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posted by mrpg on Friday April 19 2019, @06:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the Dear-SoylentNews-staff... dept.

EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is 'Terrorist Content'

Update: The Internet Archive has issued a minor correction to its original story, noting that it was not actually Europol who sent the demand, but rather the French Internet Referral Unit using the Europol system, so that it looked like it was coming from Europol.

[...] We've been trying to explain for the past few months just how absolutely insane the new EU Terrorist Content Regulation will be for the internet. Among many other bad provisions, the big one is that it would require content removal within one hour as long as any "competent authority" within the EU sends a notice of content being designated as "terrorist" content. The law is set for a vote in the EU Parliament just next week.

And as if they were attempting to show just how absolutely insane the law would be for the internet, multiple European agencies (we can debate if they're "competent") decided to send over 500 totally bogus takedown demands to the Internet Archive last week, claiming it was hosting terrorist propaganda content.

And just in case you think that maybe the requests are somehow legit, they are so obviously bogus that anyone with a browser would know they are bogus. Included in the list of takedown demands are a bunch of the Archive's "collection pages" including the entire Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts, it's collection of over 15 million freely downloadable texts, the famed Prelinger Archive of public domain films and the Archive's massive Grateful Dead collection. Oh yeah, also a page of CSPAN recordings. So much terrorist content!

Also at Boing Boing.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by quietus on Friday April 19 2019, @10:51AM (2 children)

    by quietus (6328) on Friday April 19 2019, @10:51AM (#832102) Journal

    I can't find information about the French IRU, but I can provide information about the operational rules of the Belgian IRU. Both were established at the same time, november 2016, in coordination with europol's own EU IRU unit.

    As the original intent of the IRUs was to battle terrorist propaganda online, the unit originally consisted mostly of linguists, specialized in Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages. Somewhere before 2018 the EU asked that the unit wouldn't occupy itself only with terrorist propaganda, but also started looking out for hate crime.

    The IRU is limited to content that is linked to Belgium: content posted by Belgian natives, or an organization with an official basis in Belgium. Before a request is made to take down content, a check happens with other members of the judiciary, then with europol itself. This first step is only a request though, it is not yet an obligation.

    It is mainly rightwing sites who refuse to remove content, arguing freedom of speech or explanation from an academic point-of-view. As an example, Gab -- the rightwing alternative to Facebook and Twitter -- was asked to take down hate speech made by Belgian neonazi profiles on the site. Gab's founder, Andrew Torba reacted with a LOL not gonna happen. In such a case, an official takedown request is made and directed towards the proper authorities -- which in Gab's case probably means europol/interpol connecting the FBI.

    Success with removing hate speech is currently limited: only 49% of the requests (187 out of 381 hate posts) issued by the IRU are honored.

    Presuming that all IRUs operate on the basis of the same rules, the French IRU must have made a motivation linking the internet archive's content to French authors, and have passed that motivation through to europol/interpol where somebody acted upon it, without checking -- if the story is true.

    It would help if there was something like a full title of the requesting authoritiy given, or dare I ask a copy of the mail/letter involved, so we could at least do some basic checks.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday April 19 2019, @11:41AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday April 19 2019, @11:41AM (#832116) Journal
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Friday April 19 2019, @04:03PM

      by quietus (6328) on Friday April 19 2019, @04:03PM (#832182) Journal

      Yes, I've seen that link before and even wasted time on checking out their links. No copies of anything official nor a reference to the French IRU website, if such a site exists (the only thing I found was a site where you could notify French police about internet scams and copyright violations).

      What I did notice on revisiting though was that the French IRU issued a threat of being blocked if they didn't comply within 24 hours. That's even more odd, as neither Belgian nor EU Europol IRU has that power, as far as I know, and it would require the cooperation of US authorities to do so.