Ooops comments on Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Internet censorship is very easy to do, I don’t know why some people tunnel-vision on the fact it’s not perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect to still be very effective.

That was my actual point. It's effective for censorship and targeting the broader population. It's ineffective for preventing piracy as a lot of people there are indeed tech-affine and belonging to the <1% that will go the extra mile to circumvent it.

So implementing provider and dns blocks against piracy is either stupid or an intentional lie. I assume the latter.

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[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I think you're still missing the finer point. Depending on the punishment (which under an authoritarian regime can be torture in prison or being summarily executed or dissapeared), even a semi-effective block can have a completely chilling effect.

Whether you can or cannot circumvent the block and get your hands on Taylor Swift's latest album will be the last thing on anybody's mind. Whether the fascists lie about the efficacy of the block will be irrelevant. They can point at a completely random person and have them shot and say it was because of "piracy". But you can substitute any word there and it will work the same.

This isn't a technical problem, it's a social and political problem.

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[–] Ooops@feddit.org 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)

which under an authoritarian regime can be torture in prison or being summarily executed or dissapeared

The finer point is that you are still thinking in terms of authoritarian regimes ruling by force or intimidation. You don't need to if you can direct the opinion of 90%+ of the population via methods totally unfit to do what they claim they are employed for.

For some very strange reason you seem to be under the impression that I downplay this massive insane censorship measure they try to enact with this bill. I'm not. Quite the contrary I am telling you very plainly that it's inefficient FOR WHAT THEY CLAIM THE GOAL IS. Because they are lying.

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[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 point 5 days ago*

you are still thinking in terms of authoritarian regimes ruling by force or intimidation. You don't need to if you can direct the opinion of 90%+ of the population

I'm thinking like that because such regimes are always established and maintained through violence. Indimidation is much cheaper, faster and more attainable than convincing 90% of people – which is never going to happen btw, that's a super high bar. It's also unnecessary, you can win elections in the US with 28% of the registered votes IIRC.

it's inefficient FOR WHAT THEY CLAIM THE GOAL IS. Because they are lying.

Let me ask you, does it really matter if people don't circumvent blocks because they can't (because the block is effective) or because they won't (because they fear the consequences)? Either way they're doing what the regime wants.

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