> First, the content in question here is essentially political speech, which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled as deserving of a higher level of protection than some other forms of speech. Even though the speech concerns a referendum that has been ruled illegal, the speech does not in itself pose any imminent threat to life or limb.
What the Spanish government did is considered censorship under any reasonable system of law. Justifying one "wrong" with another is not gonna get anyone anywhere anytime. But since the Spanish government is fond of censorship, this reaction shouldn't come as a surprise.
The content blocked is content being announced by an official entity (Generalitat) containing information about the unilateral organization of a referendum. The Generalitat as an official organism needs to abide by the existing constitutional laws. The judge as initial measure, has dictated to retrieve all official material with information regarding the organization of the referendum. No other pages from dotCAT have been seized, including unofficial ones with information about the referendum.
The EFF should also take into account that the Generalitat has unlawfully obtained private information from millions of citizens in order to be able to create a list of possible voters.
>Whether it's allegations of sedition or any other form of unlawful or controversial speech, domain name intermediaries should not be held responsible for the content of websites that utilize their domains. If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet.
I'm in favor of a referendum so the catalans can decide if they want to be in Spain or not. But I'm not in favor of a unilateral decision.
Women wouldn't be voting if they never broke the law first.
Giving a Tax amnesty to very rich tax dodgers (as the current Spanish government has done recently) has been ruled to be against the Rule of The Law and the Spanish Constitution, yes? Who is going to jail for this? No one.
The constitution only matters when it matters to some.
I expect this will go further up to the European Court of Human Rights, and, like in previous cases where for example German law (and constitutional changes) conflicted with these protections, the European Convention on Human Rights will be ruled to stand above any national law or constitution.
What's being argued here is that seizing the .cat TLD when a page registered in it was hosting "unlawful" content consists in pure and simple censorship. It would be similar to the US government taking control of the .com TLD because some website hosted on a .com domain is selling drugs. This is censorship.
To quote the article (which apparently you didn't read) again:
> Whether it's allegations of sedition or any other form of unlawful or controversial speech, domain name intermediaries should not be held responsible for the content of websites that utilize their domains. If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet.
In addition, the web is now hosted in another domain, against the law, not because of "free speech", but because of using protected private information from citizens: https://onvotar.garantiespelreferendum.com/on-votar/index.ht...
This is not about "free speech", but about the sublevation of a regional government, against the rule of law, i.e. against citizen's rights.
This is a very dangerous precedent
And yes, I think that the CONTENT is ilegal and I would denunce it if my data is there, but the TLD has nothing to do with that
That's simply put... bulshit, I'm far from supporting the ultra right wing catholic goverment from Madrid, but spreading plain lies to victimize yourself doesn't make them true.
If someone thinks the laws the judges are interpreting are unconstitutional, or against European treaties, they can denounce those laws against the Spanish Constitutional Court, or the appropriate European court.
If they think the interpretation is what's flawed, they can appeal and / or denounce the judges to the Spanish Supreme Court. If the argument would become that the judiciary is corrupt and owned by the Government, from the Barcelona courts all the way up to the Supreme Court; it should be remembered that the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced a Ministro del Interior (like Secretary of State, the de-facto most powerful position after the President) to 10 years in prison.
Note: This is what I read recently regarding this issue, but I am not a law expert, so take this with a grain of salt.
Edit: typos.
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...
That said, the law is just a tool used by the people to live peacefully in a society. If people are not happy about it, the law needs to be changed.
I don't know if the EFF is aware that the site has citizen personal information without permission. Who protects us as citizens against rebel regional government putting online private information against the rule of law?
> Shortly the Government will release the details on the polling stations to be used for the 1st October Referendum.
Time to denunce to AEPD
To be fair, it is very difficult to find unbiased and knowledgeable people writing about this. It is best to not rely on only one kind of source if you want to form an opinion.
If the real intention was to organize a referendum, it could have been done with preparation, lawfully and negotiated with other regional political forces who are also supporting it.
It has been tried for years, not only in Catalonia, but also in Euskadi.
The Spanish law was changed en 2006 to make those referendums ilegal
TL;DR: if you break the law, expect to get punished. The operators knew they were breaking the law, so involved sites in that domain were blocked. I.e. not a ".cat" generic blockage, but a specific action driven from a court.