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EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

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Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#91

Post by fzeroracer »

meowface wrote: post #80
jdietrich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unc…

I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling…

I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc.

A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident [1]

The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America. It's a nice platitude, but 'freedom of speech' has always been used as a tool and weapon for those in power to suppress minorities or to bolster their own voices. All you have to do is tie it to some other bogus law or rationale, and you get freedom of speech for me but not for thee.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressi...

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#92

Post by narag »

filoleg wrote: post #66
_Schizotypy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia banned drug information? What sort of information, like pharmacology?

It is implied that the parent comment was talking about illegal drugs. Interesting side fact: unlike in english, there are two completely distinct words for illegal and legal drugs in russian language. Which a lot of times makes it easier to spot russian-speaking posters, as they tend to refer to illegal drugs as just "drugs", while referring to legal ones using other more specific terms, like "pills" or something el…

Not only Russian. In Spanish "droga" y "medicamento" are different words too.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#93

Post by munk-a »

btilly wrote: post #90
munk-a wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like, at this point, a possibly likely option is a continued bump of leave dates until the British population gets sick of the BS and forces a stay decision in like 20 years once the old racists go away - but my money is still on UK doing a no-deal brexit because they can't decide on anything else... that will probably happen during the next european recession when the EU gets sick of wasting bureaucratic effo…

It is a complete mess. The MPs in office overwhelmingly oppose Brexit. They don't support anything else, but they oppose Brexit as well. But the country is fairly evenly divided. However the Conservative party hung itself out to dry on a promise to deliver Brexit, and the Conservative base very strongly wishes that Brexit had happened already. If it doesn't, it is not impossible that the Conservative party will fall…

Honestly, this is a reflection of my greatest fear of the modern world - cuts to education and social services from the last generation of Regan/Thatcher-nomics has both cut western countries economies off at the ankles while simultaneously saddling us with an overwhelming majority of unquestioning individuals that are happy to go along with whatever they are told.

I don't know how the west will recover from this but if there is one thing I've come to view as a vital component of that recovery it's arts spending. We seriously need to up critical thinking skills in the general populace instead of continuing to pump out trade-schooled apprentices (that includes a bunch of us developers, many of whom are more heavily rote taught than anything else).

Our purpose in the universe is... well probably nothing, but it'd be nice if we equipped everyone to deal with life and their journey through it with as many tools as possible. It is possible to find some educational spending wasteful and desire to make it more efficient, but the people who say "we're wasting money educating all these people" those are the most dangerous of all.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#94

Post by meowface »

fzeroracer wrote: post #91
meowface wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling…

I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arres…

I do fully agree and understand that freedom of speech by statute is not the same as freedom of speech in practice. But you at least have to start at the level of the laws. If your laws don't provide for freedom of speech, you're certainly not going to get it in practice. A legal framework for freedom of speech is not a sufficient condition for achieving it, but it is a necessary one.

And the issues you mention happen in European countries, too, just with much lower risk of being shot, and usually with different minority groups (though I'm sure black people face problems with police in European countries as well). And the Congress laughing incident is certainly ridiculous - but you'll also find many similarly ridiculous stories in Britain, for example. Don't get me wrong; I have many problems with the US, and think most European countries do a lot of things better than we do. I just think the freedom of speech laws are one thing we usually do better than they do.

In the US, you aren't going to be arrested for a tweet (unless that tweet threatens violence), regardless of your ethnicity or sexuality. This is something that does actually sometimes happen in other countries. No, that's not necessarily a huge win when you consider real, everyday situations like black men having to be far more cautious with police than other people, often risking their lives, but I think you kind of just have to tackle freedom and liberty issues as they arise. We should appreciate where our system works well and vehemently dissent where it fails.

The issues you mention are major and do definitely need to be dealt with to achieve a state of real freedom for everyone in the US. But I also think those problems aren't insurmountable, and that practical freedom of speech is an eventually attainable goal. I also think we're slowly getting better over time, even though the problems remain immense. A lot of people in the US are dedicating their lives to ensuring laws and standards are applied fairly.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#95

Post by filoleg »

umhau wrote: post #72
8ytecoder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they mentioned in passing in the blog, EU might block the site entirely within EU.

Oh, the horror.

Not for anyone outside of the EU, and not in short-term. However, I believe that it is an alarming tendency that can cause a lot of damage over a sufficiently long time period.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#97

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

smsm42 wrote: post #26

Funny how exactly EU follows the path Russia has recently taken. After Russia passed the law that banned online material promoting terrorist content, suicide, drug information and harm to children, and so on, there was an avalanche of false takedown requests and misidentifications, including attempting to block Wikipedia, ban Bhagavad Gita commentary (yes, really) and many more anecdotes that sound funny unless you l…

I think we’re still a long way before we reach the excess of Russia regarding free speech et subordination of democratic values.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#98

Post by jdietrich »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
jdietrich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unc…

> there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing i…

>Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean?

It's quite a long list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#99

Post by hirundo »

Thank Uncle Sam for the first amendment. Not that this kind of censorship won't happen in the United States but there are stronger institutional barriers to it here, so it will take longer.

But it's coming here too and not slowly. For instance five years ago 48 US Senators voted gut much of the core of the first amendment. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint-re...) After every terrorist attack we hear how the constitution is not a suicide note (and therefore the bill of rights is highly contingent). Pressure to act against (flexibly defined) hate speech is growing particularly in the young cohort of voters.

In the not distant future I expect hundreds or thousands of US officials to have the same kind of power that their EU counterparts are seeking here: to automatically switch off almost any domestic web resource if it hurts the feelings of an important constituent.

Many of us will fight it, and as in the EU, we'll lose.

Re: EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content

#100

Post by deogeo »

fzeroracer wrote: post #91
meowface wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling…

I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arres…

By that logic, no-one has any rights anywhere, because you can always find some incident where the law was subverted or abused by the powerful.

But I would dearly like to hear how freedom of speech is used to suppress minorities. Note that in my own country (or the region that became my country), censorship was used to suppress the growing independence movement. A movement of a minority of the population. Perhaps if we had had free speech, they would have instead used that to suppress us... somehow?

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