Slashdot Mirror
UK Censorship: Demonic Consequences
The problem is with the British legal system, which makes defending against libel suits difficult. Essentially, the defendant has to prove his or her innocence, typically by proving the truth of every challenged statement (and there are other systemic flaws as well). In such a system, putting up a defense is such a hassle - and so expensive - that settling out of court is almost always easier.
The Laurence Godfrey case was settled out of court, setting not a precedent but a bad example. Most libel cases do settle. After Godfrey's victory, now even more will.
One of the better-known cases which went all the way to the verdict was the McLibel trial, in which everyone's favorite multinational food chain sued two unemployed activists for handing out a pamphlet. Attempting to prove the truth of every single statement in the brief factsheet took the vegetarians two years. They could not afford to pay legal counsel or even to buy the transcripts of their own trial's proceedings. They lost, but the negative publicity was a Pyrrhic victory for McDonald's.
And in very recent news, the big story has been one in which a Holocaust-denier brought suit for a book which (essentially) called him a Holocaust-denier. This time, the good guys won, but only because the author and publisher were willing to spend two million pounds to illustrate that the facts were on their side. The bookstores that were sued had settled quickly out of court and agreed to the plaintiff's terms. (If you follow this case, some excellent and very detailed legal analysis can be found at a site I happen to Webmaster, in the essays Irving'sWar.)
Even if a libel suit is only hinted-at, as in the Outcast and CACIB cases, pre-emptively removing the material is the publisher's safest move. Don't like what someone says? Afraid of what they might say? Gag'em!
The U.K. needs to wise up and bring its libel law into the 20th century, or its citizens will quickly find themselves inhabiting a Bland Speech Zone. An island on the Internet, if you will, where nobody dares say anything about anyone else - or if they do, they prudently take their speech (and their money) offshore.
As a Demon settlement news report predicted two weeks ago:
"If the ISPs become more cautious over what material they allow to be published - by screening submissions or suspending Web sites - they could inflame the debate over freedom of expression or damage internet-based businesses."
Neither of which, surely, will benefit the people of the U.K.
Update: 04/18 03:21 by J : Two good commentaries today from lawyers relating to the Holocaust-denier's lawsuit. The legal team defending against the Holocaust-denier's lawsuit has an interesting contrary view in today's Independent. They argue that British libel law works, and is getting better in response to criticism. But when they write:
"...libel actions and the associated costs are part of the process of publishing. They are to the publishing industry what construction disputes are to the building industry. If the litigation is expensive that is a criticism of the price of litigation - not of libel litigation specifically."
they obscure an important point. We are all publishers in the internet age. If publishing is to be restricted to those who can afford "industry" insurance policies against million-pound legal fees, put a fork in the U.K.'s internet - it's done.
And, see also a legal viewpoint from the defending publisher's lawyers.
The fact of the matter is that the UK is unfortunately still lost in dreams of its past rather than looking ahead to the future. The nation which once ruled half the world is now becoming an insignificant backwater, as it ceases to offer anything to the rest of the world. The laws and institutions which govern it are incredibly outdated, and work slowly at best, and not at all at worst, and the means required to change them are even more slow and frought with pitfalls.
Unlike America, with its modern and logical system of laws, Britain has no such checks and balances against things like this. And the government is slow to change, and seems unable to deal with the modern world and its trappings. The new laws coming in aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and will do yet more harm to our country and net use here.
I'm from the UK and I love living here, but sometimes I wish we were more like America.
The UK is cracking up, and its been due for a long time.
Four nations, one nation exerting a disproportionate amount of control over the other three. It has tried to wipe out the languages and cultures within it (Welsh, Scottish Gaelic). It spent 200 years brutally colonising an Empire which is now dying. The last embers are fading as the four nations within the UK are reaching for democracy.
Hence the UK govt can only fight back by the iron fist in the velvet glove
--
Leave now, save yourself. Save two, get one free
-"Hi honey, I'm in jail."
-"What?! What for?"
-"I robbed a limousine."
-"What? Why did you do that?!"
-"Well, you see, Slashdot told me to do it! It says rob limo, rob limo everywhere. It influenced my mind, because I'm so stupid to think with my own brains. I desperately need some kind of censorship to decide what's good for me. I have no will of my own. It's their fault."
-"...I know, let's sue this Slashdot thing!"
-"Jolly good!"
Sir, you are arrested for having the words "Blair" and "suc" and "ks" written backwards in the source of your web page. This is clearly libel and as such we will place you into arrest by terminating you immediately with this well-directed shot of clueless legalese.
I is da famous gangsta rappa, Ice Creem, and I would like to share wit' you my thoughts on dis matter, which is of real importance to da people of England.
I went to England on my last tour wit' my crew and it seemed to me that there is some heavy shit goin' on over there. Their "Labour" government (dat is something like our own Democrat party) seems to be trying to crack down on many forms of free speech. They have this law called "RIP" (Rest in Pieces or something) which make it illegal for you to have pictures of ho's on your computer, and now they is tryin' to take down websitez with dirty pictures on too.
But this is about more than pictures of ho's. It is about free speech. It means that when I is in da UK I cannot use the web to disrespect my homies, or else the government will sue me. Back in my hood, if I want to censor someone who disses my bitch, then I pop a cap in his ass. That's the justice of da street and that's the way it's always bin. Dis new law is very sinister.
Best Wishes, Da Notorious Ice Creem
Demon basically dropped the ball.
If someone put what looked like libellous statements on a web server, and the alleged libel victim complained to the hosting ISP, you'd expect the ISP to investigate and/or drop the page right?
Web server admins make decisions about content all the time. They censor based on law, taste, bandwidth... no big deal. When you want to put up a webpage with dodgy content, you have to find an ISP prepared to publish your pages. No big deal.
Usenet is not that different.
Usenet servers are local servers. Messages are not transmitted; they are STORED and forwarded. When you request a message from soc.culture.thai, you don't retrieve a message from a computer in Thailand, you retrieve the message from your ISP's local server. And don't try to compare Usenet servers to proxies or caches; proxies and caches refresh after a few hours- with a Usenet server the messages are held for days or weeks on end.
It basically boils down to this one issue:
If you run a Usenet server, you are publishing.
And as we all know, libel is the crime of publishing untrue defamatory statements.
Demon committed libel.
And the great thing about UK law is the word "reasonable". Did Demon have "reasonable" grounds to suspect that they had a libellous message on their server? Did Demon have "reasonable" notification and time to remove the message? Crikey, yes they did. Loads. And Demon still didn't pull the message.
With a UK libel case, normally it would never get to court. What normally happens is that the person who was libelled contacts the publisher and says "oi, that's not right, remove/correct it". Then the publisher checks it's facts and, if it thinks it's appropriate, corrects or pulls the article and we all go home and live happily ever after and nobody goes to court.
My point here is that the UK libel laws don't allow you to just sue the publisher straight off. You have to be "reasonable" and give the publisher a chance to comply. Only if they refuse to comply with your requests can you take them to court.
Godfrey contacted Demon and requested that the libellous message be removed on numerous occasions. Demon refused despite these numerous warnings. Taking Demon to court was a last resort.
Now you and I know that the exact same libellous message was on thousands of other servers, but that's not the point. Godfrey requested that Demon remove a libellous message. Yes, he could have requested the same thing from thousands of other ISPs, but he didn't. He just requested that the message be removed from Demon's server, not anybody else's. Demon repeatedly refused to comply and hey presto, they got banged to rights guv. No big deal.
for this great article on censorship coming from the biggest pile of hypocritical shit to ever walk the face of the earth, TacoBoy.
Some people are instantly modded out of sight. That is not censorship. You continue to post these stories pretending that you are the bastion of free and independent thought, and all it proves is that you are more of a phony every day.
Today, it is outrage at censorship. Yesterday, it was an off-topic post about the stock market, but everytime someone shits a Lego, you write a story about it. Yup, that is on-topic.
Funny how the stock market was on-topic when all those IPOs were happening and Linux was getting validated. Now that those companies have tanked at a greater rate than the overall market, the subject is taboo. Or even better, how many stories did we get on the LinuxOne IPO? Oh yeah, but we are not CNBC, unless ESR writes us a memo on how much he is worth. I want a new memo from gunboy on how much he is worth today.
Everytime you open your mouth, you find another foot to stick in it. Three hours till the market opens and your shotglass portfolio will soon be an eyedropper.
One more thing, keep up the good work.
The most entertaining thing is that the Daily Mail is now waging war against the European Bill of Human Rights - and state a lot of things which are a perverted reading at best (for example, that schoolteachers would be powerless to prevent sex between two pupils, *even gay sex*) [the Daily Mail concentrates on things like this.. I assume to shock the Middle England readers].
The paper has its own agenda, and it's quite sickening how they misrepresent so many things. Still, maybe people will eventually stop reading them.
That's an excellent point.
Also, a capitalist societly like the US will be happy to take your money and defend your freedom. Okay, not that internet stocks are doing wonderfully or anything now, (right, Taco?) but I could see how this might send a chill through the British ISP market, or make people think twice before hosting their site there.
Heck, get one of those K00L country code domains, I *know* they don't care what you do with them...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I totally disagree, because taking away freedoms is a slippery slope. Everyone's always quick to tell us how teensy-weensy their particular form of censorship is -- "No comparison at all to muzzling the people!" they exclaim.
Agreed in part. It IS a slippery slope, and care must be taken. I like /.'s approach because it doesn't actually remove posts, yet helps to keep the discussions functional.
The alternative is a sort of censorship where posting to /. becomes pointless due to the noise. There is little difference between 'you may not speak' and 'you may speak, but your voice will never be heard over the thousand yipping morons who will surround you'.
Read the discussions at -2 some time to see what I mean. IMHO, /.'s approach is much better than the alternatives.
Ok. Does this mean if I say "I *think* the UK government is run by weenies", noone can cry libel?
After all, how can someone say I *don't* think that way? :)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
Now, that (IMHO) is quite a sensible criterion. If a remark has no influence on other people's opinions, whatsoever, then what does it matter whether it's true, false or purple with green spots?
On the other hand, if the comments have seriously impacted the plaintiff (not just in their mind, but in the views of people in general who have heard the remarks), then it makes sense to weigh whether the remarks are, on the balance of probability, true or false.
If the accusations are true, and they cause damage to someone's image, then that should be fair comment. If what you're doing is LIKELY to invoke the wrath of society, if it knew, you should be willing to accept the risks.
On the other hand, if the accusations are false, the people who made the remarks should make some kind of reparation for the damage they've done. Freedom speech is a great thing, same as freedom of movement, but you still expect to cough up cash if you drive through someone's gate and demolish the front of their house.
IMHO, libel laws (NOT just in the UK, but in the US as well) need to stop assuming one side is guilty and the other is innocent. In the US, libel is next to impossible to prove, because of the 1st Ammendment. If you deliberately make remarks which destroy other people's livlihoods or standing in the community, for that purpose, the last thing anyone needs is for the courts to pay YOU for the damage!
What's needed, IMHO, for libel is an initial no-guilt assumption. BOTH sides present their claims, arguments and proofs on a TOTALLY level playing-field. To prevent one side or the other dominating, though, both sides should present exactly the same amount of "evidence". That way, large corporations can't simply swamp the case, as with the McDonald's case in the intro.
IMHO, law will only mean anything when it ceases to be about money and starts to be about people.
Oh, and lastly, for anyone who thinks British Law is too lenient ALL the time on the side of the "victims", who remembers the case of the former Eastenders actress? The judge ruled in favour of the tabloids (for once) on the grounds that he also had a dirty mind. IMHO, the tabloids escallated onto the national stage a trivial incident that may well have never occured, simply to sell papers and "shock" readers.
IMHO, if they ban landmines, and want a place to dispose of them, places like the HQ's of The Sun, The Star, The Sport and The Daily Mirror spring to mind. Get rid of those obnoxious, depraved weapons AND the landmines at the same time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I found a good Q&A about US libel law here:http://freeadvice.com/law/576us.htm.
As I understand it, the main difference in US law is that it is very difficult for a public figure to sue for libel in the US since the defendant must be shown to have knowingly and maliciously made a false statement. For a private individual like Mr. Godfrey it seems to be quite similar to UK law.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
From Webster Online: censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
Since Slashdot does not do this (only volunteer moderators) at all, the site is not guilty of censorship. And since you can browse at -100 if you want, and get every post ever made, no one is enforcing any kind of censorship.
To claim that Slashdot promotes censorship is like claiming that Siskel and Ebert are censoring movies they rate as "two thumbs down" (-2?). Since no one is stopping you from seeing the film anyhow, there is no censorship.
--
: remove whitespace to e-mail me
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
On of the best stratagies in a game like this is generous tit for tat:
1: Be nice to the other guy.
2: Do unto them as was done unto you.
Deleted
Who can escalate higher?
Deleted
Yeah, I know - utterly irresponsible. But I've been soo good the last few months.
r =%22Dr.%20Laurence%20Godfrey%22%20%3claure nce@godfreynet.co.uk%3e&ST=PS
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ap]/profile.xp?autho
Yuck. Don't like thos deja URLs.
Deleted
Sorry Rob.
Deleted
Ooh some of his posts are just nasty. Maybe they are libelous. I wonder if his ISP should be notified of a potential legal action?
Deleted
Gradwellregistered his domain: http://www.gradwell.com/ who are owned by Onyx Internet: http://www.onyxnet.co.uk/
However his posts seem to come from a number of places. Most recently from Planet Online (Freeserve?):
Posting host: newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk and abuse@theplanet.net
Also:
Posting host: news3.cableinet.net
abuse@telinco.net
Email: laurence.godfrey@pmail.net and laurence@godfreynet.co.uk
Seems very interested in the chances of catching HIV in Thailand?
Ooh I am a bad bad person today.
Deleted
No real substance required.
Deleted
Make them post something that they later regret. They usually have absolutely no sense of humour. Hence the legal recourse.
Deleted
Synonym for serial unfounded litigation?
Deleted
I live and work here and I'd much much rather support a UK ISP than an American one but If UK ISP's are going to just buckle and not put pressure on government representatives because it's expedient then they must be punished financially.
Move your sites off of UK hosted ISPs and tell them why you are doing this. Encourage others to do the same.
Deleted
If we all started having anti Demon tag lines maybe they would soon pick that up on Usenet and think about the issue.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Well, are these rights granted by the government (and thus susceptible to being revoked) or are they inherent? That's the really big deal regarding the Bill of Rights in the states, anyway.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Quite right. "Your currency's abbreviation is GBP, not UKP" is what I should have said.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I am of the opinion that Lawrence Godfrey is a menace to society, and a stain upon the face of humanity.
I can say this quite happily because I prefaced it with "I am of the opinion that" and no-one can sue you for stating your opinion as you're not saying anything is fact.
This should calm some but sadly it is no solution.
It is a fact that something needs to be done about libel law.
Hardly. This is a very relevant question to the whole UK libel issue. If I had moderator points I'd bring it back out of the moderation basement.
"It is time to move beyond the social indifference of right and left, libertarian nonsense masquerading as freedom."
I'd like to have at least an attempt at changing things a little first though. We need a constitution. We need to figure out what is and isn't a legitimate task of Government. We need to have the Great Tax Debate. We need to have a political party that actually champions inherent freedoms as a policy.
We are an envious, unimaginative, reactive, bigotted, bitter society. We do not reward success; rather we punish it. We do not understand ideas of freedom and self-expression, but we attack their proponents bitterly.
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining how this situation has arisen. Very few people in Britain will be concerned about this; the idea that the free exchange of ideas will be curtailed doesn't disturb them. The notion that expressing a controversial opinion might be impossible carries no fear. After all, normal people don't have such ideas or opinions. And the greatest crime in Britain is to be other than the normal?
And what is normal? For a start, you should live in a small, pokey house. You should work for a large company, but you shouldn't care about your job too much. You should buy the Sun each day, and closely follow stories about the Queen Mother's health (Gawd bless'er!). You should have absolutely know understanding or interest in science. You should regard with suspicion anyone who does.
You should subscribe to Sky Sports. But definitely not Film Four.
You should have not-quite-enough money, but you should resent those who have more. You should distrust the Internet and believe "something must be done" about it - even though you've never used it.
In short, you are bitter, boring, suspicious, reactive, a sheep, and a hypocrite. You are also, sad to say, pretty stupid. Most importantly, you never let your lack of knowledge on a particular subject cloud your judgement.
In a country full of people like this, people who basically don't believe that other people deserve freedom, is it any suprise that our politicians and laws and judges show the same prejudices? Who could expect better than them?
Last thing (thanks for reading this long!):
Tony Blair, our esteemed leader, recently used the phrase "libertarian nonsense". Now, not everyone is a commited no-compromise libertarian, but I'm sure that everyone knows that the opposite of "libertarian" is "authoritarian". That word, "authoritarian", sums up exactly which way Britain is going. And I'm going elsewhere.. any suggestions?
You say common carriers are required to server everyone, not just their customers -- how do phone companies and ISPs differ? Both can cancel service for non-payment, both have to accept all incoming calls.
--
Infuriate left and right
Perhaps Im being a bit extreme here as well, but I dont generally find posts about hot grits or Natalie Portman to be particularly productive...
Just move your servers outsite of the U.K.
That's all.
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ISPs in the USA are not common carriers. The FCC has intentionally refrained from classifying ISPs as common carriers. A common carrier is required, by law, to serve everyone, not just the customers that they wish to do business with.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I can't believe someone modded the above message up as "insightful". Even if the thought behind it is sound, the presentation is full of invective and needless derogatory remarks.
It is possible (and more effective) to criticize without the personal attacks.
I wouldn't say that telling offensive jokes is a "right." We all enjoy it sometimes, of course, but you have to think about context. If you tell a racist or sexist joke, think about who's going to be offended. Offensive jokes are...offensive. It's not an issue of free speech, but one of politeness.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
You're right, in that we shouldn't criticize each other for living in countries with bad laws that none of us had anything to do with. However, I wouldn't say that the NRA is equivalent to the ACLU. The NRA is a special-interest group with a dubious interpretation of the Second Amendment (the Amendment recommends a "well-regulated militia," which is the National Guard, and anyway, guns were much less powerful 211 years ago). The ACLU is a legitimate, non-special-interest group that really does defend people's rights, not their desire to be able to explode deer and 9-year-olds into 470,702,342 little pieces.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
I usually find myself fairly clouded by Ethnocentrism, and don't remember that not everyone has a first amendment.
Britain's main problem vis-a-vis rights isn't that they don't have a right to free speech (the US Constitution's 1st Ammendment), it's that they don't have a constitution at all and hence no guarantee of rights whatsoever. They're ruled entirely on the basis of parliament and common law. Many Americans forget that this division of political thought is a significant reason why America fought the British for independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Those little words from the Declaration of Independence echo the core politico-philosophical difference between the Americans and the British -- equality and liberty are inalienable rights endowed to us by our creator and that men created Governemnt to protect those rights.
Americans believe in their rights and their constitution that guarantees them. The British just trust their government, and they end up with stuff like the Official Secrets Act, arbitrary detention, censorship and what have you.
Now which is it, This is whyan unwriten constiution is better[sic] or Our system of government does have a constiution, and a written one to boot, it's split over many, many documents?
I get the same argument from my British friends every time I ask them about this. At first they argue about how the British 'written' constitution is there, it's just spread all over a bunch of documents. And then they have a few more drinks, start complaining about American gun ownership, and then tell me what a virtue an unwritten constitution is because its so much easier to change.
I don't see the virtue in either, personally. I want my rights laid out in front of me unequivocally in a single document, and I don't want them easy to change. I want them very, very difficult to change so that the whims of the leadership can't "fix" them.
Why should I have to twiddle with the URL to be able to see posts that were actually moderated up? Why would someone even think that they'd have to do such a thing, except for those that happen to see this discussion? When I set my threshold higher, I do it so that I can quickly see the posts that were moderated up. I think that's everyone's expectation, so for Slashdot to force some posts to be -2 even when moderators score them up, well, it doesn't seem too kosher.
Maybe they could put up a disclaimer that says something along the lines of "Even if you set your threshold, you will still not be able to see certain posts, no matter how favorably they were moderated. >Click here< for quickie instructions on how to see those posts."
If this is really the Slashdot line of thinking, can we please see an end to the countless stories on things like CyberPatrol? (I'm sure you've seen them before, they're all posted with the icon of the guy with his mouth taped shut.) After all, they don't keep any web sites from saying what they want, they just keep them from being heard by CyberPatrol's paying customers.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'm definitely no fan of the royalty, but it just amazes me how Blair and his Third Way bullshit comrades want the U.K. to be dragged down by all the socialist baggage of the E.U. Do most of your countrymen really support this idiocy? Not that Clinton wouldn't be trying the same thing if he thought he could get away with it...
Great post.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I totally disagree, because taking away freedoms is a slippery slope. Everyone's always quick to tell us how teensy-weensy their particular form of censorship is -- "No comparison at all to muzzling the people!" they exclaim.
But then, years later, a freedom lost here, a freedom lost there, ho-hum, it all adds up. Then when you bother to reflect upon it, you see just how far the bar has moved. Remember how silly and innocuous those "1001 Tasteless Jokes" books used to be when you were a kid? Try telling one of the "blonde" jokes in there at your average university these days, and if you're lucky, someone won't overhear you and you won't be dragged in front of the student judicial board on charges of sexism. If you don't think that your freedoms have eroded over the years, and worse, if you think that it only happens in "Big Story" cases that you hear about, rather than a gradual erosion over time due to tiny things you never even thought twice about, you just haven't been paying attention.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
The way that some posters' writings are automatically shoved to -2, even when marked up by moderators, Slashdot seems to be engaging in a double standard when they rail against censorship.
The bottom line is that it's mighty easy to wave the free speech flag, but pretty meaningless if you aren't willing to stick up for it, even in cases whereby it negatively affects you.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
As I understand it, in the US, ISPs enjoy "common carrier" status, and so are not responsible for the content on their servers. If you want to sue someone, you sue the author, if you can find them... In the UK, ISPs have been ruled to be more akin to publishers, who are fair game for legal action under our libel laws.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You might not have wanted the Quake servers; many others (including myself) did, and do. I doubt your tenner would exactly make a big contribution to any of their bills anyway. :)
Come on, nobody's taken it yet... :-)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Well, isn't it one of the wonders the net brought us? If your country doesn't let you express yourself, you can still do it easily from another one and yet reach the same audience.
IMHO, it's only a matter of time before major British sites start migrating to offshore ISPs. After that is done, maybe the ISPs will start lobbying their MPs to change that stupid libel law because it harms their profitability. Hey, that's how it works nowadays... Your average Joe Government doesn't give a fsck about freedom of speech as long as he makes good business. Watch the USA and China... Who cares about freedom when you have a 1+ Billion potential customers...who might actually get forced to buy your stuff.
Humans really start making me puke sometimes.
max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
IANAL, but...
There is a status in English law called a "vexatious litigator". I think you can do a private prosection to get this status conferred onto someone. I don't know exactly what happens when you get this status - maybe judges just always through your cases out of court...
Maybe everyone should band up and try to get this status conferred onto that bloke, as he certainly seems a bit vexatious, allegedly. Notice, no names!
Maybe some one who is more up on English law could comment on this possibility?
Another part of this problem in the UK is due to the laws surrounding who is and who isn't considered a publisher. As far as I understand it, in a libel suit, it's both the writer and the publisher who can be sued.
Now why (you might ask) has an ISP been sued in that case? Well, the answer is that in the UK a precedent was set a long time ago that in libel cases concerning traditional paper published material the publisher is considered to be the writer, the publisher, the distributor and the retail outlet that sells the material!
Yup - any of those people can be sued for libel in a book or magazine.
So of course, it was a natural progression that an ISP would be considered a publisher in this case, as opposed to being a common carrier like the postal service. I remember about 5 years ago a similar debate regarding whether ISP's would have to check all the content found on bulletin boards on their sites. There was a lot of pressure for ISP's to never check anything on their sites so that they could be considered common carriers. However it seems that these days, ISP's have lost the fight and can now be held responsible for information found on their servers. Which level this could be taken to is kinda chilling - does information passing through a server (email for instance) also count as published material?
Unfortunately, the UK has a bunch of very restrictive laws surrounding freedom of speech. Civil liberties have been gradually eroded over the last 20 years, so that nowadays there is no real "right to silence", you can be easily prosecuted for importation of "obscene" material and now you cannot air free speech on a web server.
I for one am glad I moved to Sweden - which has it's own problems, but seems more open than the post Thatcher UK.
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
A little planning goes a long way...
Do you read the entirety of usenet every day unfiltered?
yes. it doesn't leave time for much else, but i DO it, by gawd.
and, strangely enough, it has brought me a sense of self-worth that i never had before.
-Andy Martin
-Andy Martin
If y'all don't like me, blow me.
This sounds more like a description of what the tabloids believe the UK population to be. Its the tabloid newspapers that engineer public beliefs and then use populist rhetoric to maintain public support. See they're racist campaign against asylum seekers as an example.
Sadly, we can`t pile all the blame onto the tabloids. They wouldn`t print things if people didn`t buy them. And people tend to read only what reflects the views they`ve made already. So the tabloids are only reflecting the thought processes of their readers.
Unfortunately.
"You might not have wanted the Quake servers; many others (including myself) did, and do. I doubt your tenner would exactly make a big contribution to any of their bills anyway. :)"
:)
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Of course, you're welcome to your quake servers. If I weren't wasting twice as much a month on mobile bills, I'd point out that it's MY £10/month that could go toward MY bills instead, though!
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I used to be with Demon as an ISP - I gave up a few months ago because they squandered my UKP10/month on quake servers without asking whether I wanted them or not - I don't! In the process of leaving I sent a mail saying "I'm off, because I don't like this" and got a stupid mail back asking why... 'nuff said! Glad to be out, now.
At the moment the UK is not looking like a good place to stay. I think the RIP bill working its way through parliament is an evil abomination (basically escrow to screw the nation over some poxy criminals - and Jack Straw expected me to believe this!), and with censorship on the rise as well... you can hardly say we're one of the 'Net's leading countries, can you?
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Of course the site authors are still just as vulnerable to lawsuits as ever, but in practice the plaintiff has to find them first. If you go to a US host in the first place then that would mean extracting customer records from the US company.
Overall its the same old mechanism: censorship is damage, so route around it.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
In the (US) deep south, the government rarely killed any black men itself, but it sure did a good job of fostering a lynch-mob mentality among its citizens who did the dirty work for it. It's an extreme, but analogous situation, at least structurally.
I myself wouldn't mind the moderation nearly so much if it didn't allow really small people to further their really small interests by punishing those with something productive to say.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
In order to prove defamation, you have to be able to prove that what was said or written about you was false.
That is the crucial difference between the US and the UK for non-public figures. In the US you have to prove that it was false, in the UK the other party has to prove that it was true.
This seems to be the same thing, but it is very different. Suppose the debatable point was "You were not in Paris last Saturday" (believe it or not, a recent notorious case depended on this very point). For you to prove that is false (i.e. that you were in Paris) is easy: Plane tickets, hotel receipts, credit cards, subway tickets, etc. For the defendent to prove that you weren't in Paris is very difficult (as proving a negative often is).
There are several problems with libel laws as they stand.
1.) The burden of proof (as the article said) is on the defendant. This is a bad thing. To take a recent example The Sunday Times lost a libel case recent when they rubbished a book claiming Trimble was a member of a secret conspiracy group called "The Crucible". Why did they lose? Well, how can you prove that someone isn't a member of a secret consiracy group?
2.) The costs are insane. In the Godfrey case he got 15kGBP in damages - the lawyers got an estimated 500kGBP in fees. This also gives some insight as to why the lawyers aren't keen on changing them :(
3.) The damages are based on whether something is likely to damage your reputation - not by how much your repuation has been damaged.
All in all not a good situation. In the US I believe there is a requirement to show malice before it can be considered libel - in the UK the most innoucous statement can be considered libellous if it is not factually correct even if the person making the statement believes it to be true. Truth is not a surefire defence either - more accurate would be "Truth that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and which was not published with the intent to reduce a persons reputation."
God forbid they check their facts *before* handing out libellous material...
Just to throw my tuppenneth into the forum.. I believe in the right to free speach but I also believe that people have a right not to read slanderous accusations about them. This is why every reputable ISP has an abuse address. As far as I understood it, he was complaining that demon hadn't removed the posting once an abuse complaint had been received. I don't believe that anyone expects ISPs to monitor every posting, but to appropriately repond to Abuse complaints.
Where do you want to tunnel today?
The question is, can we claim political asylum as we are being persecuted for our views??
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Let me put a word in from the other side. I amongst other things run a UK university's webserver. I have had to inform my boss that if we get any complaints about the content of any of the student sites then I will have to remove them. As most UK websites we just do not have the cash to fight a costly Libel battle. Our staff time would be much better spent running computers than hanging around with lawyers.
You may say that were taking a cowards way out by not fighting but with the way the libel law stands it's probably not worth it.
it's not censorship though. it's only censorship if the posts are automatically unreadable by anyone. True, you need to do a little foolery to read at -2, but you can. It's just as easy to point the finger of hypocracy as it is to support free speech. And I think /. does a good job of providing a forum for free speech, not just preaching it. Hell, it even gives JonKatz a home ;-)
Yeah, there are some problems with the moderation system. I've seen cases like you mention where a post is modded up and still in the negatives. But free speech is the right to say what you want; not the right to be heard anyway.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
. . . we're BOTH actually ON TOPIC?!?!?!? What the hell is up with that!!!
;-)
next thing you know I'll get a significant amount of non+1funny karma. *shudders*
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
My "favourite" of these (meaning that which appalls me the most) is the antifeminist-masquerading-as-feminist icleo.com. Initially billed as "everything women could be interested in" and advertising such diverse subjects as fashion, astrology, and beauty tips, the current "hot topic" is whether girls [sic] who dress skimpily are asking for trouble.
Not every site needs to be a world-shaker, but a lot of the Indian ones seem convinced that only inoffensive pap ought to be electronically available.
(I'm indo-european, and some of my family probably read these same sites)
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
I've seen some posters equate ISPs with publishers. To them I say, B.S.
To state that a Usenet server is a "publisher", implicitly assumes that an individual has no right at all to be seen or heard by more than one person without sponsorship by a third party, and that an individual Usenet server acts as such a third party. Also assumed is a notion that "the public" does not have a right to obtain information that is not scrubbed by a third party.
There are two responsibilities for any Internet server, be it Gopher, WWW, or Usenet, and those responsibilities are uptime and response time, in that order.
Usenet, in particular, is a forum. It is not a publisher, nor are any of its member servers, nor are any of its myriad clients.
I wonder though, If one can send Usenet-wide kill requests, is it possible to filter such requests?
But I don't know the exact nature of the suit. It would appear that plaintiff is filing to prevent the information from being seen by usenet clients that connect to the ISP's server. (I guess he's never heard of Deja, or Deja's next on the suing list). If he's filing to prevent the spread of posts "originating" from that server, well, as you've described, it's probably a little bit late.
I'm afraid your best option is Mars. Failing that, check out Canada. I've never been there, but from what I hear it's less evil than pretty much everything else.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
The question at hand is this: How do we mold the early videotex environment so that noise is suppressed without limiting the free flow of information between customers?
The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S. feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication. The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for) the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except, perhaps, simple person-to-person or "electronic mail". This, in turn, would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists. Potential carriers' own lawyers are already hard at work worrying everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.
The question then becomes: How do we best protect against such "legal" tactics? The answer seems to be an early emphasis on secure identification of the source of communications so that there can be no question as to the individual responsible. This would preempt an attempt to hold the carrier liable. Anonymous communications, like Delphi conferencing, could even be supported as long as some individual would be willing to attach his/her name to the communication before distributing it. This would be similar, legally, to a "letters to the editor" column where a writer remains anonymous. Another measure could be to require that only individuals of legal age be allowed to author publishable communications. Yet another measure could be to require anyone who wishes to write and publish information on the network to put in writing, in an agreement separate from the standard customer agreement, that they are liable for any and all communications originating under their name on the network. This would preempt the "stolen password" excuse for holding the carrier liable.
Beyond the secure identification of communication sources, there is the necessity of editorial services. Not everyone is going to want to filter through everything published by everyone on the network. An infrastructure of editorial staffs is that filter. In exchange for their service the editorial staff gets to promote their view of the world and, if they are in enough demand, charge money for access to their list of approved articles. On a videotex network, there is little capital involved in establishing an editorial staff. All that is required is a terminal and a file on the network which may have an intrinsic cost as low as $5/month if it represents a publication with "only" around 100 articles. The rest is up to the customers. If they like a publication, they will read it. If they don't they won't. A customer could ask to see all articles approved by staffs A or B inclusive, or only those articles approved by both A and B, etc. This sort of customer selection could involve as many editorial staffs as desired in any logical combination. An editorial staff could review other editorial staffs as well as individual articles, forming hierarchies to handle the mass of articles that would be submitted every day. This sort of editorial mechanism would not only provide a very efficient way of filtering out poor and questionable communications without inhibiting diversity, it would add a layer of liability for publications that would further insulate carriers from liability and therefore from a monopoly over communications.
In general, anything that acts to filter out bad information and that is not under control of the carrier, acts to prevent the carrier from monopolizing the evolution of ideas on the network.
...
Seastead this.
Is it possible to run an ISP from a moving vehicle, such as a boat or plane? If an ISP is past the three mile border, isn't it officially unregulable? How about an ISP on a sub with satellite dish? It stays surfaced while transmitting, but if someone tries to find it, it just submerges! How about the moon?
Most Slashdot readers are over 18 now. Just start voting!
Given that it was Thailand was it an accusation that he was a paedophile? or a used whores? what?
I am not posting this AC and if Godfrey wants to try it on with me he will get a legal kicking....
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Arguing that I am obligated to listen to those idiots and branding me a hypocrite if I don't is quite stupid. Do you read spam thoroughly? Do you read the entirety of usenet every day unfiltered? By your argument if you don't, you're denying all those people their freedom of speech.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wait, before you people get all bent outta shape, I do realise that Slashdot's servers are not in the UK. But some of the people posting the messages ARE!
Can they make Slashdot release information about who we are so that they can sue us?
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
Aren't we discussing potentially libelous things here on Slashdot? Aren't some of our participants native to or living in the United Kingdom?
Won't they sue Slashdot for libel against libel??
Rami James
Pixel Pusher
ALST R&D Center, IL
rJames.org - illustration
Certainly not as bad as the place in Docklands which gives it's URL as:
- hppt//itdesigns.co.uk
Or the lorry I was following the other day who reckoned they were:- www.moving.com.uk
(and yes, uk.com does exist - but com.uk doesn't!).Smegma.
I'm am *terrafied* that Australia will get this bad.
But what can you do? It doesn't matter who you vote for.. the little ppl always loose...
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
It's not just the laws that cause problems; it's the lawyers (or, more accurately, the tendency of ISPs to be afraid of lawsuits). What we really need is at least one ISP who won't close down a site just because it is alleged that said site may publish something potentially libellous. Not submitting to such threats is plainly the right thing to do, but, in an increasingly litigious society, organisations (and individuals) are afraid of libel suits, and the threat of legal action is often used (for example, by McDonald's) to silence criticism.
Normally you have to manually add &threshold=-2 or whatever to the URL to see those posts, but this post tells you how to do it permanently with a little hacking. Then you can browse all of the posts, even the "/. censored" ones.
I think that Rob et al. are making some changes to the Slash code in order to allow for some anti-spam measures. The reason I think is that April 20 is coming up, the anniversary of Columbine, and it threatens to become a complete spam-fest. The account being pushed to -2 on all posts is one way of quickly "removing" a lot of spam - there's also a maximum no. of posts per day based on IP address in place now as well.
How does the European Convention on Human Rights affect this? IIRC it's been signed into law here in the UK, but I'm not sure what effects it has on the situation. I think Article 10 is the important one, and Articles 17 and 18 as well, but our DNS server is down here at I can't provide a better link or look at it. Thanks.
If someone spreads the rumour that I'm a paedophiliac (sp?) I'd like a proper legal tool to defend myself with. OTOH, I don't want to consult a lawyer every time I open my big mouth.
I'll give you a quick non-lawyer translation of swedish law (as found by google) here just to get another example:
Point here: The law said nothing about damages. It can't be used as a Make Money Fast-sceme.
If you are facing a libel/slander lawsuit, you risk merely a fine, not huge damages. (yeah there is a possibility of prison, but then it would *really* have to be serious. like an evil FUD department knowingly spreading rumours of health hazards using a competitors product)
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Nope, wrong, the currency is the Pound Sterling or just £.
I can say without any doubt that had I hot grits down my trousers and Natalie Portman on my lap I'd hardly manage to get anything in the least bit productive accomplished. Aside from a slight rash, perhaps, if the grits were undercooked.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
How could the moderation system on /. be called censorship when you or I or any of our ever so entertaining Trolls may read or not read what they want? Besides the fact that Rob et all do not in fact "censor" but the /. readers have that pleasure. Personally, I never read anything below a 1, unless I want a good giggle and for some insane reason feel the need to see if anyone is pouring hot grits down their pants. But it is you and I who would be the censors of /. if you moderate as I do.
/. should be allowed to do so to their hearts content. But by the same token, I and others who generally have no intention to read it should be allowed to have a means not to.
IMHO all those who wish to post idiocy and/or flame
But then again... what do I know. I'm going back to picking my nose.
Cheers!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
In the U.S., one may publish anything so long as it is "without" or "absent" malice. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor -- that there was NO attempt to confirm facts, and WAS an attempt to maliciously damage the alleged victim. A not-terribly-good film starring Paul Newman and Sally Fields (I think), called _Absence of Malice_, illustrated how hard it can be to establish this point.
But the major difference between U.S. and English law (as I recall it) is that in the U.S., the fact that a statement is TRUE shields the publisher from a finding of libel. In England (sorry, U.K.) that a statement is true is NOT a defense against libel.
The thing that really astounds me, however, is not that British libel laws are being used to shut down ISP's, but that they have NOT been used to shut down the dreadful Murdoch papers (and their imitators). I have a lot of sympathy with Dennis Potter here, who said (in his interview when he was terminally ill and everyone knew it), that if he only had the opportunity, what he would absolutely do would be to murder R. Murdoch!
This sounds more like a description of what the tabloids believe the UK population to be. Its the tabloid newspapers that engineer public beliefs and then use populist rhetoric to maintain public support. See they're racist campaign against asylum seekers as an example.
In reality, the silent majority respect entrepreneurs and those with business acumen. They would like to see a '1st ammendment' style law in the UK. etc. etc.
Despite being a majority, this group has no lobby vehicle, so gets no concessions from the government. The angry, right-wing majority, have the gigantic 'The Sun' paper to fight their battles.
The UK's entire 'attitude problem' comes from Rupert Murdoch, via 'The Sun' and the technologically stillborn Sky TV.
- Low Taxes
- Low Censorship
It would appear, with our current choice of political party, you can only have one...It unlikely we'll see any change to libel laws in the UK in the near future.
What is more likely is that we'll see a similar change in use of language that the media undertook after a number of libel challenges.
The trick is to avoid explicit statements like: Person x is y and use I believe person x is y or It is my personal opinion that x is y. Similarly Company x did y becomes Company x allegedly did y or It has been alleged that....
The above changes to semantics convert statement of fact to personal belief (which is non-libellous), or (the second group) deflect responsibility for the statement.
And don't tell me "it's not prohibitively difficult, all you have to do is click on 'preferences > really obscure prefs > some strangely labelled link', and it's there at the bottom of the page." If the standard interface - that little dropdown menu - gives the impression that you're seeing all there is to see when you aren't, you are censoring those that don't show up when I read at -1.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
The fear of being taken to court (because of the size of damages and the fact that they are being made responsible for someone else's opinions) is now causing ISPs to shut down websites regardless of the content, but merely because they receive a solicitor's letter saying that if their client is ever slandered on this site in the future, they will sue - they've sent in the abuse report pre-emptively, before any abuse exists to report, but by doing so, they have made the ISP legally responsible for the content of all future postings on that site - no choice but to shut it down when the damages are in the region of half a million pounds...
The precedent that has been set is dreadful - it is a blanket permission to joe public to gag anyone out there who wants to use the web as a forum. We've reached the levels of limitation of speech whereby every word you print has to be carefully weighed up in case someone wants to sue you for it. If it can be interpreted as libellous, then someone out there's sure going to try, because hey - it's easy cash - the lawyer only wants a percentage, so if you lose, you lose nothing, but if you win, you win big.
Admittedly, it's never been tried in court, but which ISP is going to risk half a million pounds to find out? The last one bottled out when the damages reached £0.5m, unsurprisingly, but with ignorant lawmakers and judges, and greedy, opportunistic, litigious egomaniacs with too much time on their hands, you've got all the ingredients for disaster.
Salocin.com
Now that I think about it, the case wouldn't work, because Jack would have no complaint against Joe. Joe didn't shut down the website, he asked the ISP to and the ISP did it, therefore once again it is the ISP that is being sued.
Salocin.com
As a Brit I agree that we need to change our laws. I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to the alternatives.
The U.K. needs to wise up and bring its libel law into the 20th century, or its citizens will quickly find themselves inhabiting a Bland Speech Zone.
While this is possibly true, the author ought to offer exactly what the 20th (21st?) Century of libel law is.
How, for instance, does American law handle libel - I assume it works in a way that is more baised toward freedom of speech, but so far I haven't seen any posts which explain clearly how.
This isn't intended as a flame, just as a question, and hopefully someone will reply with IAAL and not just IANAL.
The burden of proof is solely on the defendent. And, obviously, if you can't use (for instance) other publications to back up your statement (not primary evidence) then it's hugely expensive to defend.
Directly following the death of Diana, the attempts to reform the libel law got hopelessly confused and bogged down into calls for the right to privacy for public figures.
People regularly take advantage of the fact that British libel law is so repressive to go after people and companies who would be untouchable in other countries. This effect will (I think) magnify now.
Because the snark was a...
While I consider myself a staunch libertarian, and agree with most all opinions already voiced here, I do find prudence with libel laws in general.
/not/ possible.
/not/ possible to remove a post to Usenet once it has gone through. So the clause in the law, giving the ISP time to respond to an alert and remove the defamatory remark is mute.
Freedom to speak one's mind is a self-evident necessity in a free society. However, we must have laws to protect persons and corporations from false information.
In a world without Libel and Slander laws, the BBC, a trusted news organization, could insist a corporation, say a meat processing plant, had a policy of adding human flesh to their ground beef, for the addictive properties found in Human flesh. News outlets around the world would carry the story and millions of people around the would believe it. One can easily say that the best way to fight speech, or writings, is with more of the same. However, the corporation which has been libeled should have legal recourse to collect damages, if any can be proven.
The problem with this law however is that damages do not have to be shown. It is also unfair to expect an ISP with 10 million users to filter through and edit 30 million Usenet posts a day. It is
It also is
In this case their is a clear right and wrong. The law has failed. And should be fixed. This is where intent comes in. If an organization has intended to libel and individual or corporation, they should be punished. If they can prove that they had ample reason to believe they were not defaming the person or corporation, they should not be held accountable. There are times, however, where this law could serve its purpose.
Don't get me wrong; The law should be re-written. It has far too many amiguities and no intent clause. But it should not be killed outright.
signature smigmature
- James
I have no problems at present, and I'm very happy with the service/support - so I'd really hate to move to another provider because of the UK-legal system forces providers to practice "guilty-until-proven-innocent"-policies.
I believe UK isps, shell providers and web-hosting services need to start lobbying - and soon. There is truly little reason for locating your web-pages in the UK - even for residents of the UK.
My (somewhat naive) view is that we need some new laws that should say:
The ISP is not responsible for usenet postings made to a different server (Seems obvious, but the law doesn't seem to distinguish between the WorldWideWeb and the rest of the internet)
The ISP only has to permanantly remove libelous material if a court considers it libelous. (rationale: Things can be unpublished on the web much more quickly than with paper. It should not be up to the ISP to consider what is libelous. Thats what the courts are for)
Any damages should be against the creator of the site.
The UK didn't really have much choice. The agreement was a 100 year lease. Doing anything other than return the country would have been considered interfering in another country's politics. It could also be argued that Britain generously used a treaty to help give Hong Kong 100 years of freedom.
Then there's the odd fact that Chinese rule really isn't considered too harsh by quite a lot of people in Hong Kong (What are they? The Honkongese?).
This works for the prisoners dilemma. How well does it work if there's the possibility of escalation? If one side attempted this in the cold war, then we would still have had an arms race. (Speculation. of course)
Generally by having a very large reserve of libel cash, the money to defend themselves agressively, and by getting the facts essentially right but blowing things out of proportion.
They also have the ability to use the libel laws to defend themselves (and their owners) against attacks from other publications.
Because Mr. Godfrey objected to an article posted in his name, I suggest that all articles that alledge to be from Mr. Godfrey are cancelled from all ISP's unless he specifically confirms to each ISP that he wrote them.
With the typical /. readers skills in computers, coupled with a shortage of skilled programmers in China, I'd suggest that everyone moves to China and tries to get a job working for the censorship organisations. Obviously as a censor, you would require unprohibited access to the internet, and there are no restrictions as to what you put on a site as far as copyright goes.
Despite Britain's seeming unwillingness to change their antiquated laws, if the large corporations start to get hurt from this terrible libel system they can apply far more pressure than the common man. Money is more important to most politicians than nearly anything else and the large companies who control this flow of money could end up being reform's greatest ally.
I don't see how changing the libel laws will change anything. Even if it was easier to prove innocence in a libel case, it would probably be much cheaper for the accused ISP to settle the case out of court. And moving a site to the US may end up costing more if it is sued, as the defendants will have to travel to the US to defend it. This is just an example of everyone's desire to get free money by suing somebody else. And I thought it was only in the US.
As a UK webmaster
, I am slightly worried with the results of the trial.I use Demon for some of my backbone operations and I fully supported them in the case - I actually thought that they would go through with it and win, and I was disappointed that they didn't.
All Demon did was allow USENET news to work in the way it was designed - a message posted gets circulated around the world. Given the volume of traffic in USENET is is unreasonable that they are meant to be aware of every single posting, but the case hinged on the fact that Godfrey informed Demon on possible libel.
At no point (as far as I know) did he attempt to prove to Demon that the article would libel him, but instead sued (I believe he has 'acquired' a reputation for this, but I'm unable to confirm this). And Demon buckled.
Many webmasters (like myself) will now be worried that their site may be closed down because of something they may or may not say in the future and many of us are now considering moving our sites out of the UK (especially if they run a 'public bulletin board' or forum, or maybe even an adult website [see http://www.beebware.com/dir/Adult/.
All in all, its very worrying for UK webmasters, UK Internet users and the UK internet in general.
Richy C.
--
Rubbish! Our system of government does have a constiution, and a written one to boot, it's split over many, many documents, and it forms a far les legalistic culture. We are permited to do as we will provided it does not transgress a law. Arbirtary detention? thats a gross exadgeration. I LIKE our system. It can't get too bad because then our checks and ballneces can come into play, you know, the big scary illigitament ones like the Lords and teh Monarch, and they can only act if there is popular cause, because otherwise they would egt ignored. This is whyan unwriten constiution is better, it if more flexible.
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
O.k. pedant, firstly, a constitution is not a piece of paper, which is where Americans all amke their mistake, it's a set of laws determining the governmnet of a country. They do NOT have to include a set of rights. When I say we have no written constiution, I mean that unlike the US, we have evolved a system of governmnet and an accomanying set of laws over about 1000 years (though most of the current lot date back to 1688 and the Restoration of the Monarchy after our wonderfuly brutal 'Republic' under Cromwell). Now, our constitutional laws and acts may be just normal acts of Parliament, but they are damned easy to change around. And unlike our American cousins who are paranoid about their governmnets taking rights away from them left right and centre, we are not because we have two checks on Parliament and it's ellected Commons. One, the House of Lords has the power to block, no matter the circumstance, ANY piece of legislation that delays or postpones a general ellection. Two, the Queen can dismiss parliament at any point. In order to get an ellected dictator who can impose a load of laws on us that limit our freedom (and though we have no freedoms laid out, they are assumed, we are free to act as long as we do not transgress the law, hence we don't have freedom of speach, yet we can talk our arses off provided we dont Libel someone etc, unlike the American system, wehre you have a right to freedom of Speach which can in theory be taken away from you.), we would have to have a person who is patient enough to fill the ords entirely wiht people he trusted implicitly and who were likeminded (once in the Lords they are free from the need for Parliamentary support, which is why the more unellected the better), and teh he has to get rid of the Queen for no good reason... and then.... and tehn he has to get the Military to swear alligience to him, and then becaue of the removal of the Monarch he has to re write the whole book from the begining anyway (as all the powers still stem from the Crown). The moonarchy still has a high aprooval over here, it would be hideously hard to do and you would need to change the system anyway, and the two checks can intervene (as can the ellectorat) at any time. Now, if, by some fluke, an evil congress and President got into your system, they COULD play merry havock with your constitution, and ammend those pesky rights and mess the legislation and tie it up in knots so it is very hard to change back. On the other hand, over here, three is no one higher than the Parliament [because it acts with the power of an absolute monarch, bound only by the monarch (who is bound by the practicle limitations in that if she started acting like a dictator everyone would laugh for a few minutes and then we would become a republic) and the House of Lords, which is bound not (as T Blair like to think) by Commons legislation but by Upper House conventions, like the Sailsbury convention which is going out the window because the Genius that is Mr Blair dosn't grasp that the collective illigitimacy stop us getting situations like the CTB Treaty fiasco.]... and so a future Parliament would be able to reverse any changes in a week. All in all the sure fire way to protect your rights is to make sure you vote reponsibly, becaue any legal system can be perverted, but as Douglas Adams would have people put on every Machine "Something that hardly ever goes wrong can be fixed, something that never goes wrong is not only hard to fix, but is often very hard to get at in the first place." And anyway, the Parliamentary system has stood us in good sted for 311 years now with no single Constitution as a special document, yet the US managed to have a war over the interpretation of it's. Hmmm... teething problems?
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
O.k. pedant, firstly, a constitution is not a piece of paper, which is where Americans all amke their mistake, it's a set of laws determining the governmnet of a country. They do NOT have to include a set of rights. When I say we have no written constiution, I mean that unlike the US, we have evolved a system of governmnet and an accomanying set of laws over about 1000 years (though most of the current lot date back to 1688 and the Restoration of the Monarchy after our wonderfuly brutal 'Republic' under Cromwell).
Now, our constitutional laws and acts may be just normal acts of Parliament, but they are damned easy to change around. And unlike our American cousins who are paranoid about their governmnets taking rights away from them left right and centre, we are not because we have two checks on Parliament and it's ellected Commons.
One, the House of Lords has the power to block, no matter the circumstance, ANY piece of legislation that delays or postpones a general ellection.
Two, the Queen can dismiss parliament at any point.
In order to get an ellected dictator who can impose a load of laws on us that limit our freedom (and though we have no freedoms laid out, they are assumed, we are free to act as long as we do not transgress the law, hence we don't have freedom of speach, yet we can talk our arses off provided we dont Libel someone etc, unlike the American system, wehre you have a right to freedom of Speach which can in theory be taken away from you.), we would have to have a person who is patient enough to fill the Lords entirely with people he trusted implicitly and who were likeminded (once in the Lords they are free from the need for Parliamentary support, which is why the more unellected the better), and then he has to get rid of the Queen for no good reason... and then.... and then he has to get the Military to swear alligience to him, and then becaue of the removal of the Monarch he has to re write the whole book from the begining anyway (as all the powers still stem from the Crown).
The moonarchy still has a high aprooval over here, it would be hideously hard to do and you would need to change the system anyway, and the two checks can intervene (as can the ellectorate) at any time. Now, if, by some fluke, an evil congress and President got into your system, they COULD play merry havock with your constitution, and ammend those pesky rights and mess the legislation and tie it up in knots so it is very hard to change back. On the other hand, over here, there is no one higher than the Parliament [because it acts with the power of an absolute monarch, bound only by the monarch (who is bound by the practicle limitations in that if she started acting like a dictator everyone would laugh for a few minutes and then we would become a republic) and the House of Lords, which is bound not (as T Blair like to think) by Commons legislation but by Upper House conventions, like the Sailsbury convention which is going out the window because the Genius that is Mr Blair dosn't grasp that the collective illigitimacy stop us getting situations like the CTB Treaty fiasco.]... and so a future Parliament would be able to reverse any changes in a week.
All in all the sure fire way to protect your rights is to make sure you vote reponsibly, becaue any legal system can be perverted, but as Douglas Adams would have people put on every Machine "Something that hardly ever goes wrong can be fixed, something that never goes wrong is not only hard to fix, but is often very hard to get at in the first place." And anyway, the Parliamentary system has stood us in good sted for 311 years now with no single Constitution as a special document, yet the US managed to have a war over the interpretation of it's. Hmmm... teething problems?
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
Actually, the Eu law is effected through the ECA act, and hence could be repealed perfectly legally. We dont have a gauranteed freedom of speach becaus the system is permisive (actually, I though the US constiution was along ismmilar lines in that it prohibits the CREATION of a law limmiting free speech), hence you can say what you want providing you dont break the law (i.e. influencing a jury). Regarding Demon, I think a legal mistake has been made in classfying an ISP as a publisher rather than a carrier. For instance, it is treason (technically) to break intoa post box in the UK (though you would never get done for it) as the Royal Mail is property of the Queen and while in transit, so are the letters. On the other hand, you couldn't post a block of hard drugs and do the Queen for possesion with intent to supply, humerous though it may be to attempt to do so. Perhaps it would be best to have (yet another) Lords select commmity sti down and look at the Internet, as I think appyling precednts with other media dosn't work so well with the Internet which is drastically different from any other. Certainly, the problem is nothing to do with Free Speech or lack of formall written Constitution.
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
Is there a religious right in Great Britian? How can you have Southern Baptists when there is no South? But seriously, I didn't know that there was any kind of rightwing\fundamentalist movement in Great Britian or the continent...all the right wingers I hear about in Europe are neonazis and anti-immigrant people.
Also, I wouldn't group "the religious right" and "big corporations" together (Ralph Reed\M$ notwithstanding), and I wouldn't put any of them in with this lawsuit. This lawsuit is suck that anyone if Nigel sends Rutherford an e-Mail saying that Andrew likes to shove hotgrits down his pants, Andrew can sue not only Nigel, but Nigels ISP as well. I can only imagine the junk lawsuits that will ensue.
I am glad to see that once again Hannah Arendts prediction comes true, America the land of political freedom and social repression (since most of our free speech rights are channeled into a discussion of Back Street Boys vs. *NSynch, but Joeylover459@aol.com can call the BSB fags all she wants without having to prove it).
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
You are absolutely wrong to blame the prejudices of those at the top on those at the bottom. It comes from the top down, not the bottom up. It's the way they want people to behave, the better to control them. The ruling class thrive on the ignorance of others, and this goes just as much for other countries too. The root of the problem isn't something inherent in the British people, it's what we've been taught all our lives.
The most apalling thing about this settlement is that this unpleasant and xenophobic individual now has enough money to keep on suing to his heart's content. If people cough up out of court, so much the better for him. In that way no precedents get set, and he can carry on pushing his luck and increasing his wealth.
It's pretty sad when sits get shut down for what they might post somday.
It's even more sad when the sites that are being taken down are anti-censorship ones.
Lock up all people now, sice someday they might do something bad!!!
Technically correct. However Hong Kong Island is such a small part of the whole that it would not have been viable without the New Territories - no airport, docks etc, most housing outside the area.
Mark Austin---- For Whigs admit no force but argument
Our country (the UK, that is) and its legal system is run by mis-informed, net-illiterate politicians who see the internet as nothing but another marketing tool that their spin-doctors can play for them.
The crux of the problem is that:
Apart from a very small minority, Britain, as a whole, is completely 'net' illiterate:
Only the other day, I was stuck behind a lorry on the M6 (as does tend to happen), and I noticed on the back of the lorry, along with the address and telephone details of the company, was written: "e-mail us: sales.ourcompany.co.uk!"(sic) - 10 out of 10 for initiative, 0 out of 10 for knowledge. With people like these running our biggest companies how can our society, let alone our laws change?
Blair wants Britain to be an e-commerce capital - how on earth can this happen when we live in a god-damned backwards nation, where we still harp on about 1945, 1966 and Thatcher!
Our country needs educating - which _is_ happening (but only to our children) - people that run our country, and run our biggest companies need to be net literate. Without this literacy we will have serial litigators like Dr Godfrey and his team of crack ambulance chasers suing every site left, right and centre.
The voices of us geeks and nerds will not be heard - we'll not be taken seriously and we'll be ignored. Either that, or (take Y2K for example) the media will jump on us, bastardise our views and call us idiots when nothing happens.
Our nation, its laws and its people need bringing out of the 19th (never mind the 20th!) century and back into the 21st!
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jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue
-- js.
Brilliantly phrased. I hadn't realized things had gotten so bad in Brittan. I usually find myself fairly clouded by Ethnocentrism, and don't remember that not everyone has a first amendment. I was thinking that I was going to skip America after some laws were passed (specifically California's Prop 22) and I think that Holland is fairly wonderful... But that is just based on rumours I have heard.
Further, to actually comment on this case. I know I speak for most folk reading this when I say that this is evil and foul. The very idea that people can lash out at that which they don't understand is absolutely the bottom. The only thing I can think of is that we should create a new post in our governments. Call it the national geek. Applicants must be between 20-40, and has the power of veto on all laws involving the internet. It's the only solution I can think of. Either that, or we have to wait 40 years, until the geeks and the internet generation is in power.
Just my opinion,
Dusty Hodges
Talking about education, India, my country, is no different from the UK. India inherited its present education system from the UK (when England ruled India, pre-1947). We have similar lorries here too! Why?
The whole issue settles at one fact. The US is where the Internet (and most free ideas) was born. It's in the attitude of the people. And the govt. reflects the very same attitude (largely). In the other ``Net-backward'' nations of the world, we have people struggling to keep pace with the technological innovations (make that `free ideas') of these times. We blame the govts., but who chose the govt. (UK = India = democracy)? It all lies in the overall attitude of the society.
In very less time, the globe will be our nation, and the Internet will be the govt. The open-source community is showing the way!
Some `pathetic' Indian Web sites (consider lack_of_education, money_motive_primary as the bad points for these sites, I have explained why) -
- BWSX.com (http://www.bwsx.com/) - They promise great prizes, but give nothing (my personal experience)! The Stock system can be easily `fooled'.
- Contests2Win.com (http://www.contests2win.com/) - Right-click and get greeted by an annoying JavaScript message "Copyright Contests2Win.com!".
- Indiahomeseek.com (http://www.indiahomeseek.com/) - Register as user, and can't login next moment!
Things at these sites might have changed by now, but the attitude continues.The blind and crazy followers of the dotcom culture are forgetting about the main fuel that runs the Internet engine - FREEDOM!
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``Programmaholic'', Manish Jethani
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``Programmaholic'', Manish Jethani
The agreement had nothing to do with Hong Kong....the agreement was for Kowloon and the New Territories.....Britain threw in Hong Kong in order to try an avoid more immigrants and cut better business deals with the Chinese. BTW, can you tell me why Portugal gave Macau residents citizenship and the Britain didn't give it to HK? Stange isn't it? A Portuguese citizen from Macau can travel/work throughout the EU and Britain while Her Majesty's former subjects can't?
Perfidious Albion indeed!
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
The negotiations for the return were held and concluded 1983-84.....as a result Vancouver, Canada now has the largest Chinese population outside of Asia.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
Actually, Hong Kong Island would have been MUCH better off with out Kowloon, NT, etc......I'd much rather live in the Mid-levels than across the way in Mongkok or Tsimshatsui.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
Libel law isn't necessairly a bad thing.
I remember hearing (on NPR) about a couple who published a book about some of the *not so good* things that Monsanto is doing with genetic alteration of food. They had a (large) publisher lined up for their book and, just days before the book was going to print that the publisher called them to cancel the agreement.
Monsanto had gotten word about the contents of the book and threatend a libel suit against the publisher of the book.
They kept looking around and eventually found a publisher out of Colorado (boulder?) that had a small press and was willing to be their publisher. They asked him "What kind of Insurance (for a libel suit) do you carry?" He said, "NONE, so all of your facts better be there!"
The truth is that there are not that many libel suits that suceed. At least here in the US, hardly any libel suits end up going to trail.
With your Freedom of Speech,
You have the Responsibility *not* to make an ass of yourself 8-}
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This is your life, good to the last drop.
Doesn't get any better than this.
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This is your life, good to the last drop.
Doesn't get any better than this.
This is your life,