[members-discuss] SOPA and Ripe's police order

Hi  colleagues:

As a owner of a company have great relation of fighting censorship in
China, I feel strongly about today's bill, and should like to share
few of my concerns and thoughts about how the things might going.

I personally didn't know we have so many regulations in EU about
internet before I raised my ISP business. and I didn't realize that
receiving legal latter will be part of the business.(as my lawyer
count, on average, we receive about 100-200 legal notice per day, and
we need to take down over 100 domains each day for the copy right
infringement). Futurenally, I also have a company in China, so that
legal costs has been kept in a relative low level.

In last year short after the Ripe 63, Ripe was ordered by Dutch police
force to take measurement of certain IP ranges.with today's US bill,
we are very much concerning what government might take lead to in the
future of internet.

In China, all ISP have to censer themselves before they allow anything
going public, otherwise it will results hash punishment up to a level
that entire data center can be disconnected just by single offensive
website(which in view of certain interest group).

Will that happen one day in EU or US, if this trends continues?

People might know that many Chinese use VPN service overseas to get
over the firewall built by the government, however, as a company have
relation in the business, we also see another type of VPN service
being offered in China has increase popularity, it was offered to
foreign Chinese in order also them to get back China. The reason for
them to "to back China" is this:
http://www.iqiyi.com/dianying/20120110/376d083f97061688.html

Instead of actual video, You will see a quote "This video is only
available for mainland China customers due to copyright restrictions"

The reason this happen is because large amount of Chinese
company(often legally US based) get sued by copyright groups in US/EU,
therefore they impose the censorship to censer the content out of
China.

Does this censorship has anything different from the government
censorship in China? Was that both block of certain content because of
the interest of certain group of people?

I am personally not interested in politics, the right or wrong of the
content does not interest me. but as far as I have been to three Ripe
meetings, I do feel a strong sense from the persons built the
internet(look at how the basic protocol is written, it was very
surprise me that anybody can announcing any range that doesn't require
some sign of paper), that the internet should be a open and free place
to share what you think what you thought, but not a place that police
and government can break in at any minus and tell you what to do.

As ISP, we are the ground of the internet, if this trends continues, I
was very much worried that one day we have to do what Chinese ISPs are
doing, we have to look carefully about every website's content and
afraid in one middle night our entire business can be shut down due to
something that we don't even know of.

I thought it was impossible in western country, until I saw how
aggressive the SOPA/Protect IP looks like. I don't know if something
similar will happen in EU in a near future, my company lawyer told me
that as long as we have data center here in EU, we are bounded by the
EU laws. So are you, my colleagues.

Here is just my 2 cents thought, I would hear from any colleagues that
share the same concern as me and my company do. The raising legal
costs and restrictions will not only damage the small business, start
ups, it also require us one day become some sort of "internet local
government" to police our client, and I wish that day never happen.

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Kind regards.
Lu

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