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What the hell is happening in Denmark at the moment??
First forcing the chat control topic upon Europe, now this?
I looked up their government, would have expected far right or so, but it is liberal social democrat...
So what happens here?
My bet is on a lot of bigtech ~~bribes~~ lobbying
Big Tech has no interest in chat control, though.
They vehemently opposed it from the start.
How the Danish are acting just doesn't make sense...
It's more complicated than that as control acts as a barrier to entry preventing competitive start ups entering the market and disrupting it so established players probably don't care as they can bare the cost of compliance if they have to.
Something is rotten in Denmark.
It isn't just Denmark. You see it here in Sweden, too. I'd be surprised if you didn't see it across Europe.
I'm not really happy with any of the big political parties here in Sweden. The Greens hate nuclear power so much they'd prefer to open up fossil fuelled power plants than keep nuclear ones up and running. The Left party work really hard to get out of the EU. These are both parties I align the best with.
The Social Democrats are just these milquetoast soft-core conservatives, pretending to care about issues but turning their coats the second they get the chance. Unfortunately they always end up leading any of the left-winged government coalitions, typically with the help from the Centre who then gets to dictate all the policies, so it just ends up being a centre-right government that sells out our welfare to private interests.
It's been like this for well over a decade at this point. Useless bunch, the lot of them.
Yeah Sweden has been doing great strides toward a full surveillance state, it is creepy as fuck.
All country leaders are looking at North Korea with loving eyes.
I remember how almost twenty years ago people were scoffing at the great firewall of China, how they’d restrict information and what not. Now all western countries are all “we must do this, for the children!”
The soc.dem. are not a left party anymore. The current government consists of three different center-right parties. And they have some weird priorities sometimes.
The social democrats copied a lot of anti immigration talking points from the right because this seems to be just popular in Denmark. I guess they are just weird.
But these laws are not anti immigration, they are anti freedom in general.
i guess we all should have fought back on internet censorship, rather than fallen back on "well i can still vpn".
We really should have and we have had a good track record in doing so.
SOPA, PIPA targeting online piracy have not passed in the US because of the fighting efforts.
We shouldn't be content just because we use a VPN. Companies are getting smarter about handling VPNs by putting pressure on the companies themselves.
The whole country wants to ban VPNs?
Or just a small subset of politicians in the pocket of big corporations who see their profits melt because of their own greed?
How do you "ban VPNs"? That's not how software works, and VPNs are... you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean "ban them to bypass restrictions", but the entire point of a VPN is you can't tell from the outside what it's being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can't enforce it.
I actually want one country to ban VPNs just so every other country can see the fallout or complete lack of enforcement
VPNs are banned in some countries. At least in practice. China comes to mind and please nobody tell me „I have a friend in China and they use one!“ That friend is either breaking the law, or a state agent or foreigner where that law doesn‘t apply. Hotels have that as part of their service for tourists because why the hell would anyone travel to a country with basically no internet? Of course they are exempt.
But Chinese citizens are absolutely not allowed to use VPNs to break through the great firewall. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. But of course most of them know at least one person who can.
So in theory the law is useless but in practice it‘s very effective to control information. Whatever the case it‘s nothing a democracy should pursuit. Ever.
This is such an important message. We should not lull ourselves into complacency. Banning vpns will be yet another step towards a closed, non-anonymous internet where governments (and by extension companies) will force you to give up access and control over your digital life
Let me tell how how much people actually follow laws in China.
I was born while the One Child Policy was in effect. My mother already gave birth to my older brother. Basically, my existence is illegal.
As you can see, clearly I'm not dead. They didn't manage to kill me, just demanded my parents paid a massive fine and denied legal papers until they did so.
Honestly if you just browse and don't post anything too serious, are they really gonna go after everyone who use a VPN. I mean, say even if just 1% uses a VPN. That's 1,400,000 people. Are they gonna lock up a million people? Really? Surely they have bigger fishes to catch. (Edit: 1% of 1.4 billion is actually 14 million, good luck locking that many people lolz)
As for control of information, internarional phone calls aren't blocked, you can send letters. My mom regularly call my aunts (aka: her sisters) in China. I heard the Covid QR codes being mentioned, afaik, the didn't lose their teaching jobs nor ever got arrested.
The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how.
It's like adblocking. Do you know anyone irl that use adblockers? Seriously, I don't know anyone that does except like maybe 1 perdon.
But here we are, on a platform where practically everyone uses adblockers.
Or in another analogy. Mainstream social media is like inside the GFW and Lemmy is like using VPN to bypass it.
TLDR: Okay sorry if my point isn't concise, I guess my point is: NPCs will just follow the wind, those who have the will to dig deeper will probably be able to bypass the censorship (provided that it's not completely cut off from the outside internet)
They'll do what Russia does with their online services. Have a registration scheme with noncompliant VPNs being outright banned.
Simple when you know which dictator to copy.
VPN bans amount to only allowing private companies to operate vpns for the purpose of infrastructure and commerce. It wouldn't ban vpns entirely, but no average person would have the means within his country to be able to purchase or use one... legally.
While it would be sorta bad, it's like taking the top layer off of the cake while leaving the rest.
There's ways out, still, and there always will be. They can't ban buying a vps from next door, and putting wireguard on it.
I am a relatively cheerful if a bit offputting person, I do not mean to say this is good news by my tone. This fucking sucks lol. Sorry.
It's already been taken off. The guy who requested this is a complete asshole that needs to be thrown out of office immidietly.
I hate journalism so much these days...
Random dude in the parliament: "Let's all shit our pants."
"Journalists": "Denmark wants to shit its pants!!"
The powers that be really don’t like the idea of unmonitored secure networks do they?
Denmark seems to want to fuck everything up lately, what's their problem?
They can't understand each other. Because of their language.
Denmark is trying to implement a lot of straight up fascist laws lately...
maybe lemmy at large should see the commonalities between all govts of the world making these moves instead of picking on the most obvious example and taunting citizens to "do something". It's as if there's a coordinated effort to lock the lower classes down before some kind of technology creates civil unrest worldwide.
But then again, I'm just a stoopid murican who should have fixed this by now. Not aimed at you, just a relevant jumping off point for the crap that floods these threads.
I notice this mainly from western countries. Asians and South Americans seem to recognize they arent immune from corruption and bullshit policy. Yet for some reason their western counterparts like to point the finger at other countries (namely the US) and diminish their VERY real problems. "You Americans elected a facist, what are you doing?!" Yet far right parties have been surging for the past decade in Europe and Australia.
Facism was literally birthed in the west yet they never think it will come back
Shit's getting extra shitty everywhere. Its like a couple of countries went a little fash and every politician across the globe went FUCK YEAH, LET US IN ON THAT SHIT!!!
"Oh no! We must protect the poor MPA! The poor organization that's been hell bent on policing what films and media ought to contain and ensuring the multi-million dollar corporations continue to make their millions in peace!"
~ Denmark’s Ministry of Culture, probably
(nevermind the fact that countries with anti-piracy policies have not ever proved that they "repair" the so-called "market-damage" that they purport piracy has done)
Denmark is attempting Schrodinger’s VPN ban. Seems like every week it’s defeated and re-emerges. What a waste of administrative time.
Gotta give Denmark credit, they're really going for the Shittiest Western European Country Award. Granted, I'm from the USA and we're obviously an unmitigated disaster, but like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Competing for attention?
The UK has entered the conversation, we will not be unseated in Europe. But yeah as hard as we try we pail in comparison to you guys, hopefully your inevitable implosion will serve as a warning to the rest of us aspiring authoritarianists.. Probably not.
The Supreme Court equivalent tried that in Brazil, but soon discovered all government digital infrastructure depends on it and backpedaled.
They already pulled back the part about banning VPNs last night, before this post was even made.
What is going on with this vpn banning bullshit. This would render so many banking apps completely useless.
It's really telling how over the last few months, the overlap of "Oh, WTF is this?" between Privacy and Technology communities have aligned more and more.
Once again, I would like to thank stupid politicians and greedy media conglomerates for their contributions to media piracy. If not for all their hard work, we would still be playing Russian Roulette with shitty DIVX rips on Limewire.
Denmark: everything is hygge unless you are Inuit or a Refugee. Now add free Internet to the exception list.
They want to unlock the illegal streams? All hail the Danish pirate kings.
