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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

#101

Post by gxwmg »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #92
gxwmg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do the ÖVP actually do that? I'm Spanish and I voted for a "conservative" government this last election, where they promised to do, well, stuff I expected from a conservative party, and they didn't do shit. That's why I call them "centrist". They say they are conservatives, but they don't conserve anything.

I only enumerated things they put into law out they proposed or supported from the start. The things the FPOe did was getting rid of the smoking ban, raising the speed limits to 140, renaming the immigration centers to “departure centers”, proposals to cut the funding of the public broadcaster. Together they converted the country in record time into a dystopian place. Even putting childhood education back into former…

Yeah, when I voted for the conservatives here I thought they would roll back abortion rights but they didn't, I thought they would fix the immigration madness but they didn't, and that's why I and many other people are voting far right next election: the conservative party has simply failed to be conservative, they just became centrists to attract more votes, and I sure hope it will backfire.

And that's why these laws are popping up all over Europe: they want to maintain control, they are scared of new parties.

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

#102

Post by masswerk »

lazyjones wrote: post #54
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…

> 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? Existing hate-speech legislation allows persecution of users already, but in some cases the offenders hide too well or Facebook does not cooperate with authorities. Online newspaper forums are also now full of professionally organized dirt campaigns, sometimes tolerated by l…

Since this is intended for international audiences, it maybe worth stating that "left-leaning" is what was considered center just a few years ago. (The idea of a general consent is somewhat a thing of a past.) Particularly "Der Standard", the newspaper the post is linking to, is now often attributed as "left" and its forum, the biggest and oldest one in Austria is subject to diffamation. (If you're reading the comments in this forum, there's a feeling that the law is meant to implement a premature censorship of sorts, an idea which is also maintained by some law and media professionals.) – While this is nothing like the US divide, there's no such thing like a common (political) perspective in Austria anymore. As a result, even comments meant to remind of the constitution and rule of law are sometimes countered by a qualification as left wing hate speech.

Edit: Previously, the political center of Austria was slightly to the left, like in most European countries. Bored with the great center coalition, the conservative party (ÖVP) has burned all bridges to the center-left social democrats (SPÖ) and is now considering the center rather more near its own right wing. Refugees and immigrants and "punishing" those are now the go-to argument for every legislative initiative. Also, governmental "message control", i.e., controlling what may be leaking of internal political communication or what may be setting an agenda, is deemed of high strategical importance by the ruling parties.

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

#103

Post by codedokode »

superwayne wrote: post #59
crunchiebones wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it won't stop people getting multiple sim cards and registering those under different names

It's not yet clear (at least to the public) how the registration will actually work on a technical level. I think the idea is that there will be third party services who are responsible for validating the identity of a user (similar to what banks use for KYC purposes). Users could identify themselves via different means, e.g. by providing their phone number or by simply uploading an ID. But that's all speculation on…

The easiest way is when the user provides their phone number and confirms it by receiving a SMS. That's how users of public WiFi points are identified in Russia and how users of IM programs are supposed to be identified in near future.

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

#105

Post by lazyjones »

masswerk wrote: post #102
lazyjones wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Existing hate-speech legislation allows persecution of users already, but in some cases the offenders hide too well or Facebook does not cooperate with authorities. Online newspaper forums are also now full of professionally organized dirt campaigns, sometimes tolerated by l…

Since this is intended for international audiences, it maybe worth stating that "left-leaning" is what was considered center just a few years ago. (The idea of a general consent is somewhat a thing of a past.) Particularly "Der Standard", the newspaper the post is linking to, is now often attributed as "left" and its forum, the biggest and oldest one in Austria is subject to diffamation. (If you're reading the commen…

> it maybe worth stating that "left-leaning" is what was considered center just a few years ago.

Please don't attempt to change the meaning of my post with your own interpretation. When I write "left-leaning", I mean exactly that.

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

#106

Post by codedokode »

rmu09 wrote: post #64
citeguised wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Austria and Germany you can't get any SIM without ID as of now.

So if you are a criminal that needs disposable SIM cards you just pay some cash-strapped person to get a bunch of prepaid ones for you.

If you are a criminal, then you can just buy SIM cards from someone or from country that doesn't require indetification.

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

#107

Post by founderling » 

    Users of online forums in Austria will have to provide
    operators with their true identities or risk fines that
    could run into the millions.
How trustworthy is a publication where the very first sentence of an article is nonsense?

Users do not risk being fined millions. The webmasters will.

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

#108

Post by peletiah »

lazyjones wrote: post #44
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.

> The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be registered at the site. It's 100.000 users OR revenue of €500.000 OR being media with press subsidies of €50.000+ OR being a service partner providing an online service for such companies. That the law was made in such a way for "unzensuriert.at" ist just nonsense propaganda, there are plenty of left-leaning or straight opposition blogs and for…

The fun part is that unzensuriert.at is notorious for the dehumanizing and racist comments posted under their articles but still won't be affected by this law. However, they have turned off their forums a few days ago.

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

#109

Post by rum3 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #51
bkolobara wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a sim card (even prepaid) in Austria you need to provide a valid ID/passport. If it's not an Austrian/German/Swiss ID you will need to go in person to activate your sim card. This would make it really difficult for someone to manage a few accounts.

You can buy sim cards on amazon from other EU countries.

If it is like in Spain then the non-registered sim cards from other EU countries will simply not work if I remember correctly.

However I have heard that in Spain you could anyway buy unregistered sim cards from certain stores if you asked around and paid a bit more.

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

#110

Post by peletiah »

pjc50 wrote: post #79
rmu09 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was triggered by a defamation lawsuit where a former female MP was being harrassed via facebook, made the harassement public via twitter, and subsequently sued by the owner of the facebook account. She lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages. The court found that the owner of the facebook account is not necessarily the harasser, so making the harassement public is libel. Of course this case was only a we…

That seems like an absolutely nonsensical outcome from the court. Does anyone have the court transcript? (yes I'm aware of the risks of reading machine translated legal German, but it would be interesting to know) (I see that Facebook's ineffective harassment policy is at the root of this again)

The first court decision has been overruled by the higher instance. However I don't agree with rmu09 that this was the trigger for this law.
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