion._

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keymone
when submitting this link you tried to be as sensational as possible. good
job.. web censorship infrastructures are already in place _everywhere_ , the
fact that you need court order to make use of it is what really matters.

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puivert
This doc doesn't say that.

~~~
lloeki

        2. Reducing as much as possible the availability of child pornography online, inter alia by 
        facilitating measures to remove or, where appropriate, _block websites containing child 
        pornography_, and reducing as much as possible the re-victimization of children whose 
        sexual abuse is depicted in child pornography
    

Whether you are in favor or against it, and whether the content is moral or
not, actively preventing content to be accessible is censorship. If anything,
it requires a blocking infrastructure to be put in place.

~~~
error
Any sane person does NOT see anything wrong with that paragraph, that is
probably a paragraph that will convince anyone that putting such rules is for
the best.

Well maybe not everyone, I guess pedophiles will be very disappointed and will
play the card of freedom to convince otherwise.

~~~
lloeki
> that is probably a paragraph that will convince anyone that putting such
> rules is for the best

 _Of course_ every sane person is against child pornography, just like every
sane person is against terrorism. That does not make any measure having for
goal to reduce those atrocious activities good measures to take. And that does
not make someone asking himself questions about the relevancy of a solution
one of those wicked people, nor one defending them.

It's all too easy to see it black or white. I'm not that concerned about
freedom issues (although they do exist), but also about efficiency. After all,
preventing terrorists to fly by wanting to scan every single person going
through airports looks like a nice idea on paper, but the result is a security
theater which costs a lot for weak results.

Given the time needed for a judge (and the overwhelming a mount of work they
have otherwise) to examine proofs and order a block, I'm not sure this would
be efficient. And even considering that would be, it's trivial for them to
move and/or use proxies. That is, if they don't use alternate DNS systems and
overlay networks (which they are reportedly using, according to a paper
published _a few years ago_ ).

Police forces and network managers are generally agreeing that blocking is not
efficient and that actively hunting them down is much more effective.

Also this does not make it any more helpful to stop it overseas, where most of
the matter occurs. Blocking is like putting a blindfold and pretending it
doesn't exist because we're "safe" here.

To sum it up, I'm worried it would be both a money- and time-sink with non-
measurable results, cutting of resources that would be better spent chasing
those bastards down and destroying their networks.

(anyway, thanks for indirectly calling me both insane and a pedophile, that
really makes the discussion more constructive)

