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US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

arstechnica.com

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Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#121

Post by Jabbles »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #18

So if I decide to sell my wife's (imaginary) 3 tons of Chanel goods, and open a site called chanel-goods-for-cheap, odds are my site gets lifted and I become a part of this action no matter whether I am selling counterfeit goods or not, right? I agree with the attorney. Why get upset about SOPA? They can screw you over just the same way today without all the extra laws. This will eventually reach the point, if left u…

Please read the article and stop spreading false information. It doesn't help.

Obviously the court's decision sets an awful precedent. But the third paragraph clearly states that Chanel checked that the sites were actually selling counterfeit goods. So your analogy doesn't work.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#122

Post by TillE »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #105

To all the people suggesting we approach this and other political problems from a technological/engineering perspective: how do you think it could be pulled off? Put aside all the technical limitations - they can (have been or will be) solved. The real question is adoption. What's a darknet without Facebook, Google, etc. worth? Who will use it? There are already countless projects implementing parts of suggested dark…

> Just look at IPv6. It's a new technology with the full force of all the giants in the industry.... and it hasn't gone anywhere.

One of my VPS providers recently started offering IPv6 addresses to all customers. Linode is starting to roll it out too. My residential ISP doesn't offer anything natively, but the router they provided lets me set up a 6to4 tunnel in a couple clicks, which automagically gives all my devices an address starting with 2002::/16. I can even go to ipv6.google.com on my iPad with no extra configuration.

Progress is slow, but it's hardly stagnant. A few months ago, I didn't have any of that. Ancient infrastructure is gradually being replaced by necessity, and then it's just a matter of configuration.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#123

Post by archgoon »

lkrubner wrote: post #96
angersock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't suggest that we need a social network, but your first suggestion isn't too far from the truth. The exact thing needed is very boring, very low-level, and very unsexy, and I believe can be summarized thusly: We need a method for locating hosts on a network graph which does not have a central point of failure and which cannot be easily disabled. We then need a method for authentically routing messages back a…

Why wouldn't government simply ban the whole thing? Consider ham radio: my dad used to be really into it, and it doesn't cost much to get into it. But the government can scare away a lot of people from it, simply with the distant threat of some kind of punishment. So most people do it the legal way, at which point it becomes a big hassle - tests and certificates. And as soon as tests and certificates are needed, most…

Coding is a lot of fun. Not many people do it. I think you have mistaken lack of interest with government threats.

However, let's suppose that tons of people wanted to set up their own radio station. What would the result be exactly?

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#124

Post by cheald »

kevinburke wrote: post #72

Practically, this ruling won't have much effect. There's a team of people at Google already dedicated to removing results like these from the index, as they aren't that great for users. Any counterfeit goods site with enough SERP already gets on their radar, and gets removed/demoted, without action from Us courts.

No, practically, this ruling has a lot of effect. It establishes precedent for the courts being able to declare a web address illegal to publish. The judge effectively ordered that the website be scrubbed clean from the internet, and failure to do so could be construed as contempt.

He has declared that it is illegal to "say" those words on the internet. Besides being a gross violation of the First Amendment, letting this ruling stand would open the door for people to leverage this precedent against other "undesirables".

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#125

Post by nextparadigms »

JonnieCache wrote: post #33
danilocampos wrote: post #9

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free: 1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing. 3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust. 4) A secure, pe…

The P2P Yacy search engine seems to have been announced very timely.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#127

Post by jcr »

marshray wrote: post #114
jcr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you on letting the courts work, but you're missing an important point; who will pay to fight it through the higher courts? We already know the court proceedings were "one-sided" so it's safe to assume no one showed up to defend themselves. For the sake of argument, let's assume the seized domains were actually selling copied goods. Whether one considers copied goods to be good or bad is irrelevan…

With this said, why should the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other other for-profit entities bear the costs of a protracted legal battle through the higher courts? 1. Because they pull down boatloads of money doing business on the internet and it's the right thing to do for them to help defend it. 2. Because they depend on the stable operation of the Internet for their business, in particular: A. the stabili…

I pretty much agree with you on both counts, but as a for-profit entity, it's a matter of financial math rather than "doing the right thing." If it costs "X" to fight it through the courts, and costs "Y" to implement and maintain the censorship/court-orders, then "Y" has to be greater than "X" (plus long term consequences) for the math to work. If "Y" is substantial, the legal fight can be re-framed as an unfair burden, so there is now no need to fight the initial issue through the courts or endure cost "X".

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#128

Post by kogir »

It's counterintuitive, but things like this are actually good. We need more of them to happen, and for it to affect more people more often.

Right now the core of the internet is broken from a security perspective. DNS[1], BGP[2], and SSL[3], despite being key to daily internet function, are all completely inadequate for the important role the internet now plays in the world and society. The thing is: right now they all work, almost all of the time. Any change will be really painful. Even incremental changes like DNSSEC see scant adoption[4] and obviously needed changes like IPv6 are put off until the last possible second[5].

We need things to break before we'll see real change. And by break I mean really break. When enough money is lost because of meddlesome, malicious, or ignorant government and other intervention, we'll finally see real change. But not one second before. After all, if it works, don't fix it[6].

If you really want to see change, exploit these laws to take down legitimate and government websites. Post infringing links, ideas, etc, in the most visible places you can. Try to get major news and other sites that allow user generated content taken down. In the process you'll hopefully break things for enough people that we see change, or you'll at least demonstrate how blatantly inequitable most of these laws are. Both are good steps toward real change.

[1] http://www.dnssec.net/dns-threats

[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4272.txt

[3] http://www.darkreading.com/taxonomy/index/printarticle/id/23...

[4] http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110330006919/en/IID-...

[5] http://ripe59.ripe.net/presentations/botterman-v6-survey.pdf

[6] Yes, I know it doesn't technically work in all cases right now, but did you notice when any of these sites went offline? I didn't. I see an increasing frequency of these types of reports, but have yet to be personally affected.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#129

Post by ajross »

jcr wrote: post #103
ajross wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appeal to a higher court. Courts make mistakes. The system is designed to handle that. Let it work. Relax, basically. This won't stand. That's not to say you're going to agree with everything the higher courts do (c.f. the Citizens United ruling, yada yada). But you can be sure that smart people will look at the problem. Silliness like this won't stand.

I totally agree with you on letting the courts work, but you're missing an important point; who will pay to fight it through the higher courts? We already know the court proceedings were "one-sided" so it's safe to assume no one showed up to defend themselves. For the sake of argument, let's assume the seized domains were actually selling copied goods. Whether one considers copied goods to be good or bad is irrelevan…

The costs of a "protracted legal battle" are quite small when viewed from the perspective of Google, Facebook or Twitter. There's an argument there about small entities (which is why SLAPP statutes exist), but not here.

I mean, check revenue numbers on Chanel (Chanel!) vs. any of those giants. I don't think they're worried about being unfairly punished with legal fees.

Re: US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

#130

Post by VladRussian »

throwaway81 wrote: post #109
danilocampos wrote: post #9

Look. I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here. And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state. But what. the fuck . do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway ? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

What we need is competition. There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government. Small policy changes or people changes or party changes will not be sufficient. Big changes will not happen without outside competition. Someday, some country is going to recognize that supporting free culture can be a huge competitive advantage. I would like to live in that country. I'd take a pay cut to move there. I think man…

somebody smart said that it isn't that new ideas win, it is a new generation accepting the new ideas replaces the old generation. Couple generations later (i'll be in my 70-80ies :) when current teenagers will be the judges, DAs, ... the issue of IP just willn't be an issue anymore.
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