Yes and no.

Yes, they will get the chance to argue in front of a higher court. But they can't skip the lower court.

If I understand it correctly (Quad9 is a bit sparse on details here), this was a decision to uphold the original injunction. This decision is open to immediate appeal to a higher court, but Quad9 will have to show that there's an especially high urgency for that. Otherwise they will have to wait for the judgment in the principal case.

They did.

But it costs time, money and should not be necessary.

When you write about "blackmail", you are refering to the "Abmahnung" process - essentially a cease-and-desist letter, which can involve lawyers fees, and a contract in which you - if you sign it - pledge to pay a high amount of money if you do go back to your infringing ways. If you do not sign, they will consider suing you.

It is meant to prevent preventable lawsuits (which would be a lot more expensive), but has been weaponised by lawyer firms specialising in copyright enforcement. After a few of these law firms were countersued for inconsistent claims, the law about Abmahnungen was tightened a bit.

I have yet to see an Abmahnung benefitting the GEMA. Law firms usually work for studios.

I'd fall into this explanation if I didn't need to post yesterday a sign-up form for my daughter's school.

In France and probably most of western Europe too, business being closed between 12 and 2 is very much standard. Those people gotta eat too.

Hmmm okay, so first of all I should had said Berlin, as perhaps my experience does not necessarily reflect the situation in the whole Germany. So about Berlin: Aside from the internet paper-based communication, and general love for bureaucuracy, I found the city's infrastructure to be generally deprived. When I arrived Tegel and Schönefeld were the only airports, the state of which I frankly found shameful, especially for the capital of Europe's biggest economy. And the new Brandenburg airport that took 10 years to finish is not great either. I found the state of S-Bahn and U-Bahn pretty disappointing too, and parts of the public transport system to be constantly broken. Also the general customer service is very bad, a lot of places don't even accept credit cards, and overall people seem to be reluctant to adopt new technologies. I have the feeling that Berlin is stuck in it's golden age, and doesn't want to move forward. As for the point of reference, I moved from Hong Kong (not my native country), which I consider to be very modern in these aspects, so the whole experience was like a time-travel back to the 90s :)

i look at this as running a small ferry to the island on a lake and the state demanding that i refuse passengers as a punishment for crimes they were never convicted of. Even if they had their day in court i should not be forced to punish anyone. Then i should also pay for implementation?

First the offender should pay for his persecution, then tax, then the victim but never some random citizen.

ISP blocking is mostly done per IP (or in some crazy Country's per protocol and IP), because no one would do that on the DNS level ;)

Why do you think people would like to visit Sony ? I don't see anything special about them.

Living in Italy, not nearly as advanced as Estonia, but still:

Yesterday I got an alert that I was on the last day to file my taxes (if I didn't want to pay a €25 late-filing fee). On my lunch break I SSO'd into the tax agency website, which showed me a pre-compiled form with all the mortgage payments and medical expenses I'd made during the year already deducted, plus a house renovation expense that was registered but not automatically deducted because the system couldn't automatically determine if it qualified. I didn't have to insert any data, except for updating my email address as it still had my old GMail one. I saved it and submitted the tax form as-is, just in case.

Later that evening, I googled around a bit and determined that the renovation work did indeed qualify for the deduction. I reopened the website, clicked on 'Submit Corrective Tax Form' and entered the expense amount. I needed to provide the cadastral reference IDs for the renovated building/s, so I opened my tax agency home page -> Cadastral Query and copy-pasted them from it. Five minutes later I had submitted the second tax form and had two copies in my inbox: one in PDF, and one in RPF (its native columnar file format, in case I wanted to edit it later with a Java desktop application).

Here's the thing, though:

As little as five years ago, all of that would have required me to personally keep a bunch of paper trails and most likely professional help. "Cadastral query" was a by-word for "ponderous bureaucratic mess" and the practical advice was to start filing your taxes at least a couple months in advance.

However, once public-services SSO ("SPID") was introduced in 2015, it enabled a cascade of formerly in-person services to go full digital relatively quickly, because the most critical hard part - authn/authz - was solved. I think Germany should be perfectly able to shake off its dead-tree culture if it clears the same hurdle.

Well, that’s not such a stupid move, a nuke will permanently destroy every electronic device in a large radius.

A better one would to maintain working platforms based on old, rad hardened devices.

That reminds me of the signup process for the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS), which is used for things like estimated tax payments in the US. It's not quite as bad since you don't actually need to print & post the form, but they do insist on snail-mailing a code you need to complete the signup process, so registration takes much longer than necessary. All this to set up an account so that you can pay them!

The reasoning is probably the same in both cases: They want to know that you can receive mail at the given address. There are faster ways to confirm that, though, such as uploading an image of a recent utility bill in your name.

They don't need to improve their registration system. The government simply locks you up if you give up in the process. They don't risk anything if you fail to register.

This is a matter of great debate. Germany does have a system that assigns courts to cases in a fair way, however the first step is determining the place of venue, which usually depends on the place of residence of the defendent, or it hinges on whereever the unlawful event that lead to the case happened.

In cases of press and internet law, many lawyers argue that the event happened everywhere in Germany, and that they are accordingly free to choose whatever place of venue they like.

Since the system works alright in general there's not much love from law professionnels for a change. This internet thing is just a fad anyway.

In the USA, at least, this system is generally fair. I think most jurisdictions will allow you at least one switch of judge before the case begins if you don't like the one that got assigned - you can basically throw your lottery ticket back in the hat and get them to pull one more time.

Look i am absolutely not against protecting children's from harmful stuff, but it has to be the other way around, it's not like i had to insert my ID card into the DVD player too show that i am this old...NO you put the DVD's away your children's are not supposed to watch.

I have a new revolutionary idea....setup internet filters ON your children's devices, and there are tons of websites with pre made filters (often every country has his own) and even crazier most ISP/Routers already have them implemented, on the Mobile-phones you setup VPN (back to your home-router (also already implemented from most ISP's) so even the Phones have those filters) ;)

Too much work?* Then shut up talking about protecting your/our children's, and let them browse every f*ing social media network including 4chan, tictok and that terrible facebook owned thing.

  *Not talking to the parent obviously, but to everyone who thinks it should be any other way.*****

12 years olds will always have more digital competency in evading such barriers than their parents, even the newer smartphone and tablet generations.

Oh yes it has improved a bit... If you happen to be paying paying at least 10 EUR :), otherwise you'd be bellow the mindestbetrag

Yes, you have to compare to lost sales, but then again people in Germany are used to carry cash, so lost sales is maybe low enough not to matter.

"Nur Bares ist Wahres"...and it's true. With cash you have full control of the money while with some CC or phone you rely on third parties. Not to mention the privacy and data issues. It's always "funny" when people whine about that or how their CC got compromised, despite it being their choice.

That changed a lot since 2020. I regularly pay small things, like franzbrötchen, with my Apple Watch (that was not always possible before). At least in Hamburg it is now possible to use a card/contact-less payment almost everywhere.

I only use cash for public transports.

Cash is untraceable. Nothing else has this feature (yet?). So I use cash wherever I can.

Every era has its bogeyman that allows the state to justify anything. Communists, drug dealers, pedophiles, terrorists.

>Seems like government sponsored bullying is the default M.O. in Germany.

Yes it is, it's a bit like the CCP, if they think it's anything against them (truthfully or not) they bite first and second, then stop talking about it and hope everyone forgets. Works pretty well for everyone directly involved...so no pressure to change anything.

PFFFT! BAFIN... what did you expect from the country of CUM-EX?

Or, to go back to 2001, to the 'Frankfurter Steuerfahnder-Affäre', where people tried to do their job, and got mobbed, bullied, canceled and even psychiatrized for it!

But won after years of law-suits.

* https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/schadenersatz-fuer-st...

Small correction, it would have been the BAFIN (banking regulator) and not the BAMS (migration office)

Unfortunately Germany is slowly slipping to a totalitarian state it traditionally used to be. Now they are even planning compulsory vaccination for everyone.

If you lose your cash, it's gone. If you lose your CC, all it takes is one call (or a few mouse clicks) to lock it and get a new one in a few days.

It’s isn’t really. Look at Zimbabwe hyperinflation. I have a trillion dollar note here.

Cash is only worth what someone else agrees it is worth.

Starlink satalites know where they are serving, geographically. Wouldn't they just comply with local laws or risk having their ability to do business in that region disrupted?

As mentioned it is under US laws and treaties so not likely going to happen. But possible some other county with less care will one day set up satellite internet and not care. Though I doubt countries like China would sit quietly if their citizens could suddenly access unrestricted internet and would probably take out said satellites. I dream of the day there is unregulated internet with not firewalls or stopping anything.

Everything lifted into space by a US entity, including StarLink satellites, are under the jurisdiction of the FAA with stringent licensing (or permitting, depending on the payload) procedures and restrictions.

SpaceX is a US entity and will be forever. SpaceX intellectual property cannot even legally be transferred to an entity not approved by the Department of Defense.

Once traceable transactions become widespread there's a push to limit cash payments - see reporting requirements for paying more than 10000€ in cash, the amount des not get inflation-adjusted, see other countries with higher percentages of cashless transactions. So the people who want to pay cashless enable a power-grab by law enforcement. Not intentionally, but through their own convenience. So while their preferences taken on their own are not harmful if you combine them with known dynamics they are in conflict with the preferences of those who want to pay cash.

And I think simple convenience (not having to carry a slightly heavier wallet) does not quite weigh (heh) the same as privacy.

So until we get the ratchet of increasing surveillance solved it is entirely reasonable to push back on cashless transactions.

That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of sensible economics.

Cash is a facilitating fluid which should be channeled into diverse investments which are not based on monetary value such as property and resources, not stashed in large piles. Holding any cash in any quantity is a risk. Doesn’t matter if it’s magic numbers in a computer or bits of paper in a mattress.

As for cash only society, sorry but fuck that.

> and imposition of a serious negative interest

It's called inflation and it doesn't care if your money was securely left in your mattress

This gets even worse. As of today, no one is already willing to buy Italian, Greek etc. debt at the current low interest rates - but the ECB itself.

It reminds me of Baron Munchhausen pulling himself out of the swamp by his own hair.

"god rods" are pretty much science fiction. They're not all that practical weapons, and even launching even a single one without the government noticing is rather unlikely. And would at the same time be not that scary.

> What are you talking about? Starlink isn’t operating in India yet - why would the government need to hunt down anyone?

> Reuters states that since Starlink officially registered its business in India on November 1st, it has already seen over 5,000 preorders in the country [0]

That's from The Verge's article a few days ago.

> And if Starlink did start broadcasting in Indian airwaves without a permit (not really possible since they’d need a ground station but assume they place some ground stations around India’s borders)

They don't need to. It could just as easily operate from across the border, the ground station I'm connected to is in Canada even though I live in the United States.

> it would be a good opportunity for India to test its anti satellite weaponry.

Maybe if they had a geostationary satellite, sure. Starlink is a LEO constellation though, so if they took down a satellite this weekend, SpaceX would launch 60 more by next Saturday (and service wouldn't be interrupted since there's considerable redundancy built into the system). Unless India intends to take out a few hundred satellites and be responsible for potentially catastrophic space debris, I think it wouldn't be a good opportunity for them to test their anti-satellite weaponry.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/27/22804830/starlink-india-...

This is all false. The choice of whether to use spheroid radomes has ZERO connection whatsoever to do with concealing satellite locations. The parent comment is complete nonsense.

Antenna operators build radomes because they provide resistance to weather and other sources of environmental damage (birds are a big one). The spheroid/polyhedron "golf ball" shape is mostly used on large antennas because it's a structurally strong shape for the weight. It's also volume efficient for circular & spherical antennas, and handles rotating elements well.

Also, it's impossible to hide a satellite in space. Every nation with a space program tracks every orbiting object that's even remotely big enough to be a functional artificial satellite. It's mostly radar, but also visible light, IR, and UV cameras. There are no "stealth" satellites, mostly because you can't hide a launch... And once you know about the existence of a satellite, it's trivial to track it indefinitely. Civilian satellite spotters even do this with military satellites.

The only important thing you can keep somewhat secret about an orbiting satellite is it's specific capabilities. We don't know exactly what kind of telescopes or radar are deployed on Russian spy satellites, and they don't know the exact details of American equipment... But it's not even that hard for ground observers to guess at a satellite's likely mission and general capabilities, based on its orbit, visible structure, etc.

The parent comment's terminology is kinda strange, but that might just be a non-native English speaker... I'm more focused on the fact that their two "endnotes" in the parent post are just images, they don't actually cite any useful information.

> Which sounds great in practice, but do you know why the military uses those giant golf ball radomes? Its to hide where a satellite is pointing and thus where a satellite is in space. [1]

I'm unconvinced of that. Classified satellites are routinely tracked and sometimes even photographed by amateur astronomers; surely the peer competitors of governments can do better. I suspect these domes are primarily intended to conceal which satellite is being talked to.

Uhm... [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB143/index.htm ?

Also [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_(satellite)

>Yes, my original statement is entirely true. You're offering a poorly sketched basket of theoretical ideas

No, it is not. I'm not offering theory, I'm offering physics.

>none of which change the reality that no nation has EVER attempted to add low-observability features to it's military satellites

That you've never heard reports of projects like "Misty" (by the US NRO) is nice, but doesn't inspire much confidence in your statements either.

>Mostly because none of the ideas you sketched would actually work, in practice, to effectively hide a functional satellite.

Of course they would. This isn't, well, rocket science. We know how to make radar stealth shapes. Same math would work in space, in fact even more easily since there is no need to worry about aerodynamics nor necessarily stealth except in one direction. Lowering optical observability isn't even just a military thing, SpaceX themselves are literally doing it with Starlink, the subject of this subthread! They've been doing that to reduce albedo so as to cause less disruption for Earth-based astronomy. As I said, I certainly don't know if any major efforts have been made at serious thermal stealth, but not because it's some complex idea but merely due to tradeoffs in mass. Starship will allow launching 100-150 tons to LEO though with much larger fairings (last reported diameter I saw was 9m). As with all sorts of other things that will offer, the military will certainly be able to contemplate spending mass and volume on things that wouldn't have been worth the tradeoff before.

>The US, Russia, and China are all perfectly capable of tracking manuverable spacecraft and satellites, and we all do so 24/7/365.

Sure, the same way they can track maneuverable aircraft... so long as they aren't stealthed.

>Ever since the deployment of nuclear-capable ICBMs (~1961),space has been THE primary delivery avenue for the single biggest existential threat (thermonuclear war) to the most paranoid and technologically advanced nations on earth. Space is where you get nuked from!

You've gone entirely off topic and also seem pretty confused here. It's right there in the name: ICBM, the "B" is "ballistic", not "orbital". Orbital nukes are in fact specifically banned by treaty as too disruptive. ICBMs and SLBMs follow a ballistic trajectory. They're not space-based. There has been significant support for not making orbit a battlefield, due to rightful concerns about things like Kessler syndrome. Part of MAD and monitoring that has indeed been rocket launch monitoring satellites as well as ground based stations, but none of that has anything to do with spy sats. Monitoring sats have zero need to be stealthy, just to cover the whole planet at once. If either ICBMs are detected being launched or suddenly all your monitoring satellites get taken out, well conclusions can be drawn. In fact part of the core part of MAD is specifically to forego things which could be destabilizing by increasing odds a first strike could work.

>If effective low-observability spacecraft were a real thing, don't you think that at some point in the last 60 years, one of these nations would have deployed such a weapon... or addressed the concept in an arms control treaty... Or even discussed it publicly?

Um, nope? Not at all? As I said, while there have been experiments I don't think they are that much of a thing yet because there wasn't much need nor the mass budget for it. Up until modern times not that many countries/organizations could in fact track all the spy sats, and anyway the far more important interest was simply having lots and lots of them. Why put budget into fewer stealthy ones vs more and more better ones? But as the barriers to observation and tracking have fallen, and as mass/vol budgets go up, the time may indeed come when stealth will get renewed focus beyond existing experiments.

Again, when theorizing about future things that haven't necessarily been done yet, necessarily it's important to consider the physics of it. The physics here though are pretty straight forward frankly.

>If you find some credible examples of anybody discussing low-observability ICBMs

I remain completely mystified how you jumped from "a satellite in space" to "ICBM" if you have the slightest clue about what any of this stuff is. ICBMs aren't satellites, cannot be stealthed, and have zero need to be stealthed either. The only thing they need is decoys and that indeed has been done and is part of the reason (along with destabilization) serious strategic missile defense (against a peer opponent, not merely a rogue state handful) is considered infeasible. Stealth satellites would be about intelligence or perhaps fallback CnC or comms.

That could be for some applications here and there, but the major factor is protection (I had a job related to military antennas and radars, but I obviously didn't see every system out there). Those huge golf balls on the water definitely do some sigint and a bit of radar tracking on very long range sources such as missile tests, but everyone knows about those missions:

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2013/04/01/breaking-news/gian...