The obvious tautology aside, I wouldn't agree with this in case of the EU (the US, probably.) To me, the EU feels more like two steps forward, one step back - this being the step back but, for example, the GDPR being the two steps (or leaps) forward.

In any case, this regulation seems more misguided rather than malicious. It's targeting real problems that have to be tackled but it does have the fault of granting overly broad powers to the respective institutions.

Misguided, malicious, bootlegger, baptist, real problems, fake ones... I don't think it matters much.

Norms are being established for regulating the web. The "proper channels" for seizing domains, ip blocking, de-indexing etc. There will be a number to call, forms to get stamped, enforcement.. These are growing around the world, at multiple levels of government. The EU is not an exception. Restrictions and censorship is growing at the EU and member state level.

I guess we disagree about the premise: when such channels exist (they basically do now) then they'll be used directly and indirectly in the same way their equivalents are used to regulate every other medium.

These thing are usually icebergs, mostly below the surface. China doesn't have to tell sites what to do most of the time, they "self regulate."

I know the days when only nerds like you knew about it and society at large neither knew nor needed it seem romantic now. But today the net matters to a lot of people, and they bring with them their trusted tools for defending their interests.

Go visit irc if you want those heady days where only things you didn't like where censored.

> does have the fault of granting overly broad powers to the respective institutions.

You praise the GPDR in the same comment you lament overly broad powers. Surely the contradiction is clear? Maybe in your case, the fault is not the power but rather that you disagree with the specific uses? I wonder if politicians can differentiate between forms of internet restrictions as easily as we can.

Intent isn't relevant at all - only result.

I don’t know much about narrowing powers, judicial reviews or any of that. I’m not all that concerned with the EU’s specific legal setup (even though I live here). I guess judicial review is better than none, but I think it’s probably rather meaningless long term. What judicial review means and how restrictive that is is completely unpredictable, across all the times and places this kind of norm will have influence.

I’m more worried about the norms. How those norms are evolving, in a wider context. In particular, how comfortable member states will feel taking actions (for example) like the Spanish government is currently taking. How easy will it be for non-eu governments (EG Turkey, Israel, Egypt..) to justify their own actions because “it’s an international norm.” How easy it will be to get Google, FB, AWS, ISPs, etc. to do any country's dirty work, because they will all have a “compliance” department responsible for this. The self regulation that will come from a need to avoid such hassles.

Framing this the way lawyers like to frame it, as if it were an isolated rule applying narrowly and in isolation means I already lose. My eggs come with spam.

The norm being established/advanced here is the same most of these laws in most the places are advancing (1) Unlawful websites are subject to sanction (2) To investigate lawfulness and enforce sanctions, authorities can force “third parties in the digital value chain” to cooperate.

IE, any service from DNS servers, search engines, ISPs, Twitter… every part of the internet needs to with every local, national and super-national government to police every other part of the internet.

10 years ago there were no channels for IP domain blacking/seizing/de-indexing. No templates for new rules. No ways for 3rd parties to be forced to cooperate. No way to regulate the web.

That's just false.

China had their FW since 1997 in various forms. In their very effective form since 2006.

And that's just China.

There was always pressure to censor/block/filter/control the Internet.

The norm is what people make it. The same goes for rules. And narrowness and so on.

Currently, people are dumbfuck dimwits, like they used to be. But the issues used to be simpler too. Communism bad, world war bad, etc.

I don't know if I buy this slippery slope argument. Nazi memorabilia and glorification have been banned in France and Germany for more than 70 years now, and these countries have not yet descended into fascism and further impeding of free speech and other points that we usually hear from offended Americans who learn about this.

I didn't imply descent into fascism. I implied a descent into norms where the internet is more like TV or radio were. Historically, the web has been a uniquely free medium.

There is also a commercial dynamic side to this. Regulations and restrictions favour larger, stabler, more normative companies.

Also, I don't think slippery slope arguments lend too well to analogies. Some slopes are slipperier than others. ..and the overthrow of the Nazi regime was not a democratic one. It was a violent one. All the methods were not part of normative politics. Banning Nazism was a part of that overthrow. What the shelling of Berlin a slippery slope?

That said, i think the ban should have been lifted by later generations, a symbolic nod to freedom of speech and association. If even Nazis in France get free speech, it's a sign that those freedoms are strong.

And anyway posted letters are still a very free medium, with better privacy assurances than email ever had.

Basically none of the other parties in the government want to even consider cooperating with them, it'll fizzle out soon enough.

The current Jamaika Coalition has basically put everyone in panic because for the first time in forever the major parties can't just vote what they want into parliament via coalition contracts.

The AfD will be reabsorbed, don't worry about that, that's how it has worked the last couple decades. And in the meanwhile they can exert some healthy pressure on the rest of the Bundestag to get a bit of fresh air in there.

I haven't yet anybody who likes the FDP, hence nobody likes them.

But I'm Bavarian so I might have a huge sampling bias thanks to us being 60%+ on the CSU.

A party doesn't come out of nowhere. It takes time. In 2013 AfD missed the 5%, but not by much. In 2017 has 13% and is the third largest party in Germany. Saying that it'll fizzle out soon is naive at best.

I think these two things are completely disconnected from each other. What we're talking about here is legislation, and legislation has not slipped towards censoring free speech more and more in the last seventy years (in France and Germany).

No I'm not. Your statement is so far off that I can't help myself but wonder how did you arrive to this conclusion?!

Why not. Bad laws should be repealed.

This kind of thing is true in every domain of legislation and regulation. Indeed wherever officials have wielded power since the before the building of Babylon. And yet the world has not, in the large scale, been on a march towards ever more tyranny. How is that?

I don't fully understand the process by which freedom has increased in most countries through history but it does exist. So it makes sense for people of good will to think, and discuss and act so as to help it along.

This video has a great outline: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/rules-for-rulers