New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection • Hacker News Board

Re: New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

#121

Post by jopsen » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 10:18 PM UTC

Trombone12 wrote: post #110

arghwhat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides what an "effective means" is, and which are available? Without judicial oversight, this seems rather easy to bypass. I personally find filtering of any sort to be fundamentally wrong. A website is nothing but information, and find censoring/filtering to be wrong on counts of violating free speech and free access to information. I believe that illegal content should be handled by going after those that…

Please control your hyperbole a bit, or do you really oppose sunglasses on account of how they filter spectral information?

If we restrict filtering to DNS, so that it's easy to take the "sun glasses" off, then I kind of like it :)

Re: New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

#122

Post by seszett » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #119

seszett wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? I think these two things are completely disconnected from each other. What we're talking about here is legislation, and legislation has not slipped towards censoring free speech more and more in the last seventy years (in France and Germany).

> Are you arguing that banning Nazi memorabilia is leading to the rise of far-right parties? No I'm not. Your statement is so far off that I can't help myself but wonder how did you arrive to this conclusion?!

Because if those things are disconnected, then your own comment was apparently off-topic. You posted a comment about the rise of far-right parties as an answer to one about the slippery slope of censorship.

Re: New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

#123

Post by arghwhat » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 8:24 AM UTC

Trombone12 wrote: post #110

arghwhat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides what an "effective means" is, and which are available? Without judicial oversight, this seems rather easy to bypass. I personally find filtering of any sort to be fundamentally wrong. A website is nothing but information, and find censoring/filtering to be wrong on counts of violating free speech and free access to information. I believe that illegal content should be handled by going after those that…

Please control your hyperbole a bit, or do you really oppose sunglasses on account of how they filter spectral information?

Ah, I'm sorry, I of course meant filtering of information from the public, not any personal filtering in a wider sense. I may have been wrong to expect that this was clear.

Feel free to wear sunglasses, welding helmets, use ad blockers ("content filter"), attach ND filters to your camera lenses, water filters to your water filtration systems, HEPA filters to air filtration systems, etc.

Re: New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

#124

Post by arghwhat » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 8:38 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #92

arghwhat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides what an "effective means" is, and which are available? Without judicial oversight, this seems rather easy to bypass. I personally find filtering of any sort to be fundamentally wrong. A website is nothing but information, and find censoring/filtering to be wrong on counts of violating free speech and free access to information. I believe that illegal content should be handled by going after those that…

What if the persons operating the site are unknown or living in a country where what they are doing is not illegal? I don't support outright blocks or the specifics of this new legislation, but I think there are cases where the distribution channel is the right point to intervene; e.g. by displaying an interstitial "This site has been found to be a scam, don't give them your money. Do you want to continue anyway?".

I don't think "This site has been found to be a scam" should be done in the distribution channel, but rather like Google's safebrowsing initiative... Just, maybe not Google-operated.

To me, I think I would imagine a website doing something illegal to be more akin to a newspaper ad that sells something illegal. It's not illegal for me to bring a newspaper home from a country with ads about services that are legal where the newspaper is from, but illegal in my home-country. So, why should bringing the ad over digitally be any different?

The illegal may only occur once the service is ordered/used, and only so if it is illegal to be the recipient/import (sometimes things are illegal to sell, but legal to buy).

Re: New EU law prescribes website blocking in the name of consumer protection

#125

Post by arghwhat » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 8:40 AM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #121

Trombone12 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please control your hyperbole a bit, or do you really oppose sunglasses on account of how they filter spectral information?

If we restrict filtering to DNS, so that it's easy to take the "sun glasses" off, then I kind of like it :)

But then an ISP might force all DNS queries through its own services, increasing the effort required...

And, changing your DNS server is easy to us, not easy to "common folks" who have no clue what DNS is.