Summary: The efforts to gag Techrights or to intimidate us have all been unfruitful; in a sense, they encouraged us to focus on EPO scandals even more and arguably invoked the 'Streisand Effect' at the EPO (most workers read this site, no matter what their bosses say)

MORE than half a decade ago the autocrat Benoît Battistelli blocked Techrights and also blocked communications -- to the degree he could -- from the trade union of EPO staff. What was he thinking? First of all, nowadays many people carry mobile devices that don't need Wi-Fi for connectivity, so they can bypass such restrictions even in the workplace. Secondly, people have E-mail addresses other than their employer's and they have an Internet connection at home. So these gagging attempts are futile at best; it's rather revealing that António Campinos has not undone these policies and within only months at the Office he already threatened staff representatives who attempted to communicate with people they represent.

"Censorship is rarely effective; SLAPP is another thing, but that too can be ineffective and even counterproductive because people typically wish to know what it is that they're not "permitted" to know."Censorship is a tricky thing; for a number of different reasons (beyond the scope of this post).

Censorship is rarely effective; SLAPP is another thing, but that too can be ineffective and even counterproductive because people typically wish to know what it is that they're not "permitted" to know. It's human nature. People are curious.

"At the EPO, Battistelli had long attempted to frame his critics as "Nazis"; it's the perfect weapon, isn't it? Oh, and then he claimed some of his critics also had weapons, so they needed to be treated like dangerous criminals."Over the next 4 days we intend to publish here 4 publications that the EPO's management actively attempted to suppress. A few months ago we posted here a more recent example of it -- one where Madame Battistelli was made to look like a fool (incidentally, staff representatives redact her name from some publications, but based on the context every reader knows who's alluded to anyway, so the redaction is rather pointless).

I've lost track of the number of SLAPP letters I've received, but I still have some of them somewhere in the house. I was never taken to court; they know they have no case. The idea is simple; they just try to intimidate people or discourage future publications regarding the same topic. Now, regarding site-blocking measures, that's the reason we recently added IPFS for everything newly-published (articles, IRC logs and more) as we continue to improve that. Those peer-to-peer-type networks are almost impossible to censor and they're robust to take-down requests.

A long time ago Richard Stallman said:

"Bill Gates cites copyright enforcement to justify Chinese censorship."

A couple of weeks ago he (Gates) used "anti-Semitism" to demonise sites where he's criticised; never mind if he's neither Jewish nor does that have anything to do with criticism of his crimes. At the EPO, Battistelli had long attempted to frame his critics as "Nazis"; it's the perfect weapon, isn't it? Oh, and then he claimed some of his critics also had weapons, so they needed to be treated like dangerous criminals. ⬆