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EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is 'Terrorist Content' (techdirt.com)
Mike Masnick, reporting for TechDirt: We've been trying to explain for the past few months just how absolutely insane the new EU Terrorist Content Regulation will be for the internet. Among many other bad provisions, the big one is that it would require content removal within one hour as long as any "competent authority" within the EU sends a notice of content being designated as "terrorist" content. The law is set for a vote in the EU Parliament just next week. And as if they were attempting to show just how absolutely insane the law would be for the internet, multiple European agencies (we can debate if they're "competent") decided to send over 500 totally bogus takedown demands to the Internet Archive last week, claiming it was hosting terrorist propaganda content. [...] And just in case you think that maybe the requests are somehow legit, they are so obviously bogus that anyone with a browser would know they are bogus. Included in the list of takedown demands are a bunch of the Archive's "collection pages" including the entire Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts, it's collection of over 15 million freely downloadable texts, the famed Prelinger Archive of public domain films and the Archive's massive Grateful Dead collection. Oh yeah, also a page of CSPAN recordings. So much terrorist content!
To the publishing companies, ANYTHING freely available is terroristic content.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Let them deal with the headache of sorting this sh-t out.
EU, California, all these other commie hellholes that want to regulate an international network can go f themselves.
If I decide to host the Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts on my machine in Florida, who the hell is the EU to tell me I must take it down?
Just put a message for EU ip addresses that reads something like:
"Due to EU Committee X takedown notice 123456 claiming this site had "terrorist content", we have blocked this content for EU readers. Our internal review of the site found it did NOT qualify for a take-down, but to avoid legal hassles, we decided to block it for now. You can donate to our legal defense fund at [url here]. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Further, publish a list on the Internet Archive site of all take-down requests, including a note marking the dubious requests. The Streisand Effect will then kick in and the EU review committee will end up embarrassed as those who can read the blocked content overseas can know about their poor decision.
Table-ized A.I.
From TFA:
CORRECTION: This post previously identified the sender of the 550 falsely identified URLs as Europolâ(TM)s EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU). The sender was in fact, the French national Internet Referral Unit, using Europolâ(TM)s application, which sends the email from an @europol.europa.eu address. The EU IRU has informed us that it is not involved in the national IRUsâ(TM) assessment criteria of terrorist content.
So it's actually just the French, not the EU.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A few people, some very small fraction of something far less than 1% of a population of 7.5+ billion people are going to decide something that affects/constrains the populations access to a massive amount of information.
Where/When have we seen this sort of act before in our human history? i.e. Library of Alexandria
What with the apparently relentless rise of right-wing parties across Europe, it's inevitable that a right-leaning prankster with "authority" as defined by the European Parliament decides to send out mass demands for removal of far-leftist content on the grounds that it inherently promotes terrorism. The resultant political hullabaloo will drive up popcorn sales and produce millions of liters of hot air, but I'm not sure whether European national agencies or lawmakers would learn anything about the law of unintended consequences.
Personally, I think I'll whip up a batch of Buffalo-style hot chicken wings when that happens and lean back into the couch to enjoy the show.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
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Dear Government Authority,
We have reviewed your request regarding the alleged "terrorist" content on our website, and found the request to be baseless and nonsensical. As a result, your agency has been placed on our "incompetent authority" list. All future requests from your organization will be ignored.
If you believe your organization has been placed on the "incompetent authority" list in error, please send a certified letter stating your petition along with a 125 Euro processing fee to our legal department.
Good Day,
The Internet Archive
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
1) robots.txt retroactively will delete things from the archive. Just create one telling the archive to skip certain content, and the archive will obey.
2) I just spent the past couple weeks digging up over 20 years of my own history thanks to the Internet Archive. All of this was previously published software, some 70 different projects. I've been pulling their archive and a couple others, mixing it all together, organizing it, and republishing a lot of the old software projects online via GitHub so anyone can use them freely. Hell, to be entirely honest, half of these projects I had even forgotten I did! Without the archive, all of this would have been lost. Now that the code is in git repositories, I've been able to quickly and easily mirror it to several places and properly archive it myself. They're a godsend!
Firstly it was corrected to not say "EU" but "French national Internet Referral Unit" for which I can find no reference beside that article. There IS an EU IRU, but no french national IRU I can find of. So baring a proper reporting I am viewing that as dubious.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's time to go full P2P over TOR for everything. The Web is dead.
You ever look into history? The reason we write things down is because it is or was important. "On the internet" doesn't change much with writings except the method of writing.
Just like what another poster said, the Internet Archive respects robots.txt and will retroactively delete a site if you set it that way.
Also even though the written texts are on a different medium, digitally versus paper, some writings will hold huge historical value; to suggest otherwise would be akin to burning books because they're "blasphemous" or something similar, and while you might want that for your own data most people would want this historical backup, especially scholarly sites like Wikipedia and the public domain books that can be distributed freely forever.
... it wasn't "as if they were attempting to show just how absolutely insane the law would be for the internet," but rather an actual attempt by persons within these multiple European agencies to demonstrate the implications of this law. If so, it seems to have had the desired effect or drawing attention to the matter.
Hell, if the Islamic extremists don't completly trash the place and make all the women there wear a bee keeper's outfit in public at all times, we have a 51st star ready to put on our flag if we decide to take western Europe under our wing. Russia can have the eastern half.
yes, but then they'd be our problem.
His invention decimated the livelihoods of THOUSANDS of monks!
#DeleteChrome
Maybe content hosts should simply geoblock the whole the EU with a message of explaining the outcome of this?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Total nest of terrorists in those recordings
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I find it very strange, how ALL countries got so paranoid and totalitarian and just plain nuts and evil since between 1998 and 2006.
Those countries look like they couldn't be more different. Yet the somehow all follow the same path.
Seriously, what the hell?
Yeah, I put on my tin foil hat, with its perfect parabolic concentrator shape. ;)
But you face what is *really* just a plain verifiable fact of reality, and verify it for yourself, in exchange.
So far Republicans aren't advocating "punching commies" or trying to take down Project Gutenberg.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>archive.org isn't "useful" just because you found some weird use
Wow. It takes a certain bravery to argue that archive.org isn't useful.
>everyone should suffer
Save the victimspeak for a more PC/SJW topic. Sure: I demand control over what others document, because *my* authority over their papers is what matters, everyone else can just suffer.
Seriously, go fight over the erosion of privacy on private affairs, the shared (ie sold) data of actions/events we DIDN'T openly broadcast, in the billions of invisible databases we unknowingly swim among, and exist in.
Yes, it's concerning to see similar omniscience in PUBLIC spaces, a future diseased with LPRs and facerec, but I give that a back seat because I can't morally believe I have control over information that's in the wild. Controlling info that WASN'T is something I feel more entitled to.
But we don't know which thoughts those may be
Way to blame other people for remembering that you behaved like an asshat.
God damn, I am so sick of hearing "$WHATEVER is evil!"
Internet Archive is not evil, and neither is Google, or MS, or the little bakery down the street.
It's the PEOPLE who run these things that are good, evil, or maybe just plain incompenent. Change out the bad/corrupt people, and suddenly, the company is no longer 'evil'.
Well you can only protect people from their own stupidity so much. I knew not to publish certain things under accounts linkable to my real identity since I was a kid on AOL. I like that I can use this nick to trace my activity back through the decades, but as it can be linked to my real name always knew not to post anything I wouldn't defend in public. Sorry, but anyone who thought they had any control over information over the availability of information transmitted to a 3rd party site is a fool.
A bunch of goathearders with small arms have brought both Russia and the US to unending frustration in Afganistan.
You're a tard.
No one knows what will be important to future generations or why.
You are assuming your own omniscience, and demanding omnipotence as a consequence.
You need more self doubt.
Look like youâ(TM)re incompetent and go after harmless content, so you have plausible deniability for when you take down speech that is incongruent with political ideology.
The Internet Archive's robots.txt policy was amended two years ago. They now ignore robots.txt policies and want people to make a formal request to remove a site's archive. What's been unclear (to me) if this corrected the issue of new robots.txt files making old archives of sites unavailable. What often happen(ed|s) is a domain squatter picks up an expired domain that used to host something, blocked IA, and then IA would make all of that site's archives unavailable. This almost always meant content a previous owner of the domain had hosted.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Shut up! Don't give the R's any more crazy ideas about the interwebnet thing. I think they're still hung up on the idea of a bunch of pipes and that was too complex for them to understand.
Why is Snark Required?
It doesn't matter. They use EU implementation to achieve their goals.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
https://www.theguardian.com/po...
While gendarmerie is tasked with some of the internal security, it is mostly motorized and rural part of france. For such a task force it would be the national police, far more probably the counter terrorism part of it (something similar to GIGN but for internet). The fact also top levels url were chosen looks to me far more probably an error than a malice (or heck is even the email mentioned somehow open and somebody was hacked and now the troll is having fun is far more probably than trying to censor the internet archive - i am not excluding it but on the probability scale it is doubtful).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The arguments of the leave side during the referendum were often based on false information (lies) with £350m bus being a grand example. :)
They conveniently forgot to mention the +£800m in lost trade...
Bent bananas and cucumbers are another example of how fake the British tabloids are, they can definitely be sold in the EU but not as 'Class 1' products.
Let's see where these bent cucumbers end up after a cold Brexit
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The only valid reason for the UK to leave the EU is to stop blocking sensible directives, like this one:
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
The UK is a crappy EU member and de Gaulle was right to veto the British membership back in the day.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I would prefer to have had a robot,txt that does an include, not an exclude. So opt in and not opt out. Oh well, bit late now.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
DIpshit ignores Sander's supporters going around shooting members of the House. Blames GOP for it.
Not only are you supporting political assassination, you are then attempting to blame the targets of it for the reason. You and your opinions are invalid.
Because for the most part of its history it has been a demockracy at best.
Since the UK is a state, it would mean that it has a tradition of refusing to be told what to do by itself. Fair enough, the current shitshow where the parliament refuses every possible option shows exactly that. But that's not quite something to be proud of.
Yep. So the citizens of the UK would see that while their own government prefers not to invest in the poorest regions of the country - and they are often poorer than Romania - the EU does. Which makes these regions voting for Brexit and them consequently become even poorer really funny - at least for those who don't live in the UK.
Since, as you have mentioned previously, the political and media class in the UK is very different from the EU (and very anti-EU), I call bullshit.
Given the questionable quality of the English political class the UK really ought to be run by foreigners - they simply make better decisions. That was true during the times of the Normans, that was true when England was ruled by the Dutch and the Germans and it is just as true today.
You won. Deal with it.
Oh, by the way. I'm still waiting for the riots you guys have promised if the UK wouldn''t leave on the 29th of March. As far as I know this is called "all mouth and no trousers" in your country.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Look at the UK.
They are bent into a pretzel, imprisoning their citizens for misgendering trans people, or stating a basic fact about Islamic extremism.
It is terrifying knowing that those same bumbling fascist imbeciles have access to weapons of war with no check from their own citizens.
Yea, that poster has bumped their head.
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I regularly see violence advocated against the left. Free helicopter rides ring a bell?
Moreover though, forget advocating violence, alt-right terrorism is actually happening, which, a tiny number of exceptions aside, isn't happening on the reverse. The right wing are shooting up schools and Yoga studios because they hate women and/or blacks. They're burning down black churches. They're shooting up the people inside other black churches. They're shooting up Waffle Houses. They're sending bombs to CNN and Democratic congressmen and women and even anti-Trump celebrities.
And I want to make something clear: this isn't a "Nuh, your side is worse" thing. This is a "The fact you are this out of touch is why the violence is happening thing." Somehow, perhaps because of the news sources you choose, perhaps because you're tuning it out, you're ignoring the extreme violence perpetuated by the alt-right over the last three or more years. And that's making it easy for our current government to ignore it too, because they know there's no votes in going after alt-right terrorism.
Open you're god damn eyes.
Also the EU anti-child-porn/terrorism squads are what's going (wrongly) after Project Gutenberg, you'll find no support for them from the left on this. The fact you need to imagine left wing support for nonsensical censorship should make you stop and ask yourself why you're having to reach to link violence to the left.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You seem to have a problem with reading comprehension. I do want the UK out of the EU. Matter of fact, I'd prefer you'd never joined in the first place. Moreover, I am not even British and I've only ever visited the UK for half a day, strictly for business reasons. It's not a country I'd like to visit in my spare time - the weather is notoriously bad and the people are unfriendly.
Yes, except no because this never stood to vote since there such thing as the withdrawal agreement without the backstop. They also voted against any other possibility, even against no deal.
In the last 40 years the British media has been very hostile to the EU, so I still call bullshit, and, in addition, call you stupid.
So you think Manchester and Liverpool should be ruled by Ireland and Cornwall by France? That's... unexpectededly self-conscious of you but you kind of make my point for me.
Oh yes, absolutely. This is why we have invented the word "Schadenfreude" and consider this the best kind of joy. Please continue to sabotage your country. I really love watching this neverendum circus.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
From TFA:
CORRECTION: This post previously identified the sender of the 550 falsely identified URLs as Europolâ(TM)s EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU). The sender was in fact, the French national Internet Referral Unit, using Europolâ(TM)s application, which sends the email from an @europol.europa.eu address. The EU IRU has informed us that it is not involved in the national IRUsâ(TM) assessment criteria of terrorist content.
So it's actually just the French, not the EU.
I believe that the French are part of the EU. Or did they do a Frexit? They were following a tool that is part of the EU's tools for control of the Internet.
While you for some odd reason see this as some exoneration of the EU, I see it as just a sneak preview of how the EU's power that it has granted itself is very destructive. All it will take is for the various EU subunits to declare anything they don't like as terrorist, and demand that knowledge be eliminated.
Something tells me that there will be a lot of information stored away from the EU's gentle hands.
Forbidden knowledge and history you know.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
UK needs to RUN, not walk of the fascist EU.
I think the whole thing is fake. The institution that the claim purports to come from doesn't seem to exist.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
“Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees” - Donald J. Trump
Ironically, today the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act came into force in the UK. Among other things, it makes viewing online "terrorist content" - even once - a criminal offence.
France is a subset of the EU. However it is not THE EU.
There's 27 other subsets that the EU is comprised of (still counting the UK).
I admit that calling France "The EU" was bait on my part. But that was a large portion of my point.
The most likely scenario is that this is a some kind of 'hacktivism' intended to show how absurd the consequences of such a law could be.
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Let us take a completely possible scenario. One of the EU members was tha cause of a huge kerfuffle during the last century. With the ability to demand that anything that might be considered "terrorist" encouragement, they could invoke a demand to remove everything they find that references their shady little group. Almost like rewriting history, or the ultimate right to forget.
Couldtheywouldthey? I dunno. But history shows that the same tools imposed by good people can also be used by those with less noble motives.
I look at this, and see some big problems waiting in the wings.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Dude, you are the brexiter here, but I should fuck off? You are doing it wrong. People like you are the reason why the UK is unable to leave.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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Your examples of violence are exceedingly rare and sensationalized in our modern society. The fact is we have never seen such a peaceful and cohesive time within society before, and the trend continues in the right direction. There are those who seek to bring back fear and division and it looks like their campaign of propaganda has swept you up. I go out in the real world all the time, in all types of cities and rural settings, and see none of the things you describe.
I think it is you who needs to open your eyes, and if you think violence is something to be seriously worried about, you should probably get off the internet too.
Evidence?
Welcome to anti EU news. Often entirely made up. All that bullshit makes it so difficult to fight the real issues.
What gave it away, sherlock?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Moreover though, forget advocating violence, alt-right terrorism is actually happening, which, a tiny number of exceptions aside, isn't happening on the reverse.
So we all just imagined that Congressional baseball shooting, Antifa rioting at Berkeley, the Trump rally in Chicago that was cancelled, historical monuments in the South being defaced/destroyed, etc?
Face it, It's not a tiny number of exceptions.
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And Stalin was part of the humanity. This fails your argument at the first sentence as something A being part of something B doesn't make B equal to A - basic logic.
And Stalin was part of the humanity. This fails your argument at the first sentence as something A being part of something B doesn't make B equal to A - basic logic.
Your idea of "basic logic" is most amusing.
Now Old Smokin Joe was pretty much the Alpha and Omega of the old Soviet Union. But he didn't speak for the US, or Great Britain. But you can bet his word was law within his own country. Care to deny that?
France is a part of the European Union. And if they send out data/history destruction notices under the auspices of the EU, anyone getting a notice like that is going to assume that if it was sent, it was meant. Care to deny that?
Likewise, if they got the same destroy or else notice from the Man of Steel, they'd probably think it was a joke or scam.
You see, the point isn't even who is who is what. The point is that the EU is considering a modern day version of book burning. The whole issue in this case is that apparently the modern book/data burning law hasn't even passed yet. So some folks have likely taken it upon themselves to give the world a little illustration of how the book/data burning law is going to operate.
Declare something terroristic, or whatever the bugaboo of the day is, and inform the recipient of the penalties under EU law if they don't abide by the demand. All the perp has to do is claim the authority, and most people will obey. We've seen it all before.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.