Russia Sanctions Add Shock Internet Censorship Twist for UK ISPs
ispreview.co.uk
ispreview.co.uk
No the writer is irritated that local ISPs are confronted with a regulation which can be interpreted as requiring them to go _far_ beyond DNS blocking while non local DNS provider aren't required to do any blocking when providing service to the UK.
Can DNS level blocks be bypassed using other DNS services? Google and Cloudflare are by far not the only ones, pretty much every ISP has their own.
https://scottberkun.com/2013/banning-things-makes-them-power...
It boils down to “if we can’t think of any good solutions to a difficult problem, then we should try bad solutions even if they’re counterproductive”.
When the communication becomes "enemy propaganda", you are forced to raise a wall which looks suspiciously like what your "enemy" does and wants from you as well. Mutual coexistence is impossible without two-way communication, and that means they will also going to influence you, whether you want it or not, even if you raise a wall. Communication here not necessarily being words but actions.
Turns out it was your business as well, after all. Think about it today because it might be too late tomorrow.
Anyway this isn’t really about reading websites particularly, it’s mainly about accessing commercial internet services like search or commercial sites. It just happens that internet publishers are also businesses so they can be affected too. However there’s nothing in this targets speech and that doesn’t seem to be the intention.
To work with your analogy - this is like intercepting a shipment of newspapers, and blacking out any ads placed in them by criminals. Regardless of what the ads say - they're criminals, why should they be entitled to say "I'm innocent"?
Sorry - why should they be entitled to printing press amplify their voice. They can just scream in their cells - their free speech isn't being curtailed.
Who knows, maybe it is too dangerous to let them speak - but at least have the honesty to call it what it is - censorship.
So block financial transactions with the sanctioned entities - problem solved. Unless your real intent isn't blocking money, but speech.
noun 1.The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
Does this fit that definition? I would argue no it does not but I’m open to be convinced otherwise.
And it's because the government (politics) deems it unacceptable.
Fits the definition.
Publishing businesses are still businesses and subject to the law. If they want to exercise their speech rights in other legal ways, they are free to do so.
It's weird to hear someone on HN argue against them. Of all the forums I use this is probably the most pro-personal-website one.
I'm not a fan of “economystical” models, but here it is quite striking. The business, the not so novel startup idea, is putting a roadblock on a previously open busy road, and acquire the power to decide who can pass. Then you can offer free services to the government (ass licking is the key to success), and paid services to the big copyright holders — something that unites “democratic” and “undemocratic” countries is that corporate piracy fighters are in bed with government censorship, and usually lobby the inclusion of pirate sites. You can be sure that agreeable stance and swift daily updates (through formal law enforcement proxy) cost them a percentage of global revenue.
By the way, this is how cities and states on world trade routes operated for centuries.
One thing that is missing from the scheme is the reason to start the whole thing. Whether it's “the children”, “the war”, or “starving kittens”, it doesn't matter at all. What matters is the willingness of the people to agree with that execution of the power. Given what we've seen in previous years, people all across the world are going to agree even with checkpoints and searches for the sake of starving kittens, because those, too, could be a part of “natural order” today. The war, in fact, greatly helps things like those.
Not just anti-CSAM, the UK has a mandatory "adult content" ISP filter since years (of which you can opt out, through doing so is annoying).
(Which also was used many times already in a inappropriate way by "accidentally" placing websites which are are not adult-only content but politically unpleasant on them because many don't opt out because "it's just for porn/violence right".)
EDIT: Just to be clear the law formulation seems to be over the top/vague and a extremely strict interpretation could imply that ISPs somehow have to block users access to sides even if the user uses an ISP or Tor, so wtf.
As far as I'm aware, complying with this legislation could force A&A to impose filtering on all their users for the first time.
Would certain mailservers become out-of-bounds?
Presumably it would remain possible to ping any IP address, because that doesn't depend on URLs, and the explanatory note seems to say that URL blocking would be sufficient.
Anyway: this kind of nonsense is why I run an Unbound recursive resolver.
If the site is selling something, and the visitor buys something, then the visitor is "doing business". Reading text that is published at zero charge isn't "doing business".
At the ISP level, it is even clearer than at the individual level. The ISP is passing traffic through from an entity, based on a business relationship, either direct or transitive, with that entity.
It wasn't even a slippery slope, it was more of a crumbling ledge.
-- DoItToMe81 Sun May 1, 2022
Censorship is bad, is as simple as killing is bad. that's something that should be learned during childhood and be a common ground for a modern society.
For example, if that was permissible and expected, then I would fully expect a hypothetical video of $ALLY/SELF committing war crimes to be censored as $ENEMY propaganda. Just as the Russians do. If you entrust the “experts” with the ability to tell you what is true, you will not be living in a democratic society.
I am also needless to say against war crimes no matter which side perpetrates them so videos of $ALLY/SELF committing them that come from reputable source or that can be verified should not be censored.
The very idea of an “information war” that can be won only by silencing your adversary is an attack on democracy.
> videos of $ALLY/SELF committing them that come from reputable source or that can be verified should not be censored
There is no world where the authority delegated to protect us from propaganda isn’t going to censor these. It’s well and good to posit the idea that untruth shouldn’t be allowed but by giving someone the authority to arbitrate what is reputable and true you’ve already ceded the entire idea of self-governance.
There is no dogmatism necessary, it's a logical proposition. If people are not allowed to decide for themselves what is true, they are not self-governed. Unfortunately, we can see from the ample historical record that people will frequently believe things that aren't true, or lack context, and will decide on courses of actions that appear to be foolish, reckless, or wicked. But the reason we live in a democratic society is because we decided this was better than oligarchs or monarchs choosing for us, even if a given set of oligarchs or monarchs may have been better and wiser. And we also have an ample historical record showing us that governments and other power-systems, given the power, will censor true things as well as false ones for various reasons, usually self-interested, but not always in a direct sense.
You can argue that some kind of managerial technocracy with arbiters of truth is a better system of government, but it isn't really a democratic one, in the usual sense. Perhaps in the "you are allowed to choose from these pre-approved opinions, held by the earl and the duke, respectively" sense.
> with the refusal to Trump at al to accept the result of last year's election. But that is not down to censorship.
I am personally more worried about CIA directors torturing people, murdering people, spying on the Senate, and leading the attacks on democratically elected officials as a threat to democracy than this, which is not a new problem at all in America. But even in the latter case, censorship certainly played a major role: the Biden laptop story was censored because intelligence agencies said it was the sort of thing the Russians might do (not that they had any evidence they did it - but because they would have done it if they could), and this certainly aggravated the sense of aggrievement and persecution held by these people, even though I personally doubt the "revelation" that Hunter got jobs because of who his dad was and had to pay his dad some of the money would have swayed anyone, considering how common it is in DC.
In fact, if anything, it appears to be we’ve opened the floodgates to pro-Ukrainian propaganda, as if being anti-Russian invasion means we must therefore accept all things pro-Ukraine. As with the Ghost of Kiev, people have even said even if it’s not true, we should still believe it. Since this type of propaganda has encouraged the arming of Ukraine by the west and increasing escalations, it seems like it is more likely to increase the scale, scope, and length of the war. Should we ban Ukrainian propaganda?
My ideal social network is a network where all kinds public statements are completely free to be published. If you publish something illegal you should be legally liable for that. If something illegal was published anonymously, an author should be given a time threshold when he can prove his/her personality and become personally liable for that content/statement.
The only additional feature that would improve user experience without harming people's freedom, is labeling of content by a thirdparty(chosen by the enduser, like i would chose one labeling system of content, that would put the most horrible things under "nsfw" clickwall, and someone else might choose a labeling system that puts under a clickwall(one click away for you to view that) everything that has a chance to offend anyone)
Horrible content like footage of crimes presented as entertainment should be treated the same way as described above.
Yes, propaganda is very capable to start wars and genocide (see Rwanda). I'm all for reasonable censorship, and it will not necessarily grow into bad censorship. You make it sound like white or black.
But I'm also against any propaganda. I was all anti-censorship until I saw what propaganda does to people, that it literally starts wars and genocide (like Rwandan).