Politicians Considering Useless Browser Blocks Against 'Rogue' Sites
from the yeah,-that'll-work dept
For all the talk of domain seizures and DNS blocks and filters, now some politicians in Europe are considering proposals for browser-based blocks of websites that law enforcement dubs as dedicated to infringing activities. Of course, there are two key problems with this. First, it won't work. It won't take long for anyone who cares to be able to get around such blocks. Second, of course, is that there will be significant "false positives," where legitimate speech is "blocked" for those who don't get around such measures. At some point, the industry and politicians are going to have to realize that these methods don't work, and it'll be time for the industry to finally suck it up and adapt to a changing marketplace.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: browser blocks, copyright, politics
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This plan has so many problems that it can only be classified as completely retarded.
You can't solve a problem by closing your eyes and pretending that it does not exist. If you believe that you can, then you have already lost.
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This type of legislation also has the of knocking out open-source browsers, a beneficial side effect to Microsoft.
I predict a visible slowing of browser innovation should this pass. I also predict a market for browser protection mechanisms, rather like the market for "anti-malware" for Windows computers. Also like the "anti-malware" for Windows market, I predict a not too secure future.
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isnt it sad that you can replace the word retarded with 'government sanctioned' and the meaning is exactly the same?
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attempting to force a client side solution is about the single most idiotic idea that you could ever come up with.
server side solutions will not work and unless you can lock down the client side so tightly that you cant reinstall the OS to begin with. there is not a single clientside based solution that comes anywhere near even 10% effective.
the only people that wouldnt be able to get around that are the people that they are not after in the first place.
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i need more coffee
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Have they any clue just how many browsers there already are out there? If they do, how about how many previous versions are still on the net of each of those browsers without such "browser blocks"? Even if everyone started making these newer browsers with that "added" feature, who would want it?
I would be most suspicious of any altered browser not having some sort of phone home in it.
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They have no oppinion either, they just reiterate what they are paid to say by lobbyists.
All of them are corrupt criminals.
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Working around this "feature"
First, have they ever seen these malware warning pages? You always have a button to ignore the warning and go ahead.
Second, did they know there is a checkbox in the browser settings to disable this feature?
And on one of the most popular browsers (Mozilla Firefox), it is free software/open source software, meaning that even if you force enabled the feature and disabled the button to ignore it, the user can simply download the source code, comment out the feature, and recompile.
And if the user does not have the know-how or patience to recompile, someone can recompile and distribute the resulting product. The license explicitly allows it, and changing to one which does not allow doing so not only is not acceptable (it would mean the software is no longer free software/open source software) but also would cause people to fork the source code (forks have happened for less than this; see http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html#xfree86 for an example).
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Re: Working around this "feature"
John McCain admitted during the last presidential campaign, he has staff members who 'read' his email to him...
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If they had any sense...
(Well, except in the UK where TalkTalk's DNS goes down so often half the population have learnt about OpenDNS)
Of course, this would allow the technically capable to get round it easily, but hey, so would what they are suggesting.
The difference is that mandating a blacklist on an ISP DNS server is actually feasible and would not attract so much attention - making the world and his wife change browsers isn't.
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They have already forced Microsoft to offer Opera (and other browsers) in the EU version of Windows, so this would not be an unreasonable move for these guys. After all, feeble minded Europeans (who apparently don't know how to download their own choice of browser) need to be protected against all the dangerous websites containing uncensored and pirated (shudder) music and video!
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How, in the name of $DEITY, are they going to distinguish a "browser" from another kind of program?
I have even seen non-browser programs which happened to have a built-in browser for some reason (to read help files, for instance).
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Stupid yes, but it looks like they're trying to keep up with the times...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gl7X6peh-w he can't even grasp ENGLISH! What the hell kind of hope does our broadband infrastructure have with people like these running the show!
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It's unbelievable how desperate they are. They're just grasping at anything now.
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You said "tightening grip"?
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Re: You said "tightening grip"?
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