All .COM domains now subject to US Law

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Also, you want to see 5,999,999,999 people dancing in the streets. It's not pretty when I attempt it.

[Doktor Howl]

When we get the dedicated set up, it might be worth configuring some non-US (sub)domain to point at it, just so people know beforehand where to go. I say sub domain, because they're basically free. We could ask the guys at the German Discordia forum (they seemed nice) maybe.

You're not probably talking about us, are you? Otherwise I would enjoy a link to the obviously unknown German Discordia forum.

Yeah when we move hosting to a German dedicated server, we might want to consider that.

I am not sure if you really want that, it's like curing a desease by permanently poisoning the patient. Actually we were planning to move our forums from our current hoster to a more professional one... while using a .com to avoid some german legal mumbo-jumbo that's connected to .de domains. Now this thread made me think about our .com decission...


Anyways. Time to panic?

Meh, I don't think so. As long as only a domain is seized yet the servers with all the data are still up and running and there's no partyvan in front of your house...

Principles are for those people walking (we're against that sort of thing).  It can't happen to us.

[Triple Zero]

Also, you want to see 5,999,999,999 people dancing in the streets. It's not pretty when I attempt it.

as long as it is IMPROPER!

[LMNO]

IMPROPER DANCING!?

[Triple Zero]

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREETS!
(Somebody better notify the chief of police)

... which was a very good way to start the day, as I biked to the Young Researchers Centre this morning.

[Cain]

I actually believe privacy laws, on the whole, are stronger in Germany than in the USA.  Of course, this is like pointing out Genghis Khan is worse than Commodus...objectively speaking, we're still talking terrible, but the scale between the two should make it clear which is worse.

[Triple Zero]

I actually believe privacy laws, on the whole, are stronger in Germany than in the USA.  Of course, this is like pointing out Genghis Khan is worse than Commodus...objectively speaking, we're still talking terrible, but the scale between the two should make it clear which is worse.

I discussed part of that with Faust via PM when I first suggested the Hetzner.de servers, lemme see if I can find that.

Apparently the "no swastikas / hate speech" laws are not as stringent as I thought, or at least not enforced as such if you take a bit of care.

Another thing is the "Data Protection Act", but we'd have to deal with that anywhere in the EU, something about being transparent in the way we do or do not store personal data. For example I think Hetzner themselves deal with it via this privacy statement--we could have something like "we use cookies for login purposes and will not share your personal data with third parties".
CRAP I just realized something, from the Privacy statement on Hetzner.de: "According to the Federal Data Protection Act you have a right to disclose, amend, block or delete your saved information" this is true for the entire EU and it sounds like that would force us to change our policy on account deletion I should ask/search around for some legal advice on this and ways around it, for instance I don't suppose you can ask a credit agency to delete your data in order to clear your credit rating either

Finally there's the Telecommunications Data Retention Directive ... which I thought was also EU-wide, but apparently Germany ruled it unconstitutional in 2010! That's pretty sweet.

of course IANAL especially not a German one.

[Elder Iptuous]

Kouichi Toyama doesn't seem so fucking crazy now, does he?

[navkat]

I just had a knock-down, drag-out with someone about this very topic tonight. It just amazes me how some of the same people who'll defend a Catholic employer and insurer's right (ugh) to make reproductive health decisions for its employees (thereby creating a nasty precedent for both a free-for-all insurer exclusions orgy as well as firmly establish creed-discrimination in the workplace) on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to yadda yadda yadda will also argue in favor of...ofuk.

I'm just fucking tired, you know, dude?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I just had a knock-down, drag-out with someone about this very topic tonight. It just amazes me how some of the same people who'll defend a Catholic employer and insurer's right (ugh) to make reproductive health decisions for its employees (thereby creating a nasty precedent for both a free-for-all insurer exclusions orgy as well as firmly establish creed-discrimination in the workplace) on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to yadda yadda yadda will also argue in favor of...ofuk.

I'm just fucking tired, you know, dude?

Fighting former Catholic anger at Catholicism...

[Bwana Honolulu]

But now I see you don't have your own domain.

Yet.

can you explain why it's like curing a disease by fatally poisoning the patient? I know the German gvmt isn't to be entirely trusted either (with the Bundestrojan, etc) but it's pretty hard to find places that are, and well, I'm fairly sure that the US is in fact worse.

Indeed, yet until this point I have never - and obviously neither have you since that's the reason for this thread to exist - noticed such a takedown of a .com as described.

can you tell me more about the legal mumbo-jumbo connected to .de domains?

Well, I remember a german court order wich temporarily prohibited redirection of wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org in a certain case.

Is it to do with the hate speech laws? Because I looked into that right after I found out about the Hetzner.de dedicated server offer, and it's really not nearly as bad as I thought. We'd be banning neo-nazis anyway, so now we gotta delete their posts too (or at least remove the swastikas or whatever)

We never had any problems about hate speech laws and I doubt any neo-nazi would ever dare joining our forums... both his brain cells would simply burn out while registering.

And no swastikas? Poor buddhists.

--the important part is, you get a notice if you would please take it down, and you don't get in trouble for it: it's WAY more lenient than the sort of fucked up shit you get into if you accidentally get copyrighted RIAA/MPAA material on your site and one of their lawyers sees it on their bad day (you need to be pretty unlucky, but it's been shown to happen)

Still we hadn't seen much problems about having a .com yet.
On the other hand, even in germany the so-called "content industry" has some grip as we have seen in the recent take-down of a german-speaking, german-operated, netherlands-hosted movie streaming site kino.to which was ordered by a german court.

Well that is one of the reasons why the new server is not going to be physically located in the US.

Sounds familiar to the thoughts we had.

You're right that losing the domain does not imply losing the data (I said the same in one of my earlier posts ITT), however:

- it's extremely inconvenient
- your domain will show an ugly US takedown notice banner
- your visitors will need to track down or figure out the new domain
- register a new US-controlled domain, host the same content that was deemed illegal, and it'll get taken down immediately, you're not going to get your content back up unless you put it on a free domain, so you might as well do that from the start
- also, the principle of the thing.

Yep, you're quite right about all this. I don't say staying away from operating a .com website is wrong - I just say a .de might not be the best replacement.

I actually believe privacy laws, on the whole, are stronger in Germany than in the USA.  Of course, this is like pointing out Genghis Khan is worse than Commodus...objectively speaking, we're still talking terrible, but the scale between the two should make it clear which is worse.

This.

Just to clarify: The reason for out decission for .com and against .de were:

• Never seen any trouble specific to .com (before the case this thread here), yet to .de (see above).
• We (Aktion 23) are a german-speaking forum of mostly germans which seems to make german jurisdiction focus faster and more easily on us when using a .de domain as well.
• In the end it seemed much easier for us to anonymously register a .com than a .de.
• And of course our future servers are located neither in the U.S. nor in germany.

[Triple Zero]

can you explain why it's like curing a disease by fatally poisoning the patient? I know the German gvmt isn't to be entirely trusted either (with the Bundestrojan, etc) but it's pretty hard to find places that are, and well, I'm fairly sure that the US is in fact worse.

Indeed, yet until this point I have never - and obviously neither have you since that's the reason for this thread to exist - noticed such a takedown of a .com as described.

Not quite like this, but there have been enough other incidents in the past that made our choice for a new server NOT US. The subpoenaing, for instance. Though the German government can probably also do it (do they keep scandals quiet better, or are there just less?), it's an extra hurdle as the large majority of our members are not German

Is it to do with the hate speech laws? Because I looked into that right after I found out about the Hetzner.de dedicated server offer, and it's really not nearly as bad as I thought. We'd be banning neo-nazis anyway, so now we gotta delete their posts too (or at least remove the swastikas or whatever)

We never had any problems about hate speech laws and I doubt any neo-nazi would ever dare joining our forums... both his brain cells would simply burn out while registering.

And no swastikas? Poor buddhists.

... and that about sums up how "serious" these hate speech laws are, if I need to tell a German person that "the Swastika is outlawed if used in a context of völkisch ideology, while it is legitimate if used as a symbol of Hinduism or Buddhism" (wikipedia).

--the important part is, you get a notice if you would please take it down, and you don't get in trouble for it: it's WAY more lenient than the sort of fucked up shit you get into if you accidentally get copyrighted RIAA/MPAA material on your site and one of their lawyers sees it on their bad day (you need to be pretty unlucky, but it's been shown to happen)

Still we hadn't seen much problems about having a .com yet.
On the other hand, even in germany the so-called "content industry" has some grip as we have seen in the recent take-down of a german-speaking, german-operated, netherlands-hosted movie streaming site kino.to which was ordered by a german court.

Oh yes, and we got Stichting BREIN and BUMA/STEMRA but they haven't been targeting much except big filesharing sites, unlike the settlements protection racket that's being sent to individual people in the USA

You're right that losing the domain does not imply losing the data (I said the same in one of my earlier posts ITT), however:

- it's extremely inconvenient
- your domain will show an ugly US takedown notice banner
- your visitors will need to track down or figure out the new domain
- register a new US-controlled domain, host the same content that was deemed illegal, and it'll get taken down immediately, you're not going to get your content back up unless you put it on a free domain, so you might as well do that from the start
- also, the principle of the thing.

Yep, you're quite right about all this. I don't say staying away from operating a .com website is wrong - I just say a .de might not be the best replacement.

I don't think we're looking to get principiadiscordia.de either.

I actually believe privacy laws, on the whole, are stronger in Germany than in the USA.  Of course, this is like pointing out Genghis Khan is worse than Commodus...objectively speaking, we're still talking terrible, but the scale between the two should make it clear which is worse.

This.

Just to clarify: The reason for out decission for .com and against .de were:

• Never seen any trouble specific to .com (before the case this thread here), yet to .de (see above).
• We (Aktion 23) are a german-speaking forum of mostly germans which seems to make german jurisdiction focus faster and more easily on us when using a .de domain as well.
• In the end it seemed much easier for us to anonymously register a .com than a .de.
• An of course our future servers are located neither in the U.S. nor in germany.

Yeah? Where are you thinking of?

And one thing about those privacy laws, in the Netherlands and Germany, they actually do cut on both sides, maybe a bit of a hassle for an organisation/website but they also protect individuals/consumers, even from the governments in certain situations.

[Golden Applesauce]

If we went to .de, would that mean we'd have to lose this emote?



because that would be terrible

[Nephew Twiddleton]

If we went to .de, would that mean we'd have to lose this emote?



because that would be terrible

I honestly don't know the meaning behind that emote.

[Triple Zero]

If we went to .de, would that mean we'd have to lose this emote?



because that would be terrible

We're not going to .de (unless you mean the server, in which case, be more clear).

Yes, that would be terrible.

But I think we would not get in trouble by applying the "easier to ask forgiveness later" maxim, if some German official wants to be anal about it (and they have been/can be) they ask and we remove it, but not before.

If we went to .de, would that mean we'd have to lose this emote?



because that would be terrible

I honestly don't know the meaning behind that emote.

It means "look Germany that thing you did 3/4th century ago that you still suffer national conscience over, killed millions, that horrible thing that created the Wall slashed your country apart that terrible thing that you all said NEVER again, that thing? we trivialized it by giving Hitler a banjo, don't you think that's funny?".

It means about the same thing as a really funny black-face animated GIF.