EU Speaks Out Against US Censorship

bs0d3 writes "The EU Parliament has adopted, 'by a large majority,' a statement warning the US to refrain 'from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names' due to the 'need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communications.' This resolution highlights both the practices prescribed in SOPA/PIPA... but also the actions of Homeland Security and ICE in seizing domain names. By adopting a resolution against domains seizures the European Parliament recognizes the dangerous precedent the pending SOPA legislation would set, and it wouldn't be a surprise if more foreign criticism follows. No country should have the ability to simply take over international domain names, and surely the US would feel the same if this plan was put in motion by a foreign country. Or as some 60 press freedom and human rights advocate groups put it in their letter to the US representatives: 'This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.'"

Comments

Hypocrites!

[F-3582]

At the same time they release a directive that includes optional web censoring. For the sake of our children, of course!

Re:Hypocrites!

[Spad]

I believe you're referring to section 47, which as you point out is entirely optional for member states and says things such as:

Mechanisms may also be put in place to block access from the Union's territory to internet pages identified as containing or disseminating child pornography. The measures undertaken by Member States in accordance with this Directive in order to remove or, where appropriate, block websites containing child pornography could be based on various types of public action, such as legislative, non-legislative, judicial or other.

Emphasis mine.

Whichever basis for action or method is chosen, Member States should ensure that it provides an adequate level of legal certainty and predictability to users and service providers.

Any such developments must take account of the rights of the end users and comply with existing legal and judicial procedures and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

It's not quite the same thing is what SOPA is proposing to do now, is it.

Re:Hypocrites!

[shutdown -p now]

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

--Mein kampf, Adolf Hitler.

It's a fake.

As a US Citizen,

[MSesow]

I wrote my senators and representative, and told them I oppose SOPA and PIPA. It may not be much, but it is worth it and it is ridiculously easy now that they have websites that accept messages.

Have you voiced your opinion, other than on some website that the policy makes never see?

Re:As a US Citizen,

[savanik]

I wrote my senators and representative, and told them I oppose SOPA and PIPA. It may not be much, but it is worth it and it is ridiculously easy now that they have websites that accept messages.

Have you voiced your opinion, other than on some website that the policy makes never see?

You mean like their website that accepts messages, which they never read? No, not really. That would require effort.

I swear, I've sent one of my state senators an email saying how opposed I was to a bill and I got a form letter back saying, 'Thank you, I agree that that this issue is of vital national importance and will do everything in my power to see this legislation passed.'

They don't read those. Nobody in the senate actually reads their email. Go out and vote for third party candidates. They pay attention to polls.

Censorship

[mr100percent]

It was only a few years ago that the US was complaining that the Voice of America broadcasts were banned via jamming in Cuba and Ethiopia, let alone the many years of jamming under the Iron Curtain. The EU is aware of the slippery slope, once you start blocking copyright stuff then they'll move on to politically undesirable stuff. The Bush administration actively worked to block Al Jazeera, for example.

Re:US to erect Great Atlantic Firewall

[damburger]

Only Germany forbids Nazi symbols by law (gee, I wonder why?) and the Danish government, along with most other EU governments, reacted with indignation when radical islamists when crazy over some cartoons. Yes, super injunctions here in the UK are stupid. So stupid that one of our own MPs scuppered one in Parliament to prove a point. The US does not have a monopoly on freedom.

Re:As a US citizen

[Fluffeh]

but if you think you have the right to tell another sovereign nation what they can and cant do like this

Surely you are saying this in a tongue in cheek manner? The bill is behind this which is from the US does exactly what you say. It effectively kills a website off the internet because the US doesn't like it. At least all the other "Great Firewall" countries have the decency to only kill it off for their own countries. Do you really think that it is okay for the US to vanish a website hosted in another country, under a .com or .net TLD (which has nothing to do with the US) just because a judge in the US says it is okay? Can you really be that hypocritical?

Re:US, get out

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to start looking at numbers then WW2 was basically Germany vs. Russia, everything else was a sideshow.

Re:they are not "international domain names"

[sulimma]

What is your source for your statement?

According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com, .com is intended for "Commercial entities (worldwide)".

RFC 920 make no reference to .com beeing used by us entities. Instead a domain .us is intend for that:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920#page-2

Re:they are not "international domain names"

[Fluffeh]

The ".com" domain is the domain for US commercial entities; there is no other. Because the US is fairly laissez-faire about it, a lot of foreign registrants have been able to get .com domains, but that doesn't make the TLD "international".

Europe has jurisdiction over .eu, .fr, .de, and other TLDs. The US has jurisdiction over .com, .edu, .org, ..net and a few others.

Why on earth is this +4 Insightful? This is the sort of information that most /.'ers mock Fox News for. Seriously.

The TLD for the US is *gasp* .us - unsurprisingly similar to just about any other TLD suffix denoting a particular country. Spend 5 seconds researching something before modding this rubbish up.

Re:they are not "international domain names"

[sulimma]

> The .COM TLD is managed by the US according to US rules because the US created it.
The US rule you are talking about is RFC920. RFC 920 is an official DARPA document: "This is an official policy statement of the IAB and the DARPA."

It explicitely has an international scope. It lays the rules for registering a second level domain in .com and does not restrict it to US companies.
While at that time almost all ARPANET nodes where in the US (European nodes have been part of the network since 1972), that does not mean that it was intended to stay that way.

Otherwise it would not have made much sense to specify .us and .de domains in RFC 920.

Re:US, get out

[Xest]

I've said it before, the organisation to do this already exists. It's the ITU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union

It's got a history of being run by competent technocrats who have been very good at what they do, it already does a great job of managing satellite orbits, radio spectrums and so forth.

Too many people when they hear "UN" think of the security council, or in the best case, the general assembly, but this is all but a minor facet of what the UN does.

I'm not keen on all UN organisations, I think the WHO is largely incompetent, their handling of the swine flu situation amounted to little more than over the top fear mongering not based on solid science. The WTO is a proxy for the US to try and control global trade to it's advantage hence why it always ignores rulings against it whilst it pressures others to join and adhere to rulings in it's favour, and the world bank is less than stellar.

But the ITU, IMO, UPU, UNESCO, ICAO, IAEA, are very good at what they do, governed largely by experts in the field in question who actually know what the fuck they're on about rather than career politicians. WIPO was very good in making sure IP was fair until America screwed it for the WTO because WIPO wasn't working in America's favour (i.e. strong copyright and patents that we now have today). The International Criminal Court would be an excellent addition to the UN family of competent organisations, but struggles to get support because America wont sign up to it, presumably due to the fear of having the likes of George Bush held to account, and African nations are failing to honour their obligations to it claiming it's biased against Africa, seemingly missing all the European ex-Yugoslav and ex-Nazi war criminals it's dealt with, but then, if Africa stopped producing more war criminals than any other continent too then yes there'd probably be less focus on it also.