Comment by loup-vaillant
14 hours ago
> The German courts entirely disregarded our use of geo-IP lookups on queries, and asserted that since tests via a VPN were able to resolve the domain, we were in breach of court orders
Seriously, what the fuck? So you're supposed to block VPNs as well? What's next, Tor exit nodes? New VPN and Tor nodes as they pop up? I really don't like where this is going.
What's even worse: the court fined us because they claimed this use case was in some way in contempt of their ruling. Then, when we won the overall case, that money was never returned because it wasn't specifically referenced by the final court. The response from the lower court was effectively: "Well, you will need to sue the court to get that money back." <table flip>
Edit: I'm with Quad9 (CTO)
The hubris of the courts can be stunning. Sorry from Germany.
And thanks for the great DNS service, I'm using it everywhere!
The entire point is that it can't be reasonably enforced with any granularity. Rights-holders want it to be like that so a copyright win in a single country means something has to be taken down globally.
Sounds more like we should end copyright worldwide.
Indeed it needs to happen, and even here on HN, it can be difficult for some to admit and acknowledge.
It'd be great for this to be the first major relinquishment of nation-state power to happen without violence, without backroom deals, without wedge politics and flag waving.
Just... let it go.
It's beyond obvious that copyright is not going to exist in 1000 years. Every creature on earth - especially the internet - survives by copying information. It's the most basic life force in the universe.
Copyright is serving exactly nobody today. It's time. Are there elder stateswo/men in the room who can see the writing on the wall and act with grace?
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My fear exactly.
German federal LE agencies have been doing it for years. Threatening to put you on lists of wanted and sanctioned individuals as a basically islamic suicide bomber for not taking down tiny things globally.
That kind of thing isn't unheard of for police agencies with moral and oversight issues, though. Orgs start seeking for bigger reasons. A simple copyright issue creatively expounded into an imaginary global drug bombing cyber trafficking crime ring takedown creates a massive internal win. So they do that.
>So you're supposed to block VPNs as well? What's next, Tor exit nodes? New VPN and Tor nodes as they pop up?
Trivial to do nowadays: https://focsec.com/
>I really don't like where this is going.
German courts think the internet revolves around German laws. There are some really insane cases, sometimes they will consider a website to fall under German jurisdiction simply for having a German-language version (somehow ignoring that Austria and Switzerland exist, ignoring German-speaking minorities in other countries, ignoring that a fully automated translation in 100+ languages is now possible at the click of a button).
German courts and technology are not always the best friends
There's some irony in Germany using censorship for the purpose of ensuring people don't get into reading materials that might convince them to become... fascists who censor people
There is no irony. The German government is proto-fascist, and has been for a while, as are several other European governments. Apparently the UK now arrests more people per capita for online speech than China does.
I would like to see your definition of fascism under which the German government is proto-fascist.
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