(Title of this post changed due to length constraints, original was "BEREC: Open Internet Regulation is not an obstacle in implementing EU sanctions to block RT and Sputnik")
Europe, Europe, and Europe. But it isn't actually a war. A war is a horrible, brutal thing. Wikipedia tells us:
> War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces.
When you describe what the rest of us would call 'poor relations' as war, it raises the question of what you call it when thousands are drafted and brutally slaughtered. If this also is to be called 'war', then it raises the question: if you're already at war with them, what difference does it make if you decide to draft a few million young men and send them over there? Or for that matter a few strategic offensive weapons (colloquially known as nukes)?
Alternatively, you may contend that what everyone else calls "war" you call, let's say, "war 2". But in that case, your definition is unique to you, and is not terribly useful for communicating with other people.
No. They are not at war "in all but name". War is a brutal thing, involving the deaths of thousands of young men. The EU is not by any stretch at war with Russia, nominally or otherwise.
The entire point of a free country is that people can handle the information. If not, why even bother?
No, encryption isn't going to help, because they can still block on IPs. Encryption plus eSNI helps, and if, for example, Yandex.Cloud sets up a big "shared host," I fully expect that to get the Kharkiv treatment, like Roskomnadzor tried a few years ago with Telegram.
Tor operators can see the IP, they can see the DNS, and their operation has the effect of unblocking RT.
I am not talking about the economy, I am talking about the Internet. Cutting RT off from the European Internet requires cutting the EU off from large chunks of the global Internet. If Russia responds, that would have the potential to get very ugly.
IANAL, but as far as I know, EU laws are more important than national laws (you can search "Supremacy of EU law") except in Germany, so the question is if it violates the equivalent of the constitution of the EU.
According to EU officials, it does not.
I've sent out some e-mails, if what you say is true I will amend it.
> "Knowingly and intentionally" seems to apply to the operation (e.g. "you know that you're running a Tor node") - "circumvention" is on the basis of "object or effect". (For ESL speakers: "object" means "goal", "effect" means "result", and Tor obviously has a final, de-facto result of unblocking RT)
My concern is that with this, you're not just segregating Russia from the world, you're segregating the EU from the world. You're going to get a new Iron Curtain, only this time, the restrictions are going to be on both sides.
"Knowingly and intentionally" seems to apply to the operation (e.g. "you know that you're running a Tor node") - "circumvention" is on the basis of "object or effect". (For ESL speakers: "object" means "goal", "effect" means "result", and Tor obviously has a final, de-facto result of unblocking RT)
No, but I am aware of this, I even thought to mention it, and I sorely hope that I am proven wrong. However, my concern is that the ban explicitly does apply to the medium itself.
In particular, article 12 bans participation in "activities the object or effect of which is to circumvent prohibitions". Can you think of any reason for why Tor would not be considered to circumvent the ban?
What if you explicitly target it with respect to the money?
Most of the crap on Google is going to be monetized sites. If you just block/downrank all the sites with e.g. ads, then the profit motive for spam goes down - the more value you extract, the less value you are able to extract.
Step 1 is quite difficult, and step 2 has the downside of disincentivizing people to use it. There are some attempts to make search engines where you pay per month.