EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is 'Terrorist Content' (techdirt.com) 199
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!
Re:They should tell the EU... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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
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I think the whole thing is fake. The institution that the claim purports to come from doesn't seem to exist.
Re: They should tell the EU... (Score:2)
Welcome to anti EU news. Often entirely made up. All that bullshit makes it so difficult to fight the real issues.
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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.
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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.
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 s
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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.
An different from the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
Accepting (for now) that your premise is true, what could have brought that about? The answer would appear to be the general availability of Internet communications (aided and abetted by significant increases on communications speed and storage capabilities).
Visionaries and early adopters saw a lot of good in it; but it turns out that the technology itself is morally neutral, and can be used (both deliberately and accidentally) for both good and evil. We are still dealing with the aftermath of this radic
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A bunch of goathearders with small arms have brought both Russia and the US to unending frustration in Afganistan.
You're a tard.
Re: We still have our guns. (Score:2)
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.
Well, to the publishing companies anyways... (Score:5, Insightful)
To the publishing companies, ANYTHING freely available is terroristic content.
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And this is upvoted... Is there any hope for humanity when something failing so thoroughly in everything is seen as truth when truth is now so easy to find?
We need a new internet where every user have to prove they are capable of logical and critical thinking before being granted access.
Gutenberg was a terrorist! (Score:4, Insightful)
His invention decimated the livelihoods of THOUSANDS of monks!
Re:Well, to the publishing companies anyways... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why the publishing companies invented Copyright [wikipedia.org] -- to stop other publishers!
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Things did change in England after the Glorious Revolution with Parliament refusing to continue the Stationers monopoly and introducing the modern type of copyright where after 14-28 years (35 years grandfathers clause) works entered the public domain as well as copies going to famous libraries (Oxford and Cambridge).
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And your link is WHERE again?
Instead of just complaining how about offering a solution as well?
Block and by policy ban all EU users (Score:1, Troll)
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?
Embarrass the EU (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Embarrass the EU (Score:5, Informative)
They're bureaucrats. They have no sense of shame, and therefore can not be embarrassed.
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A bureaucrat that does not create busy work has no job. In order to justify their existence, they must keep regulating. Even if the reason for their position to exist has been fulfilled. You can't possibly say job done, move on to something else. You just keep tightening the ropes tighter and tighter beyond practical reason, because that's how your job is defined.
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AOC, Bernie Sanders, and all the Dems want to bring a Eurostyle vision of big brotherism to the USA. Censorshop, take down notices, high taxes, gun confiscation, Muslim overlords, and terrorism, are all headed your way thanks to the Democrat Party.
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A bureaucrat is someone implementing something the decision makers ordered them to - if you want to complain direct that towards the decision makers. What you are describing is something illegal as a bureaucrat isn't allowed to make law, just regulations how to implement the laws they are given to enforce.
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We care! we voted for Brexit and we WILL leave despite the best efforts of our parliament to block it.
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the EU review committee will end up embarrassed
Bureaucrats will always seek to maintain the problem their bureaucracy was intended to solve.
So let me understand this correctly (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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That's exactly it, so why play ball?
Oh, you don't want your section of population accessing our content, then they're not allowed. Why bend to every whim that some grey haired politician comes up with? Let them deal with the outrage when the people can't access X or Y
Re:So let me understand this correctly (Score:5, Funny)
Where/When have we seen this sort of act before in our human history? i.e. Library of Alexandria
That's one hell of a take-down notice. Don't give them any ideas.
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Where/When have we seen this sort of act before in our human history? i.e. Library of Alexandria
But you REMEMBER him, that was his entire point. Otherwise he'd just be a nameless face in the crowd.
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But you REMEMBER him, that was his entire point.
I honestly have no idea who you mean. Historians certainly have no consensus as to who was most responsible for the library's destruction, or even in which century the worst things happened. Or did you mean the founder, who was proabably one of the Ptolemies?
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Before the printing press the scarcity was not artificial. Intellectual property wasn't even an idea until the modern era.
Sauce for the Gander (Score:1)
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 u
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a right-leaning prankster with "authority" as defined by the European Parliament decides to send out mass demands for removal of far-leftist content
While I might agree that C-SPAN leans left, I'm fascinated to hear that you think the entire Gutenberg collection is "far-leftist content".
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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.
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Yea, that poster has bumped their head.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Another fake reason to leave (Score:1)
The emails sender was spoofed.
So this is lies just like all the other leaver arguments, millions of turks flooding the UK - lie, hundreds of new trade deals - lie, £350 million per week extra for the NHS - lie, bent bananas, etc. all lies.
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https://www.theguardian.com/po... [theguardian.com]
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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
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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/... [independent.co.uk]
The UK is a crappy EU member and de Gaulle was right to veto the British membership back in the day.
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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.
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What gave it away, sherlock?
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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 possi
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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
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Ironically, today the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act [theregister.co.uk] came into force in the UK. Among other things, it makes viewing online "terrorist content" - even once - a criminal offence.
Proposed Response Letter (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Proposed Response Letter (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That appears to be exactly the intent. Someone is trying to poison the well. Considering the 'Terrorist Content Regulation' doesn't exist yet, any demand to take something down by its authority is bogus regardless of the targeted content. This was not an accident, and the Internet Archive was selected specifically because it is known that they resist demand letters reflexively.
It won't change anything though. Big content owners have money and money buys politicians. End of story.
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The Internet Archive should be expected to have the technical competence to detect emails spoofing before publishing what amounts to fake news.
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I'm starting to think it was a case of hacking. Although the email apparently came from an official address, the agency it claims to be from doesn't actually exist. There is no institute with that name.
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Yesss. Speaking as a German, this is a matter where I will be happy if the USA tell the EU to fuck off. There are many things I do not like about US politics, but in terms of free speech I greatly prefer the USA over Germany.
That story is strange (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's because "Internet Referral Unit" is a functional description used by Europol (I assume), not the name of the agency.
The articles do report the name of the agency, it's the OCLCTIC.
Nope (Score:2)
It's time (Score:1)
It's time to go full P2P over TOR for everything. The Web is dead.
Or maybe... (Score:1)
... 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.
GeoBlock the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe content hosts should simply geoblock the whole the EU with a message of explaining the outcome of this?
They are right about CSPAN (Score:2)
Total nest of terrorists in those recordings
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"They seek him here, they seek him there, that darned illusive Pimpernel!"
This is likely intentional (Score:2)
UK needs to RUN (Score:1)
UK needs to RUN, not walk of the fascist EU.
Re:Lol history, (Score:1)
Re:Internet Archive is evil. (Score:5, Informative)
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!
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>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 invi
Re:Internet Archive is evil. (Score:5, Informative)
The Internet Archive's robots.txt policy [archive.org] 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.
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Re:Internet Archive is evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Internet Archive is evil. (Score:1)
But we don't know which thoughts those may be
Re: Internet Archive is evil. (Score:1)
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.
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Way to blame other people for remembering that you behaved like an asshat.
Everything is evil! (Score:1)
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'.
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Re: AOC and the Dems and Eurostyle (Score:5, Insightful)
So far Republicans aren't advocating "punching commies" or trying to take down Project Gutenberg.
Re: AOC and the Dems and Eurostyle (Score:4, Funny)
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I think it is you who needs to ope
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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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“Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees” - Donald J. Trump
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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.
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