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Humanity just doesn't ever learn. Europe will end up having draconian oversight and censorship that will be abused beyond belief by fascists. When some central entity--subject to the whims of political temperature--controls what you can access, there can be no trust in the durability and integrity of information. Same as in the US really, except there being executed to support the nascent regime without any liberal auspices.
> draconian oversight and censorship
This is just human nature. Any place where humans live in close proximity for hundreds of years suffers the same fate until a revolution or power restructure resets the counter through the removal of the previous structures vestiges.
Thanks to technology, it just keeps getting easier. Less time to put restrictive measures in place and a tighter feedback loop. Oh joy.
Also technology has made psychological neutralization easier by various means including amusement, satisfying the hierarchy of needs in general, and of course scaling and expanding tyrannical surveillance and clandestine and targeted subversion of self-determination (see Alex Karp bragging about Palantir defusing the "rise of the far right" in Europe). And even this OP measure of banning the "Internet Archive Open Library" is in actuality a kind of outlawing of the modern from of the printing press, the control of information, consciousness, awareness, thought, and speech.
It is an anathema to the very foundation of America, especially in the year of the 250 year anniversary of the American Revolution. 250 years ago today, Americans were already killing British for the human right to free speech and freedom from this kind of aristocratic despotism of the hereditary ruling class.
> "[...]unprecedentedly broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries [...]. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take action."
Is that any different than the King's decree to smash the printing presses to disseminate information beyond the control and censorship of the aristocracy and treasonous merchants that enabled their web of control?
I think you may have got it backwards? Technology seems to be greatly facilitating fascist control rather than weakening them...
And this is a cycle people have known about for forever.
> The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Its just leader caste nature, the fear of getting crushed by the momentum of ones "own" uncontrollable leadership running on a riff by situatuonal momentum. One can despair with a opera uniform and a detached steering wheel or run a "tight" ship, whipping the crew (who unlike groaning wood and ocean still obey) till moral improves.
> Europe will end up having draconian oversight and censorship that will be abused beyond belief by fascists.
As a non-European, I see the benefits of the EU efforts, but I also see them (the suits in Brussels) getting hooked on power and control in the last ~7 years.
As an example:
"The EU Commission refuses to disclose the orchestrators behind its mass surveillance proposal, which would effectively end citizens’ online privacy." - https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1l2655n/the_eu_comm...
Edit: removed unnecessary content.
> I also see them […] getting hooked on power and control in the last ~7 years.
Unfortunately it seems to be a worldwide trend.
I think it would be shorter to list countries without serious (current) authoritarian tendencies.
The EU Commission isn’t the EU Parliament, however, and then there’s also the European Court of Justice protecting the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. So it’s a bit more nuanced.
Remove the commentary about downvotes, and you're less likely to be downvoted. The HN hivemind likes substantive comments.
It my impression that most people in the EU and outside of it think the citizens of the member countries can vote to replace that or change things, so its ok.
Seems like something I'd be afraid of though if I were a EU citizen, or in a neighboring country the EU wants to absorb next.
Spain is already instituting registry for the press, a return to the days of Franco.
You seem to be implying that they have a right wing government.
It's bewildering that this (and even more the attacks on privacy) occurs while authoritarianism is on the rise in the whole western whole, and partly realized in its leading country.
They can't pretend anymore that it can't happen, but yet keep ignoring the risk
Imagine how people like me feel that have been warning of this for an unspecified number of decades now.
I was told that I don't understand the internet and technology when I said that all these types of things would be happening, as it easily predicted if you even remotely integrate a basic understanding of human nature.
Reality though is that, sure, you and me may for the time being be able to get around some of these efforts, but what does that matter when the vast majority already don't avail themselves of any of the subject resources, and the regime's control measures will only expand from here and will make it nearly impossible for even people like us to get access to things, let alone share them.
My advice; try to "hoard" as much valuable information, data, and knowledge as possible; especially things regime really does not like and keep them offline and ideally in shielded storage. Maybe it will be for nothing and I am wrong, but maybe you may create the cache of human knowledge that survives into the future and humanity can uncover and recover from your "backup".
We are really looking at a digital Fahrenheit 451 scenario or like when Kings and Bishops sent out their henchmen to smash printing presses and torture anyone who dared disseminate information that was not regime approved thought. It may not seem like it today, especially since it is all of course only about saving children and countering "piracy", and we know of course that those are never just feigned intentions to obscure nefarious objectives that always turn out to be true.
How is it bewildering? It's one of the core tenets of authoritarianism. The fact that we're seeing these restrictions tighten is a symptom of the rise of authoritarian regimes.
Can you clarify why you said "Humanity just doesn't ever learn."? It could be interpreted both ways. That the current regime believes its own actions will never be turned against them or, inversely, they will keep control over the tools of repression. Or it could be interpreted that you believe the governments implementing these narrow-sighted tyrannical measures are the "fascists" that will do things you don't like?
I put "fascist" in quotes, because it has become an utterly useless and impressive term that is far more noise than signal due to imprecise and inaccurate overuse. Call them aristocrats, oligarchs, despots, tyrants, authoritarians... but saying that the ruling classes of most western societies are motivated by the metaphor of keeping together for strength is simply not a credible position.
Humanity are a bunch of dolts.
Obviously your kind has no problem with stalinist EU regime using the means of surveillance and oppression right now.
Add to that president election show in Romania. Don't like candidate - just fake a case, block him from running, and when it becomes obvious don't apologize. It was for 'best results' after all.
They should ban AI too then, because most of them have been trained on pirated content.
If you deny civilians access to content but grant AI the access, what are you trying to accomplish?
One Dutch-language AI project was actually shut down by the copyright lobby exactly for that reason. They did it voluntarily (knowing they'd probably lose in a lawsuit plus pay a fine to boot) but it shows that these people are perfectly fine attacking AI projects.
The big ones, though, they don't dare to go up against those. You can't bully OpenAI into submission and threats of spurious lawsuits, you have to actually win, and they don't have an interest in taking that risk.
"but it's just a bunch of floating point numbers, Your Honor"
As a Belgian, sad to see this. I rarely follow any news from Belgium (not living there anymore) so I'm somewhat unaware of what's happening in the tech landscape, but this does surprise me.
Curiously - I tried to find any news on this from Belgian sources, but couldn't find it (in my quick search).
Belgium is worse and worse, news laws all the time, very oppressing ones, much more surveillance and way less liberties.
Ah I see. Tbh, I don’t miss it
The article is a little wide-eyed about how new this kind of censorship is.
Belgium broadly has a duopoly, with the first two ISPs listed having the vast majority of the market. Both of them have been doing blocking of pirate sites for decades, with at least one of them actually resolving + blocking by IP address, not just DNS blocking.
Needless to say, both have video on demand services to protect.
That's crazy, I just use Open Library as a free and open alternative to Goodreads for reading lists, reviews, and book indexing, but apparently even that wouldn't be possible in Belgium anymore.
I always wonder if we didn’t get democracy totally backwards. As a Belgian, how could I have let my voice be heard that this is:
- a waste of time and resources
- not what I want
It sure is galling that government appears to be mostly an ever-growing and ever-more-costing pile of legacy rules, regulations and institutions, which through sheer complexity can be navigated only by big corporations or the mega-rich, who can lobby the monstrosity into doing whatever they want.
And meanwhile I’m paying upwards of 60% effective tax to support it all.
It's the law of concentrated benefits vs distributed burdens. In theory you as the person(s) on the receiving end of the burdens could counterlobby, but you will face the cost of organizing a large group (vs the much simpler structure of the solo or the few benefactors), as well as the lack of insentive on the people you are trying to organise because for each individual the cost/benefit does not add up.
So laws and regulation in practice most often end up benefiting the ones with concentrated wealth extraction, and disadvantage those from which that wealth will be extracted in agregate.
Right so who wants to work on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746016 it is time to finish this as govs won't learn. And even china hasn't managed to block that traffic: the eu/us probably wont go that far. But if they do, it wont probably work.
We must have p2p , decentralized application frameworks with strong encryption. A framework I can write my next saas on and no, not blockchain.
> We must have p2p , decentralized application frameworks with strong encryption. A framework I can write my next saas on and no, not blockchain.
If you want a serverless network, there's at least this: https://zeronet.io/docs/site_development/getting_started/
Once a book is sold publishers would do anything to limit its use. No scanning, no online lending, no training LLMs on it, no reusing of protected style or abstractions for fan fiction. If the author is not to be found, the book itself becomes "orphaned", attempting preservation is infringement.
I personally find little attraction installing in my brain furniture I can't sit on. If I can't freely reuse the ideas in the book to create anything, it is a net loss to read it.
Should same apply to software, games, movies and music? Say I license single copy of software and then set up online library where unlimited copies can be downloaded from. Would that be okay?
Or maybe a employee could license a copy of company's software to themselves and then share it online?
Hot take: it's the right decision. Why? I'm scoping my opinion on copyrighted material only. A state that is a lawful state follows its own laws. That includes copyright laws most of us don't like. So yes, I think that was the right decision for this court (as it's not the constitutional court of Belgium afaict) as it holds up the laws of Belgium and defends the rights of copyright holders (which can be individuals as well, not only evil corporation extortionists).
I know that there is a slippery slope here, but we need to change laws and make systems that are resilient against censorship. That's the only long term solution imho.
Let's be honest: it's piracy. They are not banning books. They're fighting illegal distribution. Just use a VPN and pirate the books. We gotta be honest to ourselves here.
Libraries are not piracy. You’re correct about the need to change laws, but the change goes beyond the Open Library and is more fundamental to citizen rights in the context of digital ownership.
This is just as pivotal to Right-to-Repair as it is to expecting digital assets that have been “bought” not to brick themselves after some arbitrary period.
The Internet Archive's "library" system wouldn't fit the legal definition of a library here. They'd need to register (cheap and easy) and comply with national law (needs review from a lawyer).
The Internet Archive is rife with pirated content and basically a well-intentioned The Pirate Bay when you look at it from a copyright standpoint. The American laws that make it possible for the IA to exist don't apply elsewhere. Things like "public domain" simply don't exist in other countries.
Making the IA work internationally is forcing a square peg through a round hole. It'll only limit what the IA is capable of accomplishing. I'm quite at peace with "the IA is banned from countries incompatible with the IA's mission".
In Belgium... It is already extremely difficult to get the books you want to buy if they are not the popular ones..
I need to import many of my books from America by resellers and pay many duties..
Sometimes a book at $20 is sold >$200..
for anyone in Belgium who needs a decent VPN, I recommend Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/
I really enjoyed their article on the EU's Chat Control legislation [1]. I'm so sorry to hear that your privacy is being scrutinized y'all.
I just tried Mullvad again on Android. It says "out of time" and that I have no more VPN time left on the account. I would have to "add time" (i.e. buy it). I thought Mullvad was free. I am not going to pay for it. Why would I when there are many free ones out there?
They'll soon ban books in Europe
Already happening. The UK is confiscating books for not being aligned with the government's foreign policy. https://www.monbiot.com/2025/08/01/legal-limbo/
Well, apparently Western Europe is not only buying Russian oil and gas, but they decided to buy some ideas from Wowa Putin. Who cares... until European Union will try to make that their regulation.
For us europeans, that's nothing new... point the finger at putin/china and then do worse at home, while acting you support democracy and freedoms.
UK already did their "prove your age" act, EU is well on the way of doing it, every year they try a new chat control law, and sooner or later they'll force some kind of "real name" online, requiring identifying yourself when registering an account. And that's just the new stuff, france was pushing key escrow for many years, UK can jail you if you forget (or not give) your passwords, germany can fine you you if you use nasty words against a politician, etc.
yeah putin man bad. king pooh man bad. as an EU citizen, china or russia is not even 1% the enemy that EU countries and EU itself is to the people of EU.
EU and the member states are nothing but thugs and terrorists. Very powerful ones, but terrorists nonetheless. Putin or russia has not once threatened me, stolen from me under the threat of throwing me in jail, yet EU does. Russia has never tried to steal money from other citizens to try bribe me, yet an EU state has.
EU and its member states are an enemy of the people.