backbones filtering unsanctioned sites

Fri Feb 17 09:56:13 UTC 2017

On Friday, 17 February, 2017 08:29, "Florian Weimer" <fw at deneb.enyo.de> said:

> Of course they do, see the arrest of Augusto Pinochet.

Universal Jurisdiction is supposed to cover the likes of war crimes, torture, extrajudicial executions and genocide, that are generally agreed to be crimes against humanity as a whole, regardless of where they take place.  Much as the copyright cartel would like to put any (perceived) loss of revenue into the same bracket, are you *really* advocating that copyright infringement belongs in that list?

> Due to the nature of mass copyright violation, it is likely that these
> sites violate the rights of Spanish copyright holders, and if such a
> violated party obtains a court order against an ISP, I see no reason
> why the violations should go on everywhere except Spain.

The action isn't against the people infringing copyright, the sites (arguably) aiding them in infringing copyright, or even the company providing hosting services to those sites.  It is, if the situation is being reported correctly, forcing a connectivity provider to block access to some elements of the hosting services *worldwide* based on the fact that it operates in one country.  In my view, both far too many steps removed from the offence, and, more importantly, overly-broad in impact.

Do you think the Chinese government should be able to force any voice provider operating in China to block any of their customers, anywhere in the world, from talking about Taiwan as an independent country?

Do you think the Iranian government should be able to force any mobile phone company operating in Iran to implement a worldwide ban of Pokemon Go?

If the answer to either of those questions is "no", can you explain why the jurisdiction should be limited in these cases, but not for Spanish copyright holders?

(Note that I'm not talking about the "right" or "wrong" of those decisions within their respective jurisdiction, that's not relevant to where their jurisdiction extends.)

Regards,
Tim.