
New “Terrorist Content” Regulations: A Grim Day for Digital Rights in Europe - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-copyright-powers-new-terrorist-content-regulations-grim-day-digital-rights
======
DiabloD3
Silly question: so, terrorist regimes often do everything possible to censor
the Internet and forms of speech that can be critical of their actions...

Would reporting news of said new regulations be considered "terrorist
content", as it is identical to what terrorists do to victims?

~~~
cabraca
with a filtering infrastructure in place its definitly a posibility. first it
was only for copyright, not they want to filter "terrorist content". next we
know, a political leader is censoring the opposition.

~~~
Someguywhatever
Who defines what "terrorist content" is? Maybe if the incumbent party is
getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-up to an election, their
challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of producing "terrorist"
content? I can definitely see something like that happening.

~~~
krapp
> Maybe if the incumbent party is getting "terrorised" in the polls in a run-
> up to an election, their challengers may suddenly find themselves guilty of
> producing "terrorist" content?

... because no one who interprets laws does so with any regard to their
purpose and therefore all laws which govern speech will be enforced
arbitrarily and inevitably lead down the slippery slope towards maximum
tyranny and censorship?

>I can definitely see something like that happening.

I can definitely see that _not_ happening, or at least not succeeding when
it's attempted, because it could happen now with hate speech laws, yet
politicians haven't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by
declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful.

Corrupt politicians and corruptible laws laws do exist, but outside of a
totalitarian regime, obvious misuse and misinterpretation of the law
(particularly where free speech and politics are concerned) tends to be
challenged by the system, because people within that system have a vested
interest in maintaining a balance between societal stability and personal
liberty.

~~~
repolfx
_politicians haven 't successfully had their opponents arrested merely by
declaring their opponents' speech to be hateful_

It happens in Europe quite frequently. Geert Wilders is a popular Dutch
politician (popular with voters) and has been arrested and taken to court
several times for "hate speech" (i.e. criticising immigration and Islam),
being found guilty the last time albeit the court refused to punish him.

Marine Le Pen has also been arrested and taken to court for hate speech,
although the court decided she was not guilty.

As for your faith in the fair application of EU law. That is nice. The EU
courts are staffed by judges selected for their pro-EU ideology and reliably
pro-EU judgements. The ECJ routinely throws out things put in plain English
into the treaties themselves or re-interprets apparently straightforward
language to mean something entirely non-obvious, always to the benefit of the
EU itself.

What sort of people rise to the top of this political project? Here is a
selection of quotes by the head of the European Commission, the man who really
matters in the EU because only he and his directly selected employees can
change the law.

"When it becomes serious, you have to lie."

"I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be
serious ... I am for secret, dark debates."

“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we
continue’" (in reference to a referendum on EU policy)

I will say, for all his faults, Juncker is at least willing to tell it like it
is when it comes to the motivations and powers of himself and his comrades.

------
chooseaname
The terrorists are winning by just sitting back watching us do it all to
ourselves.

~~~
gambiting
The terrorist goal was never to have this happen. Terrorist(as long as we're
thinking of Osama Bin Laden for example, and not say IRA) goal was to get the
people in western countries to think why they are being attacked, look into
it, and realize that it's happening because of attrocities commited by their
own governments in middle East. Osama Bin Laden has himself admitted that the
attacks on America have failed to achieve those goals, because Americans have
collectively refused to ask "why" they were being attacked - it was sold as
brown people hating freedom , with no deeper context to the whole issue.

~~~
travisoneill1
> it's happening because of attrocities commited by their own governments in
> middle East

This narrative again. Specifically which atrocities are you talking about? And
where are all the Japanese, German, and Vietnamese terrorists attacking in
revenge for the atrocities of WWII and Vietnam?

~~~
raverbashing
Of course, that narrative is a farce. But it plays on "look at how the western
world is evil" and other forms of "white guilt".

No wonder Stockholm Syndrome is a western thing.

Sadists don't need a reason, they just need a "reasoning"

------
rdtsc
> emptive copyright filter for content-sharing sites, as well as the idea that
> news publishers should have the right to sue others for quoting news items
> online

I don't understand the justification for this. If you quote them to either
point out the news or the errors they can turn on you if they want to and sue
you.

> “removal order”, which will oblige hosting service providers to remove
> content within one hour of being ordered to do so.

Something tells me there is a lobbyist out there for a company which sell
automated removal of "infringing" content.

> EU now wants to expand that to defining the limits of political speech too.

That seems scary, I hope EFF is exaggerating. This to me seems like very a
authoritarian move. I wouldn't have expected it from EU at least.

~~~
repolfx
The EU - as distinct from European countries themselves - has a pretty
consistently authoritarian direction of travel. It is after all a project to
massively centralise all power in an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels,
removing it from the democratically elected politicians in the national
governments.

You probably aren't aware of this because the EU gets consistently good press
from journalists rather enamoured of the whole project, but there are reasons
the UK chose to leave.

------
swingline-747
It's likely a first shot among many chilling-effects that will have
consequences opposite to those intended. Silencing debunk-able ideological
debate volunteers to hand power over Machiavellian criminals.

~~~
towelr34dy
Why do we always assume little people do things for their self benefit with no
regard for their 'reasoning/explanations', but when it comes to big guys we
instantly assuming their stated reasons have no ulterior motives?

The law is really blatant in it's intention; this was a move against free
speech. The 'unintended consequences narrative' is so blatantly false, I'm
dumbfounded how it could be seriously quoted by otherwise logical and
reasonable people.

~~~
leppr
Faith (in governments) is stronger than logic.

~~~
towelr34dy
I had never thought of it. But with the decline of religion, it seems faith is
now directed at authority, mostly of the political but also the 'scientific'
kind. Great point, thank you.

~~~
leppr
Yes, it's sad how common it is for people to be extremely critical of
individuals or even whole institutions (e.g. Trump, Conservatives, cops, the
prison system, the NRA, Google, Comcast), yet still have a strong unspoken
belief that behind all that, the government and the law as a whole are Good
Things made to care for them and their families.

Took me a long time to realize I was even thinking like that myself.

~~~
towelr34dy
It's like the Gell-man amnesia effect for news, but with authority in general
(it doesn't even have to be gov, it could be NGOs, news, religion, expert
establishment, etc)

------
pweissbrod
I havent been following this closely but the notion of "speedy shutdown of
content by the ISP" sounds strikingly similar to the late [SOPA
bill]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act))
in the US (2011). Is this effectively similar to SOPA?

------
bitcharmer
Suddenly Brexit doesn't seem to have been such a bad idea after all.

~~~
confounded
The British government’s thirst for authoriatarian control of the net is just
about the strongest in a democracy; much stronger than that in the EU.

In fact, the EU is currently making the UK’s investigatory powers act _less_
extreme, as they’ve ruled that state-surveillance of the population at that
scale, is incompatible with the human right to privacy.

I’m not the biggest fan of the EU, but they are a moderating force on the UK’s
repressive tendencies.

~~~
repolfx
Whilst true that under Theresa May the UK government is rather keen on
controlling the internet, as the EU is demonstrating there's no real
difference in terms of their desire for power. The relative disinterest by the
EU in surveillance is more because they associate fighting terrorism =
fighting Muslims = fighting immigrants = borders = bad. Quoting Juncker again,

 _" Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians."_

Doesn't really get clearer than that.

The UK government is unfortunately keen on surveillance partly because people
are keen on it, and it is ultimately a democracy. Opinion polls pretty
consistently show that terrorism is one of the top two concerns citizens have,
across the whole of Europe. The EU ignores these concerns completely; this may
seem superficially beneficially democratic but as the cookie law, GDPR,
copyright, hate speech, link tax laws etc show, this is not due to lack of
desire for control over the internet.

------
honkycat
How is this different than the censorship people lambast the Chinese for?

------
rasengan
The internet was always the best tool for us to finally be on equal grounds
with our overlords.

\- When religion overpowered us, we were helpless and had to obey.

\- When guns came into play, we were helpless and had to obey.

\- When TV and Radio began, the narrative was controlled and we were
brainwashed to obey.

The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people, and
the power of the people is beyond guns and religion.

This is too much for those who wish to stifle the power of the people. So they
have been passing small laws left and right leading to a slippery slope of
laws removing our rights and freedoms (and essentially the power of the
people).

Now that we have become desensitized (they proved it with the “internet world
control” move known as GDPR that proved they control the internet) they wish
to make the final controversial blow.

Make no mistake, this has always been a fight for control of our freedom. The
internet and decentralized technologies like it as well as the many built on
top of it are the only chance we have to maintain freedom as people and
society.

Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative.

Luckily we no longer have to sit back and get whipped anymore. Now we have
tools like cryptography that can allow us to create systems that cannot be
controlled by a single person. That said, even with the tools, if we don’t use
them, then we are “tools.”

~~~
coldtea
> _The Internet is like the power of TV and radio in the hands of the people,
> and the power of the people is beyond guns and religion._

What makes people powerful is coordination.

The public space for conversation on the web are a handful of platforms - and
those can easily be controlled.

The rest can still exist (personal webpages and so on), but they will remain
fringe.

> _Censorship has always been about maintaining their narrative._

Well, first they came for Alex Jones, but I didn't do anything, I wasn't a
conspiracy nut...

~~~
rasengan
It’s funny how hard they went on Alex Jones as that can pretty much summarize
to us all whether they were afraid of his rhetoric or not.

They were very afraid.

~~~
coldtea
People who casually read conspiracy and alternative news (e.g. not hardcore
conspiracy theorists who read David Icke), might believe some crazy crap (that
doesn't hurt anyone, just discredits themselves), but they are also more prone
to questioning the mainstream narratives (and that is very much feared).

Not to mention that a lot of very true shit going on is indeed conspiracies --
it just doesn't involve aliens and illuminati, but established powers (e.g.
the white establishment having FBI follow and discredit MLK and other civil
rights activists), state agencies, rich private interests buying politicians
and forming cartels, powerful elites pushing their agendas, big industries
promoting their crap (e.g. big food and big tobacco buying their own
"scientific research" and then promoting it in through the magazines they
advertise in) and so on...

~~~
nl
_People who casually read conspiracy and alternative news (e.g. not hardcore
conspiracy theorists who read David Icke), might believe some crazy crap (that
doesn 't hurt anyone, just discredits themselves)_

Well that is simply not true.

For example, the Sandy Hook harassment brigade caused real harm, eg:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-florida-crime-
sandyhook-i...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-florida-crime-sandyhook-
idUSKBN18Y2BY)

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, a false story can cause such harassment, but that's not unique it
conspiracy stories. An actual true fact could cause harassment as well (e.g.
people attacking muslims after 9/11, because the perpetrators where muslims,
and so on).

I'd say the problem lies more with people that find it acceptable to harass
others, whether their actions are based on a true story or a hoax.

~~~
nl
I'm glad you have conceded that it is harmful.

I agree there are many other things which are also harmful.

~~~
coldtea
Rather cheap sarcasm, no? If those "many other things which are also harmful"
apply equally to the opposite thing, then it's probably neither the thing nor
the opposite that is the actual cause of the harm.

Someone wanting to harass someone else can do it over a true story (person X
did X) just as well as over a conspiracy story (aliens made person Y did Z).

The fault lies with the harasser (who is acting badly) not with the reason why
they harass.

Or maybe you think that if a story is true then it's OK to harass people over
it?

~~~
nl
_People who casually read conspiracy and alternative news (e.g. not hardcore
conspiracy theorists who read David Icke), might believe some crazy crap (that
doesn 't hurt anyone, just discredits themselves)_

I think we agree that isn’t true.

Both the harasser and the person encouraging it can be at fault.

You can throw in all the strawmen you like.

