NIC.CZ censorship

General discussion
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Actually, no, it is more nuanced.

In democratic countries, there are no “rules” for citizens to be concerned about. They are concerned about laws (and other generally binding regulations; but we are getting too nuanced here).

See also the difference between executive, lawmaking and judicial branches. It is divided exactly for the reasons to prevent abuses.

That’s regulation of doing business. Hazard sites are an enterprise in regulated market, and the condition for doing business there specifically is to pay to the state a cut. The blocked sites didn’t, so they cannot do business anymore.

Or more specifically, they are not blocked due to speech, but due to money.

It is actually a law, made by parliament. And if some website thinks that they were wronged, a court can examine, whether they are right or not.

Would you be so kind and provide a link to Czech law regulating this?

It would be interesting, because it would be at odds with ICHR judicatures. There were pretty interesting decisions in the past, of particular interest to you might be OOO Flavius against Russia.

As far as I know, there is none. There is also no way for the affected sites to have their situation examined by courts, a necessary condition, if you want to compare with the previous case.

CZ.NIC admitted themselves, that it was just an informal request and that they thought it was a good thing to do. They actually broke rules.

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23

Also a very relevant piece (only in Czech, sorry): https://www.nic.cz/files/nic/doc/Pravidla_registrace_CZ_DSDng_20140101.pdf, §17.1. A rough translation:

CZ.NIC is allowed (based on its own deliberation) to cancel a domain delegation if it is used in a way that endangers national security…

So much for law-less-ness of the decision.

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24

Thank you, but I meant a specific law, that regulates the speech, not just vague handwaving.

One, that you can step in front of a judge with.

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25

Serious accusations require serious proof. Politicians wanting to silence dissent isn’t it. Otherwise, the communist regime before 1989 could claim the same…

Honestly, I’m very surprised how many people approve totalitarian behaviours. I would think, that we did learn from the past.

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26

Interesting conversation. NIC.CZ just did censorship implementation based on government wish, NIC.CZ is not forced to do it, they did it based on their own decision. I dont think there is any doubt in that.
So its still same, NIC.CZ as developer of secured network devices in Turris project, same NIC.CZ is implementing censorship in cooperation with government. Not, because they must do, but because NIC.CZ wants to do.
Its really great PROMO for secured network devices, to cooperate with government to implement censorship methods. BRAVO NIC.CZ You can use it in your PROMO documents and in your presentations. Who do you think will buy secured network devices from organization, implementing government-managed based censorship? This is Orwells world, i cannot imagine somebody in China would buy network firewall from China government related company, covering censorship of domestic citizens. BRAVO.

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27

Since this discussion here is in english while the relevant “facts” appear in Czech, could someone give a quick summary what kind sites were removed? Tempers seem to run a bit hot, but about what exactly?

Side-note: I tend to differentiate in such matters, absolute positions are nice and clear, but rarely a good match for reality which tends to be more of a continuum than a step function.

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I’m against censorship in general, but in this particular case, from what I understood, these sites were just Putler’s propaganda. If CZ.NIC took down these domains of their own free will, then I can’t thank them enough. Even the smallest things can help make the world a better place.

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29

News sites with stories and style very similar to sputniknews.com. Total 8 names got removed from .cz zone, “voluntarily” after consulting government agencies.

You may notice that now the European Commission claims to also have some blocking plans; perhaps the technical approach will also be of a nature that has stronger long-term effect (but I haven’t heard of such details yet).

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30

Thanks. That looks IMHO like blocking access to those sites is a totally permissable even helpful act of information clean-up. If we learned one thing in the pandemic it is the massive negative side effects of allowing misinformatiom to spread widely and freely. In an ideal world people would all be experts and would be willing and able to assess the ‘truth’ content of information (so blocking would not be necessary), but in the world we live in that is not the case, so IMHO blocking the worst sources of biased or mis-information is not something I object to, but rather applaud.

P.S.: I realize that there are several positions one can take on this matter, and mine is not necessarily ‘better’ than others, but that cuts both ways, and I wanted to balance the dominant narrative in this thread.

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31

Back to the original question. Software that is running on our routers is opensource and thus it is shared with whole world not excluding anybody - thus even government agencies can use Turris OS if they want. They can send us patches as anybody else and those will be judged purely on technical merit as always - making sure that it respects users privacy and doesn’t hinder security. If you want to double check, feel free to check the code.

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33

Well its nice, but buy product from group officially implementing censorship methods with government is not good idea at all. How secure it can be, if is developed by group cooperating with government on censorship of domestic people. Does not fit that much.

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34

Look, I understand that you have a beef with NIC.CZ (voluntary?) decision to remove a few domains from the .cz zone. While I do not share your assessment on the inexcusability of that action, I accept that my opinion on this matter is primarily different from yours (so neither better nor worse). But could you please keep that line of arguments to threads specific to nic.cz. I makes little sense to drag this topic onto other threads. If you disagree with team turris decisions in this matter, by all means do not buy or recommend turris products, but please avoid turning this into a “ceterum censeo…” style addition to every thread here. Thanks in advance.

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35

My dear, you have your idea and i have mine. Keep your ideas and feel free to share and let me do the same. You have nothing to do with my reactions or what i am writing, its my decision, not yours. So be so kind, solve your topics and if you dont like what i am writing, just dont read it. Its that simple.
And of course, reality is, that NIC.CZ is cooperating on government censorship, same NIC.CZ delivering and selling network security devices. It just does not fit and if would be correct, then official documents of Turris should have such information that you are buying device from group cooperating with governemnt on censorship. Its just description of reality.
If you dont like it, thats your problem my friend, not mine at all.

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36

Yes, but please at appropriate places. This is IMHO not one of them (EDIT: it now is at the appropriate place, so that is fixed :wink: ). Feel free to ignore me.

Yes, but you will need to accept that there will be less than applauding reactions to your writings. Within reason everybody has the right to voice their opinion, but that does not mean everybody else shares that opinion; and in a public forum one might get responses one might not have expected/desired.

No, if you post stuff I find opposable, I will voice my opinion with the same justification as you (or are you trying to “censor” me?).
Why is it often the same folks that seem to claim special rights for themselves they are not willing to grant others the same? You might or might not realize that such use of different measures/yard-sticks for the same actions (to spell it out, you posting off-topic opinion in this thread and me responding with an equally off-topic counter-view; yet you consider your action fair and proper and mine in-acceptable and rude) really puts a noticeable dent in one’s “righteousness”. Do as you please.

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Secured network device from group cooperating with government on censorship of citizens has no sense. Put this to official product documentation, i am interested how many people will be interested to buy network device from group implementing censorship bas on cooperation with government. Why to hide such important information. You can be proud of that, use it as great promo.

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@pgotze: I’ve been moving your off-topic comments into this topic. I didn’t feel like censoring the anti-censorship comments outright. Hiding the posts would be the usual workflow; note that external people mark your comments, too. This way those other topics retain links to here.

But I’m really running out of patience. If you keep spamming topics that don’t really relate to censorship, I certainly will push for stricter measures.

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39

Would be interesting to see promo documents, how is described censorship cooperation of NIC.CZ with government. As it has significant influence on how organization is placed on the market, it should be publicly described in the product specification, that CZ.NIC as developer is cooperating with government on censorship of domestic citizens. Why not to be honest, for sure lot of potential customers will feel happy to support such a group, covering censorship methods with government. Why not to have it as one the big PROMO information.

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Would it be possible to do censorship here and censor the user? It’s just annoying and completely out of place in this thread…

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