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Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

derstandard.at

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Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#21

Post by buro9 »

ptaipale wrote: post #18
stdclass wrote: post #12

The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be registered at the site. So a site like unzensuriert.at (like breitbart in the US) which is a right leaning / government favourable website will not fall under such a law and won't get penalties.

So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

I run a lot of websites, and this is exactly what I would do.

I'd probably keep the content but orphan it and kill the underlying user and profile.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#22

Post by Havoc »

toyg wrote: post #17
neokantian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently run into this jewel: https://www.gate.io/page/contacts Mail: PO Box 2804, Grand Cayman KY1-1112 , Cayman Island. I don't think anybody involved with the site has ever been to Grand Cayman. Apparently, they process 10 BTC/USDT transactions per minute; and that is just one of the hundred trading pairs. Who can claim jurisdiction over that site? Maybe Grand Cayman, but when push comes to shove, I suspect that…

Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory. Technically, the installed Governor could shut anything down at his wish. In practice it’s unlikely to happen, because (like with many British constitutional matters...) both the locals and the UK have an interest into maintaining a degree of ambiguity in current arrangements. This said, when the UK government is fully convinced that Caymans “should jump”, they eventual…

>both the locals and the UK have an interest into maintaining a degree of ambiguity in current arrangements.

Interesting take on overseas territories. Fuzzy sure, but it never occurred to me that it's intentional

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#23

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

ptaipale wrote: post #18
stdclass wrote: post #12

The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be registered at the site. So a site like unzensuriert.at (like breitbart in the US) which is a right leaning / government favourable website will not fall under such a law and won't get penalties.

So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

It’s completely unclear and ridiculous. There are some people on wikipedia atm that try to figure out how wikipedia could possibly comply and what it means: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Liberaler_Humanist/...

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#24

Post by stdclass »

ptaipale wrote: post #18
stdclass wrote: post #12

The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be registered at the site. So a site like unzensuriert.at (like breitbart in the US) which is a right leaning / government favourable website will not fall under such a law and won't get penalties.

So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

I wonder what will happen if somebody motivates a lot of people to register on a site, to push them over the threshold.

It may also be possible to split your forums to different sites / domains if you reach the thresold.

Anyhow I can't see how this will play out in real life and I hope our president will step in and prevent it from happening at all.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#25

Post by Findus23 »

In case anyone wants to know how this should work, this is the explanation by the minister:

There are "technical possibilities where software can run on the backend that can immediately identify: Does the registered mobile phone number match the name and address or not?" - derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Ominous-De-Anonymization-Software (from https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Omino...)

Translating it as "backend" is very friendly as he literally said "a software in the rear end".

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#26

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

starbugs wrote: post #8

Could anyone shed some light on which problem this is supposed to solve exactly and what triggered it in the first place in Austria right now? Have there been any issues caused by anonymous posts recently? Maybe I'm just living under a rock, but my feeling was that the main issues we're currently facing stem from political distortion caused by populism misusing platform mechanisms to spread misinformation. I don't se…

I doubt it solves any problems. The right wing parties just want to have more leverage for message control. A platform under the proposed law has to share the identity of an individual if another party wants to sue them for libel as an example. A think the FPOe does regularly.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#29

Post by jeena »

stdclass wrote: post #24
ptaipale wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

I wonder what will happen if somebody motivates a lot of people to register on a site, to push them over the threshold. It may also be possible to split your forums to different sites / domains if you reach the thresold. Anyhow I can't see how this will play out in real life and I hope our president will step in and prevent it from happening at all.

So distributed social media communities like Mastodon will not have the problem?

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#30

Post by larkeith »

stdclass wrote: post #24
ptaipale wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

I wonder what will happen if somebody motivates a lot of people to register on a site, to push them over the threshold. It may also be possible to split your forums to different sites / domains if you reach the thresold. Anyhow I can't see how this will play out in real life and I hope our president will step in and prevent it from happening at all.

I imagine sensible website operators would limit signups to below the threshold, so they don't run the risk of legislation unexpectedly applying. Otherwise it also becomes an avenue for malicious actors.
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