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Posted by akyuu 2 hours ago

Spain has blocked access to freedom.gov(twitter.com)
82 points | 77 comments
mrtksn 1 hour ago|
It's misleading title, not Spain as the government but LaLiga(a sports organization) abused its given powers and apparently demanded that ISPs block the site.

So it's very American style censorship in principle, that is it is censorship for profit reasons HOWEVER it is wrong in this particular instance because freedom.gov hadn't infringe copyrights. Nothing political despite what the title may make you believe so, purely internal issue. Italians are having similar problems with their football streaming organizations.

petcat 1 hour ago||
I'm not aware of American ISPs and CDNs straight-up blocking websites. That is distinctly European-style censorship.

American style censorship would be more like going through the courts to get an order to have the domains seized.

mrtksn 1 hour ago|||
Check out: https://zamunda.net

The American censorship works by taking away your domain and lock you in prison but it is O.K. because your activities might have reduced shareholder value.

petcat 1 hour ago|||
Domain seized. Not blocked by my ISP.

It's a fundamentally different thing. In Europe, ISPs and CDNs just block websites willy-nilly at the request of La Liga, for instance. That doesn't happen in USA. It takes a court order and then the FBI seizes the domain.

maccard 1 hour ago|||
If you're going to be pedantic, you have to be correct.

> In Europe, ISPs and CDNs just block websites willy-nilly at the request of La Liga, for instance

There's so much wrong with this sentence. It's not Europe, it's Spain. La liga aren't just dropping emails to ISPs, they're gaining court orders (now, whether these court orders are warranted, or delivered correctly [0] or not is another question).

> That doesn't happen in USA

It doesn't happen in "Europe" either.

[0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-protonvpn-ordered-block-p...

GTP 1 hour ago||||
Isn't it even in the U.S. e.g. enough for some big music firm to claim copyright infringement on a YouTube video for it to be removed and the channel's owner get a copyright strike, no courts and no FBI involved? AFAIK this is what happens with so-called DMCA takedown requests.
petcat 1 hour ago|||
The difference is that content creator can put the video on their own website and that domain won't get blocked by my ISP. It might get seized later after some judicial review.
mrtksn 1 hour ago|||
Exactly, in USA they just remove your videos from YouTube and in Spain in Italy they just block your domains on the ISPs for the exact same reasons and both are sometimes fraudulent.
hkt 59 minutes ago||||
Is this not a symptom of where ICANN sits? Subject to American jurisdiction, so domain seizures make more sense for American litigants. In Europe, litigants must chase down ISPs who are the local gatekeepers. It makes sense that it works differently.
mrtksn 1 hour ago|||
Why do you care about ISPs that much? It's the exactly same thing as an outcome, just different concerns and methods.

Also, when you don't do anything illegal in USA just take away your company either by forcing you to sell it or forcing American companies not doing business with you.

TikTok was removed from Apple AppStore forcefully, then reinstated and forcefully sold.

Why ISP blocking is considered low morale but seizing your stuff high morale endeavor?

prosody 1 hour ago|||
There's positives and negatives to each. For government domain seizure, there's due process involved but working around it is harder (the service provider either has to acquire a new proper domain or onion domain, then disseminate it to the audience somehow). For ISP level blocking there's limited due process (at least in the cited case of LaLiga seemingly just issuing a complaint to the ISP), but the audience can easily work around with it with a VPN or sometimes just an alternate DNS server.
mrtksn 53 minutes ago||
ISP level blocking is for the mainstream, anyone slightly tech literate can overcome it.

The domain seizure, forced service shut downs like app store distribution ban or payment processing ban or forcing hosting providers not to serve you and physically taking you into custody for spreading unlicensed content is the real deal and it’s actually effective.

rvnx 47 minutes ago||
Though even if there is a way to circumvent, if there is no audience or ad revenues, there is no motivation. Look at Twitch streamers or YouTubers who are banned:

    -> No revenue
    -> No audience
    -> No reason to continue
    -> "Problem" solved
petcat 1 hour ago||||
> not Spain as the government but LaLiga(a sports organization) abused its given powers and apparently demanded that ISPs block the site.
Larrikin 1 hour ago|||
Why do you keep arguing a point you were wrong about
Beijinger 58 minutes ago||||
What was the content of the website?
rvnx 44 minutes ago||
It seems to be a Bulgarian torrent website

https://web.archive.org/web/20230207190846/https://zamunda.n...

GauntletWizard 1 hour ago|||
Absolutely, America does seize domains with the assistance of local authorities[1] for crimes that are in prosecution. You may disagree with the reasoning for these crimes, or disagree that they are crimes at all, but US censorship works as a part of the legal system with well defined due process and remedies.

This is classic whataboutism compared to the outright corporateocracy of la liga's blocking and seizure.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-law-enforcement-assists-bu...

mrtksn 1 hour ago||
Videos from platforms like YouTube are taken down for copyright reasons all the time without any due process, often wrongfully.

The same thing happened but instead of some copyrights organization taking down YouTube/Twitter etc content, Italian copyrights organization blocked some Cloudflare IP addresses without due process for copyright reasons.

The implementations differ slightly but it is exactly the same thing.

layer8 17 minutes ago|||
In that case, European-style censorship is preferable, because you can just use another DNS server.
bflesch 1 hour ago||
What are the odds that the Cloudflare CEO will have a twitter meltdown about this?
rock_artist 1 hour ago||
It’s sad that most comments are just focusing on political bashing instead of the root problem here.

It’s the fact LaLiga and Spanish ISPs comply.

They’re “carpet” blocking entire IPs of Cloudflare.

Every weekend if I need to access some of my work websites which are affected by this (while there are football games) - I need to VPN to bypass the blocking.

I’m new in Spain so my ability of surfacing the Spanish law or the European is limited. But I really wish they’ll have to find a nicer approach instead of this aggressive approach.

everdrive 2 hours ago||
The most obvious outcome possible.I was never able to load the website myself, but if you centralize things to a specific website, it's trivial to block it. Since I could never load the site, I don't know if they had any plans outside of just putting up a website. If not, this was incredibly stupid.
mcny 1 hour ago||
Pretty sure it is all performative and the actual audience is the voters in the US.
kbrkbr 1 hour ago||
It's the same administration that stated that they sent a hospital ship to a country with public healthcare to take care of the sick people there.

Boy, I will miss this administration for their sense of humor and ingenuity. They always find something new. A firework of performance art.

NooneAtAll3 1 hour ago|||
the goal was to publicly display european censorship and to take down its moral "high ground"

it succeeded

potatototoo99 1 hour ago||
Maybe in the US. In Europe it never convinced anyone, as it never would since anything minimally related to Trump is discarded automatically.
petcat 1 hour ago||
Also because internet censorship and censorship in general has largely become normalized in Europe.
potatototoo99 18 minutes ago|||
No it isn't. For example in my EU country I can see the list of all websites blocked, and all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting (legal betting is allowed, but must register and pay taxes). That and rt.com. I can also say/post whatever I want in social media except stalk and harass individual people. There is no "censorship" at all compared to virtually anywhere else in the world, US included.
bdangubic 1 hour ago|||
US is infinitely worse than EU but selectively based on what ruling party wants you to both see and post. try to get some coverage from gaza or west bank and/or post something slightly critical of israel and see how that works out for you. EU, China… are at least up front about what they want to censor and why, US censors every fucking imaginable thing while people are too stupid to see it and go “oh my, look how bad EU/China are…”
SilverElfin 1 hour ago||
I think it looks stupid on the surface. But maybe it is a purposeful way to goad European countries into taking increasingly authoritarian policy changes like banning VPNs. They will use it to generate outrage among Europeans and undermine the leadership, and try to either split the EU along these lines or place friendly leaders.

Maybe this is conspiracy theory. But I feel like the aggression they’ve shown - even people like Marco Rubio - suggests they’re acting with a purpose.

embedding-shape 2 hours ago||
FWIW, Vodafone ES still resolves freedom.gov fine via their own DNS resolver. They're usually very block happy, can't access Anna's, TBP and also not Cloudflare during La Liga games normally, as some examples. But freedom.gov still resolves seemingly.

Can any other Spaniards confirm if freedom.gov still resolves for them?

As a side-note, I don't know why anyone would want to block that website in the first place? Barely has any information about what it is, and doesn't seem to be able to be used for anything as of today either.

rock_artist 1 hour ago|
It resolves now but also other websites that are blocked during games are available.
redbell 1 hour ago||
For those wondering what is this freedom.gov thing, it was discussed here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270
aucisson_masque 33 minutes ago||
The situation in Spain with laligua is becoming crazy, completely crazy.
stackghost 1 hour ago||
Perhaps Europe should put up a portal to bypass American copyright restrictions. Free speech, and all that.
iamnothere 1 hour ago||
As an American I accept your terms. More freedom for all.
helterskelter 1 hour ago||
If Europe would set up a way to facilitate non-Europeans getting GDPR protections I'd pay them a good bit of money.
altairprime 1 hour ago||
Portugal’s golden visa only costs a year’s salary!
EugeneOZ 1 hour ago||
Just checked - not blocked, works just fine (Adamo and Vodafone).
mocmoc 1 hour ago||
Spain living in 2010’s tech
13415 1 hour ago|
That seems a bit fast since nothing is on that ridiculously looking website yet, but if this website is planning to host content that is illegal in the EU, then it will be blocked by many EU countries. Usually, these blocks aren't very effective. My country blocks most piratebay domains, for instance.
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