Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#421

Post by microtonal »

carlosjobim wrote: post #269
sp527 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ethically coherent with American values I'm a lifelong US citizen and burst out laughing at this. What values? What coherence? Do you mean the NSA man-in-the-middleing all that traffic and leaving a backdoor for Mossad? Imagine the most despicable possible invasion of privacy and the most reprehensible shadow oppression and manipulation of an uneducated populace you can conjure up. Now imagine something way worse t…

Freedom of speech. I didn't expect to have to spell it out.

You mean the freedom of speech that gets you shot when you protest the gestapo?

Where critical late night shows get cancelled because a small group of Trump-aligned people control most media?

Seriously, the world is looking in amazement how all the talk about free speech and democracy was purely performative.

The US becoming Hungary (or maybe Russia).

https://rsf.org/en/index

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#422

Post by jeroenhd »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #381

Personally I think the EU goes too far when I'm not even allowed to access books on the internet where the author died more than 100 years ago. So I like it xD

The Americans are just as bad when it comes to intellectual property (70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication). By American copyright standards, you can read The Silmarillion for free around 2072.

The difference in approach (American companies suing and financially ruining a select few downloaders versus European lobbyists going attempting to block the distribution points) makes piracy slightly less convenient in Europe but the basis for the copyright problem was turned into a global problem at the Berne Convention.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#423

Post by josefrichter »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #370
josefrichter wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the EU and haven’t encountered any of these, except the copyright restrictions - which is really a different matter.

if you are in Germany, try opening ria.ru. It’s not like we are deprived of something worthy - it is Russian propaganda after all, but it tells enough about freedom of speech.

I'm in Czechia, next to Germany. Just opened Ria Novosti and Russia Today in two other tabs, nothing blocked here.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#424

Post by jeroenhd »

general1465 wrote: post #35
walthamstow wrote: post #22

So it'll have porn?

I wonder if American citizens from states which requires age verification to access porn (25 US states today) will be fine with it or these states will start demanding ID to access freedom.gov. It would be delicious irony.

Previous propaganda channels from the government couldn't legally be broadcast within the US itself, so it's possible they'll try to pull the same thing here.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#425

Post by RupertSalt »

jeroenhd wrote: post #422
randomNumber7 wrote: post #381

Personally I think the EU goes too far when I'm not even allowed to access books on the internet where the author died more than 100 years ago. So I like it xD

The Americans are just as bad when it comes to intellectual property (70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication). By American copyright standards, you can read The Silmarillion for free around 2072. The difference in approach (American companies suing and financially ruining a select few downloaders versus European lobbyists going attempting to block the distribution points) makes piracy sl…

I can read that for free, and even hang on to it for a couple of weeks, as soon as the library opens today.

Actually I don't need to wait, because it's available immediately over the Internet in eBook format, with my library card.

There are also CDs, DVDs, and on-demand audio/video available with a library card.

I visited a library across town, and many sections were given over to video games for various popular console systems.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#426

Post by ascorbic »

reactordev wrote: post #40
schoen wrote: post #38

I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agen…

It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it. Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.

Most of the replies to this seem to think it's referring to some kind of secret government datacenter. It's us-east-1, and every other cloud provider's US East and GOV zones, which are all in NVA

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#427

Post by stein1946 »

ceteia wrote: post #276
NuclearPM wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to information is dangerous when the information is controlled propaganda.

Would educating people instead and giving them more options for information, not be better than banning access to information?

What if educating people takes decades and lies can be prompted in a few minutes?

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#428

Post by sunaookami »

anthk wrote: post #417
drnick1 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn (now requires age verification), online libraries, movies, some news websites, sports (because of obscure copyright laws) and countless other things.

Spaniard here. No, we don't. Every country has different laws. The European Union share some laws but not these.

LaLiga?

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#429

Post by jeroenhd »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #370
josefrichter wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the EU and haven’t encountered any of these, except the copyright restrictions - which is really a different matter.

if you are in Germany, try opening ria.ru. It’s not like we are deprived of something worthy - it is Russian propaganda after all, but it tells enough about freedom of speech.

With the German border maybe 10 minutes to the east of me, I can open that website just fine. Seems like an exclusively German problem, not a European one.

I don't think foreign propaganda was ever exempt from freedom of speech here in Europe (except the countries and regimes which lacked free speech, of course), it just wasn't much of a problem before the internet made opinions so easy to broadcast.

Re: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

#430

Post by Manuel_D »

mesk wrote: post #410
Manuel_D wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has the US ever banned students from reading certain books or research papers? What research papers can I not legally read? The domains of shadow libraries are banned for copyright infringement, you can still read the books legally by purchasing a copy.

Here you can find short sample of those `dangerous` books: https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/ And https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/cdc-orders-retracti... And, I know those shadow libraries are banned because of copyright, but that's just an excuse. If someone pushes such a broad understanding of Freedom as US does, than copyright should maybe not be the one exception that's ok. People should have freedom…

Those book "bans" are just librarians' decision on what to use finite shelf space to stock. Students are 100% free to bring any of the "banned" books to school and read them. By this logic, when a librarian changes out an older set of YA novels with a newer set, those older novels are being "banned". So to answer your question:

> Cool, so the US students will be able to read school banned books ?

The answer is "whenever they want."

Furthermore, the CDC's calls for retraction don't prohibit anyone from reading the retracted papers.

Post reply on HN