381–390 of 1001 posts
Regardless of whether the law is absurd or not (I honestly have no idea, but we've seen some crazy stuff lately in the EU), its kinda precious that a CEO only complains about it when his company is fined. I'm certain it is also quite reassuring for any paying Cloudflare customer that the company strategy is driven by the CEO Twitter rants; That if by some reason doesn't want to play ball with local laws (as draconian…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Economic growth or lack of thereof is absolutely irrelevant here It absolutely is. Being right (and more so, being righteous) is expensive. When you cannot afford to put your money where your mouth is, everyone knows that sooner or later you cannot or will not follow through on your words. Europe hast lost ~30% of power vs. the US in just ~12 years.
> Europe hast lost ~30% of power vs. the US in just ~12 years. [citation needed] mostly because I'm curious what kind of metric one uses to measure this. From an economic standpoint, Europe stagnated behind the US coming out of the pandemic, but now it seems to be the US markets that are lagging Europe in the past year. Militarily, my perception is that Europe is ramping up, not falling off.
GDP EU ÷ GDP US in 2024: ~0.66
I will give you exact sources for the claim later once I'm back at my laptop, but rest assured: these numbers don't lie. And militarily... really? We're a joke. We cannot even defend our neighbor from being invaded without extensive US help.
I'm Italian, and as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist, I find hard to empathize with Cloudflare, especially after this tweet. First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing. I believe he knows he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law, so gathering the sympathy of the "freedom fighters" of the web is all he can do. But the funniest part about this tweet are the "threats"…
Cloudflare is clearly in the right. Global censorship from an unaccountable cabal is a moral wrong. There's no sense in which Italy somehow 'wins' here, because even if they win, they lose.
I'm Italian, and as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist, I find hard to empathize with Cloudflare, especially after this tweet. First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing. I believe he knows he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law, so gathering the sympathy of the "freedom fighters" of the web is all he can do. But the funniest part about this tweet are the "threats"…
>In this political climate, Cloudflare siding with the current administration's general line of "we're Americans, our economy is strong so we're above international law" sends a message I don't think they fully understand International law?? Italian law you mean. Why should 1.1.1.1 block a site because some Italian wanted it blocked? Sod off. Also I am Swedish, so EU here too. Sick of this whiny victim attitude.
Note the "general line". You know, bombing boats in international waters, abducting awful dictators and "running" the country sidelining the opposition, threatening to take over an autonomous territory of Denmark, meddling with German and British politics and generally behaving very much like fascists and a wannabe dictator.
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Germany has an equivalent within the CUII, which is also a censorship branch of the government with no judicial oversight.
There is no such thing as "no judicial oversight" in Germany.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llglrd/2019...
> To some extent, judges are subordinated to a cabinet minister, and in most instances this is a minister of justice of either the federation or of one of the states. In Germany, the administration of justice, including the personnel matters of judges, is viewed as a function of the executive branch of government, even though it is carried out at the court level by the president of a court, and for the lower courts, there is an intermediate level of supervision through the president of a higher court. Ultimately, a cabinet minister is the top of this administrative structure. The supervision of judges includes appointment, promotion and discipline. Despite this involvement of the executive branch in the administration of justice, it appears that the independence of the German judiciary in making decisions from the bench is guaranteed through constitutional principles, statutory remedies, and institutional traditions that have been observed in the past fifty years. At times, however, the tensions inherent in this organizational framework become noticeable and allegations of undue executive influence are made.
Not a good look on that guy to list his "pro-bono" services and threaten to pull them while asking JD Vance for his help. How is he expecting the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics to influence some representative of media right holders who have fined Cloudflare? Is he assuming that just because all of the listed things are Italian they can just make the fine go away?
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But might does make rights. Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have. If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
race to the bottom logic this kind of logic will always lead to everyone losing in the long run. always. there will always be a more powerful bully that steps up to take over. history is very clear on this one.
Descriptively, powerful people have all the rights and weak people have none. This is what we observe in the world. No amount of philosophical thought outweighs actual observations. For example, Donald Trump has (retroactively!) the right to r**e ch*ldren. We know this because he is not suffering consequences for doing that. But Renee Good did not have a right to free speech. We know this because she was executed because of her speech.
You can prescribe whatever fancy academia language you want, but the facts in the real world don't seem to currently support any of it beyond "might makes rights".
Regardless of whether the law is absurd or not (I honestly have no idea, but we've seen some crazy stuff lately in the EU), its kinda precious that a CEO only complains about it when his company is fined. I'm certain it is also quite reassuring for any paying Cloudflare customer that the company strategy is driven by the CEO Twitter rants; That if by some reason doesn't want to play ball with local laws (as draconian…
So I don't think it's fair to characterize it as he "only complains about it when his company is fined".
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> Western Europe is not an authoritarian dystopia by any measure People are locked up in the Germany and the UK because they criticize the government, its politicians or their policies. I live in Germany.
Who is locked up for criticizing the government in Germany? You can be fined for insulting a government official, and I think it's a bad law and should be retracted, but a) insulting is not the same as criticizing and b) I've never heard of a single person locked up because of it - you'd basically need to deliberately refuse paying the fine for that
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany has an equivalent within the CUII, which is also a censorship branch of the government with no judicial oversight.
There is no such thing as "no judicial oversight" in Germany.