[alpb]

    censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal
    of European media elites deemed against their interests

Has he recently gone full conspiracy theorist? (Also what's that cringy chatgpt picture supposed to tell us?) Who is the shadowy cabal of EU elites? If anything EU is purely politicians obedient to USA interests. I'm guessing this is what happens in tech when the tide starts to shift, because tech doesn't have morals, it's all just about money. Start praising the new administration no matter what they do, until they're not popular and start praising the next thing. Looking forward to his back-to-woke pivot in 2 years.

[kingstnap]

It might not be a conspiracy theory. Europeans have serious media skeletons in there closet.

Consider La Liga in Spain. When football matches are on they have a blank check to block whatever they want wherever they want. Genuinely they take down all of cloudflare and all kinds of shit. I think they were even DNS banning everyone on .tv TLD. Its wild how much legal power they have.

This was brought up on hacker news often.

They also have their apps spy on users microphones and gps to detect where someone might be watching their streams to make sure you aren't doing it in bars. [1]

Italian media is trying to do similar stuff with their piracy shield stuff. [2]

AtomicDig219303 on Reddit when Italy blocked all of google drive.

> Wait, I don't think that your post describes how fucking idiotic this whole thing is. Piracy shield is a system implemented by AGCOM (which as OP said is a governing agency) and basically "gifted" to the fucking mafia that is Serie A (yes, the football/soccer league) to block access to pirated streams of football matches.

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/laligas-anti-piracy-crackdown-trig...

[1] https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/06/12/inenglish/15603...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1mgq41i/italys_pira...

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Don't forget Robert Maxwell...

[iamnothere]

He is partially right. The Atlanticist faction in both the US and Europe has been working to get the internet under control since 2016. This project started as a backlash to the Trump election and moved into high gear with COVID and Ukraine. This faction has a sincere belief that the prior openness of the internet is a threat to the international order, as it prevents authorities from shaping civilian perceptions and behavior.

The battlefield has become more complex since 2016, as the old international order is pretty much dead now, so you have competing factions of Atlanticists (US rump admin/UK/FR/DE/Brussels) versus nationalists (US/Israel/Eastern Europe) who both want control of the internet, but through different means and for different reasons. You could also tack on BRICS nations who decided that the best path is to wall themselves off from the open internet.

[iamnothere]

Go ahead and downvote, you know I’m right which is why you won’t offer even a single comment in response.

Each of these factions trying to kill the open internet is doing it for selfish reasons and all are in the wrong for doing so. You’re strangling an international commons for your geopolitical games. Shame on all of you!

[Almondsetat]

He contradicts himself in the span of a single sentence. How is it possible that this was done solely by Italy (with concerns from the rest of the EU) and yet this is the work of a cabal of European media elites? If this were true, why isn't the entire EU involved?

[wmf]

Italy and Spain are doing the same thing and there may be other EU countries being controlled by football leagues that I haven't heard of.

[ben_w]

That's not really a self-contradiction; if we pretend the USA's copyright lobby had made California pass a similar law… well, that might not work, I have no idea if that would be unconstitutional inter-state trade restriction or something in the USA, but for the sake of showing why it's not a self-contradiction can we pretend?

If the US media elites had convinced California to do that, they'd be a "shadowy cabal of [US] media elites", even if there was opposition from the rest of the USA.

Again, don't read too much into if this would actually work in the USA, the EU is not the USA, this isn't that kind of comment.