Stages of censorship on the Internet 2007-2012
Looking at how youtube and ubuntu are blocked in certain regions of Russia, I could not help but remember how Christian Engström and Rick Falquing showed in the brochure submitted by the European Parliament that Denmark, Sweden and the European Union used censorship on the Internet, and sometimes thinks completely not for those purposes that are presented by the authors of the bills.
The article was written in January 2012, for 9 months there were some changes, but the main events at that time have already occurred, and the parallels with what is happening now are obvious. Some of this information has already leaked into RuNet earlier, but all major events have been added and systematized here, so I bring the translation almost completely:
“Child pornography is wonderful,” a speaker from the podium enthusiastically announced. “This is great because child pornography is understandable to politicians. Having played this trump card, we can force them to act, and start blocking sites. And as soon as this happens, we will make them start blocking the file sharing sites. ”
It was at a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the slogan “Is Sweden a safe haven for pirates?”. This speaker was Johann Schlüter from the Danish anti-piracy group, a lobbying organization of the music and film industry, like the IFPI and others.
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There were three pirates in the hall: Christian Engström, Rick Falquing, and internet activist veteran Oscar Schwartz. Oscar wrote a column about Computer Sweden’s seminar right after that. Rick wrote in his blog later, as well as Christian.
“One day we will have a giant filter, which we will develop together with IFPI and MPA. We constantly monitor child pornography online to show politicians that the filter is working. Child pornography is a problem that they understand, ”said Johann Schlüter with a grin, his whole being radiated pride and enthusiasm.
Viewed from the perspective of IFPI and other lobbying organizations, he certainly had every reason to feel both pride and enthusiasm, after the success this strategy brought to them in Denmark.
Today Pirate Bay is blocked by all major Internet service providers in Denmark. Mr. Schluter’s strategy worked like a clock.
Start with child pornography, which, as everyone agrees, is unacceptable, find any politicians who want to show that they are doing something. And it does not matter that such a blocking can be bypassed in 10 seconds. The goal at this stage is only to force politicians and the public to agree that censorship in the form of a filter is permissible. Once this principle is established, it will be easy to extend it to other areas, such as illegal file sharing. And when censorship on the Internet is adopted as a principle, they can begin to look for ways to make it more technically difficult to circumvent.
In Sweden, the copyright lobby tried out the same tactic a few months after this seminar, which Johann SchlĂĽter spoke on. In July 2007, the Swedish police planned to add Pirate Bay to the Swedish list of sites that allegedly contain child pornography, on which sites are blocked by most Swedish providers.
The police did not make any attempts to contact someone from Pirate Bay, which they certainly would have done if they had indeed found some references to an illegal image of sexual activities with children. The plan was to simply block the site and at the same time create a negative association — the link between file sharing and child pornography.
In the case of Sweden, the plan did not work because the updated censorship list became known to the public before it was approved. After unrest in the blogosphere, the Swedish police were forced to abandon claims that they found child pornography there, or some other legitimate reason to block the site. Unlike Denmark, Pirate Bay is not blocked today in Sweden.
But the copyright lobby never gives up. If they could not get what they wanted, at the national level, they would try to do it through the European Union, and vice versa.
Large media companies need Internet censorship, and they cynically want to use child pornography as a reason. All they needed was a politician who would be ready to speak for them without putting too much effort into verifying the facts and not thinking about the rationality of introducing censorship into the network.
Unfortunately, they found such a politician in the face of the newly appointed Swedish European Commissioner Cecilia Malström. In March 2010, she presented a directive introducing network filtering, exactly following the words that Johann Schlüter used in her speech at a seminar in 2007. As stated in the draft of this directive, member countries had to introduce blocking of sites that contain child pornography .
Thanks to the hard work of members of the European Parliament from several different political groups that are members of the Committee on Fundamental Rights (LIBE), the commission’s attempt to impose a mandatory blocking was rejected. The European Parliament has changed the directive, stating that participants “can” and not “should” introduce blocking, and if they do, they should make sure that the procedure meets at least minimal legal standards, and that the person whose site is blocked should have the right on appeal.
Since the directive does not oblige the introduction of Internet censorship at the EU level, we can expect the copyright industry to increase its efforts to introduce blocking at the national level in countries where such a system is not yet operational. Although their real goal is to force authorities to block sites like Pirate Bay, the copyright industry will continue to use the trump card of child pornography wherever they find it too early to talk about the censorship they really need.
But increasingly, they begin to feel that they no longer need to hide their true intentions. In the US, at the time of this writing in January 2012, Congress was discussing a couple of laws called SOPA and PIPA. In these projects, the copyright lobby no longer mentions child porn. Both laws are directly devoted to blocking sites on the network to protect the rights of owners of intellectual property.
Similar measures to block the Internet are also offered in Europe. In January 2012, the European Commission proposed to introduce requirements for providers to block content, and for payment systems - to prohibit money transfers at the request of the copyright holders. It was announced the change of the official strategy of the European Union on the Internet and e-commerce. It is proposed to change the directives of the European Commission E-commerce and IPRED.
Until now, these directives protected the open Internet and especially the integrity of providers. The new version has drastic changes that are directed against this immunity. Namely, the commission wants to introduce a pan-European scheme of warnings and impacts. It is based on other similar schemes (such as the American DMCA law), but with an important distinction. In the proposed scheme, instead of the word “closing”, “impact” is used, which may mean the hosting provider’s requirement to remove content, but also blocking content by the Internet provider upon request.
This is the state of Internet censorship in January 2012.
When Commissioner Cecilia Malstrom made her proposal to block child pornography in 2010, she publicly insisted that this applies only to child pornography, and is not the beginning of a slide to Internet censorship in general. In her keynote speech at a conference in May 2010, she said:
“The commission’s proposal applies only to child pornography, no more, no less. The commission has absolutely no plans to propose blocking other types of content - and I will personally oppose any such idea. ”
Either Miss Malström purposefully lied all this time, or her colleagues at the commission for some reason did not devote her to their plans for general Internet censorship, when they gave her the task of promoting the introduction of censorship in European legislation. The purpose of this lobby from the very beginning was to block sites suspected of copyright infringement.
The article was written in January 2012, for 9 months there were some changes, but the main events at that time have already occurred, and the parallels with what is happening now are obvious. Some of this information has already leaked into RuNet earlier, but all major events have been added and systematized here, so I bring the translation almost completely:
“Child pornography is wonderful,” a speaker from the podium enthusiastically announced. “This is great because child pornography is understandable to politicians. Having played this trump card, we can force them to act, and start blocking sites. And as soon as this happens, we will make them start blocking the file sharing sites. ”
It was at a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the slogan “Is Sweden a safe haven for pirates?”. This speaker was Johann Schlüter from the Danish anti-piracy group, a lobbying organization of the music and film industry, like the IFPI and others.
')
There were three pirates in the hall: Christian Engström, Rick Falquing, and internet activist veteran Oscar Schwartz. Oscar wrote a column about Computer Sweden’s seminar right after that. Rick wrote in his blog later, as well as Christian.
“One day we will have a giant filter, which we will develop together with IFPI and MPA. We constantly monitor child pornography online to show politicians that the filter is working. Child pornography is a problem that they understand, ”said Johann Schlüter with a grin, his whole being radiated pride and enthusiasm.
Viewed from the perspective of IFPI and other lobbying organizations, he certainly had every reason to feel both pride and enthusiasm, after the success this strategy brought to them in Denmark.
Today Pirate Bay is blocked by all major Internet service providers in Denmark. Mr. Schluter’s strategy worked like a clock.
Start with child pornography, which, as everyone agrees, is unacceptable, find any politicians who want to show that they are doing something. And it does not matter that such a blocking can be bypassed in 10 seconds. The goal at this stage is only to force politicians and the public to agree that censorship in the form of a filter is permissible. Once this principle is established, it will be easy to extend it to other areas, such as illegal file sharing. And when censorship on the Internet is adopted as a principle, they can begin to look for ways to make it more technically difficult to circumvent.
In Sweden, the copyright lobby tried out the same tactic a few months after this seminar, which Johann SchlĂĽter spoke on. In July 2007, the Swedish police planned to add Pirate Bay to the Swedish list of sites that allegedly contain child pornography, on which sites are blocked by most Swedish providers.
The police did not make any attempts to contact someone from Pirate Bay, which they certainly would have done if they had indeed found some references to an illegal image of sexual activities with children. The plan was to simply block the site and at the same time create a negative association — the link between file sharing and child pornography.
In the case of Sweden, the plan did not work because the updated censorship list became known to the public before it was approved. After unrest in the blogosphere, the Swedish police were forced to abandon claims that they found child pornography there, or some other legitimate reason to block the site. Unlike Denmark, Pirate Bay is not blocked today in Sweden.
But the copyright lobby never gives up. If they could not get what they wanted, at the national level, they would try to do it through the European Union, and vice versa.
Large media companies need Internet censorship, and they cynically want to use child pornography as a reason. All they needed was a politician who would be ready to speak for them without putting too much effort into verifying the facts and not thinking about the rationality of introducing censorship into the network.
Unfortunately, they found such a politician in the face of the newly appointed Swedish European Commissioner Cecilia Malström. In March 2010, she presented a directive introducing network filtering, exactly following the words that Johann Schlüter used in her speech at a seminar in 2007. As stated in the draft of this directive, member countries had to introduce blocking of sites that contain child pornography .
Thanks to the hard work of members of the European Parliament from several different political groups that are members of the Committee on Fundamental Rights (LIBE), the commission’s attempt to impose a mandatory blocking was rejected. The European Parliament has changed the directive, stating that participants “can” and not “should” introduce blocking, and if they do, they should make sure that the procedure meets at least minimal legal standards, and that the person whose site is blocked should have the right on appeal.
Since the directive does not oblige the introduction of Internet censorship at the EU level, we can expect the copyright industry to increase its efforts to introduce blocking at the national level in countries where such a system is not yet operational. Although their real goal is to force authorities to block sites like Pirate Bay, the copyright industry will continue to use the trump card of child pornography wherever they find it too early to talk about the censorship they really need.
But increasingly, they begin to feel that they no longer need to hide their true intentions. In the US, at the time of this writing in January 2012, Congress was discussing a couple of laws called SOPA and PIPA. In these projects, the copyright lobby no longer mentions child porn. Both laws are directly devoted to blocking sites on the network to protect the rights of owners of intellectual property.
Similar measures to block the Internet are also offered in Europe. In January 2012, the European Commission proposed to introduce requirements for providers to block content, and for payment systems - to prohibit money transfers at the request of the copyright holders. It was announced the change of the official strategy of the European Union on the Internet and e-commerce. It is proposed to change the directives of the European Commission E-commerce and IPRED.
Until now, these directives protected the open Internet and especially the integrity of providers. The new version has drastic changes that are directed against this immunity. Namely, the commission wants to introduce a pan-European scheme of warnings and impacts. It is based on other similar schemes (such as the American DMCA law), but with an important distinction. In the proposed scheme, instead of the word “closing”, “impact” is used, which may mean the hosting provider’s requirement to remove content, but also blocking content by the Internet provider upon request.
This is the state of Internet censorship in January 2012.
When Commissioner Cecilia Malstrom made her proposal to block child pornography in 2010, she publicly insisted that this applies only to child pornography, and is not the beginning of a slide to Internet censorship in general. In her keynote speech at a conference in May 2010, she said:
“The commission’s proposal applies only to child pornography, no more, no less. The commission has absolutely no plans to propose blocking other types of content - and I will personally oppose any such idea. ”
Either Miss Malström purposefully lied all this time, or her colleagues at the commission for some reason did not devote her to their plans for general Internet censorship, when they gave her the task of promoting the introduction of censorship in European legislation. The purpose of this lobby from the very beginning was to block sites suspected of copyright infringement.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/155295/
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