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

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

#941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling of a certain type is illegal in India but the workaround has been to place ads from sites based outside of India. How would you solve this.

Make gambling legal and regulated? Or tell citizens they are on their own and may be violating the law if they gamble, then look the other way and occasionally promote stories about citizens losing their money to illegal gambling. US citizens living in states without legal gambling can often drive across state lines or to the nearest Native American reservation to gamble. There’s no way of preventing this nor does th…

Why make gambling legal just to satisfy people who are circumventing the laws? That too by basing themselves outside of the country, as opposed to state lines.

Indian society is unconcerned, if not outright supportive of this law.

Your counterpoint zeroes in on the specific example, but in addressing it avoids the spirit of the issue.

People want certain laws and restrictions. You are arguing that if people choose to circumvent those laws, tough beans.

Heck, you could just have nations destabilize neighbors by this lassiez faire approach.

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

#942
post #434

It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.

> [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US I don't think the placement of the US on the World Press Freedom Index is necessarily informative of whether there's censorship in the EU. I'd expect they both rank higher than North Korea, but that doesn't tell us much either.

The organization that publishes the WPFI also considers online harassment a major threat to press freedom and scores accordingly.

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

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a leftist government in the US. You seem a bit lost.

> There has never been a leftist government in the US. You seem a bit lost. I'll give you three examples of the dems sliding left. Biden did make sure all the borders were wide open and american forklifts, operated by americans, have been used to facilitate the mass migration of millions and millions of non-US citizens into the US. Under the same government there have been politicians passing laws so that there'd be…

> I'm not sure who is lost here.

Anyone who looks at the other side and says "leftist" or "rightist."

> Democrats having no issues with a politician lecturing them as to how they should look at the life of the prophet of islam makes me think something serious is going on.

Okay. But if he's Muslim, is that bad?

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

#944
post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original OP clearly said "Europe", not the EU. As for the DSA censorship, I don't think you've read it. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/foreign-cen...

> Original OP clearly said "Europe", not the EU. But the Digital Services Act is EU-specific? Macron's statement referenced the DSA specifically, so I don't know what the UK has to do with that. > As for the DSA censorship, I don't think you've read it. I have. In fact, it seems you didn't read the links I shared, given that the second reference specifically addresses the – quite frankly – bullshit House Judiciary Co…

It cites specific sections of the DSA. Your previous claim was that DSA did not have hate speech provisions. Are you claiming DSA Article 22 does not exist, for example?

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

#945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make gambling legal and regulated? Or tell citizens they are on their own and may be violating the law if they gamble, then look the other way and occasionally promote stories about citizens losing their money to illegal gambling. US citizens living in states without legal gambling can often drive across state lines or to the nearest Native American reservation to gamble. There’s no way of preventing this nor does th…

Why make gambling legal just to satisfy people who are circumventing the laws? That too by basing themselves outside of the country, as opposed to state lines. Indian society is unconcerned, if not outright supportive of this law. Your counterpoint zeroes in on the specific example, but in addressing it avoids the spirit of the issue. People want certain laws and restrictions. You are arguing that if people choose to…

Because what you’re asking for is untenable in a world of billions of people scattered across countless nations, at least without cutting off the internet outside your borders entirely like North Korea. And trying to force the issue domestically just results in oppression and restriction of human rights. The global digital world is a formless, borderless space; this “freedom VPN” thing, Tor, I2P, v2ray, satellite internet, etc, you will simply never be able to fill all the gaps. Those who want to will get around it.

Even China, who has probably the most sophisticated information controls in the world, can’t prevent leaks through the Great Firewall. They just rely on it being “good enough” to restrain the general public.

Put another way, your country can make all the laws it wants, but it can’t change the laws of another country or force them to change how their network behaves, at least not without a fight. And in a world of billions of people, the global network will always be doing something that you don’t approve of, somewhere!

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

#946
post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American but I similarly don't care for the meek subservience to the government which characterizes European attitude on this. Human dignity is not foreign to me at all, I just don't believe a life where the state protects your feelings from words, and that dictates what you may and may not talk about is not a dignified one.

It is often easy to assume this position if you are majority, white, employed, etc. Your argument is similar to saying that we shouldn't have rules when driving cars. "Why life cannot be dignified if I have to observe stop signs." In every are of life there are balances to be struck. I am sure your country has rules for slandering individuals (because most have). What's the difference to also having rules against sla…

> It is often easy to assume this position if you are majority, white, employed, etc.

What is your evidence to that claim?

I think it is actually not easy to assume that position, as evidenced by vast numbers of Europeans who do not assume that position. I think that it is in fact far easier (as a majority, white, employed, etc.), to go through life believing your government will solve everything and protect your feelings from being hurt by hearing what other people think. I just think it is an undignified existence.

> Your argument is similar to saying that we shouldn't have rules when driving cars. "Why life cannot be dignified if I have to observe stop signs."

I can see how bewildering this is for you, but my "argument" is also quite different in important ways.

> In every are of life there are balances to be struck. I am sure your country has rules for slandering individuals (because most have).

Adjudicating disputes between private parties is clearly one of the real roles of government.

> What's the difference to also having rules against slandering entire people?

I'm not sure if you are being rhetorical and actually want me to list the differences because you are unaware of them? Civil actions brought by private parties are different from government censorship and criminalization of speech. And I can be sued in civil court for what I say, I never said or even hinted that this should be disallowed that seems to be a strawman you have made up.

I don't think it should be easy to be found liable for damage if you tell the truth or give your opinion though.

What about you? Do you think calling AfD voters in general racists or extremists or selfish or xenophobic should be censored and criminalized by your government?

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

#947
post #920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could German history have taught you anything about human dignity? You went from a military dictatorship to an unstable republic to a fascist state, then you split into military occupation zones, and then one of your military occupation zones annexed the other, the militaries left but you kept the laws, and now you arrest people for saying "from the river to the sea". Using your German-ness to talk to anyone else…

A little less hyperbole would maybe help your arguments, but trying to argue that one of the most liberal democracies in the world is comparable to one of the most repressive regimes is hurting your argument ( https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/liberal-democracy-index ). Nobody is perfect, but Germans have learned a lot in the last century and a half. One of the things is that Freedom of Speech doesn't deserve the pe…

This is a textbook case of German Schuldstolz - you feel having been militaristic and having mass human right abuses entitles you to lecture others.

All you learned in the last centuries and a half is that you dont have the logistics to fight massive wars. You did not abandon anything due to your own enlightenment, you abandoned it because of massive foreign military interventions, where every single one of your newspaper, radio and television stations were replaced by your military occupiers.

The worst part about your Schuldstolz is that... the regime who did the most to end yours was even less moral and killed even more people than your own. Meaning you aren't even the best at being awful.

So no, I do not care what you have to see about freedom "as a German". You were militarily, ideologically and mentally conquered. Lecturing Anglos is this is just reflecing back our own beliefs but distorted with a German mindset that has no history or tradition of freedom of speech.

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

#948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Google it. It's been reported on various news sites. eg: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irishman-arrested-for-... Maybe it's not on The Guardian or the BBC but it obviously doesn't fit their bias so you may have to accept other sources.

What this one? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-62352502

Haha, any comments on that? The police didn't even apologize or admit a mistake, they believed they were doing the right thing and just made a waffle statement about "reflects need in our local communities."

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

#949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy. Examples of sites I can't access without VPN: torrent sites (including legal uses), betfair.com (which I use as a more accurate political predictor than polls), and various non-EU sites which block access because they've decided it's easier than complying with extra-territorial requirements imposed by the EU (this one isn't direct EU censorship, but it amounts to the same thing indirectly. Sometimes I set my V…

This is a definition of censorship that seems to equate restrictions to any website or data stream as freedom, not whether the content of the site breaks local laws. This is a bit extreme, since most countries have laws against gambling, and if you could get around it by just setting up servers abroad, what value are local laws?

>what value are local laws

local laws are local and not global. otherwise we could start obeying Iran's or North Korea's laws just to be safe of not breaching any local laws.

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

#950

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What content are you missing? Off the top of my head, the type of content most likely to ve missing in Europe would be: - geofenced media - commercial sites intentionally removing eu access because of gdpr. That's it. Those are the only cases where I could not access sites from tbe EU. At least the ones I encountered. And do notice, both of them are not filtered by the EU or anything like this. They are enforced at t…

Germany has an "Index" of banned media. Mostly nazi content, so if you're looking for that, freedom.org will be _right_ place for that.

Ah yes, the nazis. So yeah, censorship is great then because nazis. Is HN becoming reddit?
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