EU Parliament Warns The US To Stop Censoring The Internet

from the don't-censor-the-internet dept

Thu, Nov 17th 2011 10:59am — Mike Masnick

What a world we live in... when foreign countries are speaking out publicly against American censorship. For a country whose identity has been built around its strong support of the First Amendment and free speech rights, to reach the level where others are condemning our own failings on free speech is really sad. 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. At what point is the federal government going to realize that these practices are completely undermining any claim the US has to a moral high ground against internet censorship elsewhere?

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Filed Under: censorship, domain seizures, eu, first amendment, free speech, protect ip, sopa, us

69 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:02am

At what point is the federal government going to realize that these practices are completely undermining any claim the US has to a moral high ground against internet censorship elsewhere?

If you have nuclear weapons, you don't need a moral high ground.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:04am

Re:
Oh, that's why the Chinese censor the internet.
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gorehound (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:08am

Re:
And yo forgot to add that when you have "Legal Corruption" you do not need morals just an urge to get more and more money at any cost.
FUCK YOU SOPA !
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DOlz (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:12am

Re:
Cheney is that you?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:12am

And what moral high ground do they stand on? The UK and Denmark are actively performing the same activities.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:13am

what makes you think that the current crop of overlords in place and about to be in place care about anything but who pays them the most?
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Anonymon, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:18am

Re:
Bullshit. With nukes you need even MORE moral high ground.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:19am

The EU is famous for creating such strict privacy policies that it is almost impossible to operate a website within their rules.

The UK, Denmark, Germany, and many others actively pursue blocking of websites.

Many EU countries are safe havens for pirate sites, and permit many things which are not legally acceptable in the US.

I don't think they have a lot of high ground to stand on.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:19am

Re:
Exactly!

What a wonderful world where every government is trying to make the others look bad while they hide their own nefarious actions.

This behavior can't last forever - humans aren't known to bend over and just take it for an extended length of time.
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tom, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:31am

my SNP MEP
signed that! well done struan
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Gwiz (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:34am

Re:
The EU is famous for creating such strict privacy policies that it is almost impossible to operate a website within their rules.

Many EU countries are safe havens for pirate sites, and permit many things which are not legally acceptable in the US.

Ummm...which is it? If it's damn near impossible to run a website in the EU, than how are there so many of these so called pirate sites?

The UK, Denmark, Germany, and many others actively pursue blocking of websites.

Basically your saying that since three other countries that do not hold the Constitution as the highest law in the land do it, so we should too. Sad.
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Someantimalwareguy (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:34am

Re:
The largest problem with the EU is the fact that it is about as cohesive as the original 13 colonies under the Articles of Confederation. This can lead to some dissonance between the "federal" and "sovereign states" level where the individual states have too much power and render any federal control illusory at best.

So what you tend to get is idealism in Brussels and pragmatism in Berlin, Paris, etc. It is more often the case that pragmatism wins out and the edicts from Brussels get a "that's nice, thanks for your opinion son" pat on the head while they go on about governing their territories.
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Simon, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:35am

Wikileaks
Oh really? EU is dishing on the US but is on board with screwing Julian Assange who'll most likely end up in a US prison. Classic hypocrisy.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:36am

SOPA is going to make sites do what they should have been doing all along - police themselves. There should have been ways for users to report illegal content all along - something akin to your "report" button should exist on every site that allows user comments or user content submissions.

Just as the community can police the contents of Wikipedia, I have no doubt that the community of users can police other sites. Remove the pirated content or be shut down.
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Ben (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:38am

Re:
The UK? Hardly. The only example we have is BT being ordered in a court of law to block access. In a court. Of Law.

See the difference?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:39am

Re: Wikileaks
Do you realize that the charges against Mr. Assange are for sexual assault? Are you coming out in support of sexual assault? I am sure there are some womens issues groups that would like to have a word with you.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:41am

Hey at least Italy is out of the fight for a while as they have bigger fish to fry at the moment. Berlusconi was looking to be the next digital Mussolini.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:41am

Re: Re:
From a higher ground, weapons are easier to aim.
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hothmonster, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:41am

Well since the EU is a collection of nations that profits heavily from infringement of US property of course they would say this. I mean have you seen France? Its like 1988 over there.
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hothmonster, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:42am

Re:
Woot police the unpolicable! Think of all the new jobs, hell Google alone will need to hire a few millions staffers to watch the 40 hours worth of video they receive every minute.
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out_of_the_blue, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:43am

The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
NO gov't is EVER any good except when kept firmly caged -- and that mainly means limiting The Rich too, who are always in control of gov'ts. Now and then the People revolt and pull down The Rich; those are the ONLY periods in human history that are ever free. But people never learn, so we're doomed to these cycles of letting The Rich do as they please until they begin to destroy the system itself. In the interim, The Rich foment wars -- how many is the US in right now? -- and in the patriotic fervor, complete their control over the People with an internal army. -- Anyone with sense saw this coming by September 12, 2001. So why are you people surprised? An empire that literally steals countries isn't going to allow you free speech.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:43am

Re:
Right after we clean this here internet up maybe we can finally get around to winning the war on drugs and wiping out terrorism.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:44am

Re: Re: Wikileaks
Also, if you screw Assange you're helping the troops. You don't hate the troops, do ya?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:45am

Re: Re:
Yes by abusing a filter intended for child porn. Some country you got there.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:46am

Re: Re:
Gwiz, it is difficult to run a website within their rules, but not impossible to run a website.

Not sure if I mis-phrased it, but sorry if that is all you took from my post.

"Basically your saying that since three other countries that do not hold the Constitution as the highest law in the land do it, so we should too. Sad."

Actually, I think they all hold their respective constitutions highly - I also think they understand that the internet presents new challenges, and creates difficult legal situations, where people can get away with things online that the law does not allow in the real world.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:47am

Re: Re:
Nah, with a nuke you can make any ground the moral high ground by bombing the rest of the ground out of existence.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:56am

Re: The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
Are you off your meds again? Apparently one of your other personalities are in control at the moment.
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lucidrenegade (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:00pm

Re: Re: The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
Hey, that's my line! :0)
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mike allen (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:15pm

Re: Re: Re:
Actually the UK does not have a written constitution something we (people in the UK) have wanted for centuries).
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mike allen (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:17pm

Re: Re: Re: Wikileaks
Disband all armies warmonger.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:23pm

Re:
i still dont get why other people should police the "property" of other people , i mean i i want to really police my house i go and with my own money contract an alarm system, with a car i go to any place where again with may own money intall the alarm so why the artist or should i say the content owner want every other person to pay for what they should be doing
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Ben (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
Still went through a court.

And if I recall correctly it was your content industry which forced it through
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Ben (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:24pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
I thought it was "Do as I say, not as I do"?
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Ben (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:26pm

Re: Re:
Look, the solution is simple, we j.... squirrel!
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:28pm

Re: Re: Wikileaks
Please tell us which US citizen and in which US state Julian Assange allegedly committed sexual assault.
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Psyga Sanichigo (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:30pm

About Goddamn time!
Seriously, I was on a thread and someone asked when EU Parliament was gonna pop by and bitchsmack these idiots.
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The eejit (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:33pm

Re: Re: Re:
AS a Brit, I can tell you that we are, indeed, no-where near as bad as SOPA and EPARASITES. Yes, we have tons of OTHER issues (such as Call-Me-Dave being in power and Nick Clegg still munching on Call-Me-Dave's shit) but I can say with certainty that we are nowhere near US levels of Stupid.

Yet.
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The eejit (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:37pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, it's "Feed the bankers, fuck the rest!"
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:39pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
WHOA NOW... "your content industry" ?

Last I checked, these content industries you speak of are multi-national. People in the U.K. are buying their goods and supporting them just the same.

Don't pretend that just because Hollywood exists in the United States that the companies going after consumers are also solely based in the U.S.

This is a worldwide problem - not something you can solely blame on the U.S.... Now granted, the U.S. government has certainly catered to lobbyists and is being used as a lever to manipulate the governments of other nations - I'll grant you that, but the governments in these other nations are still accountable to their constituents to produce proper laws.
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Overcast (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 12:46pm

Kettle - meet pot.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:01pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Now granted, the U.S. government has certainly catered to lobbyists and is being used as a lever to manipulate the governments of other nations - I'll grant you that"

They've gone as far as actually blackmailing other countries into passing legislation that suits American industries.
Oh, and before you ask for a citation, check Wikileaks.
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Planespotter (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:14pm

Re: Re: Re:
Doesn't matter, as a BT Broadband customer I can safely say that the filter doesn't work.. I pop passed Newzbin2 every day just to prove it.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:20pm

Re: Re: Re: The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
You should have trademarked it ;)
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:31pm

Re:
If you have nuclear weapons, you don't need a moral high ground.

UNBELIEVABLE
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:38pm

Re:
Citation s'il vous pla�t?
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:44pm

Re: Re: Re:
Please name the 'other' countries with a constitution...

I'll be back later, could take you a while...
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:47pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions

Do i win a prize? :)
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:49pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
something we (people in the UK) have wanted for centuries).

Sorry Mr. Allen, I do not agree, the people of the UK have never expressed the need for an all encompassing document which, when voted for, can be amended in any way the current "rulers" see fit.
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 1:56pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
possibly - though your link mentions "current and former" so how many countries currently run their lives by an ancient and frequently amended constitution

Also, unfortunately, I dont know who to make the smartarse reward out to?
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Butcherer79 (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 2:01pm

Re: Re: Re: Wikileaks
IF he's proven guilty on this charge, then if you "screw" him, surely it his own comeuppance?
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Richard (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 2:31pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
We, and the rest of Europe do have the European Convention on Human Rights - which does address, for example, free speech issues.
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Thomas Jefferson, 17 Nov 2011 @ 4:22pm

liberty
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

SOPA does more than let the internet police itself, it grants Federal agencies and even private business the ability to censor sites at their whim. It won't even stop pirated content because it simply removes the DNS record for the site, this is easy to circumvent for anyone who still wants to pirate. Your logic is flawed, this will simply make it harder for small sites to get off the ground by making so much red tape to cut through, it essentially does to the internet what corporate monopolies over broadband infrastructure have done to small time ISP's. Granting more power to the Feds is never really the answer...
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Thomas Jefferson, 17 Nov 2011 @ 4:24pm

Re: The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
Agree with out_of_the_blue..
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teknosapien, 17 Nov 2011 @ 4:29pm

We are not the only ones with Nukes
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Nov 2011 @ 10:17pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Aw shit... I knew it seemed too easy.
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Any Mouse (profile), 17 Nov 2011 @ 11:44pm

Re: Re: Re:
Time for the Cone of Shame!
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pelouze (profile), 18 Nov 2011 @ 12:53am

Dealing with websites that primarily exist to profit from others creations isn't censorship (which is SOPA's aim).

If a real world business openly traded in stolen goods on the high street, you'd want it shut down. Even moreso if some of the goods they sold for profit were yours. You'd be effing livid if it were continuously ignored or giant loopholes allowed them to continue while you lost money.

Piracy of digital goods is no different, regardless of the weak arguments of pirates.
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Elisabeth Nilsson, 18 Nov 2011 @ 1:36am

Swedish ccTLD .SE criticise the proposal
Our head of security writes about the proposal on .SE's blog:

https://www.iis.se/en/blogg/protester-mot-stop-online-piracy-act
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Wig, 18 Nov 2011 @ 2:15am

Funny how a lot of comments are of the type "yeah, but they do it too", but none are of the type "that's not true!"

Probably because it is so blatantly obvious to everybody that SOPA and the likes are, in fact, censorship...
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anon, 18 Nov 2011 @ 2:34am

Re:
yea sorry, i live in england and our websites are not censored. don't know where you got this from but no, there is no website censoring here.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2011 @ 3:53am

Re:
Indeed. We're still laughing off Obama for lecturing us about how we deal with our financial crisis. You just can't make this up.
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Marcel de Jong (profile), 18 Nov 2011 @ 4:58am

Re: Re: Wikileaks
What charges? So far, he has house arrest without any charges brought forth. Yes, there are allegations, but so far none that was actually charged.
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Marcel de Jong (profile), 18 Nov 2011 @ 5:14am

Re:
Repeat after me:
Copyright infringement is not theft.

One is a civil matter, the other is a criminal matter.

Don't conflate the two.

And there are no sites that solely exist to profit from other's creations. (nope, not even the Pirate Bay, as there is also loads of stuff on there, that's legal, such as albums uploaded by bands themselves, and Linux torrents, and archive.org files)

Besides, as long as a website offers the general public to upload their own works, chances are illegally acquired copyrighted material could show up there. Youtube could be taken off the net with SOPA, that's a clear violation of freedom of speech, as a lot of people use the Youtube platform to showcase their own works. To vent their own opinions.

Also, how do you distinguish the illegally uploaded copyrighted material from the legally uploaded copyrighted material? Anyone can call themselves "Universal_Music", who is to say that they are the real one?

These are all issues and hooks hanging on this badly written law, that have severe real world implications and problems.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2011 @ 6:23am

Re:
Nope, illegal speech (such as operating a pirate site) isn't protected by the first amendment in the US, and therefore cannot be "censored" - it's illegal and not protected.

Further, the courts have already ruled that some protected speech may be harmed when illegal speech is dealt with,and that is disappointing but acceptable. The courts did not want protected speech to be used as a "human shield" for illegal activities.

So no, it's not censorship, not matter how many times Mike repeats it.
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Wig, 18 Nov 2011 @ 12:07pm

Re: Re:
No that's not the issue. The issue is that SOPA opens the floodgates for censorship. And the domain seizures by ICE and Homeland Security are censorship.

If you allow anyone, private party or federal agency, to block and put out of business an entire site without any adversary hearing (or, for that matter, any procedure in court) solely on the basis of an accusation, you have de facto created a way to censor anything on the internet.
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David Evans (profile), 18 Nov 2011 @ 3:55pm

Re:
Sorry. Wikipedia also has 'previous version' pages and 'revert' controls, because people report, hijack and delete perfectly acceptable material *all the time*.

Also doesn't change the fact that copyright is unverifiable outside a courtroom.
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nasch (profile), 19 Nov 2011 @ 6:07pm

Re: Re:
Nope, illegal speech (such as operating a pirate site) isn't protected by the first amendment in the US, and therefore cannot be "censored" - it's illegal and not protected.

By that definition, China doesn't do any censorship either.
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Dick Atwater, 21 Nov 2011 @ 8:55pm

Re: The EU is a bunch of fascists too, though.
Very well put. And remember there are many folks in the EU who enjoy a greater measure of privacy protection and somewhat more effective social contracts than what we have left on the US side of the Atlantic.
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Nick, 30 Nov 2011 @ 2:11pm

Re: 'Moral High Ground'
What are you talking about 'moral high-ground'? Who cares. So long as nations are watching each others actions carefully, to preserve the freedoms of the internet and more. It's not about having a moral high ground at all. Defending America in their disgusting act of censorship isn't going to do any good, and the same goes for the UK etc. WHEN the time comes to warn them too.
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