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Irish Politician Calls For Crackdown On Open Source Internet Browsers
An anonymous reader writes "An Irish politician has called for tougher controls on the use of open source internet browsers. He said, 'An online black market is operating which protects the users’ anonymity and operates across borders through the use of open source internet browsers and payments systems which allow users to remain anonymous. This effectively operates as an online supermarket for illegal goods such as drugs, weapons and pornography, where it is extremely difficult to trace the identity of the buyers. We need a national and international response to clamp down on this illicit trade.' The politician added that the U.S. had 'taken action' to address this, but he seemed surprised that their solution was only 'temporary.'"
Seems like this rather confused politician is confusing Firefox with Tor. And I bet if he knew who was funding Tor, his head would explode.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
This reminds me of when Senator Orin hatch wanted to develop technology to destroy peoples computers if they were caught downloading anything that was copyrighted.
I actually witnessed this exchange live on C-SPAN.
Excerpt from an article that's no longer up:
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to deliberately download pirated material very slowly so other users can't.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song-writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.
Internet Explorer and Safari are produced in Ireland for tax purposes.