Slashdot Mirror
Geographical Borders on the Web
Boise3981 writes "An article for the New York Times is talking about geolocation software, originally meant to deliver localized ads to web surfers, being used by some countries (and possibly even states or cities) to enforce local decency laws on the internet. In one instance a judge in France decided to fine Yahoo! $13,000 a day for displaying nazi memorabilia on its auction website. The article talks about web sites dumbing down their content to the lowest common denominator, lest they break some obscure decency law in some tiny village somewhere. fun."
This is why I don't post comments much... but yes, I am female. Now go masturbate in your bathroom while I go and have sex with basically anyone I want to.
The other problem, besides official censorship, is the "region coding" of the Web by corporations.
This is particularly thorny for news content. One of the positives of the Web is that you can see what journalists in France, Russia, or Singapore think about issues. Is that content going to be walled-off when Murdoch or CNN own the media everywhere?
Even now CNN's site will ask you whether you want CNN USA or CNN Europe, and save that info in a cookie. I can easily envision a corporation publishing one editorial slant for the North American edition, another for the Europe edition, and still another for the Middle East edition.
Then you'll only be able to see the version that appeals to your prejudices.
These governments should require (via legislation) that users will provide their approximate locale with a HTTP header. Then, the web provider will be able to selectively feed content based on that.
The beauty of this design (user-requirement rather than server) is that the users can just thumb their noses at it and not use it or (better yet) put in bogus data.
I bet it'll come down to this, since ultimately you can't really make demands of foreign companies (France, relative to Yahoo) but you CAN make demands of your own citizens!
"See hot, sexy women...and get fired from (insert your company here)"
People send out millions of illegal spams every day using a variety of technical measures. Most of the spammers don't get caught. Do you think we should repeal the laws against spam?
Yeah, so maybe one German telecommuter working fo r a U.S. company can buy one illegal Nazi uniform and somehow arrange to for delivery. Big fucking deal.
A law doesn't have to be perfectly enforceable in order to affect your life. If it knocks the profitability out of the nexus of illegal activity, and if it stops a lot of individual people from participating in the activity, then the amount of that activity will decrease. Think of it as Le Chatelier's principle applied to social reactions.
Note that I am not expressing an opinion on whether such laws are good in a moral sense. I'm simply rebutting your value-neutral "it's not workable" argument.
As far as governments and jurisdiction -- governments like to extend jurisdiction to every human activity where some people's actions affect other people. This definitely includes the Internet. I expect to see government-issued Internet Licenses in France and Germany by the end of 2005, and in the USA soon after.
To the second approximation most will fail because a simple subpoena/warrant/etc can force any privacy/anonymity company to turn such information over no matter how complex the technology. Even dial-up ISPs or public Internet access points with dynamically assigned IPs (Kinko's, libraries, etc) can usually track dial-ups or at least narrow down the search to specific individuals in situations that demand it. As this geo tracking technology matures it will become easier and easier to identify you so don't be fooled into a false sense of anonymity.
The best way to protect yourself is to use a solution that (1) has effective masking technology, (2) collects no personal information, and (3) has a strong privacy statement and then (4) to use a combination of these.
The best solution possible now is to wear sunglasses, go to Kinko's, pay with cash and fire up any browser pointed to SafeWeb.com via a Triangle Boy relay so no one could track you at all. SafeWeb is free, has no registration or login, records no content and destroys all logs while Kinko's has no way to track you either under such conditions. (Once they get rid of cash it will be very difficult to remain anonymous) There is no information either Kinko's or SafeWeb could turn over even if they wanted to or were legally compelled to do so.
Can anyone think of any better solution? Any privacy/anonymity service with a registration, login, download, etc can be eventually be linked back up and tracked down no matter how complex. Any Internet connection, even dynamically assigned IP networks, could be linked up to your phone number/login/account as well.
Against this, assume that everyone is tracking you online unless they explicitedly say they aren't (even then be suspicious and factor in legal coercion). Even privacy services Anonymizer.com state in their privacy policy that they share your private surfing data with invasive 3rd party advertisers like flycast.
Bottom line: The less anyone knows about you the less able they are to abuse your privacy.
Um, France does have jurisdiction, because Yahoo has an office in France. If Yahoo ignored the French government, the French government could have Yahoo employees in France arrested, their equipment impounded, and other nasty things. So, it's in Yahoo's best interests to comply with the law.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Check out Resonate's Global Dispatch which is a WAN-based traffic management that provides consistent, reliable availability and performance across multiple sites and geographies.
The URL to Global Dispatch would be nice... ;>
The USA (And maybe Canada and Australia) are about the only countries in the world where there has not at some point been some state policy of persicuting, killing or expelling the Jews. There as far as I know are no countries in Europe that have ever had a significant Jewish population that has not at some point expelled or seriously persicuted the Jews. (Note some of these occured in countries before they assumed their modern names or borders)
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I said I would love to see them go away, not I think they should be censored. I admit they have every legal right to do what they do. But Freedom of speach also allows me to say that I think they are positivly vile and I would like nothing better that to see the Neo-Nazi's crawl back under whatever rock they came from and never be seen again. Ok its not going to happen but I can dream.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The point is that since Yahoo had a branch in France the French court could hold the whole company acountable. Sure they could have closed down the whole France operation but was it worth it? Probably not. They would much rather have a .fr and a .de than have nazi memorabilia for sale. (I would assume I don't work for them)
Erlang Developer and podcaster
There has been descrimination here but not on anything close to the scale of what was seen in Europe. Most US universities did accept Jews, just only a few each year. The school I went to Brandeis was founded to be a school that Jews could go to without a quoata. Richard Fienman went to MIT because he could not get into Columbia, same reason.
On the other hand the US is one of very few places in the world where I don't fear a mob comming down the street yelling "Kill the Jews"
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Well if the company had operations in Saudi Arabia the Saudi government could try to fine the company or make their life hard. I don't know of any cases where they have done that.
I don't know that they French should be able to do what they did to yahoo, except to say that Yahoo desided that it was not worth it to fight it. Remeber also that the first amendment does not give you the right to sell stuff on a private companies web site. Yahoo has every right to set guidelines for what they will and will not accept for auction on their web site.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The French court had the ability to regulate Yahoo because Yahoo has a branch that operates in France. If Yahoo was operating only in the USA the French court could not have done much. You will note that the French (or German) courts have not shut down a large number of Neo-Nazi sites running in the USA. (Though I would love to see them go) Its because the people who run them have no pressense in France or Germany that can be made subject to a local court.
I used to work for DHL (The shipping company) they have a big book that comes out every so often that explains what you can and can not import into each country that they deliver too, over 200.
The Upshot of this is that Slashdot only has to follow laws of the USA and Whichever states (Mi, CA and MA maybe others) that they have offices or staff in. A French court would have a very hard time making a ruling stick agenst Slashdot.
Disclaimer IANAL.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The DNS LOC (location) resource record is designed to make this data available. Using the distributed nature of the Domain Name System, it allows individual organizations to manage their own latitude and longitude information (including the use of deliberately imprecise data when needed for security reasons), while making the data available to all who need it without requiring a single point of failure hosting a large database of location information.
RFC1876 has been long-championed by these guys. If you're a DNS admin, please consider joining the movement! It's fun and useful to list your LOC.
Under certain circumstances. But laws prohibiting speech invariably precipitate governments that perpetrate the most appalling acts of physical aggression. Like Nazi Germany, for example, a state that employed the same kind of oleaginous excuses for political suppression -- and that is the correct term -- that you appear to be advocating here.
Playing free and easy with the tradeoff between freedom and security is another common practice of politically oppressive states. The flaw with the argument is that selling freedom in the name of security diminishes minor violence in the short term while ensuring major violence, i.e., war, in the long term. The road to despotism always begins with regulation in the name of security and always ends in war: civil, foreign, or both.
Isolated acts of violence by officially tolerated skinheads are a fair price to pay to avoid millions of deaths in a war against the sort of government we would create if we chose to suppress them. We cannot afford to yield to the temptation to become what we hate.
And please don't think I take "isolated acts of violence" lightly. I've been beaten to within an inch of my life more than once by skinheads. But it is for precisely this reason that I don't want to give the national government, which is far better organized and armed, carte blanche to employ violence to suppress dissent.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Why doesn't anybody ever design software for the Greatest Common Denominator instead of always going for the LCD ?
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
There's no way even half of the western countries could agree on single legislation that would cover the net. Remember US-EU banana wars? Let alone French an German Nazi and hate-speech laws. Or French and US cryptography laws. Or UK cryptography laws, for the matter. All the while leaving aside the rest of the world, which comprises of many more countries than the EU + North America together.
No, internet can't be covered by a single jurisdiction. We'll just have to continue living and understand that local jurisdiction covers whoever has presence or does business in the particular country or state.
And what's the actual problem with that? You probably have grown used to local laws already? Just act as usual. And if You want to drive faster than the speed limit, order illegal materials from abroad (hoping that it'll not be opened in the customs post office), lie to police officers, and whatever, You already know how to circumvent local laws. Internet may make that easier in some cases, but most every real transaction relates to physical goods that have to be transported and thus risk being caught at the border.
Now, I'd like to note that even the western world consists of many countries with different views towards the net. Not all are as close-minded as the French, USA, UK, Germany, and Italy. Checking that list You might also note that they are the bigger ones, ones with bad memories from WWII and WWI, ones that have been world powers at one time or another, and haven't gotten over it yet. Don't expect them to be liberal until 2-3 generations down the road.
[PHONE RINGS] - Sherrif picks it up
- Sheriff's office... Yes... Yes miss Smedley, how are you... What? Oh, the kids are swimming naked in Sawmill Creek besides your house? Fine, I'll go tell them. That's fine. Thank-you.
* * *
(One day later, same setting, same phone, same sheriff, piece of wood has dwindled to a lone splinter).
[PHONE RINGS] - Sherrif picks it up
- Sheriffs's office... Hi, miss Smedl... Hey, hey, cool off!!! What? ... You say that the kids are *STILL* swimming naked in the
creek? But that's impossible: they promised me yesterday that they would
move a quarter of a mile downstreams. ... That's what they did?
Well, you should not see them anymore! What? ... With binoculars
you can see them?
--
Been there, done that.
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Scrap countryless TLD. No more .COMs, no more .ORGs, whatever.
FORCE everybody to register under their country TLD.
Patch NAMEd so it returns AT LEAST the Fully-Qualified-Hostname of the closest router
Extract country(/area) suffix(es).
Voilà!
--
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- B: Or were just stupid.
They didn't want their kids held back, or feel humiliated, so they forced the school to lower their standards. Fehh.--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
IIRC neotrace uses DNS loc entries... (Yes, just as forgeable)
Right now, I'm in London using a UK ISP but if I go to www.google.com, it has a redirector that thinks that I am in Germany and so it force redirects me to www.google.de.
They admit they have problems with their redirection based on IP but you know what their answer is? Turn on cookies and set my preferences to English!
Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the force redirects instead of showing a German web page to people from 212.137.x.x who probably don't speak German?
Given France's desire to speak only French, why are they upset about something that appears in English? :-)
before you mangle it repeatedly in one post.
You've made yourself look ridiculous.
If you are a US citizen with a hokey little homepage and you get a 'cease and desist' letter from Zambia because some content of your homepage violates Zambian law how exactly are the Zambians going to come over and use their guns to enforce their law on you?
You took my statement out of context by ignoring the qualifier: 'courts outside their juristiction'
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Perhaps you should encourge the slashdot folks to add a spellchecker to the posting system.
Until then, lern to deel wit my afful speling.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Geolocation software has always been iffy at best; IP addresses are doled out based on network provider, rather then geo-location. The biggest nightmare of all for someone trying to solve this problem is AOL; who uses internal addresses for clients while all requests go through proxies. The biggest internet provider in the world and there's no way to geo-locate it's users.
Geo-location is nearly useful for technical uses; it's less than useless for the enforcement of juristictional directives.
What I don't understand is why more businesses don't just outright ignore courts that have no juristiction over them issuing rulings that are rediculous on their face for anyone with even a cursury knowledge of how the internet is pieced together. I think bowing to rediculous demands now is just going to result in the demands made becoming more outlandish and the application of these demands to smaller organizations who cannot afford to fight them will become more widespread.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Let's face it, people who say "your opinion doesn't count" are facists and that is exactly what decency laws say.
How we know is more important than what we know.
First of all, IIRC, the ruling was not just against yahoo.fr, which had agreed to stop accepting Nazi paraphernalia, but against yahoo.com, which is US based.
That said, I'd love to see a ruling against a french porn site (and you know there have to be a ton of these) by a Saudi complaintant in a Saudi court. Maybe then Monsieur Gomez would get the point.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
...whether you implement boundry codes through the webbrower, operating system, or even in the computer's hardware (not bloody likely), the code will have to be stored clientside, and if that's the case, it's gonna be suseptable to tampering. If the websever has to check the client to see where it's located, then the system is instantly faulty because it can be tampered with. Please, correct me if I'm wrong here.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
I can understand why people might not want their physical location tracked. But as many have already pointed out, if you don't want your location identified, there are lots of ways to hide it.
Let's not let paranoia blind us to the fact that in some situations this could be useful. Forget about the restaraunt trying to beep your cell-phone. Turn the tables, and put yourself in control. Wouldn't you perhaps like to know if there is any good chinese food nearby? Perhaps you'd like to find your stolen laptop? There are many types of queries I can think of in which location would be a useful attribute.
How would this be done? Dunno. What does Akamai do to locate the nearest caching server? Perhaps that technology would be relevant. (Probably also patented).
There's no reason to fear this type of technology. The only thing to fear would be the *imposition* of this type of technology.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
But I don't get Yahoo doesn't just filter on the .fr domain.
Why is it that every problem requires an incredibly complicated technical solution to overcome? It seems to me that problems that arise through legal silliness can often be solved the same way.
For the French courts to arbitrarily start talking about "localization software" is just a symptom of the over-teching people always seem to fall victim to these days. If they want to bar French citizens from being able to view these materials, and the problem is that they don't know which users are French, then the answer is incredibly simple: add a verification screen to the account creation process, requiring that users of French origin identify themselves, and agree (terms of use) not to attempt to view anything having to do with Nazi origin. Microsoft and Netscape had to do the same thing for years with regard to their browsers and 128-bit encryption, due to the lame US laws regarding encryption export. They simply "asked" downloaders to verify and agree not to do that which they shouldn't do. From a legal perspective, that's all that was required. Surely if French users are required to agree to a similar statement when they first create their accounts, then it is the user, not Yahoo!, who becomes legally responsible at that moment. If the user then deliberately violates Yahoo!'s Terms of Use agreement, Yahoo! can simply claim that they were the ones who were violated. And if catching new users isn't sufficient, cause a one-time agreement screen to pop up whenever any existing user accounts are next accessed as well.
Given the DCMA, I'd say that French users accessing Nazi materials after clicking through such an "access control" page would be violating *US* law - so at that point the French courts could bite Yahoo!'s collective bums. Figuratively speaking.
I think it includes "forcibly shutting up people you disagree with and/or think may be 'dangerous'". That is exactly what you are advocating.
Y'know, there's damned little on the web that's really become essential. Getting information from vendor sites is an INCREDIBLE boon to us all, but that's not likely to be banned or severly regulated any time soon--it's non-dangerous information first, and advertising second.
As for all that other stuff, who really CARES if you can't buy Nazi memorabilia in France from a website? If you really desperately want it, you'll find a way to get it.
I know, I know--Freedom! Freedom of information, freedom from artificial (or even natural) boundaries, freedom from government intervention, etc. But at the end of the day, when the writing is on the wall, how much will this affect your crucial day-to-day activities? (emphasis on crucial)
As a final aside, I'm quite sure that the internet as a whole will survive and thwart any attempts at geolocation, although it may mean a revitalisation of the glory days of Usenet.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Anytime you call an 800 number, your caller ID is available
Well, not really caller ID. It's called ANI, I think. It is unrelated to caller ID. It has to do with billing. The owner of an 800 number has the right to know who is calling since they pay the bill.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
While this might make me worry about goverments shutting down gnutella or freeweb users, the fact is that several ways to change your IP address exist. I could use a proxy server, do some dns spoofing, or just let the anonymizer do the work for me...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Anytime you call an 800 number, your caller ID is available for display. It doesn't matter if you have it blocked or not.
Matt
subscriber id: censorship4 password: sucks
Subscriber ID: censorship4
Password: sucks
[the preview button is my friend... the preview button is my friend...]
It was only one town off for me.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Basically, the book illustrates how those in power can shape the uses of new technologies to meet their needs. In 10 maybe 20 years the rules for using the internet will be much different. And if history repeats istelf those rules won't be in our favor.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
...The government has hardly any control over the internet. This is the worst position for them, so they have to figure out a way to localize parts of the internet so they have better control.
How do they do it? Make it appease corporate america. Local marketing... good idea, right? Good idea for the gov't to get what they want. Marketing seems to drive the country now-a-days. Its sad. I can see the positive of marketing: a great product no one knows about but can all benefit from. But marketing is rarely used this way. Corporate america sees marketing as a quick way to make a buck.
Localization is the quickest way to loose all freedom of the net. Sure it'll kill the nastiness like kiddy pron, but it will kill any idea of stuff like a napster in china idea.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There are some cases where the host of a site must be liable for it's content.
Kinda scary... if someone breaks into my (hypothetical) Windoze box and leaves stuff there, am I liable for it? Guilty until proven innocent... worse, what if they encrypted it? How can someone tell whether I'm hiding it or I just don't know it?
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
I think that most of the world would prefer to pretend that the French don't exist.
WOW!!!
You mean there is disagreement, perhaps even non-conformity on the web! I thought, from reading posts here and in other places, that all forms for disagreement, nonconforminity, honest misunderstanding, and other such evil had all been eradicated from the 'net, and only the trolls remained prevent perfect concessus! :P
Gee, nice to hear, actually....
"ptuogh" is one of several ways to spell the sound of spitting at something in disgust.
Have a nice day.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The list of all the things people are offended by goes on like you would not believe.
But they want all of the benefits of world wide connectivity.
Heck you see it even here on Slash all of the time. Someone takes an unpopular stand, say, heaven forbid pro Microsoft, and watch the flame throwers come out of the wall.
But tolerance is what makes the web. If you cannot be tolerant here, is there any hope out there?
Or can only the party line have access?
The web is segmenting bit and piece as the technology is developed to separate everyone from everyone else based on "the social norm" and the community standard. The final outcome is this, to destroy the web, for the public good, inorder to save what is the best of the web, for the greedy few.
[ptuogh]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Hey, I said that this ethnic group were spawn of the devil, but prove I assaulted members of that ethnic group.
This is not an example of a condition mistreated as an act. Saying something IS an act. Words can do as much harm as physical aggression can.
In theory, laws are created for the benefit of society as a whole or to protect those who can not defend themselves sufficiently against attacks which the majority considers "immoral". Laws are agreements on limiting everyone's freedom in exchange for something else: security and hopefully better "overall throughput" (resulting in a better situation for the individual).
Now that was easy. The hard part is deciding how to limit freedom to gain some advantage (over a no-limits society). Two problems with this are obvious: First, you can hardly predict the results of adding a rule to the system, just like you can't predict the outcome of not adding the rule. Second, it is impossible to get the full picture on how much the sacrifice and the (intended) gain mean to "the public".
Because these two problems can't be solved, there are several approaches to making good decisions nevertheless. Some say, you can't predict anything and no one knows if it's even worth it, so don't bother and let evolution have her way. They choose anarchy. Then there are others who take the opposite approach. They establish morals, try to make educated guesses about near future developments and base the rules on this "best effort" information. These tend to overregulate sooner or later. But there really is no way to rationally decide which approach is best and thus in the end *evolution has her way* on this higher abstraction level.
The problem with banning Nazi sites is that the outcome of such laws are extremely hard to predict. Is the effect that Nazi propaganda has on uneducated or unexperienced people (kids come to mind) more or less important than the effect of making Nazi ideology more interesting (or even believable) by pushing it underground? People naturally disagree on this topic and depending on your historical background you fear one effect more than the other.
I don't advocate political suppression. You say that selling freedom in the name of security invariably leads to major violence in the long term. I doubt that it's the fact of freedom being limited which leads to aggression. It's lost balance which leads to aggression. And that is lost balance either in the freedom-security tradeoff or in some other way. The task is to keep the balance. While I do acknowledge that once you start limiting freedom it's easy to leave the path of balance in the direction of overregulation, I think that on the other hand you have already left the path of balance in the direction of underregulation if you don't make any freedom-security tradeoff at all.
There is a difference between banning Nazi memorabilia and banning web sites which openly demand aggression against individuals or groups.
Your distrust against national government is well respected, but I don't trust society in its current state much more. After all, it could not avoid being governed. Balance is not easy to keep and it's a process, not a state.
I told it it was wrong. Guess I was in a "fight the Man" mood this afternoon.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Damn, it go me DEAD ON too.
Of course, I'm coming from a huge section of IPs associated with a university, so I bet that makes it easier.
If it works like Neo Trace (shows a map of server locations), it pretty much just does a whois on your domain and says "hey, this is in france". So of course it could be easily faked. Do they have a better way?
Oddly enough, that kind of thing is also happening at my University.
The students of CompSys Engineering have seen several of their classes changed into easier ones. F'rinstance, they no longer take Computing Algorythms (sp?), or Differential Equations. Instead, they take such courses as Culture in Northern Mexico (OK, so that's where we live) and Web Design (final proyect: do your own web page).
Also, they stopped taking Assembler and started taking Windows NT. Oh, and they replaced Lineal Algebra with Ethics in the Workplace. I took that class, and it was basically "don't do bad things to your employers or else you could get caught and get fired and GO TO HELL AND MEET SATAN!!!". Or close enough.
The result? They breeze through school, graduate, and get their a$$e$ kicked HARD when they join the real world.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
The article talks about web sites dumbing down their content to the lowest common denominator, lest they break some obscure decency law in some tiny village somewhere. I havent read the article yet (and I'm not planning on registering to the NY Times, thank you), but...
I recall something I read once on Mad Magazine: the schools are lowering their education standards in order to help the underachievers, and thus turning whole generations into underachievers.
Give a troll a comment, and he'll flame and bitch for a day. Give a troll a dumbed-down Internet, and he'll flame and bitch for life.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Bush's take on this is melting his face?
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
And it would, but do you think that the Moral Guardians Of The Universe(tm) will stop there? Pretty soon every web user will have a code in their browser indentifying their country, with strong crypto to back it up. And anyone without this code would be denied access by default. DMCA-like laws would make reverse-engineering the browser illegal. Come up with a way around this, and the browser makers will just one-up you. It's an impossible-to-win battle, unless it never starts (ie: if this geolocation never becomes widespread).
- The good ol' government passes a law, basically enforcing geolocation as a means to uphold local "obscenity" standards.
- The website hosters try this new-fangled software, find out that it doesn't work worth a <censored in this geographic area>, and give up.
- But the stupid law lives on, forcing webmasters to meet the most conservitive standards possible.
- As a result, everything that might be obscene is pulled, for fear that someone in a conservitive town might access it.
- The web solidifies into a ball of solid <censored in this geographic area>.
Almost anything thought-provoking, interesting, or insightful will be offensive to someone. What remains after all of that is thrown out is utter crap and fluff.Far be it from me to try to impose any sort of logic on a Your Rights Online story, but the ability to deliver geographically specific content frees sites from having to meet any common denominator. It's providing the same content to everyone that creates the need to make that material acceptable everywhere.
Incidentally, the use of the term "dumbing down" to mean "recognizing the perspectives of people other than doctrinaire Slashbots" is a telling bit of snobbery. Also incidentally, if anything the article states that sites are not changing anything in response to laws in other jurisdictions.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Just pray that CmdrTaco or Hemos don't get wind of this idea. Pray, because that's all that you can do.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
(Anti-Linus, Anti-RMS, ASCII art, goatse, L337 5P34K, personal attacks, pr0n links, repetitive posts [same post made over a range of time, be it short or long; e.g., Bob Abooey], and stupidity in action are all examples of "disgusting trolls")
P.S.: To those moderators stabbing for the moderation box looking for "Offtopic", go use your moderation points elsewhere. Slashdot itself is always the topic, especially when the principles of a story can be applied to improve the site. Go find those trolls and moderate them down. Or better yet, find an insightful or interesting post, and moderate it up.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
They're not. But most people are scared by such things and will take down their site if threatened. Who wants to actually read laws when a big scarw lawyer/company/country tells you what to do? Not most people...
My other car is first.
I dont know what's scarier looking, that stamp with Hitlers profile on it, or that Dr. Cerf guy in the picture right above it... yikes!
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
How are they gonna track who owns the domain anyway? It's not like they could type
"whois domainname.com" anyway
This stuff claims to soon be able to get down to the zip code. AOL is cooperating.
I know it's not about Nazis, but about whether a country should block access to certain materials based on their laws. However, it's nonsensical for the same reason. If you try to shelter someone from a hot topic through ignorance, you only end up hurting those you try to protect. If we talked to our kids more about adult stuff on the web, they'd be more protected from it.
Exactly. The censorship approach is basically the cultural equivalent of "security through obscurity." Preventing the next Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot isn't just a matter of pointing to the genocides they carried out once they were given power, because that doesn't define them early enough in their development to stop them from doing harm. By the time you can say "Look, he's rounding up people and sending them to death camps, he's another Hitler!", it's too late. You need to be able to point to the similarity of their underlying ideas, early on. You need to be able to say, "Look, he's saying just what Hitler said in 'Mein Kampf.'" How are you supposed to be able to do that, when you or the rest of the population aren't familiar with it?
"With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow", that's the phrase, right? These writings should have everyone's eyes on them, for precisely that reason.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
That way, people in France couldn't look at the Nazi material.
What do they even care anyways? WW2 is over!
It will keep corporations away from 'serious' websites.
Instead of people who are whoring their sites to the first corporation who comes along with a nice big check, individuals will start to think a little bit before they hand over their content to a big site network like IGN or *gasp* V.A. Linux.
Despite the fact that not all of these networks are evil, I would rather see people keep their sites to themselves and free of corporate content and control. If there are fewer Excite's and Go Networks out there, it can only benefit the rest of us.
http://www.furinkan.net - Never had ads, never will.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I first saw this site about a year ago, and at that time gave it my address and geographic location to put into its database, thinking, "hey, this is kinda nifty."
This afternoon, it took one look at my current IP (probably not the same one I gave it last time, but it shouldn't be vastly different), and immediately gave me three incorrect guesses as to where I'm physically located. None was within 300 miles, but they were all within the continental United States, so I guess the site should get some credit.
Anyone else note that ./ has been ./ed today?
Help find a cure for Gidget.
One point, what if I run from a proxy in another country? That would defeat this software.
Use the KISS method, it works!
Plug for my website:
www.techsplanet.com/wlan.htm
wLAN Products and more!
If you don't like what's in Hustler, don't buy one. I guess France doesn't subscribe to the theory of Freedom of Speech.
You can tell a college man, but you can't tell him much.
Thanks Bone-O-Rama!
Yum
Hey baby... come here often?
Yum
Obscene phone calls are illegal, but you can ANSWER a call any way you like. Transmitting an obscene or offensive reply over a phone line to someone who has called YOU has never been a crime. As in, "No thanks, I don't need another credit card, but I would really like you to blow me." So how does this change when the two people at the ends of the connection put computers between them and the line? I don't think it does.
Would there be a rationale for censorship if the legal system regarded the Internet as a vast network of wires connecting pairs of endpoints, which it is, rather than as a vast, open landscape littered with giant billboards, which it isn't?
On the other hand, what would have happened if, say 20 years ago, a few bored people decided to start answering their home phones with lewd sexual dialog, or by explaining how to make nitroglycerine. Eventually kids would have learned about these numbers and started called them from school. I wonder if the phone companies would then have been sued for failing to screen the content of those calls, and if we would now have things like V-chips built into our phones?
My understanding of the situation was that the material in question was not available on the French site but on the U.S. site. If I am mistaken, someone please correct me. Assuming I'm right, Yahoo should have told France where to shove their court order. If France doesn't want Nazi items (or any other things) imported into France, then that's a problem for their customs inspectors, not sites in other countries. What I'm waiting for is for some country with an extradition treaty with the U.S. to demand that a U.S. citizen be extradited for doing something on the Net that is legal here but illegal in the other nation. That's when things will get interesting.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
You are exactly right, but good luck convincing the masses. A few examples: We don't want our kids having sex, so we won't teach sex education classes. So instead of getting real answers, our kids get often-incorrect information passed to them from other kids. We don't want our kids looking at porn, so we censor it as much as we can, making it even more attractive to them. We don't want our kids drinking, so instead of demystifying what alcohol is, what it tastes like, and what effects it has, we try to put it out of reach to the point that kids want it even more. Terrorists do what they do to destroy our way of life, to make us prisoners in our own cities. We claim that we will never give in to them. We then use draconian measures to try to protect ourselves against the perceived threat, thereby destroying our way of life and making us prisoners in our own cities. As I said, you are exactly right. And when the human race has evolved to the point that logic makes sense, you might have a shot at convincing people that you are right. The only problem is, the whole process of natural selection has been undermined by our technological society. Since stupid people have just as much of an opportunity to breed these days, how will we continue to evolve and get smarter?
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Infomation may want to be free, but there's a whole lotta people who think they know what's best for it.
Cue The Sun...
Nonsense. We must insist that a body of laws merit respect before we respect it. Laws that conflict with the First Amendment are not worthy.
As for Taiwan flouting our IP law, that situation has existed since long before the internet. All the net adds is a new way to place the orders you could have placed by snail mail or phone years ago.
...except under subpoena.
Of course, if you're wrong, and there are in fact logs, they would probably surface, should you utter sufficiently noxious bytes over your net connection.
This isn't a contradiction of anything, it's just for the sake of getting it off my brain and onto yours. But that's your fault, as you shall see:
Say a pornographer places a billboard of a beautiful naked woman near the border between his agnostic nation with its liberal sex and speech laws, and a fanatically religious one with censorious blue laws and no freedom of speech. But he covers it up during the day and uncovers it only on cloudy, moonless nights.
Then say a person from the tyrannical nation starts showing up at the border on those nights with a flashlight and a pair of binoculars.
Who's breaking the law, here?
The pornographer has done nothing to cause the image to be transmitted across the border other than to place it where the viewer can, through his own actions and emissions across the border, cause the image to be reflected to him.
This is how internet works. All connections are client-server. Nothing gets done until the server receives that first SYN packet is sent by the client. After that, it can devolve to many kinds of virtual protocols, but that first connection has to be initiated by the client host.
Within a nation, laws that say things like "making such-and-such material available for viewing" would be relevant. But across international boundaries, you'd have to have it written into a treaty or it wouldn't mean a damned thing.
--Blair
"If the French banned websites about every culture that ever beat them up, all they'd be left with is www.babar.com..."
- There will always be governments and other groups who have..er..problems with content on the net.
- Most of the world does not have a robust infrastructure for data transmission, so they know the content is not coming from home. For example, in China, less than ten percent of the population is hooked up to a phone line.
- The United States virtually is the Internet. Almost all web content originates from the US, and further, more than 98% of the world's bandwitdh is located in the US. Everyone else is light-years behind, and falling further behind as telecoms cram more fiber and copper, install more D-SLAMs...hell, they just added 2 new area codes to the metro area I live in.
Therefore, the best way to get something you don't care for off of the net is to shut down the American who posted it.The EU cannot afford to cut the trans-Atlantic cable. But it, and everyone else, will try to remove as much from the net as they can get away with. Don't be surprised if the UN gets involved with this.
(There is, in fact, a series of books by Tad Williams (Otherland), in which the UN has authority over the global data network.)
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. - Andre Gide
The end user is really to blame for violating laws of their country. Not to the provider if the provider is external to the countries bounderies.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Then say a person from the tyrannical nation starts showing up at the border on those nights with a flashlight and a pair of binoculars.
Who's breaking the law, here?"
If you're trolling, then good job. If you're being serious, your analogy is horribly flawed for the following reason
The Yahoo site involved in the lawsuit with the French government was not www.yahoo.com, it was www.yahoo.fr, The french language version of the portal. Yahoo operates offices in France and advertises the site in the French media. A more accurate version of your analogy would be if the pornographer placed the billboard in plain view, within the boarder of the conservative, tyrranical nation. If this were the case, would you still blame the persons who looked at the billboard as they were driving to work every morning?
"This is how internet works. All connections are client-server. Nothing gets done until the server receives that first SYN packet is sent by the client. After that, it can devolve to many kinds of virtual protocols, but that first connection has to be initiated by the client host."
While that may be true, Yahoo.fr advertises their site on other French sites, and on French television and print media. They are not only making the material available, but doing everything in their power to encourage people to view it.
Here in the USia, if I were to host kiddie porn on my FTP site and proceed to blame on those who downloaded my images, I would wind up in a federal jail very quickly.
There are some cases where the host of a site must be liable for it's content.
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
... shouldn't the French government be fining the ISPs in France which deliver this content to the French citizens? I understand that they don't want anyone to even link to these sites (does this sound like the RIAA and decss?) but France COULD proactively do something about this...
Why don't they force their ISPs to block the IP addresses of servers which contain "offensive" material? Whenever anyone finds anything, they could simply tell the gov't, which could keep a list of censored IP addresses. The ISPs could use this "centralized" list of offensive IP addresses and not allow traffic from them. "BUT...", I hear you cry, there are thousands of ways to use proxies to get at the material.... So what? If France finds 'em, block the proxies too...
If you can call out of France to a POP in some other country, France *could* block those phone numbers... And, yes, I know there are "phone" proxies too... Block them (and see the revolt from the French who use the proxies every day for cheap France -> US phone calls).
This, IMHO, will become the only real way to censor the 'net whilst allowing free speech. You CAN'T know where your viewer is (because of proxies). You CAN know where the traffic is coming from (and, if somehow it comes "anonymously" (proxies) or "spoofed", you block it.)
The French could take proactive steps to remedy this problem. They won't be able to stop people from publishing offensive or illegal web pages, but, as they find the holes, they can patch them.
(So what if it's expensive - so what if it ruins their economy because no one can call into or out of France anymore and there is a Frenchnet and an entirely separate Internet? - it's their problem. And, if there are Frenchmen or women reading this - yes, it's your problem. If you don't like it change your government, but you can't tell the rest of the world what to do.)
Before you all cry "censorship" at ME... I'm all for free speech. I personally believe that anyone should be able to publish anything they want. If you publish something that is illegal in the country in which you publish it, you'll be shut down. I have no problem with that either. If the French don't want certain material to reach their citizens, I think this is really the only way to do it. I don't approve, but I'm just saying it is the French government's job, NOT Yahoo's.
At any rate, the "Internet" will not bow to France's demands... I don't think we have anything to fear.
Oh, darn.... I just know someone is going to reply "What about accessing the Internet via satellite?"
Matt2413 wrote, "Anytime you call an 800 number, your caller ID is available for display."
True, but utterly irrelevant. We're discussing geographically locating an Internet connection, based on stuff like your IP address. When dialed in through an 800 number, your caller ID may be logged by the ISP, but it's not visible to other servers on the Web.
This will never be workable.
First, the use of VPNs and VLANs makes it just about impossible to find people. I am currently connected to my employer's network, behind their firewall, despite being over an hour drive away at my home. I could just as easily be across the country. You have no way of telling where my notebook computer is connected. Until IPv6 is deployed, this will only get more common, as will use of NAT (network address translation) and PAT (port address translation), both of which make it impossible to locate a system by IP address.
Secondly, proxy servers make it easy to dodge geographical constraints, for those who wish to do so.
Third, ISPs often offer 800 numbers in addition to the local POPs. How is anyone supposed to know where you are when you're dialed up through an 800 number?
A local government does not (and should not) have jurisdiction over the Internet any more than it has jurisdiction over satellite television and radio broadcasts from neighboring towns or countries.
..that if I am using a proxy server, this software really does nothing.
That was was the point that Yahoo was trying to make in a French court. That is, there is really no way for them to tell where a person is sitting. The person could be routed through servers in Iraq. But the French decided that it didn't matter
Therefore, the argument that this software applies to Yahoo is invalid.
Lowest Common Denominator - the least number which works as a denominator for both fractions. In the case of 1/100 and 1/4, 100 is the lowest common denominator.
Least Common Multiple - the least number that can be evenly divided into both fractions. In the case of 1/100 and 1/4, 4 is the least common multiple.
So, the Lowest Common Denominator is at the very least, the highest of all numbers present. Thus, in order to cater to the LCD, you should go for the most educated and sophisticated in the audience.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Get this - there were, and are, Nazis.
No amount of regulation saying, "Hey, you can't look at pictures of Nazi stuff!" is going to change that. You cannot hide something and think that nobody will find out about it or talk about it. It is only through education and discussion that we can deal with things like the Holocaust and the rebirth of Naziesque movements. If you never talk to your kids about Nazis, and your school never talks about Nazis, and and your country never talks about Nazis, guess who will talk to your kids about Nazis? That's right, Nazis. I'm not sure they'd have what we'd call "a historically accurate portrayal of events", either. Banning the discussion of something like this is exactly what Nazi recruiters want - people who have never discussed the issue, and have never thought critically about Nazis.
I know it's not about Nazis, but about whether a country should block access to certain materials based on their laws. However, it's nonsensical for the same reason. If you try to shelter someone from a hot topic through ignorance, you only end up hurting those you try to protect. If we talked to our kids more about adult stuff on the web, they'd be more protected from it. If we talked to our friends about cults, we'd be more protected from them. You can't block someone from researching a topic. If they really want to find out about it, they will. When they go to find out about it, the only ones freely giving the information will be the exact same people you're trying to banish.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I don't get this modding thang...
Clearly, the Internet does not belong to a single country, nor does it exist in some kind of spooky metaphysical parallel dimension. Legislation needs to mature in their understanding of technology and take the drama out of the reasoning. The Internet is a part of the infrastructure of the world, and should be dealt with as such.
The company or agency who builds a road is not held responsible when criminals choose that road when escaping from a bank robbery, neither should server maintainers and other service providers be prosecuted for how their services are used.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
This is a very complex issue. First of all you get into the topic of a Country's rules and enforcement on the web. That in itself is very complex. I think each site should comply with that of the country's rules if it has any specific business in that country. For example: Some site breaks some obscure decency law in some tiny village somewhere in a particular country. Most likely the country will take the side of that village for breaking a law that is even the most obscure. That certin country's government will take the side of the village because they want the support of the people. This is very important in Europe especially. Now the government takes the side of the village and complains to the site. This gets the site in hot water. If nothing happens there, then the country's government complains to the government of where the site is based in(most likely the U.S.) Thus all this complainig causes a international scandal that may get everyone involved in hot water.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
This does raise all kinds of issues about doing business on the web. Just because my company is located somewhere no longer restricts my customer base to nearby regions, or even customers who speak the same language. How will these issues be addressed in the future? I can only hope that it doesn't get to the point where some kind of international board determines what kind of data goes where. However, with anonymous proxy servers and such, I suppose that this would be very hard to implement. The lawyers must really be scratching their heads over this one. ;-)
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.