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EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

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Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#31

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #11

It always seems like a bad idea to attempt a technological solution to a legal/social problem. Surely the age of people using services is a purely a social issue - similar to not allowing alcohol to be sold to underage drinkers. This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers.

> This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers. We don't have a law like that in place for alcohol, but we do for any number of other substances.

Such as? I can't think of any examples apart from possibly child-proof caps on medication, but that is serving a slightly different purpose - safety rather than authoritarianism.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#32

Post by worldofmatthew »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #11

It always seems like a bad idea to attempt a technological solution to a legal/social problem. Surely the age of people using services is a purely a social issue - similar to not allowing alcohol to be sold to underage drinkers. This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers.

Its more politicians blaming technology for social problems. Ones that have existed before the internet.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#33

Post by stonogo »

Not a very good interpretation of the law, but I'm sure it gets a lot of traffic. The EU definition of online intermediation services specifies that a contractual relationship must exist. It's focused on businesses.

RPM repositories, apt repositories, pkgsrc, and so forth are therefore completely unaffected, as there's no contractual relationship between the providers and users.

Elementary OS, Flatpak, and Canonical's Snap store might have trouble here, and need to implement further controls to be compliant. But nothing is going to "outlaw open source operating systems."

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#34

Post by pavlov »

agilob wrote: post #21
sendfoods wrote: post #9

I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?

>Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Very easy. The organisation is huge and composed from 100000s of people working on different goals. They don't have any supervision, no democratic vote and if they decided they want to grow 400% in one year, they simply could and would, because no one feels like EU is "their government" they could easily protest against. If they want to create EU-Online-Child-Safet…

I'm afraid all of this comment is essentially nonsense. For starters, the EU system (including the Commission, all the various agencies across the Union, all courts, etc.) employs around 60,000 people.

The government of Sweden alone employs more people for a population of only 10M. The EU is in fact fairly lean given its scope and the number of languages. National governments are responsible for implementing almost everything agreed by the Union members.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#35

Post by elpocko »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #11

It always seems like a bad idea to attempt a technological solution to a legal/social problem. Surely the age of people using services is a purely a social issue - similar to not allowing alcohol to be sold to underage drinkers. This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers.

> This kind of law would be analogous to making a law that alcohol cannot be physically consumed by underage drinkers. We don't have a law like that in place for alcohol, but we do for any number of other substances.

"We"? Who? What EU legislature makes consumption of any substance illegal?

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#36

Post by bigDinosaur »

sendfoods wrote: post #9

I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?

This is probably the biggest issue with having an executive which isn't formed by the actual members of parliament, particularly if that executive has powers that the parliament either cannot challenge by design or can't really challenge in practice. The EU commission really isn't democratic at all, and this is by design because of both the origins of the EU as a technocratic-economic project but also the EU parliament just sucks and doesn't really act like a parliament that governs. Because it doesn't really, the EU commission is the only thing people really talk about when it comes to the EU doing stuff. Sometimes the EU parliament will kick up a fuss but it's rare. The real fusses get kicked up in national parliaments.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#37

Post by jacooper »

maxehmookau wrote: post #8

I'm curious to know how likely this is to pass. EU laws are proposed by the council, but passed by the (much more representative and democratic) parliament. The EU has fairly good form in terms of passing common-sense tech laws (see; GDPR) so I'd be skeptical that this is any more than a dumb proposal destined for failure.

Don't underestimate the desire of regulators to get more and more power.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#38

Post by flangola7 »

m_a_g wrote: post #3

It is almost impossible to obey this law. It shows how uninformed the EU lawmakers are when it comes to technology.

Other than open source stuff I don't see what would be hard to comply with it. Most people use Windows, Gmail and Android or iPhone. At least half of those already do most of what this law would ask.

Re: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems

#40

Post by mort96 »

Semaphor wrote: post #20
sendfoods wrote: post #9

I am the first person to appreciate the pro-online-privacy legislation from the EU in the last couple of years. Yet...How can the same organization be behind this? Is it a result of the sheer size of the org, with malevolent people reeking their ugly heads? A more cynical "privacy legislation as a smoke screen with totalitarian measures in the backend"?

I mean, we sent Ursula von der Leyen as head of the commission to the EU who became infamous in Germany for rather having CSAM stay online as long as she could prevent Germans from seeing it…

Leyen is in favor of CSAM staying online? Do you have a source on that?

Are you sure you're not misrepresenting her views?

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