This shouldn't exist at all. But it probably beats it existing and being accountable to no one.
gruez•5mo ago
>This shouldn't exist at all
If you think copyrights should exist at all, website blocks must exist as well, otherwise copyrights become unenforceable. Blocking straightforwardly copyright infringement sites (eg. a site that streams full episodes of TV shows) is a pretty logical consequence of a government enforcing its copyright laws.
ACCount37•5mo ago
I'd rather copyright be unenforceable then.
"Hide piracy web sites from mainstream search engines" is the extent of what I'm willing to tolerate. Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.
gruez•5mo ago
>Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.
Does this include websites for drugs, CSAM, human trafficking, or other criminal activity?
ACCount37•5mo ago
Yes.
If those are real world criminal activities with real world impacts, you should go after the perpetrators instead of playing the shell game with websites.
You can't make violent criminals disappear by sweeping them under the rug.
gruez•5mo ago
Isn't that kind of like saying "it's fine to have hit-for-hire ads in newspaper classifieds[1], because if hit-for-hire is really a problem they can just go after the hitmen/clients?". I think most people wouldn't tolerate criminal activity being advertised in the open, even though they know forcing such activity to go underground wouldn't prevent the criminal activity from happening.
[1] ignoring how you'd anonymously place/respond to the ads
AAAAaccountAAAA•5mo ago
That's not a good example imo, since newspaper ads are in any case a curated platform.
gruez•5mo ago
>since newspaper ads are in any case a curated platform.
They are? You just pay $100 (or whatever) and it gets posted. The only curation that might happen is the fact that a human probably has to manually insert it into the draft, because the newspaper hasn't developed proper automation for this sort of stuff. Moreover this is easily side-stepped by replacing "newspaper classifieds" with "ads stapled onto power poles" or "ads placed online" (in which case it probably is automated and there's no human review).
bigbadfeline•5mo ago
> Isn't that kind of like saying "it's fine to have hit-for-hire ads in newspaper classifieds"
No, it's not "kind of" in legal sense. Genaral information and specific threats are treated differently under the law. Genaral info us free speech. Specific threats are criminal intent and conspiracy - all punishable.
gruez•5mo ago
>No, it's not "kind of" in legal sense. Genaral information and specific threats are treated differently under the law.
That argument doesn't really make sense considering illegal streaming sites are allowing you to commit a crime immediately. The "general information" equivalent for copyright infringement would be something like a wikipedia article on how torrents work. Moreover if your objection is over the fact that hit-for-hire is violence and illegal streaming sites isn't, what do you think about sites offering other sorts of non-violent crime? DDoS or doxing for hire, for instance? Should the authorities be able to get an injunction against such sites?
jijijijij•5mo ago
DNS resolution is absolutely not the same as advertisement (and murder not the same as copyright infringement.....). You only deal with DNS after forming the intention to go somewhere. DNS is meant to be impartial infrastructure. Since DNS blocking can be done completely opaquely (to most people anyway), it's more like gaslighting, really. I don't think most people want some entity to covertly define their reality.
If someone did copyright infringement (according to your country) on HN (which almost certainly happened), how do you feel about your browser suddenly telling you "There is no such thing as HN!", while the site is doing just fine?
gruez•5mo ago
>DNS resolution is absolutely not the same as advertisement (and murder not the same as copyright infringement.....). You only deal with DNS after forming the intention to go somewhere. DNS is meant to be impartial infrastructure. Since DNS blocking can be done completely opaquely (to most people anyway), it's more like gaslighting, really. I don't think most people want some entity to covertly define their reality.
That just seems like nitpicking over the blocking mechanism. Your objections might apply for DNS level blocking, but not for SNI or ip blocking. Moreover DNS level blocking is far easier to bypass than the latter methods, so your objections against DNS blocking (because it's "gaslighting" or whatever) actually would force the government/ISPs to employ more effective blocking technologies.
jijijijij•5mo ago
You are moving the goalpost. I was referencing the "murder ad" comparison. There is nothing about advertisement in DNS. Nobody is browsing DNS records. IP or SNI blocking are similarly intransparent.
You can block wherever illegal content is linked, or indexed, if you have to. Not on the infrastructure level, as that's distorting reality and is very annoying to fight.
But really, just pay a few more investigators and take down the offending service, if you got legal cause, instead of this sneaky, lazy shit, which is easily abused and sets a bad precedent.
mcv•5mo ago
The issue here is: should the newspaper with hitman classifieds be banned from kiosks, or should you go after the actual owners and advertisers and put them in prison?
Hiding the crime from public view doesn't make the crime go away.
nadermx•5mo ago
Actually the berne convention gives you right to sue in the jurisdiction where your rights are being violated.
Given there is some sort of fair use in most jurisidictions, and its compeltly with in even europeans rights to save entire movies for personal use, the parent comment to you is right. Tools exist for them to enforce them by going after the domain registrar or hosting provider.
All site blocking does is trample on rights over "alleged" infrignment.
gruez•5mo ago
>Actually the berne convention gives you right to sue in the jurisdiction where your rights are being violated.
I don't get it, is your claim that the rightsholders can sue in German courts and get an injunction if they want sites blocked, or that site blocks shouldn't be needed at all because suing people (but not blocking the sites) is an adequate remedy for infringement?
> Tools exist for them to enforce them by going after the domain registrar or hosting provider.
What if the domain registrar or hosting provider is in another country? If some Chinese company is infringing on some German company's IP, is your response to tell them to sue them in China, rather than have the goods be blocked at the border?
>Given there is some sort of fair use in most jurisidictions, and its compeltly with in even europeans rights to save entire movies for personal use, the parent comment to you is right.
Unless there's some context that's missing from the article, the sites being blocked seems like they're straightforwardly committing copyright infringement. It's not like youtube-dl is being taken down or whatever. "movie streaming sites are fine because there's a tiny chance that it's used by someone who already owns the movie" seems like a flimsy excuse to allow such sites to continue operating.
nadermx•5mo ago
>I don't get it, is your claim that the rightsholders can sue in German courts and get an injunction if they want sites blocked, or that site blocks shouldn't be needed at all because suing people (but not blocking the sites) is an adequate remedy for infringement?
Yet your own response seems to imply you do get it?
>What if the domain registrar or hosting provider is in another country? If some Chinese company is infringing on some German company's IP, is your response to tell them to sue them in China, rather than have the goods be blocked at the border?
Correct. As the infrigment is happening in China, not in Germany. Just because you don't like the way a law works, doesn't mean you can suddenly claim your rights are being violated some where else.
>Unless there's some context that's missing from the article, the sites being blocked seems like they're straightforwardly committing copyright infringement. It's not like youtube-dl is being taken down or whatever. "movie streaming sites are fine because there's a tiny chance that it's used by someone who already owns the movie" seems like a flimsy excuse to allow such sites to continue operating.
Yes because a tiny chance of innocence should be completely ignored according to your logic, and given that copyright infringement carries criminal penalties and prison. I hope it's not you who ends up in that situation.
gruez•5mo ago
>Yet your own response seems to imply you do get it?
So which one is it?
>Correct. As the infrigment is happening in China, not in Germany. Just because you don't like the way a law works, doesn't mean you can suddenly claim your rights are being violated some where else.
Yet, in most countries you can get an injunction (ie. a "block") for infringing goods produced abroad to be seized at the border. It's within the government's remit to regulate what happens within its own borders, even if the infringing product (or website) is outside its borders.
>Yes because a tiny chance of innocence should be completely ignored according to your logic, and given that these carry criminal penalties and prison. I hope it's not you who ends up in that situation.
Where did "criminal penalties and prison" come from? We're talking about sites that are obviously engaging in copyright infringement. I'm not sure how you went from that to "send everyone with an open plex server to the gulag".
nadermx•5mo ago
> the sites being blocked seems like they're straightforwardly committing copyright infringement. It's not like youtube-dl is being taken down or whatever.
> Where did "criminal penalties and prison" come from?
If it's worth protecting, copyright holders will find a way to enforce it without needing a police state to do it. The truth is IP loves the contemporary cheapness of information distribution but doesn't want to pay for "undesirable" distribution. Do your own enforcement or don't distribute
shazbotter•5mo ago
Unlikely. I suspect this will be a rubber stamp mill just like FISA in the United States.
yorwba•5mo ago
That comparison doesn't make sense. FISC can only be a rubber stamp because only the US government can bring a case before the court. Any rando can sue German ISPs for not fulfilling their DNS blocking duties under copyright law, but certainly not just any rando can get their DNS blocking request rubberstamped.
The policy change also doesn't create a new court. The CUII is a voluntary cooperation whose members exchange information about sites they think they're required to block and agree to all block them simultaneously. Because this structurally looks like an illegal cartel, there used to be a review step by the Federal Network Agency Bundesnetzagentur to make sure that no illegal cartel things were going on.
The Bundesnetzagentur felt that this wasn't really part of their core duties, especially considering that there was a perfectly fine court system ready to use, so they asked the CUII to find another way of not looking like an illegal cartel.
Now the CUII will wait for one of their ISP members to get sued, in regular civil court, and if the ISP is ordered to perform a block, the CUII will put it on their list and the other ISPs will follow suit without having to redo the legal proceedings for each of them.
This change might very well end up increasing the number sites that get blocked, not due to rubberstamping, but because losing a civil suit is less risky than accidentally doing illegal cartel stuff and incurring a correspondingly large fine.
ACCount37•5mo ago
gruez•5mo ago
If you think copyrights should exist at all, website blocks must exist as well, otherwise copyrights become unenforceable. Blocking straightforwardly copyright infringement sites (eg. a site that streams full episodes of TV shows) is a pretty logical consequence of a government enforcing its copyright laws.
ACCount37•5mo ago
"Hide piracy web sites from mainstream search engines" is the extent of what I'm willing to tolerate. Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.
gruez•5mo ago
Does this include websites for drugs, CSAM, human trafficking, or other criminal activity?
ACCount37•5mo ago
If those are real world criminal activities with real world impacts, you should go after the perpetrators instead of playing the shell game with websites.
You can't make violent criminals disappear by sweeping them under the rug.
gruez•5mo ago
[1] ignoring how you'd anonymously place/respond to the ads
AAAAaccountAAAA•5mo ago
gruez•5mo ago
They are? You just pay $100 (or whatever) and it gets posted. The only curation that might happen is the fact that a human probably has to manually insert it into the draft, because the newspaper hasn't developed proper automation for this sort of stuff. Moreover this is easily side-stepped by replacing "newspaper classifieds" with "ads stapled onto power poles" or "ads placed online" (in which case it probably is automated and there's no human review).
bigbadfeline•5mo ago
No, it's not "kind of" in legal sense. Genaral information and specific threats are treated differently under the law. Genaral info us free speech. Specific threats are criminal intent and conspiracy - all punishable.
gruez•5mo ago
That argument doesn't really make sense considering illegal streaming sites are allowing you to commit a crime immediately. The "general information" equivalent for copyright infringement would be something like a wikipedia article on how torrents work. Moreover if your objection is over the fact that hit-for-hire is violence and illegal streaming sites isn't, what do you think about sites offering other sorts of non-violent crime? DDoS or doxing for hire, for instance? Should the authorities be able to get an injunction against such sites?
jijijijij•5mo ago
If someone did copyright infringement (according to your country) on HN (which almost certainly happened), how do you feel about your browser suddenly telling you "There is no such thing as HN!", while the site is doing just fine?
gruez•5mo ago
That just seems like nitpicking over the blocking mechanism. Your objections might apply for DNS level blocking, but not for SNI or ip blocking. Moreover DNS level blocking is far easier to bypass than the latter methods, so your objections against DNS blocking (because it's "gaslighting" or whatever) actually would force the government/ISPs to employ more effective blocking technologies.
jijijijij•5mo ago
You can block wherever illegal content is linked, or indexed, if you have to. Not on the infrastructure level, as that's distorting reality and is very annoying to fight.
But really, just pay a few more investigators and take down the offending service, if you got legal cause, instead of this sneaky, lazy shit, which is easily abused and sets a bad precedent.
mcv•5mo ago
Hiding the crime from public view doesn't make the crime go away.
nadermx•5mo ago
Given there is some sort of fair use in most jurisidictions, and its compeltly with in even europeans rights to save entire movies for personal use, the parent comment to you is right. Tools exist for them to enforce them by going after the domain registrar or hosting provider.
All site blocking does is trample on rights over "alleged" infrignment.
gruez•5mo ago
I don't get it, is your claim that the rightsholders can sue in German courts and get an injunction if they want sites blocked, or that site blocks shouldn't be needed at all because suing people (but not blocking the sites) is an adequate remedy for infringement?
> Tools exist for them to enforce them by going after the domain registrar or hosting provider.
What if the domain registrar or hosting provider is in another country? If some Chinese company is infringing on some German company's IP, is your response to tell them to sue them in China, rather than have the goods be blocked at the border?
>Given there is some sort of fair use in most jurisidictions, and its compeltly with in even europeans rights to save entire movies for personal use, the parent comment to you is right.
Unless there's some context that's missing from the article, the sites being blocked seems like they're straightforwardly committing copyright infringement. It's not like youtube-dl is being taken down or whatever. "movie streaming sites are fine because there's a tiny chance that it's used by someone who already owns the movie" seems like a flimsy excuse to allow such sites to continue operating.
nadermx•5mo ago
Yet your own response seems to imply you do get it?
>What if the domain registrar or hosting provider is in another country? If some Chinese company is infringing on some German company's IP, is your response to tell them to sue them in China, rather than have the goods be blocked at the border?
Correct. As the infrigment is happening in China, not in Germany. Just because you don't like the way a law works, doesn't mean you can suddenly claim your rights are being violated some where else.
>Unless there's some context that's missing from the article, the sites being blocked seems like they're straightforwardly committing copyright infringement. It's not like youtube-dl is being taken down or whatever. "movie streaming sites are fine because there's a tiny chance that it's used by someone who already owns the movie" seems like a flimsy excuse to allow such sites to continue operating.
Yes because a tiny chance of innocence should be completely ignored according to your logic, and given that copyright infringement carries criminal penalties and prison. I hope it's not you who ends up in that situation.
gruez•5mo ago
So which one is it?
>Correct. As the infrigment is happening in China, not in Germany. Just because you don't like the way a law works, doesn't mean you can suddenly claim your rights are being violated some where else.
Yet, in most countries you can get an injunction (ie. a "block") for infringing goods produced abroad to be seized at the border. It's within the government's remit to regulate what happens within its own borders, even if the infringing product (or website) is outside its borders.
>Yes because a tiny chance of innocence should be completely ignored according to your logic, and given that these carry criminal penalties and prison. I hope it's not you who ends up in that situation.
Where did "criminal penalties and prison" come from? We're talking about sites that are obviously engaging in copyright infringement. I'm not sure how you went from that to "send everyone with an open plex server to the gulag".
nadermx•5mo ago
> Where did "criminal penalties and prison" come from?
https://torrentfreak.com/tag/yout/; YMMV
Rochus•5mo ago
627467•5mo ago
shazbotter•5mo ago
yorwba•5mo ago
The policy change also doesn't create a new court. The CUII is a voluntary cooperation whose members exchange information about sites they think they're required to block and agree to all block them simultaneously. Because this structurally looks like an illegal cartel, there used to be a review step by the Federal Network Agency Bundesnetzagentur to make sure that no illegal cartel things were going on.
The Bundesnetzagentur felt that this wasn't really part of their core duties, especially considering that there was a perfectly fine court system ready to use, so they asked the CUII to find another way of not looking like an illegal cartel.
Now the CUII will wait for one of their ISP members to get sued, in regular civil court, and if the ISP is ordered to perform a block, the CUII will put it on their list and the other ISPs will follow suit without having to redo the legal proceedings for each of them.
This change might very well end up increasing the number sites that get blocked, not due to rubberstamping, but because losing a civil suit is less risky than accidentally doing illegal cartel stuff and incurring a correspondingly large fine.