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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

#181

Post by bloppe »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #139
pjc50 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is: the idea that once something is on the internet, national law simply ceases to apply and governments should have absolutely zero control over obscene material, IP infringment, harassment, libel, foreign propaganda, money laundering, fraudulent financial services, gambling, and so on - simply be…

I think if something is hosted in a different country, the laws of that country apply to that service. It's not under your jurisdiction, so you have no say in whether it's allowed to exist, nor should you. You can, of course, pass a law making it illegal for your citizens to communicate with that service, but I think it's really important to understand that that's what's happening. You are passing a law which applies…

How is this different from the status quo?

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

#182

Post by golemotron »

manishsharan wrote: post #170
foxglacier wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food production is a huge one. We don't want highly optimized farming where only the most efficient growers feed everyone else because that has the risk of global famine if something fails there. The more a system is optimized, the closer to failure it is. Same goes for all other kinds of production but food is really important compared to, say, CPUs or cars.

Fine .. say your country has a several years of drought and bad harvest. What happens then ? Do you trade then ? Or .. lets say due to weather, your farmers can not grow enough oranges or some fruit which drives up local prices. Should only the richest people in your country get to eat fruits ? Or you discover lithium deposits that your national industry can not use . Should you let that just sit there knowing it cou…

Sure, you can trade but it is a choice. Claiming that free trade is universally good is saying that there is only one right choice - no barriers.

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

#183

Post by vkou »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172
vkou wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's nation-of-origin-agnostic (All vendors, domestic or foreign have to follow the same rules, and the foreigners have chosen to not follow those rules, and are being sanctioned for it), it's not a trade barrier. It's just a foreign company being upset that it isn't getting special treatment that would allow it to operate with an illegal advantage over local vendors.

Is that what it is though? It seems weird that such an overwhelming majority of US retail banking customers are using a domestic institution if the foreign ones are getting a fair shake, doesn't it? Countries do a thing where they call something "neutral rules" while crafting them such that only the domestic incumbents can satisfy them or they can be selectively enforced against anyone the regulators don't like or wh…

> It seems weird that such an overwhelming majority of US retail banking customers are using a domestic institution if the foreign ones are getting a fair shake, doesn't it?

Why is it weird? All other aspects being equal, why would you want to put your money into a bank that's accountable to another government first, and your market second?

Banking involves a ton of (unverifiable from the retail end) trust. There are a lot of risks to it. Going with a local institution mitigates some of them, and going with a foreign one adds very few benefits (Unless you're doing a lot of business in their home country).

You can absolutely bank with a foreign bank. HSBC is a giant international bank. TD and RBC are Canadian banks with branches in the US (RBC's are whitelabeled as City National Bank). If you want to do some tax evasion, or deal with the fallout of rogue traders, or bank with someone who has the rotting corpse of Credit Suisse anchored around its neck, you're free to do your retail (or investment) banking with UBS.

Why aren't you using them?

I assure you, you'll find the experience largely interchangeable with the same level of service you'd expect from any of the Big Four.

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

#184

Post by iamnothere »

recursive wrote: post #176
iamnothere wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t need to. The optimum amount of lawbreaking is non-zero. As long as we are catching the worst criminals and creating reasonable incentives to avoid crime, we are doing enough. Some amount of lawbreaking is to be expected in a free society; it’s literally the price of freedom.

> The optimum amount of lawbreaking is non-zero This is a new idea for me. How is optimality measured here? Aggregate utility for society? What's the independent variable? Is this from the perspective of law-makers? If I was on a desert island, should I do some crime to ensure optimality?

This idea was explored recently here: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

This is just another form of Blackstone’s ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio

The problem itself is an ancient one and you can find a number of texts that explore the idea from various angles.

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

#185

Post by recursive »

iamnothere wrote: post #184
recursive wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The optimum amount of lawbreaking is non-zero This is a new idea for me. How is optimality measured here? Aggregate utility for society? What's the independent variable? Is this from the perspective of law-makers? If I was on a desert island, should I do some crime to ensure optimality?

This idea was explored recently here: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra... This is just another form of Blackstone’s ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio The problem itself is an ancient one and you can find a number of texts that explore the idea from various angles.

This is from a policy-maker's perspective. It treats the human inclination toward fraud as an immutable force of nature (which may well be reasonable). But it seems the general idea is that policies required to achieve zero fraud would cost too much in enforcement. They would not be purely rational benefits for the organization whose policy is being written.

However from a different perspective, it's those policies that are an immutable force of nature. "Non-zero fraud is optimal" might sound like there could be a population who wasn't committing enough fraud. I haven't done any fraud this year, but I'm trying to be a good person. But that's not the Blackstone perspective. In Blackstone, the populace are thought of as reacting only to policy and basically having no autonomy.

I'm not arguing anything, but just noting how the sound-bite can be (and was) misconstrued.

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

#186

Post by iamnothere »

recursive wrote: post #185
iamnothere wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea was explored recently here: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra... This is just another form of Blackstone’s ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio The problem itself is an ancient one and you can find a number of texts that explore the idea from various angles.

This is from a policy-maker's perspective. It treats the human inclination toward fraud as an immutable force of nature (which may well be reasonable). But it seems the general idea is that policies required to achieve zero fraud would cost too much in enforcement. They would not be purely rational benefits for the organization whose policy is being written. However from a different perspective, it's those policies t…

I can see how you might have misunderstood. Yes, I was looking at it from the perspective of policy. Any policy designed to reduce crime is going to create some hardship for the innocent, and the question is how much enforcement-driven hardship is the public willing to tolerate in order to reduce crime-driven hardship. In a business context (as in the first article) your customers are not obliged to do business with you; in a democracy they are not obliged to vote for you.

In the West we are typically less tolerant of enforcement-driven hardship. This goes back to our Enlightenment ideals about freedom and justice, which are less strong than they once were but are still present.

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

#187

Post by pjc50 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #164
pjc50 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Infrastructure for blocking websites simply shouldn't exist. I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is: the idea that once something is on the internet, national law simply ceases to apply and governments should have absolutely zero control over obscene material, IP infringment, harassment, libel, foreign propaganda, money laundering, fraudulent financial services, gambling, and so on - simply be…

> I think people have forgotten how extreme a position this is If you can forget that a position is extreme, doesn't that imply that it's a relatively unoffensive and reasonable position? For actual extreme positions like "reduce housing scarcity by murdering some category of people" or "mitigate climate change by prohibiting human reproduction", does anyone need to be reminded that they're extreme? > the idea that o…

> Isn't the extreme position that a country should be able to control what you do even when you're willingly choosing to do it in another jurisdiction?

Well, which jurisdiction applies to Spanish Internet users in Spain and Spanish ISPs?

Doesn't the US claim global tax jurisdiction on its nationals?

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

#188

Post by stevenicr »

Moto7451 wrote: post #82
cowboy_henk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who has had to implement these blocks, it’s not generally done because anyone wants to, it’s because someone passed a law that requires us to do it. I don’t get to override the ITAR or Entities list just because I don’t feel it’s fair someone is on it.

Didn't CF CEO post in March 2019 that they were going to start working with govts on suggestions for how to implement laws that would get them to block things people didn't like?

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #86
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.

so for example Germany should not be allowed to block neo-nazi sites? illegal gambling sites in country X must be allowed if they are legal in country Y - Y being America I guess. >it ends up subsumed by political and corporate interests I believe the term for this is legislated by the laws of particular lands and regions. Essentially Cloudflare tells U.S Government to set the rules for rest of world please.

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by nozzlegear »

immibis wrote: post #110
nozzlegear wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They block traffic reaching your website, not the other way around. For a poor, nitpickable analogy: they keep the bad guys out of your home, but they don't want to take away homes from the bad guys.

With your analogy, they aim to keep the "bad guys" out of all homes, which is the same thing as saying those guys can't have homes. Also the "bad guys" group you're referring to includes, like, my cousin Jake because he accidentally crashed his pushbike into a car once when he was 6, but doesn't include Adolf Hitler for some reason.

I'm glad I had the foresight to categorize my analogy as "nitpickable," otherwise I'd feel the need to defend it.
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