• Wikipedia entry
• GovTrack
• Full Text

The RESTRICT Act (S.686) has now been introduced into U.S. Congress. If passed, it could mean a lot of things.

Some highlights:

• The U.S. Government has the right to ban anything on the Internet if they claim it is a «risk» to integrity, national security etc.
• If an internet service has >1M users, they may be forced to hand over any and all personal user data without reason or notice
• Use of VPNs/proxys may result in up to 20 years jail time
• Probably a lot of other stuff I'm leaving out..reply if you have some

From what I've figured out, this bill is basically the Patriot Act on steroids. I'm suspecting the U.S. is trying to build its own Great Firewall, given this act seems to pave the way for it. If this gets passed(and any future bills),, how would e621 be affected?

reading the wiki:

While it is not mentioned by name, the RESTRICT Act has been characterized as a means to potentially restrict or prohibit the Chinese-owned video sharing service TikTok from conducting business in the United States

basically its thought that its meant to mainly target TikTok

The bill was characterized by some media outlets as being broad enough to cover end-users...

some media says that its possible that its vague enough that it can cover more targets than originally intended

Warner's office stated that the bill was intended to target corporate entities "engaged in 'sabotage or subversion' of communications technology in the U.S." … and not target end-users necessarily.

Original intention was not to target end users, but instead to large cooperation.

Not saying this could be an issue, just wanted to clarify, though I have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm not a lawyer, don't take me seriously.
I feel like I'm misreading the entire point of the post...

I haven't read the proposed law, but intentions don't really matter. If it can target end-users it will target end-users. Politicians' careers are careers in bullshitting others to get their way. The only thing that matters is the text of the law. Someone deliberately wrote every word of it. You can argue intentions in court if you're rich enough to take it to the supreme court, but no one here would take things that far and you'd still probably lose.

According to Wikipedia: "The Act applies to ICTS entities that are held in whole or in part by, or otherwise fall under the jurisdiction of a country or government that is designated under the Act as a "foreign adversary" of the United States..." so at least it's limited to a list of a few countries. The VPN issue is if you use a VPN that goes through one of those countries. A major issue is you can trivially and accidentally violate the Act without realizing it.

In summary, your 1st highlight is simply false (though there's probably other laws that let them do that). 2nd and 3rd items are only for services interacting with ICTS entities.

Since Bad Dragon is a USA company and the forum software is open source, I don't think the Act will apply to this site so long as it doesn't host ads from ICTS entities.

regei said:
Is it just me or are these proposals targeting internet freedom getting way more common?

It's not only you.

regei said:
Is it just me or are these proposals targeting internet freedom getting way more common?

I think it's because older folks are starting to understand the internet (barely tbh) and get involved with it some more. People tend to forget that the internet is fairly young (40 years when it went public) so most older politicians didn't care for it or even bothered to know about it. But now that younger politicians that are more internet-savvy are getting elected, and are helping oldheads understand it, it's not hard to believe that the amount of proposals regarding the internet will increase as time goes on.

I fail to understand how this can affect a simple booru website like e621. Perhaps it’s because I’m a European and different laws apply to me. I don’t know 🤷‍♂️

How does an art archive like e621 pose any risk to national security? Is there any criminal activity taking place on this website? Is our personal information being sold to third parties OUTSIDE of the United States? Is this website being used by “foreign adversaries” to interfere or manipulate federal elections or other government-related procedures? (This act seems to be targeting “foreign adversaries” a lot)

It seems unlikely that this website will be affected by the Restrict Act if it were to pass (at least in the beginning). If anything at all, this act could affect users from China and Russia (and other ‘enemy countries’ of the United States), who will probably be unable to access this website altogether.

I’m no lawyer or an American, so don’t take my opinion for granted.

zenith-pendragon said:
I fail to understand how this can affect a simple booru website like e621. Perhaps it’s because I’m a European and different laws apply to me. I don’t know 🤷‍♂️

How does an art archive like e621 pose any risk to national security? Is there any criminal activity taking place on this website? Is our personal information being sold to third parties OUTSIDE of the United States? Is this website being used by “foreign adversaries” to interfere or manipulate federal elections or other government-related procedures? (This act seems to be targeting “foreign adversaries” a lot)

It seems unlikely that this website will be affected by the Restrict Act if it were to pass (at least in the beginning). If anything at all, this act could affect users from China and Russia (and other ‘enemy countries’ of the United States), who will probably be unable to access this website altogether.

I’m no lawyer or an American, so don’t take my opinion for granted.

Simply connecting to a ChiCom or Russian IP address is sufficient for the US federal government to get involved, and the act makes it effectively impossible to exercise any of the rights that are supposed to protect people accused of wrongdoing. Among other "lovely" aspects, under the act the government can block any service or device that connects to one of those IP addresses, and any attempt to circumvent prohibitions (VPNs, proxies, and the like) is subject to a fine of a million bucks and up to 20 years in prison.

As a website hosted in the US, a sufficiently broad interpretation of the act could be used to shut down e621, and any other furry art websites that have Russian or Chinese participants (artists or audience).

It's been described as "PATRIOT Act 2.0", but it's even worse than that. The original was just about collection of information, this one adds teeth that can't be pulled short of passing a new law to kill it.

regei said:
Is it just me or are these proposals targeting internet freedom getting way more common?

When ACTA, SOPA etc started trying to get forced through people blacked out major websites and marched in the streets. Now those major websites like Reddit are owned by the opposition and half of those people got recruited to the other side by the prospect of banning speech they don't like, and the other half are worn down by a decade of constant fake scandals, controversies and crises.