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EU Set To Demand Internet Firms Act Faster To Remove Illegal Content (reuters.com)
Companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter could face European Union laws forcing them to be more proactive in removing illegal content if they do not do more to police what is available on the Internet. From a report: The European Union executive outlines in draft guidelines reviewed by Reuters how Internet firms should step up efforts with measures such as establishing trusted flaggers and taking voluntary measures to detect and remove illegal content. Proliferating illegal content, whether because it infringes copyright or incites terrorism, has sparked heated debate in Europe between those who want online platforms to do more to tackle it and those who fear it could impinge on free speech. The companies have significantly stepped up efforts to tackle the problem of late, agreeing to an EU code of conduct to remove hate speech within 24 hours and forming a global working group to combine their efforts remove terrorist content from their platforms.
If any country can decide speech is illegal, we're just going to have the lowest common denominator.
Euros are a bunch of bitches. It's time they get those faggot shitlogs out of their mouths.
Google... does not host content! YouTube and other parts of it might, but Google is a directory, a searchable directory, and not a host. STOP CONFLATING THESE THINGS YOU IGNORANT LUDDITES!
Second... Google is not the only search engine, simply the largest. As far as you ignorant savages seems to know, anyways. There are plenty of other options for searching the web and many people use them.
Third.... again, these are NOT hosts of content, they are indexes. Taking them down still leaves the content available for others to find through many other paths. TARGET THE HOSTS.
Sorry for the caps but damn I am tired of this same garbage by people who, by now, definitely should know better. But no, these cretins deliberately shove theirs heads up their own asses and try to tell everyone it smells like a pine forest because paid interests are paying them to do so. So, I say, to hell with them. Cut their noses off to spite their faces, Google and others should just cut them out for a day, 1 day, collectively, to show them that nothing at all will change by targeting them. Not. One. Thing.
Without Google, people will use Bing, Yahoo, and many more. And find exactly the same stuff.
Without Facebook, people might actually get some work done, but they'll still talk through many other social media paths including messengers and even *gasp* email!
Without Twitter, Trump might get through a whole day without some kind of social gaff. Ok, maybe not, but still, at least we'd have to wait a day to hear about it!
My point being this: None of these companies have a real monopoly. The people are free to walk away from them and pick a new winner at any moment. The sad part is, all it would do is make these political dogs chase a new tail, not a thing would change. If it really was change they were after, they really do have the power to block Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and plenty more from their countries. But they aren't because they don't want change....
They want money. They want these companies to cut them in on the action. Corruption is alive and well in the 1st world and the EU will be damned if they don't get their shake.
..is to get too many people involved in it.
47% of the people alive on the planet today have access to the internet -- call it 3.3 billion people.
I'd say that's more than enough to ruin the Internet, sooner or later. Which is what we're seeing here today.
What is a trusted flagger? Is there a certification and licensing program in place? How about indemnity insurance should the flagger incorrectly call for a takedown and damage some group or the content hosting company as a result?
Have gnu, will travel.
define "illegal" when it pertains to the world wide internet. Once you define what is illegal, then sure let's have a legal process to remove the illegal content. Until then, stay away.
"We have removed the majority of EU government websites from all search result listings due to millions of copyright violation complaints.
Once again we would like to thank the EU government for not only given us this right, but demanded we exercise our own internal judge, jury, and executioner capabilities for responding and acting upon such claims.
Loves and kisses - Google"
Yeah, that'll show 'em.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter could face European Union laws forcing them to be more proactive in removing illegal content
The problem here is that we have centralized way too much with just a few companies. Those companies now have too much control over what billions of people see and do.
(Insert neckbeard point here about how their darkweb 0.0000002% of the internet is proof that isn't the case because all you have to do is recompile your network stack and add the --darkweb option at compile time and reinstall a new firmware for your networking hardware).
The point is: to MOST people, the internet really is Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That is way too much power in way too few hands. It gives those companies the ability to censor and control worldwide communication. By extension it gives governments inc authoritarian ones the ability to do the same.
Until we can unchain ourselves from the ISP, there is no hope. We need a real P2P internet with multiple routing that can't be shut down. Without it the tyrants will always win.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because throwing in the same bucket
infringes copyright == incites terrorism
Is perfectly fine, Right, right?
Latter just add free speech or whatever convenient to the establishement in charge.
Dear EU.
We have established some of the demanded "Trusted Flaggers". We chose a random sample of EU citizens, in the spirit of democracy, and we have found a surprising lot of .gov.eu pages obviously violating copyright, inciting hate and fear and generally being illegal or detrimental to the public well being according to the Trusted Flaggers.
We have of course immediately removed said pages from indexing, just as you ordered. The respective owners may of course appeal it, which we will offer utmost scrutiny. Which might take some months/years to complete, just to make sure no pages that our Trusted Flaggers deem "bad" will continue to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in the hearts of your subjects.
Yours,
Google
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whether those who are trying to use force intend to really just limit their actions to illegal content or not, they are trying to introduce these censoring capabilities and the tech itself will not have any idea what content is illegal and what isn't. A computer doesn't know when it's censoring lawfully vs censoring because Scientology Inc figured out how to exploit a bug.
If a government (and there are many governments, we're not just talking about yours, whichever one that may be) is able to ban pirated pro-terrorism childporn, then it is also able to ban Thomas Paine's pamphlet too.
Therefore, it is necessary for those who value free speech to frustrate these mechanisms and try to prevent them from ever having the capacity to effectively function. It needs to fail, not just politically/legislatively/judicially, but technically.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I feel like EU will one day wake up without ability to use any of these services. At what point do these regulations overburden the Internet companies enough that they simply bow out.
Why doesn't the EU just censor things themselves?
China is definitely willing to license the technology.
That way you don't have to go to 11 search engines to get something banned, you can just ban it yourselves.
Welcome to the global internet!
Everything is illegal somewhere. Therefore everything is illegal everywhere.
You have only those rights granted by DUH LAW. Which is to say, you have no rights.
Everything you say or don't say will be used against you in a kangaroo court of law.
All speech is hate speech. All speech must be monitored, censored, and cataloged for later retribution.
You are a pleb, you must obey.
Money buys speech. But even money can't buy freedom.
Resistance is futile, the dystopian future is already here.
You lose. Thank you for your compliance.
Fuck you very much, and have a great day!
It uses the term 'hate speech' but is talking about communiques that are obviously illegal: Copyright infringement and inciting violence. The issue is about making the publisher responsible for content. We've seen that Twitter allows one group of people to incite violence while forbidding another group to incite violence. It's easy to argue that Twitter and similar sites aren't doing enough.
In contrast, Facebook spends 0.9 seconds examining every post, ensuring it avoids nudity, fucking, bullying, harassment, generic defamation, violence and inciting violence. What more can Facebook do without losing money?
"infringes copyright or incites terrorism..."
Again, using the word "terrorism" to justify a corporate rule. Because uploading a music video is the same as decapitating people...
Because they know better then the rest of the world, duh.