The European Commission is preparing an attack on the hyperlink - <AUTHOR> https://juliareda.eu/2015/11/ancillary-copyright-2-0-the-european-commission-is-preparing-a-frontal-attack-on-the-hyperlink/ <comment><USER3> I think I've given up on sane legislation with regards to technology.

Not only does technology advance much faster than law, but law makers are almost by definition two generations behind the generation that actually is native to the technological change in question. It's not possible to win in that situation.

You're asking someone whose paradigm of video was formed by the advent of color TV, to understand the cultural and technological consequences of popcorn time. It's like the tech problems of WWI: generals who only knew cavalry rushes continued ordering i calvary rushes, even against machine gun fire and even against staggering numbers of dead.

So I think I give up now. Technological issues may as well ignore the legal framework, because the legal framework ignores the technological issues. If we stop fighting, the rules will get so ridiculous as to he openly impossible to satisfy, offering industries the choice to either ignore them, or go out of business. In the end this stuff doesn't strangle the open sourcers or the hacker culture... It only strangles big industry, the people pay the legislators' paychecks. So fuck em. Legislators can figure it out when it hits their tax receipts.

<comment><USER4> Finally! An opportunity to say something positive about representative democracies! The opportunities to do so are rather meager these days, it seems, what with all the talk about their failings and lackings, especially when compared to direct democracy, which is becoming more and more possible every day. This is a tailor made case for representative democracy.

To all the comments speaking to the shortcomings of their legislators and how those shortcomings translate to suboptimal or even outright harmful laws, please consider two other options. Direct democracy and laissez-faire /libertarianism /anarchy.

First, consider direct democracy. By opening the legislative process to every eligible citizen, there is little chance the voting base will become more knowledgeable as to the issues of technology it will be voting on. It will in all probability become less knowledgeable, on par. Direct democracy increases the cognitive load on the legislator by orders of magnitude. By not having professional legislators each citizen must become, in addition to already being a productive member of the work force keeping their skills sharp and keeping abreast of advancements in their field, being a responsible, good member of their social circles, oh, and having a personal life, they must now both make decisions as to when they should devote resources to their legislative duties, given there will always be something up for vote, they must also devote resources deciding how they will vote. So, direct democracy not only creates a larger pool of non expert technology legislators but it also creates a framework in which those new legislators are less capable to devote the appropriate resources to legislate effectively.

Now consider the laissez-faire case. This one is easy, and for a contemporary case study one just needs to look at the recently drafted TPP language on restrictions on States regarding OSS. Laissez-faire simply settles in whatever state is conducive to the capabilities and sensibilities of the most fit entity given the initial state of the environment and its constituents. If the environment is most conducive to an entity which is benevolent and intelligent, awesome. If it is conducive to the successful outcome of a self interested, profit motive driven entity, awesome or not, that is the outcome in that case. It is amoral. No judgement. Just outcome.

The case for representative democracy then follows rather nicely, for once. Representative democracy creates a specialized space for crafting legislation where the citizens concerned about a given piece of legislation can appeal to the legislators to devote more resources to that particular issue, over other issues. Additionally they can provide additional resources to the legislators on a case by case basis to help them legislate, which may come in the form of financial assistance, access to relevant case or field studies, or experts in the domain. The non legislative citizens can then still go on about their lives, and the legislators can craft better quality legislation. Lobbying would be a form of this activity, but one in which the non legislative party is already decided as to how the legislation should look in its finished form, rather than simply trying to inform better legislation.

Two other benefits of representative democracy. The process inserts safety- switches in the form of, for example, checks and balances (only possible when the legislature is split in to different bodies, does not work when the whole legisture is involved in every part of the process), vetoes and recalls (same thing here), or the formalized process itself, which might require drafting, review, certification, or cooling-off/reflection periods.

All of which I mention to say that, sure, our "legislators" proper have had some pretty dumb moments recently while discharging their duties, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are only a small part of our law making apparatus. Lobbyists have certainly been providing their full energy. The process itself, while never perfect, has certainly done well for its constituents over an extended historical period, especially compared to other experiments; part of the beauty of the currently implemented process is its ability to improve and broaden the scope of its constituency, which should certainly continue. And there are some examples of grass roots activity influencing the dialogue and end-product.

As technology experts, throwing our support and resources behind the entire process, in a holistic fashion, providing expertise, opening up operations to legislators and citizens so they can familiarize themselves with often mysterious domains, providing a forumn for dialogues surrounding the issues, etc, this, to me at least, seems like a promising way forward, as opposed to withdrawing from the process all together and assuming everthing will sort itself out to one's personal liking. Not every issue will be settled in a manner that will satisfy each citizen every time. But that is the trade off one makes for being part of a larger community which shares most, but not necessarily each of their interests and priorities with the other members of their community. On balance though, we should all be better off if everyone engages and basic rights are respected.

So, yeah, call you Senator or Representative today. :)

<comment><USER5> No market (as libertarians understand markets) has ever emerged in all of history the way libertarians believe they do. All markets emerge in the context of _state_ actors, the earliest being warlords that capture gold and silver, strike coin with their visage to pay their soldiers and demand the peasantry to pay taxes in said coin. Markets follow directly from that. They require states to function for no other reason to have police protection over transactions. When you have too much control from a police state, markets suffer. When you have too little, markets suffer (or melt away actually). You will have to do better than this.

<comment><USER6> I must correct you about one thing. Gold/silver wasn't used until fairly recently - 15th century IIRC and for a lot of the time the value of the coin was in no way correlated to the metal it was printed on. Gold caught on in a time of market crisis because the rulers thought that telling people that the metal itself was valuable it would give them more confidence in the currency. Also it's convenient for currency because it's both absolutely useless and rare (hard to counterfeit).

<comment><USER7> Your off by at least 2,000 years as Rome for example used gold coins. 200BCE examples on this page : [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency). And older gold coins dating back to 600BCE showed up in turkey.

Currency was likely directly created as tax payments. There are several examples where some unit of currency was basicly X food for Y time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "And it's clear: When, like that, the number of subscribers dramatically declines, young people no longer subscribe to newspapers as my generation did, when the number of papers sold at newsstands declines, when the classified ads for the labour market, for used cars and for apartments decline because it all becomes an online service then newspapers are in existential danger. One can either accept that, or act now – in five years it would be too late."

I say, let them die. Most newspapers are a joke. I don't subscribe to them because it's actually a way to become misinformed about any specific topic. Or at least that's what I see in their take of any topic I know profoundly.

There are alternatives. Reader-supported news like LWN seem to be working. I get most of my content from topic specific websites, blogs, and mail lists.

About the classified ads. Why is that a problem at all?

"Maybe Google will only accept an European provision, accept European instruments because then, if needed, via the competition law and the European Commissioner for Competition measures, penalties and legal action in case of breach of European rules are possible"

Transcription -> Steal.

</comment><comment><USER9> So we need to go through the legalese in detail and make new definitions of slightly modified original concepts so that the law can't be applied to them anymore - like what the pharma industry does with rebranding old medicine by changing the formula slightly. Ideally, that should also be polymorphic in nature, i.e. the definition/implementation could be changed easily algorithmically. Unless there is some radical change to the law making it algorithmic, it would always be trailing a few years behind.

As an EU citizen, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer stupidity of our politicians in the past 2-3 years...

<comment><USER10> I believe it is more incompetence, lack of technology understanding and / or complete ignorance. You can't explain otherwise how a person like Oettinger can be put in charge of such an important part of the economy.

I'm still waiting when they suggest that airline pilots can be replaced with bus drivers to stop them going on strike / industrial action - it's called an Airbus so there shouldn't be much difference, after all it has bus in the name.

<comment><USER11> He is a shame for his country. Never heard a man speaking english so badly when thats his job.

And he never said anything good. He was one of the worst minister of the state i'm living in. Clearly only one guy after him was worse.

He is totally stupid and he and his successor managed it that people started to vote other parties on state votes, after over 50 years the CDU dropped out of the state cabinet.

And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country. The problem is even if they do completely bad things these politics never needed to fear about any judges against them.

<comment><USER12> > And now here is the fun fact. Most german politicians inside the EU are > politicians nobody wanted in the foreign country.

That's funny, it's exactly the same, here, in France!

<comment><USER13> In Ireland, too. It's essentially where you send either a complete idiot, or someone who threatens you politically, to retire.

They get lots of money, and you get rid of them. Sure, the Council pretty much agree with all commission proposed laws anyway, so the only risk is a media one.

<comment><USER14> Ireland's pretty bad, recently as MEPs we've had legalize-weed-druid, Ireland's Michelle Bachman, and far to many Sinn Feiners lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one of the reasons why the IT industry in the EU is so weak when compared to the US.

As a citizen of an EU state I can't help but feel that we are here governed by complete morons.

<comment><USER16> How are EU regulations holding EU IT industry back?

<comment><USER17> Regulations by definition are for holding rapidly advancing industries back, for various reasons.

<comment><USER18> Good regulations have almost nothing to do with technological change. We have regulations against pollution or fraud not because the technology has changed but because the incentives otherwise don't line up. You can pollute the air using technology from 1895 and if it's cheaper to do that than to install emissions controls then economics will drive you to do that unless regulations prohibit it.

Regulating very new technologies is almost always unwise. There will already be existing generic laws and regulations against serious bad outcomes (you are not allowed to knowingly kill people regardless of method) and for less serious outcomes it's generally better to let the technology shake out and take some time to study and understand it, even if there is a short-term cost to doing that.

<comment><USER17> Well I'm thinking along the lines, "low-polluting equipment is most likely more expensive => the company is held slightly back by demanding new standards". Maybe some regulation is needed, some is not. And all of it is by definition against the company. But not necessarily against the society as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > judges established that the simple act of linking to publicly available > content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new > public, a few questions were left open bis this ruling, however: For example > when exactly content can be seen as accessible by the public and how e.g. > links surpassing paywalls are to be treated.

Links surpassing paywalls are a non-issue, IMO. Those coming-from-Google paywall bypasses are put in place _by the content copyright holders_ specifically for the purpose of making that possible. If they didn't want their paywall bypassed, they wouldn't have built (or would turn off) their paywall bypass for search engines.

<comment><USER20> The end points are 100% under control of the content owner. They are free to decide who to let in and who not to let in. Why should there be any onus on the linker to do anything whatsoever and not exercise their full rights to use hyperlinks any way that they want to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand. Help me. Why do you even PUT content at a linkable url online if you don't want anyone linking to it?

If I wanted to control exactly who views my content and where they come from I can just check headers for internal linking or generate unique single-use URLs for each visitor.

What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?

<comment><USER22> > What is the practical scenario that this legislation aims to cover?

Newspapers want Google to give them money

<comment><USER21> Or else what? Or they will stop being indexed by Google? Why would they want that? It makes no sense!

<comment><USER23> It doesn't make any sense.

Google should sometimes just give people what they claim they want. "Be careful what you wish for". Unions often have "work to rule" \- you do what you're paid to do and no more, and it's an effective method of industrial action.

If a newspaper site doesn't want Google to index them Google should just drop them. Maybe provide help about setting up robots.txt.

Does Google have a blog post about why they index pages behind a paywall, and why they're happy to not index pages behind paywalls? (I understand it as "we want to index stuff that people can get to. If they can't get to it we don't want to index it")

Or maybe Google should just give ads and paywalled content the same shaded background?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I no longer care.. fuck it. Let them break the internet. We will not be the only one to face the consequences.

I for one, started hoarding data, scraping good websites for valuable information while I still can.

<comment><USER25> We should also be preparing the infrastructure for a global network that's asynchronous, anonymous, and encrypted. It doesn't seem all that unlikely that the whole notion of a real-time internet is going to collapse or become infeasible for anything but entertainment approved by the corporations and states. And of course that has already happened to some extent. We should maintain a relatively slow grassroots samizdat network. Even the remotest regions should be able to receive dispatches through couriers, and in regions where packet-switched internet is somewhat operational we can distribute the samizdat at net speeds. I suppose I'm thinking of an "interplanetary" network. A network fit for the Firefly universe, if you will.

<comment><USER26> There already are efforts to address this with projects like the IPFS. However, without mass adoption, it seems very unlikely that an alternative internet would emerge before the increasingly-likely collapse of the open internet.

<comment><USER25> Somewhat agreed. However, there is enough repression to provide incentive for semi-shady people to work on these things. Unfortunately piracy seems to be the biggest incentive for secret communications, and while that is indeed productive, it incentivizes high-bandwidth torrents for large files, which is not exactly in line with the most crucial needs (although of course there are important uses for distribution of videos and photos). An interplanetary low- bandwidth Usenet might be the most crucial necessity for the upcoming dystopian future. So I suggest we start encouraging the spread of subversive poetry and politically uncomfortable discussions, to incentivize such a grassroots network.

<comment><USER27> You're best off figuring out other avenues to do this - HN is preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER28> You need a choir to make a chorus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would have thought that those in European nations would have learned from their mistakes by now. Spain did this, initially only some companies demanded money and so Google just removed them from the index. Then the companies realised it was a disaster.

Then the Spanish government made it mandatory for everyone to pay the media companies, regardless - and they weren't allowed to do it directly either. They had to pay the state, who then paid the publisher. Nobody was allowed to opt-out. So Google News pulled out entirely. It was an unmitigated disaster... for the publishers:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study- shows-s...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains- google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-publishers/)

To quote that article:

 _Whatever loss of traffic occurs due to readers who may read a news aggregator and then choose not to read an entire story, is more than made up for by the "market expansion" effect, the study found. In other words, given access to a news aggregator like Google, people read much more news._

 _The NERA analysis found a 6 percent overall drop in traffic from the Spanish Google News closure and a 14 percent drop for smaller publications. Those numbers are slightly smaller than a GigaOm analysis from last year, which found traffic drop-offs of 10 to 15 percent._

<comment><USER15> But once these plans apply to every single EU state Google will in effect have to choose between leaving the EU market or paying.

That's at least the plan they have come up with.

If they severely limit the Internet in the process doesn't matter to them. They'll create a shitty EU alternative if they have to.

<comment><USER30> How much do you think Google earns with News? I'm pretty sure they would simply shut down the service EU-wide, and continue providing just their core business, Google Search.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't matter to them how much Google earns, it is threatening the business model of EU media corporations.

Therefore the framework of rules must be changed. This is protectionism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who finds these regulations increasingly funny?

I want to see how they would react to URL shortening services, base64-encoded outgoing redirects, links injections only on click events; you know, the gray tactics the whole internet already uses!

Please explain this one thing to me: why don't politicians work with field experts? Not just IT, but any domain, really.

<comment><USER32> The government sets an agenda and uses all kinds of tricks to get it through the parliament as fast as possible. A real democratic process is not desired. MPs usually don't have enough time to even read bills, doing proper research is completely out of the question, and therefore they trust the party position. Disagreeing with the party is sanctioned, e.g. you won't get listed in the next election (-> you lose the income you need for your mortgage), less speaking time, etc.

Source: Members of the Bundestag and "Von Rettern und Rebellen" by Klaus-Peter Willsch

<comment><USER33> > MPs usually don't have enough time to even read bills, doing proper research > is completely out of the question, and therefore they trust the party > position.

I don't get this. They should automatically reject anything they didn't have time to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And another strike by the same EU Digital Economy commissioner (!) that "had no sympathy for Jennifer Lawrence when she happens to post her private pictures online".

I'm pretty hopeless, especially because there's no way on gods green earth to get rid of this guy. EU is so high above country level politics (yet defines >80% of laws in the end), it's hard to even get people to the voting booth. And even if they do, it's completely parliamentary, no chance to influence anything.

It doesn't help that completely incompetent politicians in the country parties get dilbertized one level up so they "can't hurt anymore". This pirate politician is about the only one there decently transparent and accountable.

</comment><comment><USER35> A hyperlink is the same as a reference in a book. That means referencing a precise portion of a book (for instance, ISBN + page number, or just title + publisher + chapter number) would become a copyright violation too.

I'm not sure the EC is conscious of that, because it would have huge consequences. The cost of academic research papers, for instance, with their pages full of references, would become dramatically high to produce, or even impossible (what if I don't want you to talk about my works ?)

</comment><comment><USER36> Has any organization formally estimated the worldwide, annual economic value generated by the open internet? When copyright (intended to promote the generation of creative works) is abused for control, the loser is the legitimacy of copyright. Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically for control, instead of hiding behind and squandering the legitimate role of copyright.

<comment><USER30> > Those who want control should invent new mechanisms that are specifically > for control

You mean, DRM, rootkits, hardware TPMs, etc? Personally, I prefer copyright, at least it can be easily ignored.

<comment><USER36> The problem is that "technological protection" mechanisms are being bound to copyright, the violation of which is being bound to criminal law in TPP/TTIP/RCEP.

DRM would have an uphill battle if it could not hitch a ride on the legitimacy of copyright. They need to be separated. One protects transient and ever- changing business models, one protects human creativity in a virtuous circle inspired by past creativity.

<comment><USER37> Bypassing DRM has been criminal for decades now, as a result of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and TRIPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any fellow Europeans here, who remember the good old time, when we used to make jokes about American Politics being so stupid?

I feel sad, very sad.

</comment><comment><USER32> _" the simple act of linking to publicly available content is no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new public_"

That's not really the most straight forward reasoning? I'd say linking is not COPYright infringement because nothing is ever copied.

</comment><comment><USER39> lol. it wouldn't break the internet. it would just break european websites. I applaud Julia's euro-centric ego though.

I agree though, let them do it. Someone has to show everyone what nonsense this is. Cautionary tales serve a purpose.

</comment><comment><USER40> If you are a EU citizen, vote pirate in the EU elections.

We got Christian Engström last term, and we have Julia Reda this term. They're doing a ton of good. We need more.

</comment><comment><USER41> IPFS, anyone?

[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

<comment><USER26> I completely support the IPFS (especially with them keeping content hosting explicitly out of scope). The problem I faced when trying to leverage IPFS for a project is that the reference implementation is very difficult to use in languages other than Go, and to completely embed in applications (as in staticly linking to sqlite).

<comment><USER42> Yeah, I _like_ Go, but the reference implementation should have been a C library (or similar). There are splinter projects trying to implement it for other languages, but they're either already dead or moving at a snail's pace.

I love the idea, but that decision leaves me with little confidence that it'll catch on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> When you have a culture of statism this is what you get. You elect governments that want to and do micromanage your lives.

Don't blame it on the politicians. You guys elected these people. They're just following the ideology of their politics.

<comment><USER44> Don't you think that the whole 'democracy' model is flawed from the top to the bottom? If there were no good candidates offered to the public, how would the public choose a good one? And if a good one would somehow emerge, it is trivial to 'catch him' with a pack of heroin or being related to 'enemies', isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it's a great idea because those media companies will get crippled when everyone stops linking to them. What a great way to put a serious dent in an annoying industry.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is so broken.

I'm giving up. The political system is broken beyond repair.

</comment><comment><USER47> It really doesn't matter, I will make my own internet.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why are tech companies so bad at lobbying? If a small, dying industry like publishing is strong enough to push through stuff like this, why can't cash- flush tech companies combat it?

</comment><comment><USER48> When I lock my front door and leave a spare key under the doormat, my insurance company is not obliged by law to pay for any damages if the spare key is used by thieves to enter my house. I could have easily prevented the situation.

Content publishers should properly lock their front doors, too, and not have spare keys lying around all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER49> Silly for digital media to try and leech off of the more successful tech cos. In general, digital media is scrambling with various monetization strategies. But they're thinking about the problem wrong. They obsess over how to monetize people already _on_ their site. Instead, they should start asking how they can monetize people _coming_ to their site. I think the proposition linked by OP is a very premature recognition of that. The proposed solution is way out in left field, but there are saner approaches, such as the use of interstitial advertising. Of course, now adblockers become relevant to the discussion, and I won't go down that rabbit hole (here, at least.)

Disclosure: I operate a link shortener [1] that pays people based on their traffic using interstitial advertising.

[1] [https://credhot.com](https://credhot.com)

</comment><comment><USER50> Will this also way the other way around ? I.e. will newspapers also need to pay if they link to external source?

</comment><comment><USER51> Time to play devil's advocate and do a thought experiment. What if we created a site containing every word and every conjugation in a way that could be linked to. This work is clearly not a copyright violation. What if we then wrote a "compression" program that took any text file and converted it to a file containing only links to this site. Few would argue that is not a copyright violation. Yet the resulting file contains nothing of the original, it is just a link. If linking to a whole text with a single link is not a copyright violation, at what point between that and our "compressed" file does it cross the line, and why?

Or, put another way, if links had been copyright violations from the start, would we think that it was a sensible and logical characteristic of copyright?

<comment><USER48> That experiment has been done before! [https://github.com/philipl/pifs](https://github.com/philipl/pifs)

<comment><USER14> What is the legal implication of distributing a range of Pii that can be translated into copyrighted material?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Remember all these sites that ban hyperlinking to them in their ToS:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+fro...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Hyperlinking+to+the+Site+from+any+other+website+without+our+initial+and+ongoing+consent)

</comment><comment><USER53> Since democracy seems incapable of progressing with changes in the world, would it ever be possible to have a bureaucratic technocracy? Something where technocrats write up and implement legislation rather than people who have no understanding?

<comment><USER54> Um, it's not democracy that's at fault. Legislative structures first goal is to protect capital. In practice this leads to lobbyists influencing legal decisions.

In the fantasy technocracy - unless it was totalitarian communism - <USER2> would be instruments to sound the markets for need for legislation and big capital would have as much say so there as here now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'd like to know how many of the people complaining here about their legislators have called, written, or visited* (yes you can do that) said legislators to help educate them.

*In the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER56> Just let them pass the legislation. Any media company actually trying to enforce their "rights" will promptly die.

</comment><comment><USER57> Hyperlinks are not a problem. Government is a problem. The EA and it's legislators are a problem.

</comment><comment><USER58> when was internet free? i always have paid to use it. i understand free software but internet is here cause an infrastructure was created and deployed (means paid). my lan is free (cause i paid for that).

i don't get the point. someone wants to control a wan. is that a news?

</comment><comment><USER59> Internet already has this. If you want to be paid by google for linking to your site you just need to put NOINDEX in proper place in the page header. Though it's really up to google if they choose to list you and pay you or not list you.

</comment><comment><USER60> What exactly makes a text a hyperlink?

Does it have to be only the usual <a href="#">text</a> ?

What if I do this: <div link="#">text</div>

And then I use JavaScript to redirect, is it still considered a hyperlink?

Have I just found a loop hole? :)

</comment><comment><USER61> There's a lot of "considering" and "seems" in the article, and skimming the leaked document I didn't find anything definite either. So I'm not particulary worried.

</comment><comment><USER62> Let it pass. Let these nimwits embarrass themselves.

</comment><comment><USER63> Maybe before establishing all these EU bureaucracies they should have focused on establishing a strong bill of rights. The first amendment at least in the US would almost certainly prevent nonsense like this.

The EU commissions overall feel like they are flailing around making up the rules they go. At least when courts in the US disagree, it is about adherence to precedent and the constitution, not appeasing whatever group is lobbying them at the time.

<comment><USER64> * (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

        (2) The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.*

(At first glance it has more caveats, but in practice they're all present in US 1st amendment caselaw as well)

<comment><USER63> It is not true that these are remotely equivalent. US case-law says, you have freedom of speech unless it specifically calls for violence or threatens very, very, direct harm ie calling "fire" in a theater (and yes, even copyrighted material can be quoted or satirized as necessary to make a political statement).

"For the prevention of disorder of crime, for the protection of health and morals for the protection of the reputation or rights of others" \-- those are wide, gaping holes which make this statement absolutely useless.

<comment><USER65> The US has the same caveats, it's just that the limitations of free speech are decided in case law instead of specifically codified.

 _> For the prevention of disorder of crime_

There are all sorts of types of speech that are criminal in the US because they are either a crime, or encourage/enable crime in some way.

 _> for the protection of health and morals_

There are plenty of examples in the US of speech being limited for health reasons.

Protection of morals is a bit more of a gray area, but certainly there are historical examples of the US limiting speech for reasons that amount to morality.

 _> for the protection of the reputation or rights of others_

Again, libel is a crime in the US.

<comment><USER63> Libel specifically says you cannot say provably false things. You can ruin a reputation, without lying, without a problem in the US.

The difference is evidenced by the "right to be forgotten" ruling in Europe, where the ability to hide past actions was deemed more important than the right to publicize those links / events.

<comment><USER64> Unless it's about agriculture: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws) (civil burden of proof, and reversed in some places).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Take Ottinger out of the Commission, and this idea will die. He was the one pushing for such a tax in Germany, too. He has strong ties with GEMA there.</comment>


'THEY'RE SELLING UNICORNS:' ISRAEL CANCER CURE CLAIM DEBUNKED BY EXPERTS - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/theyre-selling-unicorns-israel-cancer-cure-claim-debunked-experts-1311656 <comment><USER2> This blog post author accuses the Israeli startup that its discovery to cure all type of cancer is a lie because some Australian doctor went on their website and looked at their published data. It's like going to AMD's website to check if their 7nm Chip is real... i'm Not saying the Israeli startup is not selling unicorns but the article evidence is a stretch...

Ps: the HN author use of all caps sounds like he's happy about this, but we all lose when the cancer cure is not found

<comment><AUTHOR> >Ps: the HN author use of all caps sounds like he's happy about this, but we all lose when the cancer cure is not found

Newsweek used all caps: I quoted their headline.

<comment><USER3> Please change all-caps titles to not all-caps when submitting.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, will do

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most appropriate description of the Israeli scientists that they suffer from delusions of grandeur that are not supported by the data that they have or really anything at all

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I lost over 30 points for suggestions that they, and their jpost spam was bs. Way to go HN.

</comment><comment><USER6> They sure got forbes...</comment>


She said yes – again, after rebuilding a love erased by memory loss - <AUTHOR> https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/she-said-yes-again-after-rebuilding-a-love-erased-by-memory-loss-1.23930434 <comment><USER2> Beautiful. A real-life version of The Vow: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606389/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606389/)</comment>


Audio and music analysis resources with Matlab and Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.AudioContentAnalysis.org <comment><USER2> Will this work with Octave, since it is Matlab-compatible? It is amazing tool and actively developed. 5.1.0 version was released recently. What I really miss in Octave is the LSP server[1] and a better REPL experience (similar to IPython one).

[1] [https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?57106](https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?57106)

<comment><AUTHOR> It has not been tested with octave. Since it mostly uses core functionality only , I would expect that it is largely compatible, though.</comment></comment>


Sites using Facebook 'like' button liable, ECJ rules - <AUTHOR> http://euobserver.com/tickers/145555 <comment><USER2> Should I be laughing at the fact that they have the share button on their site?</comment>


The Power Failure Seen Around the World - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2013/02/04/ThePowerFailureSeenAroundTheWorld.aspx

<comment><USER2> Can't believe this didn't get upvoted. Easily best analysis of what likely went wrong, and how to fix it in the future, I've seen so far. What a bummer HN won't see it.</comment>


Is there a regular expression to detect a valid regular expression? (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/172303/is-there-a-regular-expression-to-detect-a-valid-regular-expression?

<comment><USER2> Regexception

Wait that doesn't work.</comment>


Coffee consumption: umbrella review of meta-analyses of health outcomes (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/359/bmj.j5024.full.pdf <comment><USER2> What's with all the patients who stop drinking coffee because of cardiovascular problems. Is it accounted for that they may skew the results of some coffee versus none in favor of some coffee? In other words, sick people who are more likely to die stop drinking coffee.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem like they would have excluded a study that specifically looked at that group. Nor controlled for them.

They specifically talked about this:

> Despite our broad inclusion criteria, we identified only one meta-analysis > that focused on a population of people with established disease. This was a > metaanalysis of two small cohort studies investigating risk of mortality in > people who had experienced a myocardial infarction.

Here's that one meta-analysis:

Coffee reduces the risk of death after acute myocardial infarction: a meta- analysis.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27315099](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27315099)

As far as preventing issues:

> Coffee consumption was consistently associated with a lower risk of > mortality from all causes of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, > and stroke in a nonlinear relation, with summary estimates indicating > largest reduction in relative risk at three cups a day.28</comment></comment>


The Great Big Porn Block is coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.sheeldz.co.uk/2013/12/blocked.html <comment><USER2> Stop calling it a "porn filter". It's censorship of the internet.

If it was actually a "porn filter", its purpose would be to filter pornographic material. In reality, there is a list of categories to be censored, and porn is only one of them. Focusing on the words "porn filtering" was a deliberate strategic move by the government, because it makes it more difficult to oppose convincingly.

Those of us who oppose censorship are playing into their hands by referring to this issue using the favourable terms coined by the government. We should all stop referring to it as "porn filtering" and start referring to it as "internet censorship".

<comment><USER3> This has already happened.

The Internet Watch Foundation already tell ISPs to block child pornography, and the court system can tell ISPs to block file-sharing/streaming sites.

It is a myth that the internet is uncensored in the UK at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Both distributing child pornography and distributing content in violation of copyright are explicitly against the law. Distributing "normal" porn is not. I think there is a qualitative difference between attempting to prevent illegal activity and attempting to prevent legal activity that some vague authority out of the public eye just doesn't like, and I'm not sure it's helpful to equate the two cases in a debate like this.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, you can't just censor it away until it's gone. It doesn't fight the root of the cause and in the long run will only hurt the society as a whole.

We all know that it doesn't matter how illegal something is; if it can be found, the person looking for it will find it. That's especially true for the internet. Obstacles always bear the chance of making it worse for the wrong people.

<comment><USER4> _The thing is, you can 't just censor it away until it's gone._

To play devil's advocate for a moment: how do we know that?

I'm guessing you and I are both liberally inclined in our politics from the very fact that we're having this conversation. Probably we are both naturally sceptical of any form of censorship.

However, objectively, it is clear that some children really are being exploited in horrible ways to produce the kind of material that we sometimes hear about in the news. If a responsibly operated system for limiting its distribution could have a significant actual benefit in terms of reducing the incentive to create that material in the first place, I don't think a principled "absolutely no censorship allowed" argument is sufficiently powerful to dismiss the alternative out-of-hand.

To make these kinds of policies, I think you have to look at the big picture, and the merits of both positions, and ideally hard evidence about the likely outcomes of each outcome. Even then, you are almost always choosing the least of evils in such a situation, because there will be real and legitimate concerns about any policy you might finally adopt.

 _It doesn 't fight the root of the cause and in the long run will only hurt the society as a whole._

I am absolutely in favour of going after the root cause of abuses, or any other criminal activity. But when you're talking about legislation and law enforcement, I think you have to take a pragmatic view and accept that you aren't going to be able to protect every vulnerable person overnight by magically eliminating all sources of evil in the world, no matter how noble your intentions.

If a responsibly operated system for limiting the distribution of things like child pornography can reduce the amount of exploitation going on in the meantime, at a direct cost in terms of limiting the freedom of expression of those who would distribute such material and an indirect cost of requiring a technical mechanism for censorship and the risk of that mechanism being abused for other purposes, I think it is still reasonable to consider it.

Then again, I also have strong views on the need for accountability in public office. In particular, I believe that betrayal of the public should be considered a high crime. If you're going to give that much trust to anyone then the penalties for abusing that trust must be severe, and anyone who tried to censor other material using this sort of system should expect to be caught and should be facing significant jail time and a ban on holding public office. If any government isn't willing to accept that responsibility and transparency and oversight, then my view on whether they should be trusted with the kinds of system we're discussing swings sharply against them.

 _We all know that it doesn 't matter how illegal something is; if it can be found, the person looking for it will find it._

No, we don't know that. This is my point.

 _Obstacles always bear the chance of making it worse for the wrong people._

Yes they do, and that is why those obstacles must have credible oversight to ensure they operate responsibly and severe penalties for anyone who abuses them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider taking the chance anyway, depending on what is at stake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh yes, it starts as ThinkOfTheChildren... but then it's an opt-out process. They know people will feel kinda embarrassed to call their ISP and say "I want porn". And of course, this filter will eventually expand to cover more than that. And now, you have those in power censoring the internet in a China-like fashion, but the masses assume it's just porn. Maybe at first they'll put up an error message from the ISP that "This site is blocked by porn filter" but that would make some people curious and ask questions. So eventually, it'll just 404.

[http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/12/20/bt-gives-parents- tool-t...](http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/12/20/bt-gives-parents-tool-to- block-kids-from-learning-about-sexual-health-and-gay-rights/)

[http://www.darkpolitricks.com/2013/07/uk-internet-filter- wil...](http://www.darkpolitricks.com/2013/07/uk-internet-filter-will-block- alternative-news-sites/)

[http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20130107/1119...](http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20130107/11190721597/)

 _> >This very broad, default censorship is disturbing for at least two reasons. First, because many people will be unaware that this kind of "mature content" censorship is taking place at all, and therefore won't ask for it to be stopped. And secondly, even if they are aware, the fact that asking for the filter to be lifted could be seen as tantamount to wanting to access porn -- something that many will understandably be reluctant to have noted down on their Internet access record -- means that they will simply put up with a limited feed_

<comment><USER7> > They know people will feel kinda embarrassed to call their ISP and say "I > want porn"

I called my Canadian cable company on some trivial matter. The end of the call went something like: "We've got a great deal on the kids TV channel package. Do you want to sign up?"

"I live by myself. Not interested."

"Oh, in that case, I can give you a deal on our adult channels."

Moral of the story: the call centre staff couldn't care one way or the other - they're just doing their jobs. Call 'em up and get the stupid filter removed.

<comment><USER8> They are charging you for the extra channels. The call center people are motivated to make you pay more.

It's a bit different with this Internet filter.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. In fact, historically some of the UK mobile providers used their Internet filtering to direct users to their own for-pay porn of which they got a cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From TFA: " I don't mind certain art, like films or computer games being censored"

Right. He doesn't mind censorship, he just disagrees with where the line is drawn. Which is what a lot of debate seems to boil down to these days: we don't care about anything unless it affects us personally.

And, as others have said, trying to keep teenage boys away from porn can only fail in the most spectacular way possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> This whole thing feels like a way to embarrass people into accepting a filter on pornography, while including non-porn content in the filter at a later date.

Once any type of filtering is set up it opens the floodgates for what content can or will be filtered. Imagine how easy it would be to filter out anti- government content when the response is merely "oops, must be a bug with the filter".

How can you even be sure that the opting out will still truly allow you access to the full, unfiltered internet?

<comment><USER12> > How can you even be sure that the opting out will still truly allow you > access to the full, unfiltered internet?

We already know that opting out of this filter does nothing about other filtered content - stuff the IWF has filtered will be hard to find; stuff that courts have ordered ISPs to filter (at the request of the companies asking for the court order) will be harder to find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dear UK government: You are putting your technological expertise against a horde bored, horny 14 year old kids. Your abject failure will amuse the world.

<comment><USER14> The target was never bored, horny 14 year old kids -- it was the likes of WikiLeaks/Snowden sympathizers.

Currently, military personnel and other public servants are barred from viewing any and all 'classified' content (WikiLeaks/Snowden material). This restriction will now be applied on a national level resulting in a variety of news websites being rendered inaccessible.

It's not _if_ but _when_ the censorship will be applied across the world. It's coming to nations whom are regarded as shining beacons of democracy (especially all of whom are in the sphere of US influence), and such censorship policies will be as untouchable as our ever-growing war budgets.

No politician wants to be the one responsible for tragedies resulting from rolling back censorship in the same manner no-one wants fingers pointed at them for reducing the defence budget.

<comment><USER15> > The target was never bored, horny 14 year old kids -- it was the likes of > WikiLeaks/Snowden sympathizers.

This is stupid to such a level you should delete your account immediately. How exactly could optional ISP filters possibly ever target people who know about computers to any reasonable degree.

It won't be applied nationally, and you're busy predicting the future when you don't even understand the present.

<comment><USER16> And you should stop insulting people on Hacker News and consider rereading the guidelines.

<comment><USER15> If someone posts nonsense, then no possible response can ever be seen as non- insulting. What was posted was grade A total nonsense. So I can't see how I can tell the poster this without being insulting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It has nothing to do with blocking porn and has more to do with creating a database of people who have no fears of making it known that they don't want filters on the Internet connection.

Of course later on they government can label them has people who are happy to view porn or visit terrorist websites. It is a way of creating a database of people who can be labelled in a negative manner in relation to some government agenda.

<comment><USER18> Or sold to the daily mail and other hypocritical smut pedlars

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Opt out, or better still, vote with your pounds and use one of the many ISPs that aren't blocking sites.

<comment><USER20> One of the reasons I use AAISP: they provide a nice clean connection with no mucking about.

That and a bunch of other technical reasons too: proper dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 across the board (they've provided IPv6 for a decade while many UK ISPs don't even have solid plans to support it soon), fully delegated rDNS for the addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) I am assigned and so forth.

Also excellent support when something goes wrong as I experienced when BT's vDSL box died. Unlike some ISPs I could mention, after making sure I'd done all the relevant tests so _knew_ what the problem was rather than guessing they both handled nagging BT for me and kept me well informed (all comms were visible from my login on their control panel) of that process. When a friend had similar trouble (there was a spate of those units overheating, to the point where BT eventually started proactively swapping out those installed between certain dates) it took much longer to get resolved as he was passed from pillar to post.

Caveat for balance: there are other ISPs that people describe in similarly positive terms for much the same reasons, of course. Unfortunately, like with AAISP, you do pay a bit extra for the better service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What if people massively "opt in", thus dismantling many social taboos around the subject?

<comment><USER22> Leak the list of course, and use it as a weapon against anyone in politics or the public eye. Much as you can fire any public schoolteacher seen consuming alcohol in any form, now any librarian or political opponent will be attacked for being "on the list". May as well wear a scarlet letter "P" on your 3-piece suit.

Of course if you'll agree to support what we define as network neutrality, perhaps your name can accidentally not be included on "the list". Or we can charge an extra fee for an unlisted account much as the phone company used to charge extra money for an unlisted account.

Even funnier it would be a shame if your political opponent were added to the list, right? I mean, obviously no one would ever execute a pretexting attack to tarnish the good name of their political opponent, or perhaps the good name of a coworker aiming for the same political appointment as yourself.

All you really need to do is see how the Germans treated the Jews in the mid 30s. I'm not trying to be inflamatory, merely factual. I specifically listed the 30s not the 40s.

<comment><USER15> > All you really need to do is see how the Germans treated the Jews in the mid > 30s. I'm not trying to be inflamatory, merely factual. I specifically listed > the 30s not the 40s.

Wow. I have nothing to say but wow.

<comment><USER22> I feel the need to list the specific treatments we can soon expect, inspired by mid 1930s Germany:

A list will be created of people requiring special treatment by those in power, and a crowd of miscreants will enforce that treatment against anyone opposing it.

Those on the list will not be permitted to participate in the government, sensitive posts in the military, or to teach.

Those on the list will be publicly identified for ridicule. Would not be surprised to see a scarlet "P" on drivers licenses and such. After all, its "to protect the children". Some people are more equal than others.

At some point they'll be unable to hold certain non-public jobs; companies will be terrified to be identified as hiring people "on the list" so to limit liability they'll have to stop hiring.

Businesses opened and operated by people on the "scarlet P" list will be picketed. If you think I'm making this up, you probably think the Westboro Baptist Church is a made up story.

Political and family enemies will be added to the list, guilty until proven innocent of course.

"To save the children" maps of neighborhoods with "scarlet P" overlaid on homes on the list will be distributed, much as we already distribute predator maps in the USA.

Divide and conqueror, baby, divide and conqueror, thats what its all about.

Thats why I specifically listed the 30s not the 40s. I don't think we're quite up to lighting the ovens just yet, although I'm sure theres a segment of the population and a segment of .gov who wants it.

<comment><USER15> > "To save the children" maps of neighborhoods with "scarlet P" overlaid on > homes on the list will be distributed, much as we already distribute > predator maps in the USA.

Please see a doctor. You are experiencing paranoid delusions.

<comment><USER22> A delusion would imply a site like mapsexoffenders.com and a bazillion other online mapping competitors do not exist. I will give you an out, that your current locale might not release information like this to the public, but many locations do. Or you may simply not have known about these old, popular-ish, existing services. So much for claims of delusion.

If, however, that was a ridiculously bad attempt at an ad hominem, well, I'm sorry to say that was just pitiful. You can do better. I mean, even something like "your mom" would have outshined that. There's a level of disrespect beyond disrespect where not even putting in enough effort to be properly disrespectful is in itself disrespect squared, and from that point of view I can salute your effort, but still it wasn't very good. Practice practice practice...

<comment><USER15> > So much for claims of delusion

You are claiming this will be implemented like a combination of 30s Germany and 00s USA. Despite the fact this is the UK and you have no evidence whatsoever for any of your wild predictions.

Seriously, see a doctor. Your statements are massively paranoid and not at all based in reality. If I wanted to say you were wrong because you were stupid I would. In this case you're just believing in wholly illogical things.

<comment><USER22> I think the root problem of our disagreement would be that you think I am making a formal engineering prediction and is therefore held to an extremely high standard, which is a wee bit higher than I was aiming (I was aiming for a little higher than "the green bay packers are going to the superbowl" but not too much higher).

On the other hand your outlook is falsification of a formal hypothesis merely requires repeating over and over "illogic" "paranoid" and such as though they're magic incantations which in and of themselves will convince others, which is highly unlikely. Practice argumentation and debate. Repeated incantations just don't work.

Needless to say we aren't agreeing on a mutually acceptable, and equally applied, level of "proof". Oh well. Makes for a boring debate if we can't even agree on the rules of the road (thats a pun, you guys drive on the wrong side of the road you see)

I also sense a bit of bias toward a belief that large groups of people tend to behave in a rational and logical manner, whereas my extensive observational experience and historical reading tends toward the exact opposite. Sure would be a nice planet if you were not completely incorrect!

So I apologize for implying you were an inexperienced troll, in that I missed the root cause that we have mutually dramatically incompatible outlooks on life (although note I'm a little more of a gentleman WRT not suggesting medical treatment).

So have a nice day, and good luck with the whole fascism thing, hope it works out for the UK better than famous historical examples and I hope their cultural phase ends better than some awful historical examples. I'm sure civilization will maintain itself despite people burying their heads in the sand when faced with what boils down to evil and/or a cultural/political hygiene issue.

<comment><USER15> > although note I'm a little more of a gentleman WRT not suggesting medical > treatment

I'm not saying that to hurt you or your reputation. From my perspective your views are paranoid and illogical. From extensive experience debating people with similar beliefs I believe the best solution is to discuss your feelings with a doctor.

The chance of this system ever getting any further is incredibly small. The public backlash has been almost universal and the filters are already being exploited publicly. I honestly have no idea how you could rationally extrapolate 'scarlet P' letters stamped onto licenses.

<comment><USER22> LOL you must be a lot of fun at sci fi and alt history cons, or any time people start brainstorming about greatly extrapolated trends.

The 'scarlet p' is a literary allusion to a very old book of Hawthorne's, wikipedia link below. Some decades ago it was trendy to include it on the reading lists for school children, at least in the midwestern USA. As a piece of literature, its absolutely drowning in symbolism to the point of ridicule, although it certainly demonstrates the utter inhumanity of theocracy as a form of government, so its not all bad. Its has the virtue of brevity. And a scarlet "A" makes quite an appearance. There's worse ways to pass the time, than reading "the scarlet letter".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I used to get pretty upset at these constant news reports of expanding Internet censorship. Then it occurred to me that it simply means that the reactionary forces are (finally) starting to see it as a threat. And that is a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER24> There may be a point on optionally blocking pure, meant to be porn, sites. But when you block wikipedia, youtube, art galleries, xkcd, social sites and so on because it could show somewhere some skin or talk about life as it is, you are forcing people to skip your filters in the best case, and get disconnected to good part of the digital world in the worst with all that could come after that.

</comment><comment><USER25> > _Of course, certain censorship is fine. I don 't mind certain art, like > films or computer games being censored, and think that it is key to keeping > a powerful art community when protecting those from harmful images or > powerful material._

The author hasn't made a distinction between _restriction_ and _censorship_. Films unsuitable for children, say _Sword of Vengeance_ have their availability to them restricted. On the other hand, I'm quite sure that the British release of _Ichi the Killer_ has scenes edited from it, ie. it is censored.

I was wondering if this porn filter would block access to the works of the Chapman Brothers.

[http://jakeanddinoschapman.com/](http://jakeanddinoschapman.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Porn is not the problem — you are[0].

[0]: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-who- stray/201305/p...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-who- stray/201305/porn-is-not-the-problem-you-are)

<comment><USER27> Nothing in that article is a reason why they are introducing the porn filters in the UK

<comment><USER26> "What is Porn Anyway?" is a philosophical question. So you're actually misfiring in your claim of irrelevancy.

OP opened a can of worms. Seriously. (No, really: _seriously_.)

Arguing that it's _art_? That it is in itself valuable to culture as "low art" is? This isn't a question restricted to the UK, and it's one we need to get philosophically astute about pretty fast. So, again: Porn is not the problem — you are.

Whatever it is, analogies to automobile accidents and art, in any sense, is a stretch beyond palatability, and makes this entire discussion look entirely intellectually one-sided. I think such talk is a disservice to the discussion, and maybe porn should be blocked on those grounds alone, for I am quite sure OP's aesthetics are common.

<comment><USER28> The uncontroversial answer to "what is porn anyway?" that underpins the UK ban is "something children shouldn't watch".

This is ostensibly a "think of the children" move, it has nothing to do with aesthetics or art, low or high. In reality, it's probably also an old school conservative play to "clean up" the filth.

<comment><USER29> _The uncontroversial answer to "what is porn anyway?" that underpins the UK ban is "something children shouldn't watch"._

On the list of things children should not watch people having sex should really not be close to the top. It is just sex. After breathing, drinking and eating it is one of the most natural and common activities on earth. A coyote trying to smash a bird with an anvil seems a way less appropriate thing for children to watch.

<comment><USER12> The UK doesn't have much of a problem with children watching adults having sex.

The UK has more of a problem with children watching the weird unrealistic sex portrayed by the US porn industry.

<comment><USER26> This is an excellent observation to make.

 _This._

Now, _why_ is the US unique here?

<comment><USER12> Also, in a thread about censorship: an accidental showing of a half-covered nipple on terrestrial broadcast TV would not result in a half million dollar fine and many many years of legal action. (I think the original fine was eventually overturned, but only because the FCC had changed a policy before taking action??)

US TV shows have to censor their language unless they're broadcast on cable or satellite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the british movie adaptation of "1984" which was filmed in 1984, when he had sex with Julia, was that explicit enough to get the film blocked on the internet? Just idly curious. I haven't seen the film adaptation in probably 20 years (or more?) so I have to call out to the wider HN community.

I think the movie adaptation of 1984 would be a good idea to rally around. I say "idea" rather than "film" because I don't remember if the actual film is any good, but the idea of censoring 1984 "to save teh children" but primarily motivated to politically censor is too juicy to pass up.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why block porn? The cynical answer is this: Government is about power, and power is about sex.

Boiled down to it's raw animal fundamentals, having power is about being able to maximise your reproductive chances and suppress the reproductive chances of lesser males.

As a result, the powerful will always impose a (hypocritical) morality on the weak. Even if it just provides a symbolic victory over their libido, it plays an age-old role in cementing the pecking-order of society.

<comment><USER31> >Boiled down to it's raw animal fundamentals, having power is about being able to maximise your reproductive chances and suppress the reproductive chances of lesser males.

So blocking porn minismises the reproductive chances of lesser males? So you feel that watching porn would _enhance_ their reproductive success?

<comment><USER30> I didn't say it was anything more than a symbolic act, or perhaps an unconscious throwback to a primitive sociological drive. I seriously doubt that those who crusade for a restrictive moral code have the self-awareness to recognise their motivation for what it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Censorship is small problem in UK.

The SS forced c-section on pregnant woman and stole her baby. She was visitor, foreign citizen who stayed in UK just for a few days...

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/social- servic...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/social-services- forcibly-remove-unborn-child-from-woman-by-caesarean-after-she-suffered- mental-health-breakdown-8975808.html)

<comment><USER15> No they didn't. The doctors made the request which you'd know if you bothered to read more than a few lines.

<comment><USER33> "Despite the woman's mother explaining her daughter's condition to police over the telephone from Italy, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Five weeks later, her daughter was removed from her womb without her consent."

<comment><USER15> Right, because she was not capable of giving consent. The doctors looking after her decided that it would be best.

Hell if you bother to read even slightly then it's wholly reasonable: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/1049605...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/10496054/Forced-caesarean-was-manifestly-in-Alessandra-Pacchieris- interest-says-judge.html)

If only people on HN could be downvoted for being completely and arguably wilfully ignorant about what they comment on.

<comment><USER33> troll

<comment><USER15> Read the goddamn reports. You're wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about.

<comment><USER33> "No they didn't. The doctors made the request which you'd know if you bothered to read more than a few lines."

Hang on! No they didn't --what--?

<comment><USER15> Yes, they did. The woman had had two previous children this way and so they judged that it was much more preferable than to risk a breech and the health or life of both the baby and mother.

How hard is it to do trivial research?

<comment><USER32> This is retarded. The decision was made 5 weeks before c-section, they could have send her home before that. What will be next? 'Voluntary' kidney donations while changing flights?

\- there were other relatives who had rights and could take care of the baby.

\- she was held for 5 weeks in the hospital before the baby was delivered, than deported!

\- And on top of that there is gagging court order, so she could not ask for help, otherwise she would lose all chances to get baby back.

Also there are other similar cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> More interestingly, O2 has not blocked access to its own site. That would be silly. It has, however, blocked access to [http://www.giffgaff.co.uk](http://www.giffgaff.co.uk), one of its competitors.

I've seen it claimed that it's blocked access to the Conservative Party's web site. Based on all this, that's a block I'd like to see remain in place.

<comment><USER35> O2 own giffgaff, so not exactly a competitor. Which makes it all the more of a facepalm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Government controlling what people can see and know... smells like teen dictatorship

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm less in favor of network blocking and more in favor of just making porn illegal. Establish civil and criminal liability for displaying it. Seize the assets of porn producers and burn them to death in an electric chair or whatever.

<comment><USER38> I have one simple question: why? For the children? For the fraction of performers involved in it involuntarily? Because you simply object to it yourself and want to force your morals on others? Because you're just trolling? Oh..

<comment><USER37> Why flush the toilet? Why not just excrete your waste into the living room.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Author's statement: "Censorship is bad!" Author's point 1: "Some censorship is okay! But this is more censorship than I personally agree with!"

If you hold the premise that minors must be protected against media _by the government_ , then you can't possibly argue that this move is radical or illogical.

<comment><USER12> Sure you can.

Most people in the UK are _totally fine_ with some levels of censorship.

Ask them if they want a ban on people producing or distributing images of child sexual abuse and most people would say that they do want a ban.

Extend that to images of people having sex with animals and many people are happy with a ban, and some people saying that they agree it should be restricted to those over the ages of 18, and not accidentally available to anyone.

But when you ask someone in the UK if a TV show should receive a huge ($500,000) fine for an accidental < 1 second showing of a partially clothed nipple most people are going to laugh and say "no". (Unlike US FCC which imposed such a fine for Janet Jackson nipple slip. That fine was overturned 7 years later, but only because FCC had used new powers before taking action). Or if you ask whether it's okay for terrestrial broadcast TV shows to include nudity or swearing after 9pm most people are going to say it's okay. (Unlike US, where shows have to censor their language. See for example The Good Wife which parodied this situation with a street noise during a courtroom hearing. The noise was used to mask bad language.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The truth is, that pornography today is not the same as 10 years ago, today, porn is more about humilliation of women and really low depravation, psycological studies have found the high impact this is having on young citicens, the social future of the UK is in jeopardy, and this is what they are doing save it.</comment>


What lies ahead: Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/12/2011-mobile.html <comment> loup-vaillant I am very disturbed by the idea that prioritizing classes of application is an okay thing to do.

First, it's impossible in the long run: if for instance you slow down everything but the web and e-mail, you'll see more and more application using HTTP as a transport layer. This can quickly degenerate into an arms race. Second, it requires the ISP to effectively wiretap their users.

Really, if there's not enough bandwidth, just limit the bandwidth. Users will prioritize their traffic themselves.

<comment><USER2> > First, it's impossible in the long run

You assume that the carriers won't track usage of different bandwidth classes and bill / cap them differently. Offering different reliability/latency/throughput guarantees for different classes of data seems like a very reasonable idea to me. If you want to download bulk data using the most expensive transport layer, knock yourself out.

<comment> loup-vaillant First, I'm assuming that they _can't_ track usage. Now they can, but if everyone encrypts everything, it will no longer be possible. And filtering or slowing down TLS is not really feasible, because of e-commerce. I'm not _certain_ of this point, but I'm reasonably sure.

Second, why the hell should one bit cost me more than another? Or come slower than another? Because it's part of bittorent transaction instead of a video stream?

Third, why the freaking hell should it be okay for my ISP to _spy on me_? (Just in case it's not clear: spying is requiered for prioritization)

<comment><USER2> Ideally, packet class identification would be at the network or transport layer. I don't like the idea of an ISP doing payload inspection ("spying"), either. But your argument about all bits being the same is naive. Do you think it's fair that you should have to pay more for overnight mail or certified mail?

<comment> loup-vaillant I think some of your assumptions are technically wrong. The only role of an ISP is to let you send (& receive) IP datagrams to (& from) any machine with a public IP. Now, one packet could cost more than another, depending on its destination, its provenance, and its size. But not its content. Not a chance. For instance, the TCP port number of an ISP shouldn't influence the cost of an IP datagram: they're not even part of the Internet Protocol.

Now, if I want to send packet faster than another, I would just use a private network that is not the internet. And if I want to send "certified" packet, I'd just use an SSH tunnel, which will naturally consume more bandwidth anyway. But if my _internet_ provider do those choices for me, I tend to complain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my ideal world ISPs should honor customer-provided QoS flags, while limiting total bandwidth as necessary. They can also limit high priority traffic to a certain percentage of a user's total available bandwidth (i.e. 50mbit/s connection, only 8mbit/s may be high priority when the network is heavily loaded). Anything beyond that is abusive, and will reduce the amount of bandwidth-intensive innovation coming from startups that can't afford to pay off the ISPs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Money Quote:

 _"I see the idea of "absolute" net neutrality going away at some point. Eric Schmidt made an important point at Web 2.0 Summit: There are two concepts of net neutrality. One is you can't discriminate against any particular company or any particular application. But on the other hand you can discriminate against classes of applications._ "

</comment><comment><USER5> The real complicating factor is wireless, since from an infrastructure standpoint it isn't actually the same network - cell companies have to invest in their own infrastructure to provide internet access wirelessly.</comment>


Don't Shoot Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/dont-shoot-messenger <comment><USER2> Again, the more fundamental question being fought over here is who has primacy in the United States, the individual Citizen, or the "collective" Citizens.

This is the primary danger that comes from blind adherence to Democratic/Republican principles. Letting the COLLECTIVE will filter down without bureaucratic checks and balances in terms of having laws expire and having to get reaffirmed as the population changes leads to a slow consolidation of power that goes unchecked to the Federal level.

The Federal Government was not intended to be the hammer that gets thrown about all over the country. The fact that we're even entertaining the discussion that the Federal Government should be able to exercise such primacy in access to personal information is a scary thing indeed.

It was never meant to be that pervasive. This country runs from the bottom up. There are ways for Law Enforcement to do their jobs without ubiquitous capacity to wiretap. The potential for abuse is simply too high.

<comment><USER3> > This country runs from the bottom up.

That's all well and good, except irrespective of the issue, if you as an individual Citizen tell Facebook to do something, it will take one look at you and say 'bugger off'.

I don't see that there is anything intrinsically wrong with the government directing Facebook to operate within laws or take action. The problem here is that, the particular policy of the government in this case is stupid, and it's up to the collective Citizens to change that policy.

<comment><USER4> >if you as an individual Citizen tell Facebook to do something, it will take one look at you and say 'bugger off'.

This.

In my own opinion @salawat's heart is in the right place, but his/her ideas are completely unworkable. Expecting a lone individual in Lincoln, or Birmingham, or Providence, or Dallas to be able to protect his or her rights against Facebook, in the absence of a federal government, is just naive.

<comment><USER2> The point I"m making is more along the lines that a slow consolidation of ultimate power at the Federal level is to be avoided.

The "Collective" Citizen, represented by the Federal Government, MUST be limited in it's ability to intrude in the affairs of the Individual Citizen.

Things like CALEA represent dangerous precedents and potentials for abuse that should require reaffirmation and consistent reevaluation in the light of advancing technology.

We all want a powerful and responsible government, but we have to weigh the dangers and potential for abuse in the long run against the short term gains from granting a new power with little or no constraint.

Perhaps I didn't express it that well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What bothers me is that if Facebook has to reengineer messenger to comply with the government then what's stopping signal having to reengineer its infrastructure to comply with government demands?

And wouldn't it be more secure to setup your own infrastructure instead of depending on someone else's infrastructure where you are unable to determine with certainty that serverside code is unmodified?

<comment><USER6> The article explains that courts have concluded these Acts in particular don't give the government carte blanche, it doesn't get to destroy your business to achieve its goals under the Acts, and obviously allowing wiretapping in Signal's app that exists specifically so that they nobody can wiretap you would destroy Open Whisper Systems' business.

So Facebook's Messenger is made more vulnerable by the fact that "Also the government can't wiretap this" isn't a prominently advertised feature. In fact, prior to this article if you'd asked if they can do so I'd have guessed "Yes" and recommended Signal instead.

Why not set up your own infrastructure? Well that does come with a significant downside. "Don't Stand Out" is one of the principles we've learned is important for real world communications security. Once you set up your own secure systems, while everybody else keeps using Messenger, you are marked out, your communications label themselves as especially interesting. So _once you do that_ you have to be sure that two things are true:

1\. Your technical systems are 100% secure. No adversary has a backdoor to your GPU firmware, a laser microphone listening to your keypresses, a black bag team who can break in and silently copy your data when you're out shopping, a zero day exploit for your browser, or whatever. If your adversary is "Bob from next door" this seems plausible. But if it's the government of your country you are probably in deep shit immediately.

2\. Your society has both norms and strongly enforced laws that will ensure it's not just easier and cheaper to bypass all this technology and get what they want from you anyway.

But so long as you Don't Stand Out all this fades into the background. If we make _everybody's_ communications secure, yours won't Stand Out and a powerful adversary (such as the US Government) can't target you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't understand the references to TLS (with GMail, for example) and why the goverment likes that better. Is there previous legal precedent which makes TLS more vulnerable or does the protocol itself make snooping on it easier?

</comment><comment><USER8> Even if the session key for voice calls were shared, what use is it if the audio is sent peer to peer and never hits Facebook's servers?

<comment><USER9> Quoting from the article: "The government would then use that key to decrypt voice data separately captured by the subject's ISP (likely a mobile provider in this case)."

<comment><USER10> They also could just capture the data from the subjects' routers, assuming they can be hacked (which for most people is probably the case).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Idk understand why option 1) wouldn't be the best one. Facebook hands over their session keys, and then they go to the cell provider to retrieve the data and then it's no problem.

Unless this case is actually about trying to establish precedent and using the fact that it's a well known, heinous gang to argue for something more than it needs.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's evolution! Criminals who use vulnerable chats/voicechats do get caught (more often). Sooner or later the government will breed the criminals who use open source end-to-end encrypted software. What will they do then?

<comment><USER13> I agree with you in theory. It's an arms race which just makes the software/encryption better. However, governments have a Trump card to this whole arms race. Alot of countries just make encryption illegal.

<comment><USER12> I don't think criminals care about things being illegal.

<comment><USER13> It's pretty easy to be caught though. The internet is public.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scalable Muscle-Actuated Human Simulation and Control - <AUTHOR> http://mrl.snu.ac.kr/research/ProjectScalable/Page.htm <comment><USER2> Huh, this is really interesting and in my field of research. Most people are using OpenSIM or closed source alternatives like Visual3d to do inverse kinematics/kinetics and there isn't much talk about machine learning in these fields, well, for this purpose, anyway.

Very excited to see the direction this is going.

</comment><comment><USER3> To see the deadlift animation, and to have had it trained in a reinforcement learning is really interesting. Seems like this kind of simulation might drive the next wave of figure and trick development in many sports.

From figure skating to freestyle snowboard, many athletes are pushing the reslm of what's possible by trial and error. What if you could get a bunch of simulations, and learn from its form.

<comment><USER4> I cannot wait to see this applied to BJJ, maybe the most complex sport in the world in terms of body mechanics. What amazing new techniqies could be uncovered if we had proper models.

<comment><USER5> Funny to see this as one of the first replies, it's something I've been thinking about lately as well. As long as there is basic collision detection in the model it would be hilarious to see what happens now if you put a couple of them in a proverbial cage. Probably 5-10 years before there's enough fidelity to actually innovate, but there might be enough coming from it to inspire new ideas before then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want that and better in games.

While graphics often borders on photorealistic, animation still looks bad. Decades pass and even top of the line mocap still feels way off for me in the context of game environments.

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems very useful work.

But I wonder why it took so long to get here since [1] was published.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaEE27nsQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaEE27nsQw)

<comment><USER8> And this one is from five years before that:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI&list=FLdOcSmTlAk...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI&list=FLdOcSmTlAkOzhNJIf67VcxA&index=32&t=0s)

<comment><USER7> Looks cool, but there doesn't seem to be a corresponding scientific publication that explains the inner workings and which shows that this result is generally useful outside of gaming/entertainment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing. Is this used to treat patients in the real world?

<comment><USER10> This research was only just released.</comment></comment>


World could RUN OUT of chocolate by 2050 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/world-could-run-out-chocolate-11784359 <comment> dh-g finally, a good reason to take action against climate change.</comment>


Major Canadian newspaper asks readers if they're quitting Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/globe-online-poll-facebook/article1568537/

<comment><USER2> What does this story tell us? It's a web poll, so it means literally nothing. So, is the idea that it's interesting that a major newspaper is covering the Facebook privacy story? Because everyone is covering the Facebook privacy story.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it because of this discussion where many were wondering if only geeks were seeing all this stuff about FB or if "regular people" were also starting to catch on.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345662>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Way to spoil the poll by showing the results before voting.

<comment><USER4> It's not like opt-in polls on newspaper websites are particularly statistically valid anyway.

<comment><USER5> They have zero validity. Polls that are collected without randomness are completely meaningless.

<comment><USER6> > Polls that are collected without randomness are completely meaningless.

What?

<comment><USER7> Meaning the people who take this poll are self-selecting and likely to already be concerned about the things in the media; it is not a random sample of internet users

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about "I already quit and deleted my profile."</comment>


Guys takes down craigslist, because he's pissed at their spam filter - <AUTHOR> http://www.craigslist.org

<comment><USER2> Please link to whatever article this came from - or you accidentally linked to the Craig's homepage (which is back up).

Sounds interesting, I'm interested in reading it.</comment>


VCs Now In The Loan Business - <AUTHOR> http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/new-england-ven.html

<comment><USER2> VCs are definitely not in the loan business, and I am skeptical about Sherbrooke Capital's approach. Had never heard this before and thought I would share it.

I highlighted Founders Fund at the other end of the spectrum...which I think is a much better approach to aligning interests between entrepreneurs and startups.</comment>


My road to the IOI 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://bouke.be/post/29200673902/ioi-2012

<comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has a question, go ahead</comment>


On the global survival of mafias - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/mafias-godfather-misha-glenny/ <comment><USER2> From the article:

"In his opening chapter, "Birth", Varese compares the initiation rituals that are common to almost every mafia organization. He draws from interviews, autobiographies and police wiretap transcripts in which the gangsters do most of the talking. It is remarkable how close in style, substance and imagery the initiation ceremonies are across cultures – the religious symbolism, the use of tattoos, the omertà, the misogyny and sealing of membership through blood are present among the Yakuza of Japan, the Russian mafia, the Chinese triads and the Sicilian Mafia."

It seems to me mafias are basically tribal societies. That is not surprising as human psychology is basically designed for tribal existence. With complex civilized societies, humans are expected to integrate into something much larger than a simple tribe. However, civilizations often have spaces in which tribes can start up and survive, such as cults and criminal mafias.

<comment><USER3> One striking feature is the depth of trust in these organisations. Many of them function without written records for all or most matters of importance.

<comment><USER4> > depth of trust

I guess that it's more about the big boss is always right.

Written records are needed for a fair observance of contracts. With no fairness, contracts are useless because one side can change them without consecuences.

"I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." Darth Vader.

<comment><USER3> Maybe everyone keeps in mind what the boss wants and that aligns incentives even for smaller things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't really go into what mafias are actually doing to stay alive. What cyber crimes are the mafias in control of? Are any large "cyber gangs" not connected to local mafias?

I have always loved the fantasy of the mafia just from a job advancement and loyalty point of view. You start at the bottom, get rewarded for hard work and being intelligent and eventually get "made". Then you have power, unconditional respect, and life long guarantees of a job, security, and family. Getting "made" should be a real thing in the corporate world.

<comment><USER6> The smartest of them saw the writing on the wall and used their I'll gotten gains to go mostly legit, investing heavily in high money throughput businesses such as Hollywood, casinos, banking, the legal field, insurance, etc.

Bonus: The mafia that even the mafia is afraid of that you've probably never heard of? The Jewish mafia.

<comment><USER7> This is antisemitic bullshit. While there has been a small jewish mafia in NY they where a "regular mafia" like the italian mafia.

Most of them were and are legit and the affinity just coming from jewish immigrants having a history in those fields living in europe. Not for money laundering what you implied. They are very well connected and help each other.

<comment><USER6> People who immediately accuse others of antisemitism at any mention of Israel or the Jewish religion are not interested in any kind of intellectually honest discussion.

<comment><USER7> How you were describing Jews in all those industries is a clear case of antisemitic canard. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_canard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_canard)

They are apparently so powerful they are the "Mafia of the Mafia", no sources just that they are "The Jewish Mafia". Are there Jewish mafiosi? Sure, like a lot of other nationalities and ethnic groups, but I doubt any mafiosi will see them as above them as the "puppet masters of international crime".

You call this intellectually honest?

<comment><USER6> >How you were describing Jews in all those industries is a clear case of antisemitic canard.

A strawman attack. I was speaking of mafia in general in the first sentence.

>They are apparently so powerful they are the "Mafia of the Mafia"

Putting words in my mouth I never said, another strawman. There is a difference between saying they are the "mafia of the mafia" and saying they are a part of the mafia that even other mafia are afraid of.

>"puppet masters of international crime"

Far too simplistic a summarization of this much more nuanced and complex subject.

>You call this intellectually honest?

Yep, unlike your two comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Coincidentally just came across this interesting list of noir produced by blacklisted US writers: [https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/17/force-of- evil-abraha...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/17/force-of-evil-abraham- polonsky-and-anti-capitalist-noir/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I missed it in this article, but does the book talk about the accuracy (or lack thereof) of popular Mafia depictions, like in The Godfather? If they are accurate, where did their authors get their iformation? I'm aware that the author of the original _The Godfather_ novel was Italian, but I don't know more about him beyond that.

<comment><USER10> It's basically all real and fairly accurately portrayed by movies from what I can tell.

There are "The Goodfella Tapes" but here's a random JFK doc that has informant info:

[https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-3...](https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32307931.pdf)</comment></comment>


Emacs for Data Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.robertvesco.com/blog/2015-01-emacs-for-data-science.html <comment><USER2> No spacemacs love? It's by far the most noob-friendly way to get started with emacs.</comment>