Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I think the WTO needs to get involved.
If the US blocks any web sites, the European governments should just block sites like Amazon or Ebay.
As a US citizen, I also find these practices unacceptable. The current mentality of complete control by our government has gotten entirely too far out of hand in this country. I vote my conscience in every election, and I write letters and am as politically active as I can be while still holding down a job, but there's only so much I can do when so many of my fellow Americans are bound and determined to allow our own government to undermine everything that our country is supposed to stand for.
Actions like this by the EU are pretty much the last hope I have of something may give the US the wake up call that we so desperately need. Unfortunately, with the US's current extremely confrontational attitude, the only reaction that I can see is a bunch of angry griping about how the rest of the world just better shut up and stay out of our business. Still, I applaud the EU and anyone else that refuses to tow the US-mandated line.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Have you seen the approval ratings of the U.S. Congress? They are abysmal and have been there for a very long time. This group does not represent its citizens, not by a longshot. This is an example of what happens when corporations corrupt a representative process.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
No, but slamming the US for proposing a law that includes censorship (regardless of the approach) while permitting their own members to censor their own citizens' access, is hypocrisy.
This is why NO key element in the Internet Backbone should belong to any individual corporation or any individual country. The backlash against the UN owning them was, I think, a serious mistake by geeks. Assuming a benign (even relatively speaking) US is clearly bogus. Placing ownership completely outside of any nation is the best hope we have. True, the UN hasn't exactly been perfect, but it is the closest we have to a multinational system that special interests (including the special interests of specific national agencies) cannot readily control.
In and of itself, though, this is not sufficient. We'd have to move away from the spanning tree topology currently popular on the Internet (because it's cheap) and move to as close to a full mesh topology - even across international borders - as finances permit.
The first part makes overt control much more difficult. The second part makes covert control much more difficult. Without both, total control - including over other nations - remains a possibility. This MUST be stopped.
I do not believe that private corporations, who are slaves to profits, are capable of deploying such a mesh. It would be expensive and would eliminate the congestion problems they're using as excuses to hike rates, so they'd be spending more and earning less. Shareholders would never permit it. That means the Internet can only be run either by a quango (a semi-devolved agency, similar to the British BBC, where it runs independently via an established charter even though it is government-funded) OR by a non-profit group that also has core policy defined by charter but is funded by the userbase.
So a UN quango (ie: the UN can only negotiate and enforce the terms of the charter, and where it is legally obliged to pay the charter-defined amount annually, but the quango is otherwise politically outside of the UN) would be the logical solution. It would defeat nationalists usurping the Internet, it would prevent many of the problems feared when UN ownership has been talked of before, but the UN would be contractually obliged to provide any and all protections necessary to stop nations threatening other nations' usage.
I don't seriously expect to get a positive response to this, but I can honestly think of no other solution since everything else has been tried and been shown to be a disaster.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I propose the following:
1) Only Citizens capable of voting in an election can contribute to campaigns they are eligible to vote on.
2) PACs cannot donate to Campaigns to ELECTED offices.
3) Corporations cannot donate to Campaigns.
4) Unions cannot donate to Campaigns.
Corporations and Unions can run their own damn campaigns making it clear exactly where the $$ is coming from. Further, Corporations and Unions would be forbidden to form "PACs" for the purposes of obfuscating financing.
But I would also REVOKE all personal donation limits to campaigns, provided that they are from Citizens eligible to vote for those representatives. I'm NOT restricting Corporations or Unions from Political Speech, just making it clear that they have to run their own campaigns for the candidates they want to support, with clear notifications of who is sponsoring the campaigns.
Our Liberties have been watered down and diluted by Corporations and Unions making unrestricted contributions to political parties.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
History doesn't repeat, it rhymes.
Why does the fall of empires have to be a bad thing? Some people think the fall of the Roman Empire was bad - but the most immediate consequence for people living in Europe in the time was fewer legions pointing swords at them demanding tribute.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
> I was in college during Tiananmen Square. Chinese students studying in America were persecuted for things they said on the internet here once they got back home.
China being China, why do you want to justify US actions based on their example? Are you living in United States of China, by chance?
Not only that, but it also interesting that China already had such a large internet monitoring system inside US back in the 1989.
GP i just talking out of his ass.
Here is a good quote on the subject:
"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.
That quote does not appear anywhere in Mein Kampf. It was made up, probably by some random guy on the internet.
Actually I've noticed that the number of people who disagree with US policies is increasing. Slowly, yes, but people who are out of work and have very little to do but actually pay attention to what is going on seem to be getting the picture.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
but the most immediate consequence for people living in Europe in the time was fewer legions pointing swords at them demanding tribute.
Actually, the most immediate consequence for people living within the Roman Empire was marauding hordes of barbarians burning down your village.
The "dark ages" aren't called that because sunspots made things dim for a couple hundred years. The amount of knowledge and skills lost was unbelievable. For several hundred years, old roman roads, despite not being maintained anymore and becoming more and more broken, were the best roads in all of Europe, because nobody knew how to make something like that. We're not talking pyramids here, we're talking about roads.
The world was a much different place back then. Knowledge as we know it was an unfamiliar concept. Knowledge was guarded and uncommon. Few people knew much about anything outside their own profession. Books were rare and valuable. If the US would be entirely destroyed by, say, a sudden eruption of the Yellowstone volcano, most of the knowledge would be preserved because copies of it exist in other places.
That's a relatively new thing. Less than a thousand years ago, any catastrophy that wipes out a civilization or any fall of an empire usually took most if not all of its knowledge down with it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org