European Patent Office blocks staff reading critical articles at work The European Patent Office (EPO) has reacted to criticism of its latest proposals – by blocking access to a blog that raised concerns. The thin-skinned organization has placed a block on the popular IP Kat blog, seemingly in response to critical comments about proposed reform to its independent Boards of Appeal. In a posting …
Pointless, unless the Streisand Effect is actually what they want. All the employees have smartphones, so they can just access the site through their carrier, using the three fingers they are not using to send a message to their employers, of course.
Entered And you can use Google Translate as a proxy (just convert English-language site from random language --> English)...hardly anyone blocks that. and converted to Portuguese and back to English:
And you can use Google Translate as a proxy (only convert English language site of random language -> English ) ... Almost no one blocks .
Similar, but not quite. May be good for some chuckles.
No, you use the 'translate a URL' function to "translate" a page that's already in English (by throwing the URL into the translate box). Then it acts as a proxy and doesn't touch the page. Comes without CSS (did on this page anyway) so the formatting is a bit messed up, but you can work out what's going on and read articles from 'banned' sites this way.
Used to use this all the time back when I did housecalls and had to access info from behind someone's firewall.
Censoring sites it doesn't agree with is akin to the practices of an authoritarian regime not a democratic, free society.
Like all the double-talk around the EU and it's related institutions, it's all deception - those in power can't be removed by the electorate and they do as they please. The same types of people are responsible for filtering political sites they don't like in UK schools and libraries. Clearly these hypocrites are out in force voting on Reg comments in favour of the EU.
EU human rights laws are irrelevant since other laws contradict them and rulings depend on the opinion of a judge who will usually convict anyone they don't agree with. We don't have true freedom of speech in the EU. Numerous EU citizens have been convicted for expressing fact-based opinions of controversial subjects that some in authority don't like. If we don't vote for Brexit then the authoritarian European legal system will eventually be imposed on the UK.
"EPO appears to be nothing to do with the EU"
Correct - I didn't say the European Patent Office is related to the EU, but that it's censoring is deceptive LIKE the EU's claim to be democratic and uphold free speech (it does the opposite - the lawmakers are not elected. You are entitled to freedom of speech - caveat "within the law" = any law can override it = you DON'T have freedom of speech).
It is a FACT that the EPO censor internet access.
In my opinion the EU is deceptive because it does not uphold what it claims to be.
"The EPO is F** all to do with the EU."
Correct! It is a European institution as was stated.
"#Brignorant."
I would like to know in what manner you think I am ignorant since what I said is true.
"Tosh. The whole point of human rights conventions is that laws can't over-ride them."
It's a FACT that people are imprisoned in EU countries for expressing their opinion. Please go and research the issue.
Pathetic, but not really surprising. I'm actually amazed that we've been able to access IPKAT from work for as long as we have...
It just shows how petty those in charge are, and it demonstrates a remarkable level of ignorance as to how such stupid and pathetic measures are seen, by both the staff and the outside world; not that BB and his stooges care though.
A sad, sad day for those of us who work for the EPO.
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