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Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

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Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#71

Post by rob74 »

nicole_express wrote: post #53
R_D_Olivaw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, watch an American's face when you explain to them that "America" doesn't ONLY refer to the united states. See the gears grind to a halt when they are reeducated on the concepts of "Central AMERICA" and "South AMERICA".

In the United States, "North America" and "South America" are generally treated as separate continents, so therefore as a whole are called "the Americas". This frees up the singular "America" to refer to the US without too much risk of ambiguity. My understanding is that in some places, especially non-English speaking, is that North and South America are treated as a single continent called "America", which adds ambi…

Be that as it may, the thing that sounds odd (and a bit arrogant) to most "outsiders" is using the name of a whole continent for a single country and its citizens. I (from Europe) would definitely consider a Canadian, Mexican or Columbian citizen as an "American" too, not only a citizen of the United States. BTW, I'm really curious what Trump thinks the "America" in his "Gulf of America" stands for - the whole continent or only the US?

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#72

Post by grayhatter »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #59
RobKohr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a single website. Other websites can host it just fine. This is the same as blocking content on your own forum or comment section on your blog. Yes fb is huge, but still just a website, and one with fading popularity. Blocking ips on a network level is different.

Facebook isn’t just a website. Like whatsapp isn’t just a messaging app and visa/mastercard aren’t just some of the credit card companies.

I see the comparison you're trying to draw, and I don't agree.

People use FB because other people use it. There's a lot more complexity, and algorithm fuled habits. But in the end, FB provides the service of communication and content recommendations. Using that attention, it can sell ads. Without that willingness to give attention, they can't sell ads. There are no significant hurdles to starting a social media site.

Credit card processors facilitate payments from one group to a different group. They aren't an endpoint, they are middle men. They don't need to court the attention of users, they are in a position of power it where they can interfere with the lives of others, and have formed a coalition with a total monopoly over the digital trade of money. Good luck starting a competitor while attempting to shun PCI compliance.

If I never use FB, I can still interact with friends, family, buy and sell ads. If I never use a credit card... I've been cut off from the vast majority of the things that I would buy.

It's reasonable for different rules to apply to groups with vastly different powers. I wouldn't expect Google to be held to the same standard that I hold PG&E. Nor would I hold PG&E to the same restrictions I'd place on Google.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#73

Post by delusional »

blibble wrote: post #64

I'm not sure the US wants to bring attention to its massive trade surplus in services if I was the EU I would have responded to the threats of goods tariffs with a threat of service tariffs that will start off slow and increase every month that tariffs remain in effect initially 0% tax on Office 365/AWS/facebook+google ad sales, then after a year it's 20%, and so-on

That's exactly what they did. They didn't want to escalate the conflict, so they didn't end up using it. It's what they refer to as their "trade bazooka", and it's still around ready to be used.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#74

Post by golemotron »

This comes from the dated perspective that free trade is universally good. Nations create their own trade rules and they ought to be able to enforce them. I consider that far preferable than attempts to exert extraterritorial control over services from other countries.

If, say, Uruguay doesn't like content on Facebook, they are free to block it. In their opinion, they are protecting their citizens and that's ok. It should not produce legal action that could result in least common denominator style global content censorship.

In an ideal world, there would be no country level blocking but invariably laws will differ.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#75

Post by pjc50 »

pyrale wrote: post #43
ACCount37 wrote: post #38

I'm no fan of Cloudflare, but they're completely in the right on that. Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. Because if it's allowed to exist, it ends up subsumed by political and corporate interests, and becomes a tool of overreach and abuse. We've seen that happen over and over again. If US Trade Office can be leveraged to destroy internet censorship efforts in other countries, then so be it.

> If US Trade Office can be leveraged to destroy internet censorship efforts in other countries, then so be it. ...But, of course, US corporations enforcing the same kind of censoring is a-OK, because corporations are people and their censorship is free speech. I'll be open to your posititon the day Boticelli's Venus doesn't get censored on FB because there's a pair of tits somewhere on the painting.

Not to mention that several US states have various sorts of adult content bans.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#76

Post by arcanemachiner »

cowboy_henk wrote: post #66
ACCount37 wrote: post #38

I'm no fan of Cloudflare, but they're completely in the right on that. Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. Because if it's allowed to exist, it ends up subsumed by political and corporate interests, and becomes a tool of overreach and abuse. We've seen that happen over and over again. If US Trade Office can be leveraged to destroy internet censorship efforts in other countries, then so be it.

That's a bit rich coming from Cloudflare, a company that routinely blocks access to important and legitimate websites to huge parts of the world. A huge part of Cloudflare's customers use them specifically to block users' access to websites.

Gotta take your wins when you can get them.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#77

Post by rsingel »

cowboy_henk wrote: post #66
ACCount37 wrote: post #38

I'm no fan of Cloudflare, but they're completely in the right on that. Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. Because if it's allowed to exist, it ends up subsumed by political and corporate interests, and becomes a tool of overreach and abuse. We've seen that happen over and over again. If US Trade Office can be leveraged to destroy internet censorship efforts in other countries, then so be it.

That's a bit rich coming from Cloudflare, a company that routinely blocks access to important and legitimate websites to huge parts of the world. A huge part of Cloudflare's customers use them specifically to block users' access to websites.

There's a big difference between a company making that decision (an edge provider) vs a country doing that at the network level.

The rub comes in that nations, including the U.S., have laws about what they seem illegal content or services and reserve the right to force those to be blocked.

In Thailand that might be criticism of the king; in the U.S., pirated TV streams; in another country, that could be gambling sites.

Cloudflare seems to be trying to stop blocking that is trade protectionism, but is blocking overseas gambling sites trade protection or a legit state interest in protecting its citizens?

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#78

Post by inemesitaffia »

tiahura wrote: post #35
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered if that is even possible (whether it is good policy or not is another question entirely). Could we disconnect Russia from the Internet effectively? Let's say that Europe could be pressured to cooperate, what then? Well, here a couple of years ago I finally got the answer I wanted: we can't. China would never abide any such sanction, and there must be a few overland backbones connecting the two (ev…

It would be easy. Require the backbone CEO's to certify that their networks don't connect to networks that connect to China, Russia, Nigeria, etc. The burden would then shift to them. If they couldn't get a guarantee from a peer or customer, they would have to disconnect them.

Nigeria really?

Don't use that brain to cross the road

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#80

Post by inemesitaffia »

stego-tech wrote: post #21
mikkupikku wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defend literal pirates" - imagine if it was the opposite; if the only way to keep a site on the internet without being ddosed into oblivion was to use Cloudflare but also they only permit sites which are approved of by corporate interests. That would be very dystopian. The root problem of course is their de facto monopoly status, as gatekeepers of the internet (if they aren't secretly an NSA run company, the NSA is…

…I find it interesting that you edited the quote to remove their defense of Nazis. Like, that’s just a very odd decision to make when quoting somebody. And you’re covering the ground I already laid in the original comment: > …the only way to effectively punish an operator like Cloudflare is to block its entire IP range, despite the harms innocent customers and users will incur. And I can’t quite figure out a way past…

Taylor Swift is now on so...
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