.Cat Domain a Casualty in Catalonian Independence Crackdown

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/cat-domain-casualty-catalonian-independence-crackdown

by pera • 9 years ago

56 57 9 years ago

faragon6• 9 years ago

.cat domains work properly, e.g. http://www.elperiodico.cat (tested from Barcelona)

TL;DR: if you break the law, expect to get punished. The operators knew they were breaking the law, so involved sites in that domain were blocked. I.e. not a ".cat" generic blockage, but a specific action driven from a court.

princekolt2• 9 years ago

Did you even read the article? Or did you just jerk-reply in an effort to criticize people or the movement?

First, the content in question here is essentially political speech, which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled as deserving of a higher level of protection than some other forms of speech. Even though the speech concerns a referendum that has been ruled illegal, the speech does not in itself pose any imminent threat to life or limb.

What the Spanish government did is considered censorship under any reasonable system of law. Justifying one "wrong" with another is not gonna get anyone anywhere anytime. But since the Spanish government is fond of censorship, this reaction shouldn't come as a surprise.

fabianmg5• 9 years ago

What the Spanish government did is considered censorship under any reasonable system of law.

That's simply put... bulshit, I'm far from supporting the ultra right wing catholic goverment from Madrid, but spreading plain lies to victimize yourself doesn't make them true.

fabianmg5• 9 years ago

There's a system of law in Spain, is called the constitution. And the unilateral call for seccession or doing a referendum not allowed by the constitution or the courts is not allowed in any democracy.

I'm in favor of a referendum so the catalans can decide if they want to be in Spain or not. But I'm not in favor of a unilateral decision.

faragon6• 9 years ago

It was not political speech: the blocked site included private information of citizens (census), without permission. You can not use your power as regional government to ignore the Constitution.

In addition, the web is now hosted in another domain, against the law, not because of "free speech", but because of using protected private information from citizens: https://onvotar.garantiespelreferendum.com/on-votar/index.ht...

This is not about "free speech", but about the sublevation of a regional government, against the rule of law, i.e. against citizen's rights.

tirant3• 9 years ago

In the broad sense of the word, yes, it is censorship. But I do not think it falls under political speech.

The content blocked is content being announced by an official entity (Generalitat) containing information about the unilateral organization of a referendum. The Generalitat as an official organism needs to abide by the existing constitutional laws. The judge as initial measure, has dictated to retrieve all official material with information regarding the organization of the referendum. No other pages from dotCAT have been seized, including unofficial ones with information about the referendum.

The EFF should also take into account that the Generalitat has unlawfully obtained private information from millions of citizens in order to be able to create a list of possible voters.

pera3• 9 years ago

I am trying to follow the situation in Catalonia, and I have one question: Is any kind of publication (done by private citizens) about the referendum actually illegal in Spain? Thanks.

fabianmg5• 9 years ago

Not about the referendum, but about what happened last days:

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...

darthdev3• 9 years ago

No. It is though illegal that a public institution (using of course public founds from ALL Spaniards) promote in any way an illegal action. The Spanish term is "prevaricación" (perversion of justice), is commonly used when a public servant use his power to make knowingly an illegal action.

Note: This is what I read recently regarding this issue, but I am not a law expert, so take this with a grain of salt.

Edit: typos.

enriquto4• 9 years ago

it is illegal for privately owned publications to publish government calls for the referendum. They receive threatening letters asking them to comply, and many pulications thus refuse to publish these calls.

Oletros8• 9 years ago

How is TLD having a domain name registered breaking the law?

fabianmg5• 9 years ago

Also, the didn't government didn't ruled the referendum illegal a constitutional COURT did it. And the detentions and search were ordered by a JUDGE from Barcelona that not long ago was awarded by the same Catalan government that now is criticizing him.

Please read this to know the facts: https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/20/inenglish/1505917320_78...

toast0• 9 years ago

A court is an arm of the Kingdom of Spain, and a judge is a Kingdom employee. In US parlance, where the EFF is based, we would say the court is an arm of the government, and the judge is a government employee, thus this is a government action.

In European parlance, 'the government' often means the currently in-power group of legislative representatives, which causes much confusion in the US when we hear 'a new government was formed in X', or 'the government will be dissolved in Y'.

faragon6• 9 years ago

Spanish King has no actual power, we have a democratic monarchy.

tbatchelli4• 9 years ago

The referendum hasn't been ruled illegal. The constitutional court grants an automatic stay on any law at the Spanish central government request. Automatic. They haven't made a judgement.

And by the way, this is a political problem that the Spanish government refuses to tackle politically, making it a criminal issue. Is it criminal to want to not belong to a country that thinks that promoting a referendum is a crime?

Also, El Pais is certainly not partisan, no...

sigotirandolas2• 9 years ago

I think that the Spanish Constitutional Court can be hardly considered independent of the Spanish government (most of its members have been historically appointed by the PP and the PSOE, the main Spanish parties, see [1]), so I don't think EFF's point here is invalid, even if clarifications are possible. Without knowing the specifics I'm inclined to think the decision by Barcelona's judge would be just a consequence of the Constitutional's Court ruling.

[1] http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2015/08/20/55d4cbb646163f3c1c8b...: The Spanish Constitutional Court has 12 members, of which 4 are chosen by the congress, 4 are chosen by the senate, 2 are chosen by the governing party, and 2 by the "Consejo General del Poder Judicial".

fabianmg5• 9 years ago

The .cat domain was seized because the organization in charge of the domain IGNORED the orders issued by a JUDGE. So saying: > "If such content is unlawful, a court order directed to the publisher or host of that content is the appropriate way for authorities to deal with that illegality, rather than the blanket removal of entire domains from the Internet."

Is simply put, bulshit. A court ordered taking down illegal calls to a referendum not approved by a democratic consitution. If that was ignored, someone had to take action.

snakeanus• 9 years ago

DNS servers do not have "illegal calls" (read: thoughtcrimes) for the independence of any country. These are served by the server that the DNS points to and only on the request of the client.

antaviana• 9 years ago

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

euyyn3• 9 years ago

Hyperbole much?

Oletros8• 9 years ago

The .cat domain was seized because the organization in charge of the domain IGNORED the orders issued by a JUDGE.

What orders ignored? Do you have any link to newspapers?

And, by the way, PuntCAT is a TLD register, they don't host any site.

Do you know other case where the TLD registar has been seized? Domains are blocked via ISP's, the publisher or the hosting.

sigotirandolas2• 9 years ago

As far as I know, no newspaper has published anything that indicates that the puntCAT foundation ignored a clear order by a judge to censor a domain (though it is possible that they did). It's also possible that this is part of the open blanket investigation of anything the Catalan government does about the referendum.

snvzz2• 9 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15322537

grimborg• 9 years ago

Self determination is a human right. It is not unlawful, and a referendum about it isn’t either. If a certain law doesn’t allow for it, the law is wrong.

Of course, Spain is also calling thoroughly pacific demonstrations “tumultuous” so that they can accuse politicians of sedition, so Spain clearly doesn’t care about truth and law.

darthdev3• 9 years ago

Secession is in fact illegal in most of the world countries (if not all). Auto-determination is a right recognized in the UN for regions under colonial rule. Catalonia is not a region under colonial rule, and in fact the UN does not recognize the right of auto-determination of Catalonia (Source in Spanish from a newspaper from Catalonia: http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20151030/54438498099/ba...).

Is the law is wrong? Maybe, in fact I might agree with the right to vote secession, but (IMHO) this needs to be done with great care, if not, any region of any state can call a vote for independence each time they disagree with the neighbors. In fact this kind of "blackmail" has been used consistently in Catalonia for years: "If you don't vote this bill, we will secede from Spain".

So, I don't think that the law that prohibit referendums for secession is completely nonsense. Exceptions of course can be made, but, is the case of Catalonia an exception? Before answer that, please, think if you have all the data to make that statement.

BugsJustFindMe• 9 years ago

Before anyone goes rushing off to make sure that their favorite (nyan?) .cat domain is still up:

... .cat domains not connected with the October 1 referendum (including eff.cat, EFF's little-known Catalan language website) have not been affected.

A more accurate title might have been "Individual .cat domains promoting sedition casualties in...", which is not what it currently seems like it means.

sctb• 9 years ago

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15296359

enriquto4• 9 years ago

It is interesting to note that Assange and Snowden seem very interested in the catalan issue these last days.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/911226994846...

https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/910888878948700160

faragon6• 9 years ago

According to El Pais (first Spanish generalist -i.e. non-sports- newspaper in audience), the Russian intelligence is behind the support to Catalan separatists, like before pushed for the Brexit, Trump, and Le Pen: https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/09/22/actualidad/1...

enriquto4• 9 years ago

I understand that many people here dislike El Pais; but please, do not link continuously at their most outrageusly ridiculous articles. There are still reasonable writers there. Not many, of course, but they are still there.

snvzz2• 9 years ago

What happened here:

- judge told .cat TLD to take over some domains, setting them to display a spanish police landing page.

- .cat complied.

- Judge told .cat TLD to censor any domain that does support the referendum in any way.

- .cat replied that they run a TLD, that it's not their job to act as a censorship agency, inspecting each domain and disabling those that host websites that talk about topics that a judge specified are forbidden.

- .cat notified the ICANN of the situation they're in: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/lineros...

- police raided the TLD office, and arrested its CTO at his home.

.Cat Domain a Casualty in Catalonian Independence Crackdown

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