Slashdot Mirror
UPDATED: Outcast: Censorship Under The Digital Union Jack?
Slashdot: What happened, Chris?
"On 17th March, Mishcon de Reya, one of the biggest firms of media lawyers in the UK, wrote to Outcast, and the company that prints our magazine, and the company that hosts our Web site, stating that if we ever published anything defamatory, they would sue us. They were representing one of our rivals, the Pink Paper. We thought, 'fine,' because we didn't intend to publish anything defamatory. Outcast is a controversial magazine but we know how far we can go, and we'd never deliberately print anything untrue."
"The printing company tore up the letter because they know the type of magazine Outcast is and know that the editorial team can be trusted. However, our Web site company -- NetBenefit PLC -- was not so sure."
"They wrote to me on 29th March giving me two hours to fax them an assurance from a solicitor that our site did not contain any defamatory content and asking for a written guarantee that it never would. I was out of the office working in Parliament, and returned to find our Web site suspended and an error message where it used to be.
"I faxed NetBenefit on 30th March, pointing out that the article Mishcon de Reya were referring to had not even been published yet, and they were effectively censoring us before knowing what the article was about. They were finding us 'guilty until proven innocent.' I only received a very brief reply from the managing director, Alison Sparshatt, and it did not address my concerns. She has refused to take my phone calls since."
"NetBenefit has told journalists that our site will not be reinstated unless we provide them with written assurances about the content of the site. They appear to accept that nothing defamatory has ever been on the site and agree that there is no reason, apart from a letter from our rivals, to suggest there will be in future. But they say they have to 'play it safe.'"
"To have a solicitor write these assurances would cost in the region of 5,000 US dollars and, because Outcast is a small, community-run magazine, managed by volunteers, we cannot afford it. In any case, we don't think it is fair that we should be asked for guarantees like this -- none of NetBenefit's other customers have been asked for those assurances."
Slashdot: This is extremely frightening; what did you do to let people know about this?
"Outcast issued a press release to the national media at 2pm on 30th March, after it became clear that NetBenefit were not prepared to discuss the case with us. We used the OutRage (www.outrage.org.uk) e-mailing list and flooded the newsgroups."
"Later that afternoon, I sent out a further message asking supporters to e-mail Alison Sparshatt (alison.sparshatt@netbenefit.com) to object to the censorship. We asked people to c.c. the message to us, and we have received about 300 to date. I think that's a fantastic response, but we need to keep up the pressure."
"We also got in touch with the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain, Feminists Against Censorship and the Anti-Censorship Campaign, all of which have supported us."
"Yesterday I wrote to all the directors of NetBenefit PLC at home asking them to intervene to oppose censorship."
Slashdot: Have you found that people are supportive to your cause?
"The support has been overwhelming -- far more than I expected. I think we've hit a nerve because this is the first time that a UK website has been censored before it has published something."
"The media have been great and have put a lot of pressure on NetBenefit. I also expect a number of politicians to announce their support for us next week if the matter hasn't been resolved by then."
Slashdot: I almost hesitate to ask this, but do you feel the shutdown was targeted at your site because of the sexual preference of your readership?
"I don't think so. The problem is really that ours is the first case of its kind since the Demon Internet 'Net Libel' settlement last week. That case appears to have set a precedent that UK ISPs can be held responsible for the content of newsgroups or websites they host. However, to censor something before it has been published is clearly an over-reaction."
"We can understand NetBenefit's fears and appreciate that they're only acting on the advice of their lawyers. But censorship on the Internet is something to be fought and that's why we're challenging their decision rather than changing to another ISP."
"The real blame lies with the Pink Paper, whose lawyers sought this censorship. They have exploited the ambiguous Internet laws to try to put us out of business. They seem to want a monopoly of the gay press."
Slashdot: In the immortal words of Bruce Perens, "If Slashdot's only good at one thing, it's good at raising a ruckus." Where do we go from here?
"We cannot let this be covered up. If NetBenefit win this case, the precedent will be set that any ISP can remove an entire website because it might contain something defamatory some time in the future. That means they can close down any website at all. It is a violent attack on free speech."
"We are asking supporters to e-mail Alison Sparshatt at NetBenefit and the owners of the Pink Paper to object to their pro-censorship stance. Please c.c. your message to mail@outcastmagazine.co.uk. The site is currently at http://www.gay-news.org.uk/outcast."
Needless to say, Slashdot tried to contact NetBenefit and the Pink Paper, to no avail. I would like to go on the record as stating that if representatives from the Pink Paper or NetBenefit would like to contact me, they may do so at my E-mail address, and I will update this story accordingly ASAP.
I did manage to speak to John Shirley, a manager at After Words, a popular Philadelphia-area gay bookstore. Having explained the situation to John, he noted that while he wouldn't pull the offending paper off of the shelf, they would certainly let people know about it. "We try to advocate on the side of the little guy in general," John said. "We would consider posting something on a bulletin board, especially if it were a magazine that people knew or cared about, in order to create some public outcry."
UPDATE:
I just got this in E-mail from Alison Sparshatt at NetBenefit plc.
NetBenefit Statement April 6 2000
Outcast, a customer of NetBenefit's web hosting services, recently claimed that NetBenefit had attempted to censor Outcast. NetBenefit rejects this.
NetBenefit does not censor any web site it hosts. NetBenefit is happy to host a web site such as Outcast - Outcast was accepted as a NetBenefit customer without question. NetBenefit will continue to support customers who seek to use the web to publish their views, whatever views they espouse, provided they keep within the law and do not expose NetBenefit to unacceptable risks which are clearly spelled out in NetBenefit's terms of business.
NetBenefit has been advised, following the case involving Demon and Laurence Godfrey, that we are obliged to review the content of a web site once we have received a warning that potential defamatory material is expected to appear on it and to act very quickly if potentially defamatory material is found. This applies to all Internet hosting companies operating under English law. We received advice that Outcast actually had on their web site material that was potentially defamatory. NetBenefit had no choice but to take action to avoid an unacceptable risk of being drawn into one or more costly legal disputes which were not of its own making but in which NetBenefit, merely a provider of web space, could be held liable to the same extent as someone who uses that web space to publish a defamatory statement. The Demon case has shown this to be a real risk for providers of web space and ISPs in the UK.
NetBenefit was entitled under the terms of business Outcast accepted, to suspend Outcast's web site without notice, but instead NetBenefit gave notice before suspending Outcast's web site and sought strong assurances from Outcast: specifically an assurance from a lawyer about the then current content of the site and Outcast's assurances about its arrangements for future content. Outcast responded to NetBenefit, acknowledging NetBenefit may be liable for any defamatory content Outcast publishes. Outcast failed to confirm its existing content was not defamatory, and indicated Outcast is not in a position financially to have its content checked by a lawyer but gave no assurance that future content would not be defamatory. Outcast alleged the suspension of their web site was censorship and gave an ultimatum demanding the lifting of the suspension. Outcast's response therefore contained no assurances whatever and NetBenefit declined to reinstate access to the web space, which Outcast since decided to relocate.
We recognise Outcast is in the business of publishing and so understands these issues. We would invite Outcast to campaign on the real issue: the need for a change in the law to allow Internet hosting companies, like NetBenefit, to provide the service Outcast and others are seeking.
---------------------------------
Alison Sparshatt
Managing Director, NetBenefit plc
So far, it doesn't seem to be working. ;)
and actually ask those of us involved in it for ideas on how to make it work
Kind of unlikely. People in power prefer the comforting lies of yes-men to the unpleasant realities that they don't want to hear.
Reality however has a way of dealing with this. When the delusions of those in power are too much at odds with reality, then reality kicks their teeth out.
Eventually the politicians work it out. After chewing this ( and a lot of other things over for the last year ), I'm starting to come to the conclusion that we ( or rather I ) need to spend more time trying to educate the people who are in power.
So I don't think that we can wait for them to come to us - we have to take the message to them and it's probably best done on a face to face basis, since they sure as hell don't understand the nature of electronic communication.
Shut up. You just said something that I don't like, therefore I'm going to tell on you and make any evidence of you ever saying it go away. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I don't like what you're saying, so nobody else can hear it, and I'm going to stop you saying anything ever again. (/me duct-tapes your mouth closed.) Do you see the point?
Is this really what you want the internet to become? Grow up and open your eyes. Life isn't all fluffy clouds and ice-cream.
Maybe we'd just settle for you looking for the shit on your own shoes before the next time you go posting smirking comments about 'those crazy American courts'. It seems to be popular on Slashdot to take the worst decisions of American courts (whether real or fantasized) and take them at face value as perfectly representative. To be honest, I'm glad that the anti-American bigots get reminders once in a while that their judicial systems have idiots in them, too.
The correct response is for people who disagree with NetBenefit's position to simply not do business with them. Don't waste your time whining to the CEO, write to their other customers. If I were a NetBenefit customer I sure wouldn't be for long. Let the market punish them!
So who do I do business with, considering that NetBenefit is only doing what almost all other British ISPs will have to do at some point in the future? Sorry, but I don't see how survival-of-the-fittest economics can work here (at least, not on the national scale) since the Godfrey legal precedent affects all ISPs.
On an international scale, of course, web hosting business gets moved offshore, as does most e-commerce once RIP becomes law. Thousands of potentially-great British Internet businesses get killed off, and the British economy becomes a worldwide joke. But, hey, as long as the police can read all our mail, and Lawrence Godfrey's ego doesn't get bruised, that's fine, isn't it?
Lovely.
-- Anonymous, on purpose.
I believe the ISP acted correctly and appropriately in protecting itself. If it could be held responsible for content it contained, then it certainly had the right to exercise control over that content.
In fact, I think all ISPs in the UK are at risk, and should shot down their operations, rather than be held liable. It *IS* the law, after all.
Perhaps, with Britain's internet thoroughly off the map, Parliament will decide to make some INTELLIGENT laws instead.
It isnt a union jack unless it is flying from the jack staff of a ship of the royal navy.
I can assure you as a long-time gun owner that nobody in his right mind ever gets in the habit of sticking his face in front of the barrel when adjusting the sling. Or just about any other time. Ironically, Mr. Gore could benefit from the excellent NRA gun safety training classes.
:)
Or a little military training. I'm sure people may have rushed through BASIC training back during Vietnam, but I doubt they skipped the weapon saftey training. Heck, back then they were allowed to punch you and stuff to get the message into your head.
Don't forget that he "discovered" the nuclear waste in Love Canal when there were House meetings on it two years before he got there.
Somewhere around the RNC's GoreFiles section they had a whole list of his "accomplishments" like this. It's a funny read even if you're not Republican.
The market does not punish those who discriminate according to popular prejudice.
That is just a matter of getting people to care about it. Look, here around Peoria, IL three overweight women were fired from a Casey's story (small gas station/convenient store) for eating candy on the job and not paying for it. Now they were able to get on the local news broadcasts and had at least 10 people marching in front of the store with signs. Hell, if that can get people motivated, then the same can be done with racism. Despite the work of Al Sharpton types, I don't find every white person to be an inherent racist. If you have a store that is booting blacks (or whichever group) out, you could easily get far more people to picket. Who's going to go in when people are shouting "bigot" and stuff in front of the store? This would be the "punish by market" process working.
People love protesting, from the WTO thing in Seattle, to the thugs in Decatur, to everyone around Elian Gonzalez's house. The thing we need to do is channel a tiny portion of that energy to other causes.
How about some *real* tolerance for a change?
See, you miss the point of political correctness (in America at least) today. Tolerance means, "You will do (behave, believe, etc) what I say." Most often, it is the left side that you must agree with or you are killing children (but only those who are completely born), senior citizens, and minorities that apply to any given situation. If you don't agree with any given left group, you should die. That is tolerance in America.
The machine(s) weren't down completely. I was able to get ping responses from them. They're still running Apache 1.3.6, so I doubt it was to upgrade to the latest. Perhaps they were upgrade slashcode to 1.0 or something.
That, or they were taken over by aliens to spread their propaganda prior to arrival so we do not rebel against them when the do arrive here.
This isn't 1940 anymore either. I'm failing to see your side. Are you saying nothing has changed over the years, everyone is still ambivolent about racism? Maybe it's just the people I associate with, but I don't know people that are this way. There's blacks living in the neighborhoods of friends/family. I see people getting along just fine. Has living among non-racists poisoned me to what's "really" going on? Or is your position, since it happened in 1940, it is happening forever?
Shouting "bigot" has a different meaning today that it did in 1940's South. I am talking about compaigning today as well. In my life and travels, the normal people FAR outnumber the bigots. So, my idea was to use that to accomplish what you want for this cause. This is more what America is about, not "Eh I'll let them politicians pass a law. That'll take care of them bigots." As others have stated, laws won't change the people's minds.
you're right, all those words were improperly spelled. No reason to say you're srry, after all, that's not spelled correctly either :-)
----------------------------
Yeah, I was just joking, some people on slashdot can't grasp that. I try not to offend gay people, just humorless people. And sometimes humor gets a little too close to the truth, but... well, that's parody for you.
:)
I doubt real homophobes are encouraged by other's use of slang. They might be repressed, or confused, but I hope they aren't that easily manipulated.
Remember, people, gay means happy! You *do* want people to be happy, right? If you didn't want that, that would certainly be queer... um, strange. Because queer means strange...
Oh, but I wasn't kidding about the lawyer part.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Probably true. They cannot, however, (under US law) have, say, a website shut down because the website says their hamburgers suck. More specifically, they would not be able to legally force the website to be shut down, so long as the content was either true or labeled as opinion. (Or at least they shouldn't be able to. I recall some protestors being involved in a very lengthy legal battle over this.)
Anyway, on to my main contention...
(Again, speaking from a US perspective.) If you're being massively offensive or disrupting their normal flow of business, they will likely ask you to leave, and will have a solid legal basis for doing so. If they ask you to leave just because they think you're going to do something along those lines, they would have no legal basis for doing so, and could be taken to court over it. (Rather, they could be taken to court and lose.) Also in this case (as I understand it), there was no indication that Outcast was going to write anything defamatory. To continue the analogy (although it's getting pretty stretched at this point), consider what would happen if McDonalds refused to admit an otherwise "normal"-looking young man because he was wearing a leather jacket (and everyone knows that the only people who wear leather jackets are punks just looking to start trouble).But that's just between a private company and an individual. For a analogy closer to Outcast's problem, think about a situation where a mom-and-pop burger joint is attempting to lease land near a McDonalds for their own restauraunt. McDonalds, however, is threatening to sue the landowner (not the restaurant owner) unless the restaurant owner can provide a legal document proclaiming that the local restaurant will never mention McDonalds in their advertisement. The issue is not that of the landowner preventing the restaurant from leasing the land, but of one restaurant manimulating the legal system to keep a competitor out of the way.
--Phil (I wonder if I should mention that one of my first jobs was working at a McDonalds?)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Thanks for the link. Balances things out a bit.
Oh, and no problem with you playing the devil's advocate -- sometimes you've got to be inciteful to be insightful! ;)
Are you saying that NetBenefit found potentially libellous materials on Outcast's site? The interview makes it clear that Outcast's site was removed because they failed to give legal assurance to NetBenefit that there would be no libellous material posted in the future. On what basis are you asserting otherwise?
Ah, so you aren't directly familiar with the situation??
I'm sorry, but that's both prejudice and circular reasoning. You're saying, "If Outcast is like what I think they're like, then they're probably like this, too."
Look, it doesn't matter what "branch of politic" they come from, or whether they're gay or straight, or anything. It doesn't matter whether you or I agree or disagree with their philosophy.
What does matter is that their site was apparently removed as prior restraint against some percieved potential for libellous material being posted in the future. If that's the test of speech, then God help us all -- 'cause we sure aren't helping ourselves!
I also find it amusing that you are supporting the removal of a site based on potential future libellous material, when you assert that Outcast could well be "less than rigarous with thier sources of facts." If that isn't directly libellous, then it sure seems to be evidence that you may be posting libellous material in the future. Should your access be revoked based on that?
I'd be interested in seeing the Independant article. Is the it available on the web, or do I have to try and find a paper copy? Do US newsstands carry The Independant, or is it primarily distributed in the UK?
Sorry, but he's completely correct in avoiding any URL with obvious sexual content when surfing from work. You must be aware that many companies monitor net access and might flag that as inappropriate. You want him to get called into the boss' office for an explanation and have a note in his employee file about accessing sex sites? I don't even read Salon at work!
He's indicating an interest in helping, and then you jump down his throat for making a legitimate point. Maybe it's you who need to chill and get a clue.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Yeah, but as they say in Texas, some people just need killin'. Personally I don't own a gun OR have a family, but I'd rather shoot you than see you run off with my server. Besides, you're missing the guys point entirely.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Of course they won't, they're too busy cashing in their big advertising checks of thousands of dollars they make off 'free' speech and 'free' software (linux) to care about their users who get them that money.
Another idiot who doesn't know what free means! Go back to pay-yo-billz is it? As if you care about free!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
There was no decision on the Demon case. Demon settled out of court because it was the cheaper option. Bad choice but theirs to make.
I think they should sue for any losses but IANAL and do not know if they have grounds.
I have written to the ISP in question and voiced my comments.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
In Europe we have far more rights than in the US. This case is a blatant example of US type lack of free speech being introduced here. It is this sort of bully by those that can afford a better lawyer that makes US type free speech a joke.
As for the rest of the stuff you wrote, it is an obvious troll. If you are honestly that stupid you should read the ECHR. We have equality and freedoms enshrined in law i.e. unalienable rights.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Anyone remember Chris Morris from these TV shows? I won't say any more in case I ruin the surprise...
The argument advanced in the publishing of censorious material were ridiculous and a simple parallel would have disposed of the risk to the ISP.
ISPs are no more liable for the contents of the sites they host than British Telecom is for the telephone conversations they carry, for exactly the same reasons.
The only other solution is for all ISP to move off the Isles and host their sites in the Netherlands and the government can kiss those revenues (businesses and citizens good bye.)
Its been done before. There's a whole continent here "across the pond" which is laughing in its beard.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I completely agree, it is blatently(sp?) obvious that the post reffered to was not a troll.
:-)
It was flamebait, and should have been moderated down accordingly.
(why does the free speech movement always pick cases to defend where the one thing you want the defendants to do is shut the fuck up?)
Well, speaking as someone who regards the right to free speech as a very important thing indeed, I have absolutely no desire for either party involved to "shut the fuck up". I'd be quite keen to see people moaning about perceieved moderation abuses to shut up though, although if that's the sort of thing you like spending your time doing, I'm not going to try to stop you.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Statements of opinion, such as "Laurence Godfrey is a litigious twit"
:-) ) is a statement of opinion. What you said reads (to me at least) as a statement of fact, and could (IMO) be portrayed as such in court...
Strictly speaking, that is not a statement of opinion. "I think that Laurence Godfrey is a litigious twit" (which I do, as it happens
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
No, there was no decision, but there was a clear message sent by the settlement - suing ISPs for libel (or threatening to) in the UK is worth it. Demon is one of our biggest, and they folded. There are lots of much smaller ISPs here; how many of them are going to stand up against this sort of thing?
People now know that all they have to do is threaten to sue for libel against a UK ISP, and the ISP is more likely than not to just give in quietly and comply with their demands. We are going to see a lot more cases like this until the government wakes up and realises that they have a choice - put a stop to it, or give up on their idea of Britain becoming "a leading player in the field of e-commerce".
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Pre-marital sex is a different category; in order for it to be adultery, at least one of the participants must be married.
:-)
Hope that helps
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Political correctness is newspeak. To not be politically correct is thoughtcrime. You will be vapourised if you hold non-politically correct views. Don't forget that disagreeing with the politically correct is a _very_ serious crime for which all perpetrators must be eliminated.
In years gone by, I was one of the group that you would describe as 'homophobic'. I am completely chilled about homosexuals now. But from having that perspective, I have to say that homophobia is a term used to subvert the truth, to make the politically correct feel better about the situation. There must be some people out there who have a fear of homosexuals, but the majority of the people that the politically correct label as homophobic do not feel fear, they feel hatred.
Alright all you politically correct, keep on censoring your own words and thoughts, and report on others who violate your code. The inner party will reward you.
netbenefits.. sorry :)
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Part of the problem is the requirement to expend an enourmous resource just to assure to the provider that there is no defamatory content. Is this a requirement imposed by NetBenefit? or by the British Government? And why is it NOT being applied to every web customer?
If it is the fault of NetBenefit, then no one should host there. If it is the fault of stupid British laws, then no one should host anything at any ISP in Britain.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A bad decision in the Daemon UK case, (IIRC a basically bigmouthed person successfully sued the ISP for not removing some inflammatory information about him) and now the British ISP's are so worried about being sued that they overreact and start pulling crap like this on their customers
(my boldies)
The bigmouthed person in question contacted Demon several times about content that was libellous; it wasn't 'inflammatory information'. It was after Demon refused to remove the posts that alluded to our chum's child-molesting tendencies that he sued.
I agree with your points in general, but to paint Demon as a noble ISP standing up for free speech is to misrepresent the case rather grossly.
Nor do I think that this is an example of prejudice; more like an unhappy combination of trigger-happy lawyers and outright cowardice. There can be no doubt that case law does indeed help in the persecution of the differently [whatevered], but that's not the case here.
Just for the record, I am MMFM (monogamous married hetero male), so I'm as far from gay as a man could get
Lucky you said that; you wouldn't want us all to think you were an arse bandit. Let's hear it for the 'IANAQ But' posts!
Commentary appreciated :-)
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
What a bunch of crock, here's my response to it:
- Who's more insecure, a person who agrees with the general populace about sexual issues, and does nothing, or the person (MMHM) who is way out to the right but defends someone at the opposite end of the spectrum because the rule of law is on the line?
- My opinion matters no more and no less than anybody else.
- Anyone who defends the site must care more about justice and the rule of law more than they care about sexual preferences
- Being against something (homosexuality) does not mean that a person, group, or country should have the authority to unilaterally discriminate against another group or individual because of their differences, but if the general populace doesn't oppose it, the viral evil of prejudices continue to infect.
And finally, not that I can do anything about it but I don't want you to "rest easy". I'd rather you get mad at the folks involved in trying to legally enslave the net -- whether it be the DCMA, UCITA, Amazon, eToys, or anyone else....Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Interesting point. My reading of the original /. article was different (more like Walmart going to an newspaper insert publisher and saying "you should get rid of the insert you publish for Sears because it may potentially say something libelous about Walmart in the future", and the newspaper then calling Sears and saying "unless you post this huge bond and promise never to say anything bad about Walmart, we won't print your insert -- in fact, we'll get rid of all your work with until you do.
This is sort of like an economic attack on freedom of the press in my book, but as always, I am interested in the commentaries because I learn from it. Hence my sig line.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Nice try there AC. But Rob & Co have been bought by VA Linux, so I don't think so. But I'd give ya a funny point if I had one anyway.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Sorry, but he's completely correct in avoiding any URL with obvious sexual content when surfing from work. You must be aware that many companies monitor net access and might flag that as inappropriate.
Funny, he didn't mention any of that, he was just whining because he was "tricked" by Slashdot into going to a site with "gay" as a part of the url.
From the origional post:
This is not a staight-gay issuse, but a censorship issuse, why does slashdot want me to goto........
The fact is, this is a great wrong and they should not be censerored, but the fact also is I don't goto anything with the word "gay" in the url. There is nothing wrong with that, but turning off staight readers to their cause by not hosting things on a netural site?
Why shouldn't the news be posted on a site devoted to gay news? Its about a gay online magazine (Outcast) being bullied by another gay online magazine (Pink Paper), both of whom are presumably active in the gay UK online community.
If you guys only want to get your news off cnet and www.yahoo.com/news, thats your problem, not mine, and not Slashdot's.
In this case, the paper has remedies. They can have their content hosted in one of dozens of countries in the world that don't have laws and legal precedents making hosts liable for content.
Save the Slashdot effect for important battles.
What's not important about this? These people aren't living in China, they should be able to have a web site hosted in their own country without living in fear of being shut down.
The absurdity of the situation boggles my mind in all directions. To the ISP who was hosting outcast, shame on you. I know you're simply making a business of providing web access and it's 'cheaper and easier' to do it this way, but the proper response to the Pink Paper request was to, after research to determine if any wrong-doing had occured or was likely to occur, send a reply to their lawyers politely stating that they are abusing laws, and that they can bugger off until they have a leg to stand on.
To the Pink Paper. I'm appalled, astounded and just... confused. What's wrong with competition? What did they do to hurt you? What reasonable justification is there for this action other than a lawyer noting in the middle of a business meeting 'i know how to get their website shut down.' I hope that this is a case of a lawyer acting without proper authority, or of a manager who acted against the will of the company as a whole. If this is the type of action which you propose is appropriate for them, perhaps you should stop claiming to be a voice for the gay community as your actions demonstrate that you don't believe in equal rights, fairness or good faith, even within the gay community.
To the parties who believe that the law is being used in it's proper sense, allow me to state that abuses like this can end in only one inevitable conclusion. Websites will no longer exist in Britain. If you believe that this law makes sense, and that it's being used reasonably, then allow me to note that the sun now sets on the British Empire. When a situation is made rediculous, a solution is always found. Perhaps the most logical solution is to decide that no websites should be hosted in Britain as they might be subject to costly, illogical and frivolous abuse.
Good luck, outcast magazine, Good luck, Britain,
I would not normally post spelling/grammar corrections, but this may be copied by lots of people and emailed so it may as well be correct. It is asinine, not assinine. Its ridiculous, not rediculous. Its grievous not grievious. Finally (really), its occurred not occured. Apologies if anything I corrected is an acceptable American spelling, and srry for posting what may appear to be a spelling flame, but as its a letter, it may as well be correct.
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My sometimes helpful blog
So hit the advertisers : inform them that you're boycotting their product because of their patronage of the Pink Paper.
Any person or document that tells you otherwise is attempting to infringe and erode your rights. If you decide to abide by it, fine. If you decide to ignore all laws and rules of your society and country then you are within your rights.
+++++
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The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
Ok Larry, come to the US and sue me you pompous ass.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
the country has become more prosperous, which seems to be the bottom line for most Singaporeans.
It's the same in the U.S. How else do you get the DMCA passed? UCITA? And even though it's not really effecting the Internet, take a look at the whole LPFM (Low Power FM) b.s., that's currently getting slammed by the NAB, it's lobbyists, and their congressmen. When things are rosy, nobody spends the time to watch or care about the politicos, and by the time it's not, laws have already been written and precedents have been set. Pay attention now, or pay for it later.
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+&x
You'd think so wouldn't you? But after Demon's stupidity with the Usenet ruling thats no longer the case. At the moment the legal position in the UK is rather vague, there's no such status as the US common carrier, and I can't blame ISPs for being very very touchy right now.
look at Hong Kong -- the *only* thing Hong Kong had was capitalism.
Actually they had location and a harbour - which for a trading state is Everything
It's not the same person. Without referring to his bio page on the shut-down server, I don't know quickly how to prove this, but what you suggest definitely isn't the case.
Alan.
The problem with this is that it takes money. Lots and lots of money. Money that Outcast, as a small community-based organisation, simply does not have.
The only way that this would work would be for a full legal team to be prepared to take the case on pro bono, which is fairly unlikely.
Alan.
One quick clarification: not only does a judge have to make a ruling, but the Court of Appeal has to confirm it before it is a proper "precedent". The word has quite a strict meaning in law, and many people use it in a wider sense than its actual legal interpretation.
Alan.
Why should we borrow your letter, Is the average slashdotter not smart enough to compose a letter of this own? Receiving the same letter from multiple senders will only server to imply that we are not really serious, it might also be perceived as spamming, I think we rather have them get 1000 unique letters than 100000 letters with the same content. So far they have received only 300 mails, that is nothing! I hope slashdotters really do take action, It only takes 5 minutes to send mail!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Why not deport the SOB to a country more in tune with his thought processes, say, North Korea.
If they don't want him they might try and start a war...
Statements of opinion, such as "Laurence Godfrey is a litigious twit", should not be actionable.
AFAIK truth is still a defence for libel accusations.
The term "Censorship" is over-used these days, especially in Slashdot type forums. Censorship is something that governments do. NetBenefit is not censoring. They are execising their right to choose their customers as they see fit.
Assuming they have a lawful contract term which allows them to cease service at the request of a third party.
Agin for the record, I'm oppsosed to most anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws, but I'm certainly not opposed to anti-discrimination and equal opportunity.
:)
Quite frequently so called "anti-discrimination" laws are actually "pro discrimination in favour of whatever group lobbied for the law in the first place".
It would actually be very hard to create actual laws against discrimination since they'd annoy all of the lobbying groups equally
God, I'm sick and tired of hearing Americans going on about "Constitutional rights" and how it makes them superior to the people of every other country in the world. Every country has rights for its citizens, but no-one bleats on about it like Americans
Whilst at the same time having many citizens who are so ignorant of these rights that they don't recognise when they are being ignored. e.g. if these "rights" were actually well known then passing an unconstitutional law would be pointless. Since no police officer would arrest anyone for violating it, no lawyer would serve as prosecutor, no judge would try, etc...
Yet instead the US government passed laws which flagrantly violate the US constitution. Simply having such a constitutional document is no panacea.
It would be simpler to use a Scottish or other European country ISP, and as likely to be effective. There must be some country that has ruled that ISP's are totaally non-responsible for content on their sites.
How about France, where apparently ISP's are completly non liable so long as the customer is identifiable?
Australia has our net censor laws, requiring ISPs to block sites officially listed as offensive, the US has the current idioticy regarding DMCA, deCSS, etc, and now the UK is diving in with the most oppressive crytpo privacy laws imaginable and then this!
I doubt attempting to manipulate the law to damage the business of a commercial rival is a new idea. Simply the way it is being applied here.
It may seem laughable that a site campaigning against censorship has been censored itself, but that is exactly what has just happened.
It may be "laughable" but it certainly shouldn't surprise. After all it would be a primary target for people advocating censorship.
Not Quite.
Had they contested the case and lost they would almost certainly have had to pay all the costs of both sides.
Had they contested the case and won then Godfrey would have had to pay all the costs. However it is likely that he didn't have that much money. Demon could have bankrupted him - but in the end they would not have got their money.
We will never know for sure - but it is quite likely that Demon made a tactical decision to make a small offer to settle the case (the offer made was modest compared with many UK libel settlements) - and Godfrey felt he had to accept the offer because in the event of him continuing and eventually receiving an award less than the offer - he would have been liable for all his costs and Demon's costs from the point of the offer onwards. He would have got nothing and would probably have been bankrupted.
Demon would have had a lot to gain by making such a tactical offer - if the thing had gone to full trial Demon would have almost certainly have lost more money than they have paid out in a settlement - regardless of whether they finally won or lost in court.
Essentially the fairly complex rules regarding who pays what costs and why effectively make much such litigation in the UK an advanced kind of high-stakes poker.
This is one good reasons why cases settled in this way do not set any kind of precedent.
AJB
It's very nice to see the Slashdot community reacting in such a concerned, social libertarian fashion. Most posts are to the extent of "Censorship is evil!" rather than, "They're gay... but censorship is still evil!"
/. community.
No one has really brought the sexual preference issue into the fray, for good use or for flaming (haven't read the trolls, yet), and that's the way it should be. Sexual preference, in this debate, is irrelevant.
Glad to be part of the
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
The fact that there is a gay magazine involved has got nothing at all to do with it. They could be a magazine about potatoes. What is important here is the censorship in case you might write something a bit close to the wind.
I feel that this will send a message to all the other ISP's that this is an acceptable course of action to take in response to the Demon Internet affair.
Legislating against firearms is not a matter of morality; it's a matter of pragmatics.
If it was a moral question, then the pro-gun laws of the USA would allow people to carry fully automatic rifles (do they already?), grenade launchers, Stinger missiles, Cruise missiles, nuclear warheads. At some point you have to draw the line; is this "moral" legislation?
The rate of violent crime in Britain is significantly higher than in the USA; yet homicide is far, far higher in the US, most of it gun-related. Gun-related accidents in the US are more common than deaths by firearms used in anger. Is it really a question of morals or pragmatics?
The difference is, it's hard to think of a situation where two men having sex in private would hurt anyone. However, if my next-door neighbour owns a gun, he could easily shoot me by accident if he was an ignoramus.
/not/ to own a gun.
Surely if thousands of people around me owned guns, that would make me less safe? Then I would be obliged to get a gun to protect myself, thereby compromising my right
That's him. I'm not really the full bottle on American politicians. :)
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Indeed it is. But, just ask yourself, what isn't? If something is illegal, but there's nothing morally wrong with it (from your point of view), then it's surely a bad law (from your point of view).
You might as well argue that anti-murder laws are "imposing morality". Of course they are, but so what?
Female Prison Rape in NY
Gore did, everyone knows that.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I post a little comment about how I personally feel about a certain word being used a certain way, and all of a sudden I'm Big Brother and I'm going to vaporize you?
Calm down.
Sure I used homophobic instead of 'people who hate homosexuals'. I did this mainly because I feel the term homophobic can be extended to those people pretty effortlessly. I don't see how this usage is subverting the truth to make the politically correct feel better. I don't see what sort of gain this allows them.
Seriously, I could care less if you use 'gay' in this manner. I was simply stating that when I come accross people who do, I get pissed off. That's still allowed isn't it? Can I get a little angry? Or does that make you feel oppressed? Having trouble getting it up lately?
One thing I forgot to add in my last post is that a really good reason not to use 'gay' to mean 'bad' is that there are probably people around you who will have a lesser opinion of you because of it.
Anyway, I've just managed to sneak out of my militant pollitically correct meeting to post this message, so I should probably get back to it.
The Gay community is probable pretty effective as "getting the word out." It would be nice for people to stage a "Pink Paper subscrition cancelation athon" to punnish them for this attack on the rest of the gay press. It's always good to see a company which dose something nasty get fucked over. I suppose the most effective way to do this would be to get some of the Gay community's leaders to attack the Pink Paper and support your paper.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The thing I just can't handle is the fog, the horse drawn taxi's and the chimney sweeps.
You know, sometimes I hate government. As you can see though, it doesn't matter where you live. There's always someone whos gonna get you.
No you are not.
There is a simple bug in your code and your balls are destined to be eternally burntoff.
Try
if(balls==burntoff)
QeltiQ
If an ISP pulls your content of of thier server, then setup your own server and host the sight yourself! (Linux and BSD make good web servers from what I hear (grin)) Even a 33.6K connection can handel a good amount traffic, and broadband is getting cheaper. At that point you become responcible for your own content.
I've been thinking about this for some time now! A completely independent geek state. However, most geeks aren't of the 'political' variety. In order for this state to work well, we would need some form of gov't. My dream is of a new system based somewhere in between 'true' communism, and 'true' democracy. Hopefully the economic system would be more on the gift-culture side than capitalist (I admit we wouldn't be where we are today without capitalism, but it has had its day)!
Just my thoughts (and dreams).
-Ben
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
Overseas? huh? you're thinking in the past.
Now that launching/maintaining a satillite is pretty cheap (relitively, compared to a few years ago...) we should build a space-server. Give it a wireless connection, and voila, freedom forever....
Except it'd have to be in geo-syncronus orbit, which woulkd cost a little (lot) more, unless we had multible ground based recieveing/transmitting stations. And if it's in geo-sync orbit, it'd also take a lot of power (cleverly done be solar power...good for the next 5 billion years...) to get the signal to earth....
And, as for protection, being 37 million meters away from the nearest government should work....
But still, it's a thought.... (of course, redundency could pose an ecomomical problem....)
Besides, we will always have a place where we can be free, today, remote areas of earth, tomorrow, space, in the not-so-distant future, the moon or perhaps mars.... Freedom will always survive, no matter how oppressed our friends on earth become.
If I had to do it today, though, I'd checkout some pacific island....
Grades, Social Life, Sleep....Pick Two.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Funny man... =)
...but who's the Mule?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Some people are into packing fudge. Some people are into collecting and shooting assault rifles.
Hmm. Gay sex being compared with firing off assault rifles. I guess I can see the connection in that statement... men together alone, firing off their big guns...
-The Reverend
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
People that use it argue that they don't mean to imply that homosexuality is bad when they say it and and I believe that a lot of them don't. Unfortunately, this implication is still made.
An old girlfriend of mine used to make the same comment. My argument was that we had just created another meaning of the word. I mean, no one went around yelling at people for using "gay" to refer to homosexuals, since that implies that all homosexuals are happy, right? I'll admit that using gay to mean bad probably did originally intend to make the implications between homosexualtiy and bad, but like you said, I doubt many people who use it now are aware of this.
Of coruse this all said, I no longer use gay to mean bad, though when I hang out with people who still do I slip sometimes.
-chris (gandalf@darkcorner.net)
Actually under UK law truth is not an absolute defence against libel, strange as it may seem.
J
I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
You can read more here. Whether you agree/disagree with the way the Lee dynasty has run the country, they term it a "benign dictatorship," the country has become more prosperous, which seems to be the bottom line for most Singaporeans.
However, what we have here is censorship because of the fear of governmental action. Outcast's provider is afraid of UK's civil courts, and with good reason. The problem lies with Britain's stifling libal laws. The end result is that NetBenefit is not acting because it is morally opposed to any of Outcast's content, but because they know they will be held responsible in the eyes of the court, with no defense.
Because the cause is legislature, what we are looking at is, in fact, governmentally sponsored censorship. Play all the word games you like, you can't escape that simple truth.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
A tesing ground that hasn't been available up until now is being created by new anonymity and encryption technologies. Legislative bodies implementing a policy like the one above, where some intermediary is guilty if the end-user isn't or can't be found, make it quite clear that they aren't interested in actually punishing he/she who was responsible for the injustice, but are only looking for a political/media "fall guy" for it. It's important to realize that, if you value freedom of speech (including the freedom to speak anonymously), holding the middleman responsible only breaks away this freedom over time.
Boom. We levy power, don't mess with THIS community!
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
I don't agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
The idiot that copyrights his music and gets mad if someone borrows it
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Are you high? Libel is difficult to prove in the UK? Give me a break -- the UK has some of the worst libel laws in the Western world. That crap McDonald's pulled a couple years ago would never occur in the U.S. Books are regularly available for sale outside the UK that are never printed in the UK due to the backward libel laws.
Yeah, I work for a company doing an MIS for printers, and our MD is Dutch and the Dutch subsiduary is almost as large as our UK branch now. Actually, quite a few of our employees are Dutch as well... Shit, they're taking over! :)
Curing prejudice with legislation is not an easy task. At the very best, we can remove the symptoms hoping that time will do the rest.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
In the case of Yugoslavia, nobody removed the symptoms nor the prejudice, they merely supressed them.
Legislation is a very blunt tool. Unfortunately there isn't any better one.
And Hey, we *do* have the governments we deserve.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Your comments are worse than just meaningless and useless; they themselves border on libel. The entire point of the article is that Outcast was deprived of their net access, not over anything they had said, but because of what they might say in future.
You admit that you don't know the facts. Yet because you've created a scenario in which Outcast did something to justify NetBenefit's outrageous unilateral acts of surpression, you assume you know all you need to. This isn't much different from Edwin Meese's infamous "if they weren't guilty, they wouldn't be suspects."
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
I am pretty sure that slashdot is being wound up here, Chris Morris is the name of a comedian notorious for lampooning the pompus by putting silly assertions to them and watching how they react.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
As an American, I gotta agree with you on this.
The Consitution, these days, seems to be nothing more
than a vehicle for self-delusion.
Actually Demon decided not to contest the case and therefore have to pay costs on top uf the 15000 pounds. Costs are estimated at between 250 and 300 thousand pounds.
Working for the (other) man
True, this IS a private company, they can accept or deny customers or services on any thing they see fit. The people at McDonalds CAN and WILL kick your ass out of their building, IF you are saying something they don't agree with. For example, if you say FUCK YOU THESE HAMBURGERS SUCK at a McDonalds restaurnat they CAN and WILL throw your ass out of there. The goverment isn't doing this, it is a private company. If you going a McDonalds restarnat for service (large coke, fries, hamburger) and you start slanging them (or they think you will) by being abusive (even if it really isn't, but it is how THEY see it, not you) by saying things like "don't eat here, the food sucks" McDonalds DOES have the right to say, "please leave sir, we do not tolerate that type of launage here".
The goverment isn't going this, it is a private comapany. I am going into McDonalds today and tell them that their hamburgers have green meat and turn off their customers, I will start yelling at the top of my lungs "McDonalds sucks, they food is horriable and it cause cancer". When they kick me out, I will post it to slashdot.
But in this case, they kicked them out BEFORE they did anything 'abusive'. If I got to McDonalds after they have kicked me out a couple times, they will thing "ok, here comes that crazy nut, hey Bob stop him at the door and don't let me come inside, he will start trouble." They can and will do this, they are a private company, just like a pub or bar, they can and will throw out people they think with be distrub or have the potenial to be distrubive in the near furture.
Even if it is unfair or unjustice, this is a private company and they also have freedoms, like FREEDOM to deny service to abusive or distrubive customers or customer they think will be abusive or distrubive in the furture. This private companies freedom should NOT be compermised for your freedom. Get a differant ISP and stop whinning to slashdot.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Interestingly, the Brits did the same thing with movable type. Printing was seen as a threat to the regime and printers were strictly licensed; enforcing these rules was a major function of the infamous Court of the Star Chamber. The result was that many British printers, and even more British printing business, moved to the Netherlands, whose large publishing concerns (Elsevier, etc.) still give British publishers fits.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Leave the internet for those who want to talk to each other unhindered and go and watch TV or read a book or something instead. There is your controlled medium, you can't have your say heard in those mediums unless a publisher likes what you have to say - which is exactly what are advocating for the Internet when you raise your voice in support of an ISP who took down a site because they thought some time in the future it might say something radical.
- You should be free to voice any opinion you have without fear of legal bullying.
- You should be free to state as fact anthing you believe to be so, but you must be prepared to accept the consequences if you are in error.
- You, and only you, should accept consequences of a false assertion. Publishers and ISPs are not responsible. If you didn't write it, you are not responsible for it (however, you may be made responsible for removing false information that has been brought to your attention).
- Posting anonymously can be done for many very valid reasons. If libel is written anonymously, it doesn't carry any weight. If you must, then educate people to see anonymous slander for what it is - unconfirmed - something you make up your own mind about.
The points above do not seem immoral, they will not bring the downfall of the human race. You seem focused on the tiny fraction we have lost and not looking at the huge gains we have made by having a free medium.Don't advocate new legislation to screw up the only mass medium this planet has ever had that allows everyone to have a voice, and allows everyone to choose where they get their information from. The old laws are strong enough to cover libel cases on the internet (too strong infact, most libel laws are 'guilty until you prove your innocence'). A heaving crackdown on ISPs will only make things worse.
Take your lawyers, go outside, and get yourselves lives. There is more to the world than worrying about what some anonymous coward is able to say about you in a slashdot forum.
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
-Martin Niemöller
I should note that I don't condone homosexuality. But then I don't condone gluttonly, drunkeness, adultry, or any of the other more popular sins either.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Unfortunately the Demon libel out-of-court settlement has sent subtle shockwaves across the UK ISP industry. The Netbenefit decision may well have been influenced by the Demon settlement.
As an IT Manager of a UK ISP I've had to think carefully since Demon settled.
I disagree with CodeShark though that the Demon case decision was bad. Demon were not sued by a "bigmouthed person". Demon were asked by a customer (meaning there was a contract in place between the 2 parties) to take down false information. Demon decided to ignore this request and not respond thus showing no concern for someone they provide service for.
We're Internet SERVICE Providers and we all owe a duty of care to our customers. Remember that everyone reading slashdot takes service from an ISP in someway (directly or through another company) and I'm sure that everyone would not want false information presented by those same people.
I certainly don't worry about being sued as an ISP but I do worry about treating customers with respect.
CodeShark suggests following the path of issuing a counter sue but have you ever read the Terms & Conditions you have with an ISP?. I suggest looking at these carefully since it probably includes a clause allowing the ISP to stop service at any time without reason. I'm not going to argue the morals of this but we work in an industry where the legal world has no idea how to approach the Internet. The majority of Judges have no experience with the online community and try and apply outdated laws that rely on boundries where we have no boundries.
I'm do feel sorry for Outrage and hope that slashdot community can create that "ruckus". I don't want to judge Netbenefit without their side of the story but thanks to Emmett for an informative piece of journalism.
D98
Cor Blimey Guvnor. Whatdja got against us luvvable chimney sweeps?
Yes, racism is less of a problem these days, but not all social prejudices have been eliminated, especially outside North America and Europe. There are still many countries that treat women as second class citizens.
Okay, so we've got the techies and scientists. Where can we get the telepaths from?
And does anyone have a 10000 year old robot they don't need anymore?
That is just a matter of getting people to care about it.
You make it sound so easy.
The problem is that people have to perceive the prejudice as wrong. There was a time when the "No coloreds" policy was acceptable in parts of the US south. If you shouted "Bigot" at anyone who walked into those stores, then you would have been arrested and probably got very little sympathy from the rest of the community.
Firstly, the ISP totally overreacted, and had no consideration for their clients. Given this, I would recommend changing providers.
What we really need is a code of conduct for ISP's that deals with this sort of situation. Something that gives the customer some comeback if the site is taken down. Specifically they should have to give a reason and a specific reference as to why a site has been taken down. If the law seems unfair then they should lobby to change it. All UK ISP's are so terrified of litigation that they'll pull a site if someone even suggests that it might be libelous or might infringe copyright.
Nice idea.
It would be simpler to use a Scottish or other European country ISP, and as likely to be effective. There must be some country that has ruled that ISP's are totaally non-responsible for content on their sites.
Find or create people on Usenet who don't like you
Wait until they say something nasty about you
Sue their ISP and live off the proceeds
You could spend your life surfing the Internet, looking for sites and Usenet groups saying bad things about you, and never have to work again.
BTW, I am a UK citizen and this is being published on a site in the USA. I haven't mentioned any names or defamed anyone. So tough !
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
However, if a business refused to do business with a customer at all, a misuse of anti-censorship legislation would be to sue that business.
As is well documented here on Slashdot, America is becoming a society based on victims. Should any legal ramifications of this reach the American legal system, we could be facing a gross misuse of an honest and well-intentioned guideline.
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Maybe so, but remember, unarmed peasants aren't really unarmed. Kung Fu was developed for the defense of unarmed monks and farmers, you know. I suspect what politicians prefer now is unarmed, uneducated, brainwashed peasants who are too busy killing each other and entertaining themselves to pop up and take notice of what's going on around them.
There's a paralell here, between unarmed monks in ancient China and modern day hackers but I'm an expert on neither, so I won't try to make one.
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Ah, well, you see it rather depends on your definition of 'one .. coalition a year'. although Italy has had about 50 *new* Prime ministers since the war, it's only had about half a dozen individuals in the post, many times each. In many respects it's actually had one remarkably stable coalition between the war and the corruption trials of the 1990's. Which is not necessarily a good thing, but anyway...
Can you point me to a good arguement for PR?
Democracy. Rule by the people. In the UK, no government elected under the existing system has ever polled more than 43% of the popular vote, but as a consequence of the first past the post system and the concept of 'royal prerogative' (the PM has uncontrained rights to use the powers of the Monarch (which is more than the Monarch herself has)), each of these governments, against whom the majority of the population voted, has had near-absolute power. Another factor here is 'party discipline', which enables a party leader to force, let's say, an MP from a coal mining area to vote for the closure of the mining industry, against the interests of his/her constituents. Seems to me that a bit of Party dispoyalty is a very very good thing.
In particular, FPPT tends to benefit parties with concentrations of strength in one area to those with support spread more evenly across the country. Thus in a three party system where each party has roughly similar support aggregated at a national level, if say the Big-endian party has all its supporters in the north and the Little-endian party has all its supporters in the south, a third party with support spread evenly will never gain representation in parliament because the big-endians will always win all the northern seats and the little-endians will win all the seats in the south. So much for democratic representation of the 1/3rd of the population supporting that third party. (if this seems a little theoretical, take the UK as an example and substitute big-endian=Labour, little-endian=Conservative, third party=LiberalDemocrats.
No electoral system is perfect. It's a question of whether you place a higher premium on "Strong Government" or "Fair votes". My personal view is that the Single Transferrable Vote is one of the better compromises available at present.
My other pet hobby horse here is that all ballots should include RON amongst the candidates. RON stands for Re-Open Nominations, as in 'nope, i'm not happy with any of these. Try again and this time offer me something I want'.
TomV
Incidentally, in strict biblical terms, men can't commit adultery. Adultery is when a married woman sleeps with someone other than her husband. the man's a piece of shit, but not an aduterator. technically. This is plainly b0ll0x, but that's what the book says. Just before it says you'll burn forever if you wear a cotton/wool mix sweater or eat lobster.
TomV
monogamous married hetero male huh? I knew a gay guy once who was monogamous and was at one point even married, so maybe you're not off the hook yet.
Back on topic, maybe this would be a good chance for the tech community to be heard by the government, i don't know how vocal the Great British LBGT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual) community is, but if it's as vocal there as it is in the states then maybe this would be a good chance for the tech community to let the government of Great Britain know that they had a clue card like a previous poster had mentioned.
I agree with you, that is why I wrote Netbenefit and explained to them that they won't recieve any business from me while they "pick and choose" their customers. I told them that although I sympathise with their legal position that I will not do business with them because of it.
Me a troll, me no gnome, me smash ye head and break ye bones.
good idea, until...
:-)
>unless we had multible ground based recieveing/transmitting stations.
so your server is in orbit to avoid gov interference, huh? problem is with the earth stations then, yah? Pacific Islands, hmh? Why not just put the server there?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Unless this is just a storm in a teacup - and I don't believe it is - perhaps Demon Internet did everyone a favour by caving in to Dr Godfrey and highlighting the total stupidity of our current laws.
Britain is going to miss out, "Big Time", as the Yanks say, on the information revolution unless we can get this resolved - and quickly!
Hmmph. Are you saying that because we in Britain don't allow people to shoot assault rifles, this is morally equivalent to stopping people having gay sex?
Dave
Duh...he's taking the mickey, you idiots.
Whoops, that's www.sonow.NET, not .com.
Quite correct, but the AUP's reserve the right to pull sites that CONTAIN libelous, slanderous or other material that contravenes the law. In this case, the site didn't have any of that material, it was just warned not to have that material. There's a difference.
What do you expect from the same government that sentenced Alan Turing, after he cracked the German Enigma code and helped the allies win the war, to castration?
God Save the Queen!
--- Speaking only for myself,
- Jeremy Fuller
Im against censorship, lets get that right from the start. What is happening here is wrong. But OutRage has a reputation of destroying peoples reputation by -forcing- them to declare they are gay. If they refuse, they 'Out' them (ie expose them).
Im sure many mistakes have been made, and hetro's exposed as being gays. They in particular seem to delight in exposing priests etc, citing their vows of abstinence as being signs they are gay. While im sure some of them are, surely they deserve the right to choose what they declare about themselves?
While i disagree with the censorship thats happening here, i think this is definetly a case of 'you reap what you sow'.
If they want to be treated fairly, given free speech, no censorship etc, they should give the people they 'Out' the same rights.
Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't put on his pants.
err, i did sort of point this out earlier, by answering my own post and correcting myself....
Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't put on his pants.
Quite. The important thing to remember is that Demon actually did the right thing. By settling out of court, they actually *avoided* making the legal precedent. If Netbenefit were worried about the legal ramifications of the Demon case, they were not being advised correctly by thier lawyers. What this means is that their lawyers were basing their viewpoint on existing libel legislation. Simply put - they would get a very public legal hammering if they did not heed the threat (just like Demon). In this case too, they are doing the right thing because it is preferrable to setting the legal precedent.
I would like to point out that my previous post does not refer in any way to the post from 'Yaruar'.
Absolutely correct. This can be seen both ways in the form of newsprint - how about television, then? There are programmes and adverts in between (if you are not watching the BBC, of course). Thing is, neither programme makers nor advertisers are allowed to issue libels and the broadcasters are not allowed to knowingly propagate them. All seems fair to me!
Demon settled out of court because they failed to remove a defamatory posting when requested - admittedly, the man deserved it. But Demon failed to remove the posting at the request of the complainant and they paid the price like any other carrier of libels would in this country. (I am a Demon subscriber, BTW). Whether that libel was invited, deserved, petty, or not, is irrelevant. The problem was Demon's inaction.
What NetBenefit have done is different - they have received a legal threat concerning potential libels and are asserting their right to protect themselves against the actions of others. If they were a newspaper, it would be a case of 'we will not run your advert until you assure us that we won't get sued becuause of you'.
Neither of these problems present me with any difficulties because I understand the nature of a libel. It is illegal in this country to distribute a libel - and ISP's are subject to that law.
Take a close look at the AUP's of UK IPS's - they will explicitly state their rights to pull sites that contain libellious, slanderous or other material that contravenes the law. Now look at the AUP's of UK newspapers (re: advertising and other public access mechanisms) - they look very similiar, do they not?
All you Americans should try to understand that in the rest of the world, what one says and publishes and *is party to* is important. In other words, we are bound by law to think before we open our mouths, unlike you. (ooh - defamatory comments!).
Lissen you dumbfuck, long-haired, Quake playing socially retarded thirteen year olds, you wouldn't know a troll if it came up and bit you hard on the anus. As a very wise man once said to me "Fuck you". My name's John Saul Montoya, from the East Fucken Coast, and speaking as a leading lawyer with experience of the open source (or "freeware" movement from its beginning in 1996, I have to say that the communist Linux users have no idea of the necessity for gun control. They'd probably rather be indoctrinating children with pseudoscientific gobbledegook in the name of "evolution", while lying about the effects of abortion on women in order to peddle the gay agenda.
Now that is fucken trolling. Although the last bit about the gay agenda was arguably on-topic since the main subject of this article is an intensely dull bitch-fight between two cliques of Metropolitan London queens (why does the free speech movement always pick cases to defend where the one thing you want the defendants to do is shut the fuck up?)
I know trolling. I've had troll threads that took up 30% of an entire discussion. The post above is merely a departure from the slashdot consensus. It's probably intentionally provocative, but it isn't an attempt to draw flames, it certainly isn't off-topic, and it doesn't contain any troll hooks (oh yeh, Python is fundamentally better than Perl. And Linux needs to be able to support DirectX and other industry standards if it is ever to be taken seriously in the high-end enterprise-level server market)
Flame, my ass, as another very wise man said to me, holding a match to his ass and farting.
streetlawyer.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This statement from Alison Sparshatt, managing director of NetBenefit, states that NetBenefit has received advice from its lawyers that our website contained 'potentially defamatory' material when it was checked last week. She claims that it was for this reason - not the threatening letter from Mishcon de Reya - that the site was suspended.
NetBenefit will not tell us which article they consider to be 'potentially defamatory' so we cannot respond in detail. However, we can say that Outcast has never published libellous material in the past, either in print or on our website, and that none of the articles on the website have ever been complained about or been the subject of legal action.
Until today, NetBenefit has been careful not to accuse us of having published 'potentially defamatory' material - for the last week, their lawyers have only expressed a fear that we 'might do so in the future'. Their change in position appears to be a reaction to the huge public outcry, media coverage and pressure from industry leaders and politicians. Their former position has been made untenable.
We find it regrettable that, rather than admitting it was wrong to suspend the site, NetBenefit has introduced a new set of allegations to confuse the issue. This tactic makes it especially difficult for Outcast to campaign for a change in the law to protect ISPs from similar legal problems in the future - a campaign NetBenefit says it supports.
Our website has now been reinstated at: http://64.33.37.176
You can see for yourself that, although some of the articles are hard-hitting and controversial, Outcast's coverage is always fair and accurate and we try to give balanced reports.
Best wishes,
Chris Morris
and everyone at Outcast
Consider the following:
This may sound flakey, but as far as I can tell it is ok to operate a US corporation outside of the state where it is formed. Most of the fortune 500 companies are DE corporations, though they might be HQd in Atlanta, NYC, or some other place.
Of course, not being a lawyer, I can't tell you the legal effects of this. I can say that you can set up a corp yourself for a few hundred $, or with a lawyer for around $1000.
If your goal is a newsletter, you could probably spend a bit more on the lawyer to become a US non profit corporation. The UK might be legitimately curious about taxes if you were an owner/officer of a for-profit US corporation, but for a non-profit that argument would be more difficult, especially if you do not pay yourself a salary.
Ok. Maybe you don't want or need to incorporate. How about just hosting, combined with anonymity? Surely someone in a relatively progressive 3rd world state must be out there, advertising their country's unique freedoms as an advantage in web hosting.....Anyone on slashdot have a clue here?
Wouldn't it be great if competition and the ease at which data and business can be moved on the web would promote strong competition among nation-states to be the most free and least litigious? Of course, the big countrys would come along and arm-twist the small ones with a "treaty".
I am signing this AC, as I have such an arrangement. Not doing much with it yet, though.
The Demon precedent is actually interesting, because it says that Demon had no case because they had been served formal notice about the allegedly defamatory messages. In other words, the post had been made-- demon had been notified that it was considered libelous-- the judge decided that once they received the formal notification they were required to act on it. This is quite different than prior restraint, which seems to be happening in this instance. No libel has taken place, there's simply the threat of action should libel take place-- that's what NetBenefit is responding to.
I've got a bunch of links on the Demon case and British libel law:
We switched slash to NT and IIS tonight. Pretty smooth transition.
You probably were just experiencing the normal "reboot every 5 minutes" cycle. You need to get used to it.
The good news is we are WIN2K complaint now -- sorry, I mean WIN2K compliant
Jerf wrote:
That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Ah, but their behavior is not rational given the ruling. I am not a lawyer (and certainly not a British one), but as I recall the ruling, Demon was held liable for content on their site that they were notified about and failed to remove. That is not a precedent for "Every ISP is liable for everything on their site", it's a precedent for "If an ISP knows about objectionable material on their site, they have to remove it or be held liable."
NetBenefit knows there is no legally objectionable material on the Outcast portion of their site. They are not liable for anything. Even if Outcast were to post something defamatory, NetBenefit still wouldn't be liable until someone could prove that they knew the defamatory content was there and did nothing about it.
Is the fundimental problem the Demon libel ruling? Kind of, I'd say Britain's draconian libel laws that generated the ruling are more to blame. I'd still say NetBenefit is overreacting, and I would act differently. Hypothetically speaking, if I were in NetBenefit's shoes, I would have:
* kept Outcast online;
* sent a polite letter to Pink Paper's lawyers saying I understand their concerns, and if they become aware of any defamatory content on our site, let us know so we can remove it; and
* bitched out my MP
I think that doing the above (and following through if notified of anything) would be sufficient to protect an ISP in this circumstance from any lawsuit with meat behind it. As for frivolous lawsuits, I have heard that Britain is much harsher on them than the US is, and NetBenefit would likely find the opposing side paying for their legal expenses.
----
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Open mind, insert foot.
I didn't mean that one should copy my letter, word for word and idea for idea. I meant that if one was attempting to write a letter regarding this situation, that they could feel free to use mine as a bit of inspiration, or to ignore it, or whatever.
I agree, 100000 letters with the same content are almost useless. A variety of content will make these letters an order of magnitude more effective. I apologize for my lack of clarity, I guess I should have opened with 'this was the letter i sent, please feel free to borrow any of my ideas while composing an original letter of your own.'
To anybody reading this who believes a wrong is being committed, please write a letter. It doesn't take very long and you could help, just a little, to protect the freedoms we so often take for granted.
----------------------------
Out*cast*, not OutRage. As it happens this has many factual inaccuracies about OutRage, but that's not the issue since you're just railing at the wrong organisation.
--
Xenu loves you!
Otherwise known as "homosexual panic". It amazes me the terror of anything gay that people are prepared to show. Chill. I don't run NetBSD, but I'm prepared to look at www.netbsd.org if there's an interesting article there. I'm guessing you'd find it difficult to select the link to my Website because you'll run a mile from anything with "clue" in the name.
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Xenu loves you!
You don't have to actually get sued for it to be censorship. If you pull the plug on content yourself because you're afraid of what the state will do to you if you don't, that's censorship too.
That's why *every* news report from heavily censored territories ends with "This news report was compiled under the reporting restrictions of (the local regime)" even if no content in that particular report was pulled, because those who compile it are aware of the restrictions all the time.
You can accuse the ISPs of extraordinary craven spinelessness in the face of even the tiniest push, but in the end they're just covering their asses; the real censors are still the judges who decide on and enforce censorship legislation.
--
Xenu loves you!
I know exactly what's really going on. And I'd love to tell you. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, I can't comment.
--
Xenu loves you!
Certainly. He made a rather good point. Anti-firearms-rights laws are a type of prejudice against a particular group of people and a particular lifestyle.
You can make seemingly reasonable arguments to support them, but so can the people supporting anti-gay legislation.
Government (and society) succeeds in removing our rights, because we are all too willing to sacrifice the rights of our brother, forgetting that the same will eventually happen to us.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Prohibition laws do no such thing; they are so-called 'preventative' measures. The problem with preventative laws is that they punish people who have committed no crime.
Really, it is a basic philosophical issue: do you see individuals as holding certain inherent rights? And if so, what rights are these? Can society, which is a construct made up of individuals, have rights of its own?
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
I made no claim whatsoever as to the reasonableness of gun ownership; what I stated is that when you push to outlaw a lifestyle choice with which you disagree, you are ultimately destroying *everyone's* freedom, including your own, in the long run.
You may wish to rant and rave about this, but I believe it is demonstrably true.
I am merely making a plea for those with strong opinions to reconsider their push for legislating their morality. And make no mistake about it, passing anti-firearms-rights laws is legislating morality.
Please, reread your rant, and substitute "gay man" for "people who live with guns" and "have sex with another man" for "own weapons that kill."
How about some *real* tolerance for a change? Tolerance for those who we genuinely dislike, or disagree with, but who have not directly harmed anyone?
Support *everyone's* rights, and perhaps you'll find your rights supported by others when push comes to shove.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Assuming of course that the Pink Pages (is that the name) are really behind this, can't you sue them under British Libel laws. Seems like by writing someones net provider they are commiting libel themself.
Of course I don't claim to understand British laws, but I keep thinking that they must be over the line in this case.
Laurence (not Lawrence) Godfrey was a net legend years ago. Aside from flaming some of his more nasty comments I thought he was pretty harmless. Oh sure, he talked about suing everyone, but I didn't really believe it.
:-(
Now this?
Never underestimate the effect that a single nut with a lawyer.
Welcome to the dark ages, Britain. Just as something was being done about access costs for being online, you have now been censored. I just wonder how long it will be until The Register is forced to relocate...
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
So why don't the crackers and script kiddies band together and knock the UK off the 'Net?
Why not shut down the ISPs that are shutting down these sites?
Seriously, though, I was thinking just this morning that the Internet, because of its distributed nature and its international scope poses a very serious threat to territorial gov't as we know it. I was thinking of this specifically in terms of the US and the various States' attempts at taxing Internet sales. What happens when the transactions are interstate, even international? There's a real Constitutional crisis for the US buried in there and when your government is defacto unconstitutional anyway....
This case is another example where gov'ts are trying to impose law and order on something that is, by virtue of its very design, anarchic and chaotic. It just won't work. Politicians can criminalize and regulate all they want, but they won't stop the behavior, because those of us who really understand the nuts and bolts of how this thing works will be able to get around their silly little attempts at control. WE DO HAVE THE POWER over this technology. THEY may have guns, but their armies now depend on our technology and on technologies that we can subvert, take over, and control. We can use their tech (as well as our own) against them. This is precisely why politicians prefer unarmed peasants. Trouble is, everything is a weapon today.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
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That's already been done. Haven't you seen the news video clip where that Belgian guy whacked him in the face with a cream pie?
If you haven't seen it, there's a link to it in this ZDnet article. Ironically, the video itself is hosted on MSNBC :o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
On a more realistic note, Parliament should reform the libel law to be more like the U.S. law. The plaintiff should have to show that the defendant knew, or should have known, the statement to be false. Statements of opinion, such as "Laurence Godfrey is a litigious twit", should not be actionable.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sorry, parsing your post returns -EYOULOSE
Demon did not get sued. Demon bailed out of the case before it got sued and thus there is no internet libel precedent in the UK law yet. And UK law operates on precedents.So Demon did a good thing (TM).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Ok, there is no doubt that this needs action. We, the internet community, cannot accept this kind of shit happening.
/19 network. They are pretty big. What we need to do, is to reverselookup each and every Ip address, and gather a list of all domains. We should all do our job, and send a mail to the companies we see fit -- that use netbenefit as a provider. We should inform their customers, as many as possible, about their providers actions.
I did a whois lookup, it turns out that netbenefit owns a
NOTE! We MUST NOT send out a single message to thousands of their customers. That would be spamming. But we should each and every one look up some of them, and mail them.
The mails should have links to this slashdot article, and to all relevant sites. This action should and must be taken As Soon As Possible.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
After writing the above piece, I remembered once using a nifty little tooled called 'netdemon'. Its a windows(god forbid) tool, but I fired up a computer with windows, and downloaded the tool (which is shareware.. 30 days .. then you've got to pay).
.. if i remember correctly. If you don't find it, just search at google.
Using the 'address scanner' you can reverse-resolve any IP range. Since I've yet too see such a tool for *nix (or maybe its just me that's too stupid to figure out how to just reverelookup an iprange;) - I fired it up, and found the list. I suggest that you other slashdot guys do the same. You'll find the tool at www.netdemon.net
Find the most interesting customers of netbeans, and mail them about the ISP's behaviour.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
That wasn't what happened.
Someone forged something nasty from Laurence Godfrey, Laurence Godfrey complained to demon (the ISP whose servers he read the post on), asking them for it to be removed as it was a fake. Demon didn't remove it, so they were aware of the post, so were responsible for it.
Quite clear cut I think
Or, let me suggest a slightly more feasible alternative. Given the capital flowing into Open Source stuff now, buy an island. Preferably, one of those little islands that is really destitute because nobody goes there on vacation and they have no exports.
The infrastructure is relatively simple. You need a port and airport, the ability to ship over a good standard of living (that is, make sure the Mountain Dew ship comes by every two weeks...), get your connectivity through a sattelite uplink, and have some sort of power source to generate electricity (you should be able to get geothermal energy if there's a volcano nearby).
There is no need for a real defense force if you play it right. You cut a few treaties with some key powers in the area, and make them dependant on your software ("We're under attack! Send planes quick, or you don't bug patch 203 goes down with us!").
This would be a desperate strategy, but may be persued by a consortium of geek houses if litigation gets so bad one can't operate here any more. Geeks fly out and make money under their own rules, other countries get to import better software than their own laws would let them make, and the natives get a serious economy boost.
--The basis of all love is respect
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, money is a better defense.
--The basis of all love is respect
Only it's no longer who can sit at the front of the bus or get into the good schools.
Governments can remove the symptoms by legislation. To a degree, this is a good idea--it stalls for time and keeps people from, say, shooting at each other. When such legislation promotes prejudice (a point that is in debate in the US with affirmative action and quotas), it may well be counterproductive.
What the government cannot do is cure prejudice. It is still hard for a government to reach into the minds of all the populace. However, the people themselves can do something about it.
When the government legislates around this problem, they are buying time for people in the prejudiced groups themselves to get together and stop the prejudice. IMHO, it can happen. Often, it doesn't, and the government is stuck with ugly legislation and no cure for the real problem. Fine; that's the best governments can do. It's not their job, it's ours.
--The basis of all love is respect
Someday, enough of us will realize that the role of government is not to solve our social problems, but to keep us in our respective corners until we can work them out ourselves. That is, governments cannot create love, but only cease-fires. People problems can only be solved by people.
--The basis of all love is respect
Hey... Maybe that French law that had some people so riled up was right after all. I wasn't really flamed for saying it was a good thing, but other people were.
The French law clearly laid down the terms on which a webhosting company would be responsible for its content. It went something like: If you can't point us at the client, you're in trouble. Otherwise, cool. You (provider) can host anything whatsoever without fear of persecution.
On an unrelated note, how do the mostly American readers of Slashdot like the report in Rolling Stone that as part of the "War on Drugs", money went to magazines such as "Seventeen" to fund fictional stories, plublished as real, which were basicly anecdotal "Drugs are bad" literature.
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Completely wrong - Laurence Godfrey has never been a customer of Demon internet. They did not provides services for him, and they had not contractual agreement with him.
Demon did get sued. In fact they got sued twice by Godfrey.
There is a libel precedent in UK law as a result of this. Demon's original defence - innocent dissemination - was thrown out by the Judge as "hopeless in law". The court has decided that, once an ISP in the UK (or rather, England and Wales) are notified of a post that a reader considers libellous, then from that point on they are considered publishers of that post. That is the legal precedent that was established by one of these cases. The post that was complained about was considered libellous by the judge - "Squalid, defamatory, and libellous to the plaintiff." were the words he used.
The second case involved a poster to demon newsgroups (amoungst other places) that Godfrey contacted Demon about, saying that in Godfrey's opinion the poster was probably going commit libel, and he wanted the account suspended (or posting rights removed). Demon refused, the poster posted something that Godfrey considered libellous, and the whole thing went to court. A precedent wasn't established here as the case was settled out of court without a ruling by a Judge of the status of the case.
This second case involved prior restraint, and this seems the type of argument that the Pink Paper is using to silence Outcast. It is not a course without risks - libel is obviously a wrong, and false (or, in E&W, unprovable) allegations of wrongdoing could be construed as libel themselves - i.e. the Pink Paper is libeling Outcast.
I don't think that Outcast suing the Pink Paper is any sort of a solution - libel actions only serve one end: enriching lawyers. However, the Pink Paper is a free paper in a small market - it depends entirely on its advertising. What must be done is contacting every advertiser in the Pink Paper with details on their actions. Make sure that its readership know. In other words destroy their credibility - no one likes a bully.
Okay, that was a cheap shot. Not a good fit either-- microsoft subjects aren't loyal or loving enough of their dictator. I would like to see Bill Gates as an abused clown though.
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Yes, and then someone will remember the prophetic words of our leader, Linus Trovalds, about another island on the "other side" of the ocean that will help humanity get through the 1000 years of censorship and darkness.
--
I know you're just joking... but one thing that really gets on my nerves, is the substitution of the word 'bad' (or lame or whatever) with the word 'gay'.
People that use it argue that they don't mean to imply that homosexuality is bad when they say it and and I believe that a lot of them don't. Unfortunately, this implication is still made.
I often confront people about the use of the word 'gay' in this manner. Most people are instantly apologetic and tell me they meant no offence to homosexuality. There's the odd person, however, that tells me "But gay does mean bad." These people are encouraged in their homophobia by others' using this slang. This is reason enough, in my opinion, to stop using it.
As I said before, I realise you're only joking. In fact, you're probably even poking fun at the people who do use the word 'gay' like that. I just figured that this needed to be said.
not just governments. From Mirriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 2censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): censored; censoring /'sen(t)-s&-ri[ng], 'sen(t)s-ri[ng]/
Date: 1882
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
The correct response is for people who disagree with NetBenefit's position to simply not do business with them. Don't waste your time whining to the CEO, write to their other customers. If I were a NetBenefit customer I sure wouldn't be for long. Let the market punish them!
Just start sending complaints against every site they host claiming that something Defamatory might appear there in the future. When they solicit all of their customers for a note from a lawyer assuring them that this won't happen most of their customers will get a new hosting company instead of pay out 5K for the note.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
In 1982, I wrote a short article on the potential abuse of libel laws by institutions intent on controlling the free flow if information. Some of it is still applicable.
Seastead this.
Indeed not. Slow down!
No, the whole point is it's a pre-emptive gag. Netbenefit have pulled the site just in case Outcast print something potentially libellous in the future. Because of Netbenefit's aversion to getting involved in any possible court case in the future, Outcast are now prevented from publishing on the web despite been *two* steps away from breaking the law: they haven't printing anything *potentially* libellous, and whoever they might print anything about in the future has not proved the hypothetical libel in court.
This demonstrates the ludicrousness both of the current libel system, and of holding ISPs responsible for everything their customers do. It is worth noting that the print publishers promptly told the Pink Paper to get lost.
Et al? I would say Hamilton-al Fayed is very much the exception as far as prominent UK libel cases go. Hamilton lost his complaint as he had already been pretty thoroughly discredited; normally it has proven a lot easier to win libel cases, and in many high-profile cases, with absolutely ludicrous damages.
Whoa there. This is way off, like most of the posts here about the Godfrey case.
Demon settled with Lawrence Godfrey. No legal precedence has been set. It is unfortunate for everyone that they did so, but clearly they believe that they stand to lose more by fighting the case than by giving in. Demon used to be a strong opponent of censorship and had vowed to fight this case; things may be different now they are owned by Thus, but Demon still look really unhappy about this.
Godfrey was not a Demon customer. The offending post did not originate at Demon. Cancelling the post would, at that point, have achieved little, whilst opening the door to the necessity of removing any post anybody ever complained about.
At this point, that was not common practice. It's sad that we would now consider it normal.
Except that you often do. Just ask Private Eye.
It also costs too much for the average person or company to defend a case. The sums involved are so stupid it frightens people into retracting or just saying nothing in the first place. When responsibility for "publication" spreads unreasonably far - as in this case - it becomes impossible to say anything in the first place. That's why it's a freedom of speech issue; if all ISPs are forced to take the same legal view as Netbenefit, some people won't be able to speak at all.
On an completely unrelated point, is it just me who strongly dislikes the term "gays", or indeed any adjective turned into a plural noun? It seems to take a group of disparate individuals and classify them as a herd of identical people whose defining characteristic is their gayitude. Or something. "He is gay" means "he is a person, who is gay", as opposed to "he is a gay" which to me at least implies "he is a generic instantiation of the class gay".
Disclaimer: not being derived from class sexuality.gay myself, I may be totally missing the point.
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Strangely enough, even the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain seems to have been sensored, and are now scrambling to find offshore sites. I am not entirely certain of the events surrounding this particular event, as not enough information was posted on their website, but I hope to find out more soon. [If anybody knows why cacib got censored, or knows of anything that they need, hosting or whatever, contact me.]
This kind of idocy is intollerable in any country in the world today that prides itself on freedom of expression, speech and press. It seems extreemly odd to me as well, that a country such as Brittain which has a relatively long history of being tollerant could allow such a twisted chain of events to take place.
It seems strange to me as well, that people who have a long history of being discriminated against seem to quickly forget the discrimination that they have faced, and perpetrate the same discrimination against others. But I guess that is unfortunatly, the way of things.
I eagerly await the outcome of these events, and I hope that saner heads prevail, both in the judicator's seat, and in the consul of the Pink Paper.
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
http://www.donarmstrong.com
I'm still waiting for one country to trade in their Get a Free Clue card
So am I. I'll be on a plane the next day. Well, as soon as I graduate. Or maybe I'll wait for the hiring managers in silicon valley to come to their senses, but eventually, I'd move there.
Honestly, any country who wants to become the next high tech hotspot only needs to pass a reasonable set of laws. They don't even need good enforcement -- the tech companies will be happy to bring their own lawyer, arbitrators, private security, clean water and infrastructure. It might not happen overnight, but look at Hong Kong -- the *only* thing Hong Kong had was capitalism.
I think Russia is the most promising candidate right now. Vladimir Putin realizes that the most important thing a stable society needs is a consistently enforced set of laws. Any stupidity can be contracted around, so long as it's known in advance.
--Kevin
However, from what I have read about the case this hinges around the fact that Outcast have printed as facts things which aren't true about the Pink Papers editor. If these are harmful then this would account for the threat under the libel law.
Errm, read the article - you've got it all wrong. Outcast never published anything about the Pink Paper - they were sent a letter from Pink Paper's lawyers saying they'd be sued if they ever printing anything defamatory about them. In response to this NetBenefit pulled the Outcast site and won't let them have it back, even though nothing at all has been done by Outcast.
This isn't anything to do with a libel case, more to do with an ISP forcing pre-emptive censorship on one of their clients. And the Demon case doesn't apply - it was settled out of court and therefore sets no precedence.
God, I'm sick and tired of hearing Americans going on about "Constitutional rights" and how it makes them superior to the people of every other country in the world. Every country has rights for its citizens, but no-one bleats on about it like Americans :)
Okay Hemos et al, will you be telling us why the site was down for ~7+ hours, or not?
The day that people start acting in everybodies best intrest, including (but *not* limited to) their own, no formal government is neccesary.
Until then, as you say, sometimes *someone* must keep the hotheads in their corners. Someone must say "Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you" or "Just because *You* want it, you cannot force it upon everyone else"
Sometimes individuals sort these things out. When they don't I prefer a battle with clear rules and an umpire to no-rules-ultimate-combat.
*sigh* wouldn't a perfect worl be nice?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
That does not mean that the xenofobia is gone. Prejudice against arabs is "OK" (see any news report)
If you kick Jews out of your store, you are out of business and into the courtroom faster than you can say swastika
If you kick out gypsies (that the nazis sent to the gas chambers even quicker than the jews), few people care.
Yes, the "normal" people outnumber the screaming bigots. Unfortunately, the latter come in clusters.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Here's my letter, feel free to cut and paste.
Dear NetBenefit and Pink Paper
I find the the actions of your two organizations over the past few weeks
to be outrageous and unjustified. Further, what you have done infringes
upon the rights of the people involved, without any evidence to prove the
plausibility or necessity of the actions you have taken. Let me summarize
exactly what I am angry about.
On March 17th, Pink Paper, a competitor to Outcast Magazine, wrote to
Outcast and NetBenefit informing them that if Outcast ever published
anything defamatory, both parties would be sued. In response, NetBenefit
suspended Outcast's web account.
It may not seem obvious to you as to why this is horribly morally
imprudent. NetBenefit, by suspending Outcast's account, has effectively
taken part in a censorship action against material that _has not even been
published._ While I realize that UK citizens are not guaranteed the same
rights to free speech as Americans, there is no justification for
censorship of any sort, and the UK has had (up until recent months) a
fairly liberal policy towards free speech.
This is worse than bookburning; It's like burning the printing
press. While I understand that NetBenefit is "playing it safe," I am
horrified to learn the true character of the people who run this company.
People of character stand up for what is right. Yes, that includes taking
risks. I would, however, rather purchase services from an organization
that demonstrated moral competency than one who is afraid of such
an absurd litigious action. As a purveyor of Internet services, you are
familiar with the open, anti-censorship, and indeed, often rebelious
nature of the Internet community. Your actions have been a major
disservice to that community.
I demand that you reconsider your decisions, and examine the consequences
that they might bring.
Respectfully,
Mike Friedman
I think it's important to remember that censorship has many forms. In the US it's pretty hard for the government to get away with banning something altogether, but that doesn't stop them from abusing taxpayer money to alter things like TV programs, the product of a supposed private corporation, to spread their "helpful" messages.
I'm still waiting for one country to trade in their Get a Free Clue card, and actually ask those of us involved in it for ideas on how to make it work - how to balance legal requirements for privacy and accountability with freedom to express.
why wait for them to ask? maybe we are just reactive? maybe we need to be proactive and go to them?
maybe we need to form a group, and go the the government and actually say something like "We are concerned with this, and we want to work with the govt to come up with some real solution that's not going to be a knee jerk reaction to anything..."?
I can't actually remember anywhere that we have done anything like that. maybe it's worth thinking about? maybe we could get some real response that way
The host itself reviewed the contents of the pages before removing them having had potentially liabalous materials brought to their attention. I'm going to have to look into outcaste, but if they are from the brance of queer politic that I think they are I could well believe that they are less than rigarous with thier sources of facts.
Working for the (other) man
However, from what I have read about the case this hinges around the fact that Outcast have printed as facts things which aren't true about the Pink Papers editor. If these are harmful then this would account for the threat under the libel law.
It has to be said that lible is very difficult to prove under UK law, see Neil Hamilton V M AlFayed, et al.
This is not a freedom of speeck issue it is the basic right of an individual to be represented truthfully. Under libel law, if Outcast can back up any claims they have made then the Pink will be liable to all their costs in a court of law, they should fight it. It seems as if they are not willing to fight the case though.
Also people are bringing up the recent demon case. saying that this was wrong too. Maybe if Demon had bothered to acknowledge the complaints of the professor at the time then it would have not gone to court. If anything they were punished for their lack of customer care. Again this case was not entirely about what was printed, but the inability of the ISP to act when the issue of defamity was brought to their attantion. In fact it was their complete lack of even a simple reply to his complaint that lost them the case from the start.
Yes, the libel and slander laws in this country are flawed, but not in that way, if you can prove that what is printed or said is true you don't lose. In fact the flaw with the legislation is that it costs too much for the average person to bring a case, and legal aid doesn't cover it.
Working for the (other) man
You think this is funny?! My left leg is two inches shorter than the other, and I'm sick and tired of this "lame" business. This is a serious handicap, people. You're such a bunch of dummies. No, cretins... No, you're a mongol horde.. no, wait... um.. help me out here.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Just because we don't have a written constitution, doesn't mean that we don't have rights.
We have legal rights, as well as constitutional rights. These are made up from a long list of laws and acts of parliament as well as common law. We are every bit as protective of those rights as Americans, so stop feeling superior just because you've got a bit of paper that says you're all equal.
I am not familiar with the legalities of the matter, however I have used geek sense to think about this, and how an ISP can be a publisher.
What is a publisher?
Essentially the publisher is the person who owns the printing press, wether this be physical or electronic. Publishers are the ones that take the material, put it in a form to be distributed and then distribute it to the book stores and libraries.
What are the ISP's?
The ISP's serve as libraries. They are essentially shelf-space to store the material being distributed over the web. They do not play a part in the content of the material when it is created, they just put it out where people can see it like a giant library.
--
Hephaestus_Lee
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
In this case, the paper has remedies. They can have their content hosted in one of dozens of countries in the world that don't have laws and legal precedents making hosts liable for content.
Save the Slashdot effect for important battles.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
If ISPs and companies are sued for censoring, then the pendulum will swing the other direction. Then ISPs and companies may act in a more reasonable fashion as opposed to taking a knee-jerk reaction.
In some cases, it's just a knee-jerk reaction, in others it's malice.
Fight Spammers!
Boy, then life will really suck.
Fight Spammers!
- Jeremy Fuller
Because of this, at the end of the day, all British citizens are SUBJECTS, not equal citizens of the state
One of the dumbest yet most persistent myths on Earth. British citizens are citizens -- if you don't believe me, check page 3 of a British passport, where Her Britannic Majesty's Foreign Secretary kindly explains the difference between a British Citizen (having the right of abode in the United Kingdom), a British National (having the right to a British passport), a British Dependent Territories Citizen, a British Protected Person, a British National (Overseas), a British Overseas Citizen (mainly Falklanders and Gibraltarians) and a British subject. British subjects are not the same as British Citizens, and British Citizens are very definitely citizens.
In the UK, you are not guaranteed the right to free speech. There is no genesis document like our Constitution that explicitly says that you are allowed to express your opinion due to it being a right granted to you as a human being.
Now that's fucking funny, because I seem to remember that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ratified by the UK and enforceable in UK courts, with appeal to the European Court of Human Rights) guarantees me exactly that freedom. Ah yes, I remember rightly. I often rmember these things correctly, due to not being a fucking moron.
It helps that, unlike you, I'm not lumbering under the myth that everything has to be like the US Constitution, and that only "genesis documents" (for crying out loud) can confer "inalienable rights".
Why, Oh Lord, must it be the case that the loudest defenders of free speech are those who have fucking nothing to say? Why do you care about free speech? You've clearly never had an original thought in your life. No government in history has ever put people in prison for mindlessly parroting the party line. You're completely safe.
montoya
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Wow, that's some stupid censorship there. Those lawyers are acting really gay... um. I mean, not that there's anything wrong... um, I meant to say lame. They're really *LAME*.
Oh, and I am not a gay lawyer. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The gay part that is, not the lawyer part. I mean... oh, nevermind!
It won't work. First, the Pink is free, and left in big piles at gay venues; few subscribe. Second, everyone already knows it's a nasty rag, but it's free so they read it anyway. Third, Millivres, the publisher, already own half the gay press.
The Pink survives by selling the Pink Pound to advertisers: lots of dual-income no-kids people to sell lifestyle shit to.
As for "gay community leaders": Peter Tatchell, probably the best known gay campaigner in the country, is already involved in creating Outcast, so I expect he'll be making his opinion known. However, that the Pink is bad news is not news at all.
--
Xenu loves you!
"We cannot let this be covered up. If NetBenefit win this case, the precedent will be set that any ISP can remove an entire website because it might contain something defamatory some time in the future. That means they can close down any website at all. It is a violent attack on free speech."
Fact is, ISPs have that authority now. As the owners of the equipment used to put your website up, they have the right to refuse any content that they deem inappropriate. This is not really censorship in the strictly legal sense because it is not the government that's doing the censoring. An ISP and any other private business basically has the right to say, "I don't like your politics/lifestyle/your hair/whatever, so I'm not doing business with you." I certainly would not host web sites for Neo-Nazis, as an example. It's a free market (in theory) so you can refuse to do business with some people if you choose. Now, your local/national gov't may disagree, as would the FTC in the US, but really there isn't a hell of a lot anyone can do about it. I'm sure an ISP could always come up with some reason or another that they can't host one site or another.
Think about it. If you own the hardware that the site resides on, and you lease the lines from the telco/whoever to pump the data out, then you can shut any site down you want. You could even flip a power switch and shut them all down. I'm not saying this is good policy on the part of an ISP, but it's not censorship and it's certainly within the ISP's right considering it's their equipment and you must agree to their policies in order to use it. You can always go somewhere else if you don't like how one ISP does business.
In this specific case, yeah, they might have overreacted. I'd just get a new ISP (preferably outside of UK) and forget about it. If you get an ISP in a country where ISPs aren't responsible for what their customers post and that is beyond the reach of British law, then you won't have to worry about your ISP being sued, just yourselves. :-)
If you want to fight back. Slap the Pink Paper with a restraint of trade/unfair competition type lawsuit if you have such a thing in the UK. This is an obvious attempt to put you out of business using strongarm tactics and would probably qualify as a restraint of trade in the US. Unless the article in question has something to do with the Pink Paper, then they have no business threatening to sue you if you publish something defamatory. Why would they threaten to sue on behalf of a third party if they didn't want to put you out of business?
Anyway, if you want real legal advice, cough up the bucks and hire a solicitor. Sounds to me like your enterprise has gotten important enough to need one. If you can't afford a solicitor, then too bad. Maybe you could get the Pink Paper to buy your outfit, then hire a solicitor, say they screwed you, and sue to get your business back. :-)
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
In his words: "The problem is really that ours is the first case of its kind since the Demon Internet 'Net Libel' settlement last week. That case appears to have set a precedent that UK ISPs can be held responsible for the content of newsgroups or websites they host. However, to censor something before it has been published is clearly an over-reaction."
Hold onto that quote. That is the problem. NetBenefit PLC is acting entirely rationally, given the great liability to which they are now exposed. They are not the problem... it is the ruling.
Can you truly say you would do any different if you were completely liable for the contents of your customers web sites? Focus your efforts on the true problem, which is that damnable libel ruling... not NetBenefit PLC.
A bad decision in the Daemon UK case, (IIRC a basically bigmouthed person successfully sued the ISP for not removing some inflammatory information about him) and now the British ISP's are so worried about being sued that they overreact and start pulling crap like this on their customers -- my guess is that it's the more controversial sites that are being targeted -- and just like that we have an economic blockade to free expression.
I wonder if bandwidth constraints keep the idea of hosting their site outside the UK unfeasible, because sure shooting the day an ISP does that to me (here in the US, by the way), it will be the last day I do business with that ISP, and I would probably countersue if at the time they dropped my site I was in compliance with all of their existing rules.
Just for the record, I am MMFM (monogamous married hetero male), so I'm as far from gay as a man could get, but I still stand on the side of Outcast and agree that the web (/.) community needs to raise a ruckus against the ISP.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I think that's a great idea. In the interim, here is some more relevant contact info:
/19).
Jonathan Robinson
11, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R0DP, England
+44 171 3366777
Stephen Keay
10-11 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1N 0DN, England
+44 171 336777
IP address allocation info can be found at whois.ripe.net under NETBENEFIT-NET-1 (They've got their own ASN and a
There's a US branch, as well:
Netbenefit Inc.
55 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Their upstream provider is:
COLT Telecom Group plc
International Headquarters
15 Marylebone Road
London
NW1 5JD
Telephone +44 20 7863 5000
Fax +44 20 7390 3701
They have a "fibre-optic" backbone that goes straight into London, and they offer services in several European countries. They've got 497 million pounds of equity, according to their latest financial statement, so we could probably milk them for tons of money if we threatened to bring suit against them for hosting NetBenefit which slandered Outcast (or just make them worry enough about us milking them for tons of money that they take down NetBenefit).
The courts didn't find for Godfrey, but a precedent was established - innocent disseminiation is not a defence when put on notice. Justice Moreland ruled on this about a year ago, saying the defence was "hopeless in law".
I propose that we remember what civility, and, in particular, the American ideal is supposed to be: don't put down my weird habits, and I won't put down yours. If you like guys having sex with guys, I might think that's sick, but, by all means go ahead, just so long as you don't try and take away my assault rifle. It follows then, if someone is disrupting the weird behavior of one group, then a dangerous ground has been broken. If it is ok to bash one group for its quirky behavior, then it is ok to bash them all. First on the streets, then in the press, then in the politics, group bashing escalates and this can only lead to civil war. Censorship is a tool of this conflict, and so to promote censorship is to promote war.
So... the next time you see a web site that is getting hammered because you think it is disgusting, stand up for that site - making it clear that you expect quid pro quo for your support. Say "I'll defend your right to have your sick lifestyle if you'll defend my right to have mine." Some people are into packing fudge. Some people are into collecting and shooting assault rifles. It's a sick world but it can be all good. We just have to remember that if we don't let anyone dampen someone's freedom, then nobody will dampen our own.
This is my sig.
Just googled for the Pink Paper; it doesn't have an online presence per se but partners with a G&L portal site, SoNow. The Pink Paper appears to be providing news (well, little lite bites thereof.) and SoNow provides, ahem, free email and web space.
The next move is obvious. Register Outcast with sonow.com and publish it from there. :)
To Whom It May Concern:
A most grievious situation has recently come to my attention, through an article on slashdot.org. The situation, as it has been related to me, is that the Pink Paper has engaged in a most disreputable and plainly assinine attempt to have outcast effectively shutdown by filing a preemptive complaint.
The absurdity of the situation boggles my mind in all directions. To the ISP who was hosting outcast, shame on you. I know you're simply making a business of providing web access and it's 'cheaper and easier' to do it this way, but the proper response to the Pink Paper request was to, after research to determine if any wrong-doing had occured or was likely to occur, send a reply to their lawyers politely stating that they are abusing laws, and that they can bugger off until they have a leg to stand on.
To the Pink Paper. I'm appalled, astounded and just... confused. What's wrong with competition? What did they do to hurt you? What reasonable justification is there for this action other than a lawyer noting in the middle of a business meeting 'i know how to get their website shut down.' I hope that this is a case of a lawyer acting without proper authority, or of a manager who acted against the will of the company as a whole. If this is the type of action which you propose is appropriate for them, perhaps you should stop claiming to be a voice for the gay community as your actions demonstrate that you don't believe in equal rights, fairness or good faith, even within the gay community.To the parties who believe that the law is being used in it's proper sense, allow me to state that abuses like this can end in only one inevitable conclusion. Websites will no longer exist in Britain. If you believe that this law makes sense, and that it's being used reasonably, then allow me to note that the sun now sets on the British Empire. When a situation is made rediculous, a solution is always found. Perhaps the most logical solution is to decide that no websites should be hosted in Britain as they might be subject to costly, illogical and frivolous abuse.
Good luck, outcast magazine,
Good luck, Britain,
----------------------------
So, we write the hosting company that hosts NetBenefit. We write them asking them to provide assurances that NetBenefit will not be making any offensive statements, or false accusations, about OutCast.
So, when NetBenefit's site is pulled, we laugh at them. Because it's their own policy, and they can hardly argue with it.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The term "Censorship" is over-used these days, especially in Slashdot type forums. Censorship is something that governments do. NetBenefit is not censoring. They are execising their right to choose their customers as they see fit.
Yes, the ISP libel liability law and the Demon precedent suck very, very much. But you can't blame NetBenefit for that. Write to your MP.
I'll say it again just to be sure. I believe that a private entity has the right to do or not do business with whomsoever it sees fit. (For the record, I'm against all anti-discrimination laws and equal opportunity laws too.)
The correct response is for people who disagree with NetBenefit's position to simply not do business with them. Don't waste your time whining to the CEO, write to their other customers. If I were a NetBenefit customer I sure wouldn't be for long. Let the market punish them!
The only case Outcast have is if they had a contract with NetBenefit which has been breached. I seriously doubt it though.
Australia has our net censor laws, requiring ISPs to block sites officially listed as offensive, the US has the current idioticy regarding DMCA, deCSS, etc, and now the UK is diving in with the most oppressive crytpo privacy laws imaginable and then this!
I know the law makers and Those Who Consider Themselves Very Important are worried about this new medium called the internet (God Bless Quale for inventing it!), but there seems to be a global over reaction.
I'm still waiting for one country to trade in their Get a Free Clue card, and actually ask those of us involved in it for ideas on how to make it work - how to balance legal requirements for privacy and accountability with freedom to express.
I wish the Outcast crew all the best. Let's hope they don't have to visit the last resort for such situations - moving their servers off shore.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
3) The courts find for Godfrey. Demon pay up damages. From now on any British ISP is, by legal precedent, responsible for any slanderous content that it makes available, included hosted sites and newsgroups. This is what has prompted NetBenefit's actions - they're covering their arses.
Not quite true, the court did not find for Godfrey, Demon elected to settle, this doesn't set a precedent in English Law (a judge has to rule for a precedent to be set) but it does place a worry for ISPs. Lets face it who wants to risk being the one setting a precedent ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
then there will be no overseas locations available
I'd contest this statement - until the advent of a truly "global" government there will always be countries where these laws won't apply. Consider copyright laws - both Malta and Taiwan don't have them, even though there is enormous pressure from the rest of the world that does for them to adopt copyright. Until copyright is universal there will always be somewhere you can go to get around it.
Similarly, there will always be at least one country without these censorship laws - consider the Cayman Islands or Antigua, where practically all online gambling sites are hosted due to the lax laws there. Its a matter of supply and demand - if the demand for hosting without the restrictions of censorship laws exists, then there will be somewhere which will supply that service, and make a lot of money out of it.
And then there's offshore hosting at sea, which could become a viable option given the increasingly restrictive nature of laws in most countries.
There's a very strong connection. The sequence of events goes like this:
1) Lawrence Godfrey sees something allegedly defamatory about him posted on a newsgroup.
2) Demon Internet, a major British ISP, gets sued by Godfrey for libel, claiming that by hosting the newsgroup, they are liable.
3) The courts find for Godfrey. Demon pay up damages. From now on any British ISP is, by legal precedent, responsible for any slanderous content that it makes available, included hosted sites and newsgroups. This is what has prompted NetBenefit's actions - they're covering their arses.
4) Obviously, this is a bad thing. CACIB post something on their site saying so.
5) Godfrey, who by now is sending legal letters to anyone who mentions him on the net in any remotely negative tone, threatens CACIB with legal action unless they take the story down.
It's not just Demon and CACIB he's done this to, either. Certain other very vocal activists and commentators have been unusually silent on the matter, mainly because when they've mentioned him in the past he's been onto them within hours. Now he has the law on his side.
(Why do you think I'm posting this anonymously? I'm in America at the moment, for God's sake, but I'm coming home this week and I'd like to think I won't get served a writ when I step off the plane.)
What's obviously needed here is some kind of mass stand against this, because it's obviously threatening not just free speech (after all, we don't have a constitution that protects free speech anyway - but please don't gloat at us about it, Americans, because we're sick of that) but the freedom to contribute anything to the net at all. The Outcast case is a perfect illustration of the ridiculous extremes to which this can be taken, and there will be more, and worse.
A mass stand - a huge, COORDINATED, unstoppable outcry across the network, too large to be stopped by a few lawyer's letters, too prevalent. Simply because this may be the last time that we can.
-- Anonymous
P.S. If you're an American who's about to post your nth reply to a Slashdot story about bad net law in Britain by banging on about what a backwards so-called democracy we are because we don't have legal power to buy submachine guns on street corners and so obviously we must all be serfs toiling under a Monarchist hegemony, why not use the time constructively instead, by trying to come up with a solution to the problem posed above? Mass coordination and publication, anonymous, untraceable, unremovable. It's a fantastic techie problem. Freenet is the start. Where's the rest?
I checked the Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain link referenced in the story and guess what I found there:
Yikes. What the hell goes on in Britain? Does anyone know whether there's a connection to this story?