Thanks, the product looks similar but does not seem like it's targeted towards business customers. This is supported via donations to begin with, so not an enterprise product. Other key things like customer support, sophisticated admin controls around key management, master key access to documents in your domain etc. are missing.
(Title of this post changed due to length constraints, original was "BEREC: Open Internet Regulation is not an obstacle in implementing EU sanctions to block RT and Sputnik")
No. They are not at war "in all but name". War is a brutal thing, involving the deaths of thousands of young men. The EU is not by any stretch at war with Russia, nominally or otherwise.
The entire point of a free country is that people can handle the information. If not, why even bother?
Who do you think is supplying Ukraine with the weapons that are causing half these deaths? Who is feeding them real-time intelligence? The Russian economy is crippled by EU sanctions. Their foreign reserves are frozen. Russian planes cannot fly into EU airspace. Russian oligarchs are having their assets seized across Europe. Diplomats are being expelled on both sides.
These are not the actions between neutral, peaceful countries, but a full-fledged proxy war.
Europe, Europe, and Europe. But it isn't actually a war. A war is a horrible, brutal thing. Wikipedia tells us:
> War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces.
When you describe what the rest of us would call 'poor relations' as war, it raises the question of what you call it when thousands are drafted and brutally slaughtered. If this also is to be called 'war', then it raises the question: if you're already at war with them, what difference does it make if you decide to draft a few million young men and send them over there? Or for that matter a few strategic offensive weapons (colloquially known as nukes)?
Alternatively, you may contend that what everyone else calls "war" you call, let's say, "war 2". But in that case, your definition is unique to you, and is not terribly useful for communicating with other people.
This is a tiresome distraction; okay, so by your definition of war, this kind of proxy war doesn't count. Fair enough, your definition of war is reasonable. We'll call the state between Europe and Russia "war prime" or whatever, since apparently no one disagrees with the actual state of affairs, just what to call it. Now we're back to the initial exchange, which was:
Person A: Why ban Russian state media? Europe and Russia are not at war.
Person B: No, but they are at "war prime", which has some properties of war, including banning enemy propaganda.
Did creating the extra word to split the hair help resolve that conversation? It doesn't really feel like it to me. It seems like what most people would prefer the conversation be about is whether or not it makes sense to ban enemy propaganda in a state of "war prime" (or war, for that matter).
I think Europe has pretty clearly shown (by their actions) that they are mobilizing the machinery of war. They don't have (many) people currently in harms way, we are content letting Ukrainians fight it out for now, but the machine is humming.
The machine of war isn't monolithic, and what you're seeing is that certain parts of it (like shutting down opposing propaganda) can be started without other parts (like literal fighting) being needed.
> War is a brutal thing, involving the deaths of thousands of young men.
Just want to point out that most EU millitaries, along with the Ukranians and the US have women as well. So there is death all around, no matter the sex.
That is extremely misleading, men suffer from intense misandrism. Ukrainians men are forced to stay captive in their cities to fight while ukrainian women are allowed to save their lives and flee the city, because they own a vagina.
No, women are allowed to leave Ukraine because, for the most part, they are responsible for raising the next generation of Ukrainians. The number one long-term job of any society is ultimately to raise the next generation. If you don't do that, the society doesn't exist in one or two generations' time.
What you consider misandry is in fact a feminist issue. Women often don't choose a life of childcare; it's something that can be forced upon them, because if they don't do it, no-one else will. Men get to choose whether to get involved. If the share of childcare was more equal, then there wouldn't be a reason to restrict leaving the country on a gendered basis.
Just guessing, but maybe you're in the US so it feels a little bit different to you...? This is what's it's like now in Denmark:
- We literally have 1 hour and 30 minutes of war updates before the half hour evening news every night.
- We've just delivered a huge batch of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
- We've basically sanctioned 90% of what is possible to sanction from Russia with more sanctions coming every day, plus private companies getting ahead of themselves to exit Russia the fastest, e.g. Maersk.
- People are volunteering to fight in Ukraine and our government has officially OK'd it.
- We're already taking in refugees coming in buses from the Ukraine.
It sure feels like we're at war here in all but name.
Russia is already sending same threat letters with "safety guarantees" to European countries. On March 4th they are planning a big gathering for another speech of Putin. Russia is making changes to ODKB rules (shitty version of NATO among the post-soviet countries), that introduces the definition of "coordinating member" of this military alliance. They are about to start a 3rd world war.
You can still find the material yourself if you're interested. It's the broadcasting that's being limited. Worst case, contact someone in Russia to send you screenshots. Your rights to seek that information are not affected. It's just that EU entities are not allowed to specifically help you.
IANAL, but as far as I know, EU laws are more important than national laws (you can search "Supremacy of EU law") except in Germany, so the question is if it violates the equivalent of the constitution of the EU.
According to EU officials, it does not.
I've sent out some e-mails, if what you say is true I will amend it.
It applies everywhere. Germany and Poland courts said that they interpret this principle is against their constitutions. The consequence is that they need to either:
- Change their interpretation of their constitution
- Change their constitution
- Leave the EU
It's a basic principle of participation in a Union. Germany's or Poland's case is the same as if a State of the US decided that some federal law or the US constitution doesn't apply in that territory because their constitution prevails or that the state supreme court can overrule the decisions of the US supreme court.
The EU case is much easier than the US, of course, because EU Member States have the right to unilaterally decide to secede. So they can always just leave if they really don't want to comply with EU laws. They have no excuse whatsoever to whine about them.
> - Change their interpretation of their constitution
The BVerfG tries really hard to interpret the constitution in a way in line with EU regulations, but it reserves the right not to (if they're "ultra vires" - beyond their power).
> - Leave the EU
Not going to happen.
> It's a basic principle of participation in a Union.
Note that the supremacy of the German constitution over EU law was well known at the time of signing the relevant treaties and all parties agreed to proceed anyway.
> Germany's or Poland's case is the same as if a State of the US decided that some federal law or the US constitution doesn't apply [...]
The first is that it's not that EU laws are more important, it's that by ratifying the EU treaties the members have ceded the power to act in some areas to the EU as a whole.
This applies uniformly to all member states, Germany included.
The issue that can arise is when there's a disagreement on whether or not a specific power was ceded or not, the problem being that on the one side we have the national constitutional (or equivalent) courts which are the ultimate authority for the member in question, while on the other we have the ECJ which is defined as the ultimate authority in what the Treaties say
What you're probably referring to is the recent case in which the German ConstCourt said that a judgement by the ECJ was incorrect and adopted its own, it was then resolved by some judicial diplomacy. That issue remains and it's arguably inevitable whenever multiple levels of government share power.
A further asterisk is that this is a freedom of expression issue, which is handled at three distinct levels.
At the EU level the law is likely to be found partially in contradiction with the Charter of Fundamental rights (which only applies to EU law and EU institutions or national institutions executing EU law), I don't think the broadcasting ban in itself would be but I'm pretty sure that someone posting clips of RT for instance would be found protected by the charter
However there's also a national level since the EU doesn't actually have any own enforcement, therefore the individual countries will have to adopt actual punishments and enforcement mechanisms which are then subject to respecting the national freedom of expression requirements (fundamental rights are generally of constitutional significance, so they're at least equal in precedence to EU treaties), technically the EU commission could start an infringement procedure if it deems the actions taken unsatisfactory and that process ultimately ends at the ECJ, however while the ECJ could tell the member state it has to effectively ignore their own court (which the member state can't do anyway) but since that would lead to an unresolvable constitutional crisis the ECJ is unlikely to pick that hill to die on and it has a pretty convenient clause in its mandate saying "we will respect each country's constitutional identity" which would be easily applicable here
Finally there's the ECHR, which is another international court, integrated in the member states legal system by its own treaty (confusingly the acronym is the same for the court and for the treaty) with the sole purpose of serving as a baseline for fundamental rights. The EU is not a party to the ECHR treaty (accession stalled) but all of its members are, so if any member were challenged in this court and said "we're violating article 10 because of this EU law" the ECHR would say "cool story, don't care" (if it finds a breach). This is not immediately a precedent for other countries, but others would likely file similar motions
More realistically however this is just going to be interpreted to prevent the sanctioned entities from setting up shells companies to evade it
My concern is that with this, you're not just segregating Russia from the world, you're segregating the EU from the world. You're going to get a new Iron Curtain, only this time, the restrictions are going to be on both sides.
We don’t need Russia. Even China has told Russia to stop the war. Only thing Russia has is gas and we shouldn’t be using fossil fuels anyway. Building of new green nuclear plants should have already been started. If you have fucked that up (like Germans) then that means you need to start hurrying
I am not talking about the economy, I am talking about the Internet. Cutting RT off from the European Internet requires cutting the EU off from large chunks of the global Internet. If Russia responds, that would have the potential to get very ugly.
"Russian exports account for 20 percent of potassic fertilizers globally. Exports from Russia and Belarus account for a combined 40 percent of potassic fertilizers globally."
You're turning around cause and effect. The EU imposing sanction is segregating the world? How about Russia invading Ukraine?
Also read the precanned article that was accidentally released by Russian state media, this is not about Russia feeling threatened this is about Putins fantasies of a "great Russia" in the borders of the USSR
"Knowingly and intentionally" seems to apply to the operation (e.g. "you know that you're running a Tor node") - "circumvention" is on the basis of "object or effect". (For ESL speakers: "object" means "goal", "effect" means "result", and Tor obviously has a final, de-facto result of unblocking RT)
This is an overly broad reading. The hypothetical Tor operator's object (i.e. intent) is to run a Tor node, the contents of which they are entirely agnostic to (and may be formally agnostic to, if the traffic is additionally encrypted).
To use some abductive reasoning, think about how this would apply generally: the law is clearly not written to ban encryption, even though your interpretation would suggest that any encryption amounts to intentional circumvention. If that sounds wrong to you, it's because you've confused the intent/object that the law is concerned with.
No, encryption isn't going to help, because they can still block on IPs. Encryption plus eSNI helps, and if, for example, Yandex.Cloud sets up a big "shared host," I fully expect that to get the Kharkiv treatment, like Roskomnadzor tried a few years ago with Telegram.
Tor operators can see the IP, they can see the DNS, and their operation has the effect of unblocking RT.
Who can still block on IPs? An interior Tor node doesn't have the information available to do that.
I think you missed the point of the abductive argument: you're describing a cat and mouse game, one that is fundamentally unrealistic. The more realistic scenario is that the intent described in the article has nothing to do with encryption, Tor, or anything like that.
If you ran a tor node and piped the content of RT to newpipetoRT.com you're in violation, but having a tor node might be comparable to operating a ham radio relay. If someone in Moscow transmitted RT encrypted over radio and decrypts it in Germany, the radio relay wouldn't necessarily be in violation.
We live in a networked world. There's an unbroken physical connection between your hardwired ISP connection and every device connected to Russia (less so with starlink and woman and 5g, but still. )
It's resilient by design, and damaging that, even for good reasons, has secondary consequences.
Going after tor nodes would be overreaching and shortsighted.
No, but I am aware of this, I even thought to mention it, and I sorely hope that I am proven wrong. However, my concern is that the ban explicitly does apply to the medium itself.
In particular, article 12 bans participation in "activities the object or effect of which is to circumvent prohibitions". Can you think of any reason for why Tor would not be considered to circumvent the ban?
The simplest answer to this is to look at what the previous regulation (the one being amended by this one) says[1].
Article 12 is completely unmodified except for the scope of parties involved. Since the original (2014) regulation didn't ban Tor, I think it's a safe assumption that this one doesn't either.
The more detailed answer: the article actually reads as follows:
> It shall be prohibited to participate, knowingly and intentionally, [...]
"Knowingly and intentionally" is the operative phrase here. In order to show that this article poses a threat to Tor's legality, you'd need to show at either Tor's operators or Tor itself intentionally provides service to RT. This is a stronger standard than passive service, the kind Tor actually provides.
> "Knowingly and intentionally" seems to apply to the operation (e.g. "you know that you're running a Tor node") - "circumvention" is on the basis of "object or effect". (For ESL speakers: "object" means "goal", "effect" means "result", and Tor obviously has a final, de-facto result of unblocking RT)
I responded to the second part above, below your linked comment.
For the first: broadcasting is an intentional media activity. You're right that this new regulation adds a ban, but it's not clear that said ban undermines the intent required in Article 12.
To be clear: it's a form of government censorship. But, on my reading, it's not a particularly broad form or itself a stepping stone to banning Tor. The EU seems perfectly content to broach that problem with separate regulation.
> Can you think of any reason for why Tor would not be considered to circumvent the ban?
Because plenty of people use Tor for accessing things which aren't covered by this particular ban? Sure, many of them may be illegal in other ways, but not all of them. If using Tor isn't enough in itself to prove you're buying drugs, why would it be enough to prove you're accessing banned content here?
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