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French Court Orders Popular VPNs to Block More Pirate Sites, Despite Opposition

https://torrentfreak.com/french-court-orders-popular-vpns-to-block-more-pirate-sites-despite-opposition/
36•iamnothere•1h ago

Comments

ironbound•1h ago
They should ask Spain, how the court order blocked Cloudflare CDN at the ISP level.. badly
izacus•49m ago
Do the people who asked for that block really think it went badly?
everyone•1h ago
One of the benefits of the USA no longer being an ally is we should be able to ignore all this sort of bullshit in the EU now.

Cory Doctorow was talking about it recently. https://youtu.be/3C1Gnxhfok0?si=OzjYwL16yLzQUwuY

wooger•59m ago
Eh? What has this got to do with the US? European based sports broadcast rights are an EU & UK issue entirely.
ronsor•51m ago
The truth is that the EU loves copyright and censorship just as much as the US does. The only difference is the branding and who pushes for it.
Eddy_Viscosity2•48m ago
The EU is perfectly capable of doing its bullshit all by itself. See 'chat control'.
y-curious•41m ago
Yes now that the EU is divorcing the US you can now stream soccer illegally! Oh wait… you guys are doing ISP-level censorship on your own

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/wireStory/spanish-soccer...

petcat•31m ago
That article says that Cloudflare is fighting Spain about the censorship.

ISP-level censorship is extremely rare in the US. Copyright and piracy is almost always handled by domain seizure ordered by a court, not ISP-level blocking (as is common in the EU).

speed_spread•31m ago
France has its own self important cultural industry to pressure the government. And then sometimes the President himself is married to a pop star.
everdrive•29m ago
Pretty ominous line here for ProtonVPN users:

"All VPN providers, except ProtonVPN, appeared in court to argue a defense. They raised various arguments, with the “no-log” defense from Surfshark and NordVPN standing out."

0x3f•26m ago
What's ominous about it?
petcat•23m ago
Proton is relocating their servers out of Switzerland and into Germany over privacy concerns. They are now facing the possibility of the same privacy concerns in EU countries. Ironically, the safest place to host a private VPN service may actually be USA given the way privacy-related things in the EU are going.
0x3f•20m ago
The EU member states are still sovereign, though. This French court ruling doesn't really affect the prospects of certain kinds of privacy in Germany. I think the parent might have been referring to the fact they didn't raise a no-log argument, thus implying they do log. But I don't think that makes much sense either.
squigz•11m ago
> Ironically, the safest place to host a private VPN service may actually be USA given the way privacy-related things in the EU are going.

Why, because American companies are never forced to do things because of copyright and/or law enforcement?

jacquesm•9m ago
The main reason for Protonmail's existence is that they are not hosted in the USA.
logicalfails•6m ago
Why do individual European countries seem so obsessed with blocking Pirate sites? I assume the majority of IPs being pirated are likely from outside their own country, so the harm is negligible to the individual country's internal revenue streams, no?
alephnerd•2m ago
Media & Entertainment Services are overrepresented in a number of European countries like Italy, Spain, and France. Tier 1 Football/Soccer is a massive revenue generator, and one of the most pirated products.
JanisErdmanis•47s ago
Piracy does not pay taxes ;)
mrtksn•3m ago
To be fair, it is ridiculous to advocate that the solution to a broken system is circumventing the laws. Fix for the problems for copyright and intellectual property systems can't be "heroic" VPN companies.

Kim Dotcom become filthy rich by selling access to copyrighted materials and turned into folk hero of the alt-right.

CGMthrowaway•1m ago
This is democratic erosion and why United States founding documents are singular in their importance.

Such censorship is passed by elected legislators, interpreted by an independent judiciary, and subject to appeal (which NordVPN has already begun). From a procedural standpoint, that is democracy. But it ignores liberty, proportionality and limits on power.

Democratic erosion is how governments today expand surveillance, blocking and platform obligations while still technically obeying democratic rules

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