The Internet totally uncontrolled in Poland?

The Polish govt is preparing a bill that would enable the authorites to prevent e-gambling, paedophilic content, and e-scams on the net. Some are protesting that the Internet should not be controllld in any way. Otehrs say it is a medium like any otehr and should not have privileged status. If editors limit what they print and broadcasters eliminate unsutiable materials, why should the Internet be the only medium where anything goes?

media2.pl/internet/60853-cenzura-internetu-protesty,-manifestacje-wideo.html

The Polish govt was preparing lots of stuff in the past, was forgetting about them afterwards and moving on to new, more exciting issues on the agenda ...

Well, there are already laws on the books against the material you mentioned. Filtering doesn't work (see Australia), and is ultimately abused by those creating the criteria for filtering (again, see Australia). Filtering will be circumvented by anyone that wants to access that type of information, and will ultimately just degrade the normal users experience and lead to a situation where govt. is responsible for deciding what is considered acceptable for the population to view. Is Indymedia acceptable? What exactly could be considered offensive or slanderous to the president, and should that be filtered? Censorship doesn't work, resources should be put towards catching the people that are breaking the law.

is poland trying to follow china or something? what a waste of time and effort.

Something pejorative appeared on a Polish website about someone I know (and by the way dislike). I mentioned it to a mutual friend who likes this person and is very well connected. He said that something would have to be be done about it right away, and within a couple of days the offending item wasn't showing up on search engines here in PL.

How do they do that?

internet fairy (and lawyers)

I wondered, but it was all too quick for that, and it disappeared immediately from google. Must be the internet fairy.

they also wear suits and are most often in the form of a threatening letter :)

Are they going to actually restrict the content that you can access or just restrict what can be posted from IP addresses in Poland (or hosted on servers in Poland)?

There's a big difference.

E-gambling, paedophilia and child pûrn, scams, yes regulate or block them...Use common sense...Most of these things are run out of Israel, anyway...Especially the e-gambling...The child pûrn, they may run it through Russian sites.

Otherwise, no censorship on the Internet...Free discussion...The other things you mention fall under the category of criminal activity and pollution.

Most of it run out of Germany and the UK, very popular here in PL. I use Bwin and Unibet.

No no, not out of the UK, but out of the dependencies, territories and other made up legal statuses ;)

The biggest joke is gambling sites registered on Alderney - I mean, does anyone believe that Alderney seriously has more than one bloke dealing with gambling issues?

No, but he surely gambles a lot.

Some sites were licenced as bookmakers shops during the last few months of the DDR - non-tote gambling had previously been forbidden there, but was allowed just before reunification. The few licences that were given are transferable and worth a small fortune now, since they are valid accross the EU due to grandfather rights and can only be revoked with some difficulty.

PiS have roundly attacked gambling sites licenced in this way, but they can't do anything. The Polish government don't have any powers to block access under EU rules.

Most of these things are accessed through TOR networks, chains of proxies, vpn's, they are not accessible normally so whatever's the bill it won't change much because of the methods mentioned above.

SUpposedly one can find on the net step by step instructions on how to construct a bomb using ordinary items gound around the house. Should that kind of thing to readily accessible to immature juveniles as well as the criminally minded and umbalanced types of all ages?

Yes and no...I am aware of the 'chains' used for these purpose, but a good 'cyber man' or network man can do some grunt work and trace them...Just eliminate the sites...Sure, they will go underground, but under the ground is where they belong, IMHO...If this gambling is allowed, then why shouldn't one be able to purchase, say, synthetic morphine and other drugs freely on the net?...Both are addictive and suck up money, not even mentioning moral issues...Hey, if anything goes, anything goes...Is this the direction we wish to move in, this is the question.

Because you can't just pop down to the cheist and buy synthetic morphine, but you can go to the bookmaker's shop on the High Street and gamble. No reason that there should be a specific restriction relating to the internet.

As long as one can go to the corner shop and buy alcohol and a pack of smokes, your argument makes no sense.


Good luck trying to trace onion routing. Just don't go to the sites that you have issues with, and stop trying to press your hypocritical morals onto others.

You don't even have to be good - just find the sites. Once you've found the sites, it's trivial to find payment data and thus be led straight to the paedophiles. This is how the vast majority are caught - because they're stupid enough to use something traceable to purchase content.